Men have more sex after getting a vasectomy, a new study has shown.

They were three times more likely to experience an increase in frequency after getting a snip than have a decrease.

Four out of ten of those surveyed said their sex lives had 'significantly improved'.

This could be because removing the stress of potentially getting their partner pregnant makes men feel more relaxed, experts say. This makes their love lives more spontaneous.

Men who had vasectomies also said they had higher sex drives, better erections and orgasms and were more satisfied.

Just over 12% of the men surveyed had sex more often after having the snip (stock image)

HOW IS A VASECTOMY PERFORMED? Vasectomy is usually carried out under local anesthetic and takes around 15 minutes. The procedure involves severing, then sealing off, a tube called the vas deferens, which carries sperm from the testes to the penis. This prevents sperm from reaching the seminal fluid (semen), which is ejaculated from the penis during sex. There will be no sperm in the semen, therefore a woman's egg cannot be fertilised. The procedure has a 99.9 per cent success rate. Men will not feel any pain, although it may feel slightly uncomfortable. The incisions are stitched, usually using dissolvable stitches, which will disappear naturally within about a week. After a vasectomy, a man’s hormones remain normal and there is no noticeable difference in his ejaculate volume, since sperm make up only a tiny part of the semen. As the sperm cannot come out after the vas deferens is cut, like other dead body cells, the sperm disintegrate and are reabsorbed by the body. Advertisement

And the benefits were not just for the men. Women reported an increase in their sexual arousal after their partner had the operation.

In their study involving 294 couples, researchers from Frankfurt University found 12.4 per cent of the men had sex more often after a vasectomy.

Meanwhile, just 4.5 per cent reported having it less often.

Their report concluded: 'We were able to show the sexual satisfaction of men improved and that of the women did not diminish.

'The reason is presumably the absence of anxiety of unwanted pregnancies.'

Research by Stanford University in 2015 found that men who had the snip had sex 5.9 times a month, compared with 4.9 times for intact males.

The snip has gone out of fashion

Vasectomies are minimally-invasive procedures, which take about 15 minutes and involve very little recovery time.

Yet the number of men having them in England has fallen by two thirds in 10 years, NHS figures show.

The procedure is also being rationed by some NHS trusts and GPs in certain areas have been ordered to cap the number of referrals.

Figures from NHS Digital show that just 10,880 vasectomies were performed in 2015/16, down from 29,344 in 2005/6.

And in the US, just one in 10 eligible men get vasectomies, according a 2015 report by the United Nations.

That’s half the rate of men in Canada and the United Kingdom.

Marriage breakdowns deterring men

Experts say more men are choosing to preserve their fertility to have children later in life, particularly if their marriage breaks down.

They also say men may be deterred by the permanency, since vasectomies are very expensive and arduous to reverse, with uncertain success.

‘Around one in ten men having a vasectomy will want it reversed later on,’ said Frank Chinegwundoh, a consultant urologist at Bart’s Hospital, London.

‘Divorce, remarriage and meeting someone younger are invariably the reasons.’

Although vasectomy reversal is possible, the £3,000 operation is far from straightforward — and only a fraction of men can expect to have more children.

‘While a vasectomy is a quick, straightforward procedure carried out by and large under local anaesthetic, reversals are a much bigger job, taking an hour and a half to perform and requiring a general anaesthetic or deep sedation,’ said John Lemberger, a consultant urological surgeon based in Nottingham.