Jul 01, 2015 02:04 PM EDT By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

Despite its reputation for ruining people's sex lives, new research suggests that porn could actually help keep the passion in the bedroom alive.

Researchers at Concordia University and UCLA found that men who watch erotic films for up to 25 hours a week, or more than three hours a day, are "better able to hold erections than those who do not," Campus Reform reported.

"The study shows that if there is erectile dysfunction in a relationship, it's probably not the porn that's causing it -- it's more likely the quality of the sex," Jim Pfaus, a professor in Concordia's department of psychology and Centre for Studies in Behavioral Neurobiology, told The National Post.

For the study, Pfaus and his colleague Nicole Prause of UCLA collected and analyzed data from 280 men, half of whom were in relationships.

The study participants viewed 20-second-to three-minute-long films in a lab, showing a man and woman having consensual vaginal intercourse, and then reported their level of sexual arousal, The Los Angeles Times reported.

Researchers found that men who had watched more sex films at home were more aroused when they watched sex films in the lab.

"While one could object that this was expected since they like sex films, the result is important because clinicians often claim that men get desensitized by watching these films," Prause said.  "They are responding more strongly to very vanilla erotica than the guys for whom the films are more novel. While this association doesn't establish a cause, it proves viewing erotica at home is not desensitizing and perhaps even sensitized the men to respond more strongly."

They also found no relationship between viewing sex films and the incidence of erectile dysfunction in men who are sexually active.

"While many people think easy access to porn leads to problems in the bedroom, our study suggests the opposite: that erectile dysfunction is most likely caused by the same issues that have been known for some time, such as performance anxiety, poor cardiovascular health, or side-effects from substance abuse,"  Concordia's Pfaus said in a statement.

The findings are detailed in the in the journal Sexual Medicine.

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