Missionary is one of the most dangerous sexual positions

A new study has found that missionary is the 'second most dangerous' position - for men.

Vanilla sex is actually quite risque it seems.

This makes sense in a way. Vanilla was once an exotic import from the colonies, an amazing flavour from a foreign land.

Research published in the Journal of Impotence looked into which position causes the highest proportion of penile fractures caused during heterosexual intercourse.

Missionary was the second most likely to cause a fracture, specifically missionary where the man is on top of the woman.

• Doggy style (44 per cent)
• Man on top missionary (25 per cent)
• Woman on top (10 per cent)

The data was based on 90 heterosexual patients with a broken penis, who were asked how it happened.

Previous studies have found that a woman being on top of a man during sex caused the most injuries.

Why these two positions come top of the list is to do with angle and 'vigour'. According to the study's authors:

We can speculate that when the man is in a dominant position and very excited, intercourse can become extremely vigorous, triggering greater impact at the time of trauma when the penis slips out of the vagina and hits against the perineum or pubic symphysis.

During missionary, with the woman on top, her position or shifting of position can also cause a breakage.

Other injuries on the list which were much rarer included:

• Masturbation (17 per cent)
• 'Rolling over' (3 per cent)
• 'Blunt trauma' (2 per cent)

According to NHS England, 'reported cases of penile fracture are rare', but they also say this may be because men do not report injuries out of embarrassment.

Seeking medical attention is always better than giving in to social embarassment.

The positions which were most dangerous for women were not addressed in the study.

HT Metro

More: These are the most popular sex positions​