Just because you’re a heart patient doesn’t mean you have to miss out on some Valentine’s Day romance.

Sure, you might need to skip the bonbons — not that you should be eating candy anyway, even if you’re not a heart patient — and your doctor might have a long list of other “don’ts” you need to follow.

But there’s still one “do” you can do: If you can climb a flight of stairs without suffering chest pain or a bout of gasping, you can have sex — even if you had a heart attack just last week, according to the latest advice from the American Heart Association.

AHA doctors say sex is only a very tiny risk factor for a heart attack — and that risk is the same regardless of whether or not you’ve already suffered one.

That being the case, I can’t think of a better way to help yourself recover from a heart attack — because sex itself is actually one of the best ways to boost your ticker in the first place.

One recent study found that men who have sex at least twice a week are 50 percent less likely to suffer a fatal heart attack than men who do it less than once a month.

Regular sex can also cut the risk of prostate cancer — and sex in general, for men and women alike, can lower levels of stress, boost general well-being and may even help you to live longer.

Of course, the AHA gets a lot wrong — carb-heavy, low-fat diet, anyone? — so naturally, they’ve managed to botch this one too.

Instead of just telling men it’s OK to have sex after a heart attack and leaving it at that, they had to add that it’s safe for them to try penis pills like Viagra, too (unless they take nitrates) — despite the fact that there’s nothing safe about sex meds.

Along with links to heart problems, especially in heart patients, sex meds can rob you of both your vision and your hearing. They can also cause headaches, stomach problems and painful erections that won’t go away without the help of an ER doc with a sharp instrument.

If you’re having problems down there, forget meds. Try losing weight first.

Obesity causes testosterone to plunge and estrogen to rise — a one-two punch right where it hurts most. In most cases, dropping those pounds will put you right back on your game, no meds necessary.

More importantly, losing weight will also help boost your stamina — so you’ll actually have the energy you need to get moving in the bedroom again, too.

The best way to protect your prostate is to keep it far away from doctors who want to screen it — and even further from the surgeons who make a living off prostate cancer procedures.

Not long ago, this was considered a rogue approach.

Today, it’s mainstream science — and another study confirms again that all the screenings in the world don’t save lives.

Simply put, the government-funded study of 76,000 men who were tracked for 13 years finds that annual PSA tests don’t make a bit of difference in determining who lives and who dies.

It’s not hard to see why: PSA tests can’t sort the rare, aggressive and deadly tumors from the ones you don’t need to worry about — and even when they do detect high-risk cancers, it’s too late.

As a result, men in both groups — those who were screened every year, and those who were not — died of the disease at the same rate, according to the study results published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

But don’t be fooled by the scare tactics: Most men who have prostate cancer live with it for years or even decades, and eventually die of something else entirely.

And until screenings came along, most of these men never even knew they had prostate cancer.

Ignorance was truly bliss.

Today, when men find out they have the disease, they panic and get treated for it — but if it doesn’t reduce the death rate, why bother even finding out in the first place?

That’s the bottom line here, and if you’re thinking “better safe than sorry,” think again. Prostate surgery won’t keep you safe… and it’ll almost certainly leave you sorry — sorry you ever agreed to surgery.

The procedure that’s been proven NOT to save your life can ruin it more than your doctors will ever let on. Men who wake up after prostate surgery often find they’ve lost all control “down there” and face long battles with incontinence and impotence.

Plenty of men never recover.

When you consider the decades you can live after a prostate cancer diagnosis — with or without surgery — that could add up to a quarter of your life or more, in diapers and unable to have sex.

Of course, you’ve probably heard commercials and seen ads for newer “robot” procedures that make it sound like they have fewer of these risks — but that’s just not reality.

Keep reading for the truth behind robot-assisted prostate surgeries.

I wouldn’t wish prostate surgery on my worst enemies.

Not only is it often completely unnecessary since prostate cancer isn’t nearly the killer it’s been made out to be — but the treatments themselves are often worse than the disease and come with more risks than your surgeon will ever let on.

And that’s true even if your surgeon happens to be made of metal.

Robot-assisted prostate surgeries have become all the rage in recent years, involved in up to 85 percent of all procedures in the United States.

But that’s not a triumph of technology so much as marketing: Many patients agree to them because they’ve been led to believe robo-surgeries are safer and better than traditional surgeries.

They’re not.

Researchers asked 600 Medicare patients who had undergone prostate surgery about their side effects, and a full 90 percent of them reported moderate to severe sexual dysfunction 14 months later.

It didn’t matter if they were among the 400 patients who got a robot-assisted procedure… or the 200 who got the traditional surgery. The results were the same either way.

And in both groups, about a third of the patients reported incontinence problems — with slightly more men in the robot group battling the leakage.

This isn’t some groundbreaking study, either. In fact, the research has been consistent: These high-tech procedures don’t lower the risks of side effects or even improve outcomes.

But while robots aren’t bringing better results to the OR, they’re delivering big on the balance sheet: Hospitals charge up to $2,000 more for robot-assisted surgeries.

They have to. The machines alone can cost several million dollars, not to mention training and maintenance fees.

Most hospitals have to take out loans to cover it all — and when you’ve got payment deadlines coming up, you’ve got extra pressure to make sure the machine starts bringing in cash the moment it’s plugged in.

That’s why hospitals that buy robots launch big, misleading ad campaigns — and that’s why studies have shown that facilities that get the machines begin doing more procedures almost overnight, even in areas where prostate surgeries in general are on the decline.

In a nutshell, that means hospitals and surgeons are aggressively pushing patients to not only get a surgery that research shows they don’t actually need, but a more expensive high-tech version of the procedure that doesn’t improve outcomes or even decrease the risk of side effects.

And people wonder why the healthcare system is a mess!

Exploitation — it’s the only word that comes to mind here.

Even as the mainstream moves away from routine cancer screenings for men and women alike, there’s one group of Americans that are still getting screened regularly for cancers that almost certainly won’t hurt them.

And that’s the elderly.

These are the people least likely to need treatment even if a cancer is detected — and least able to withstand the traumatic surgeries, dangerous drugs, and toxic chemotherapy often used to “treat” those cancers.

But the numbers don’t lie — and the newest numbers show that 57 percent of men between the ages of 75 and 79 were screened for prostate cancer, while 42 percent of men older than 80 were actually given PSA tests.

You have to wonder what the doctors are thinking here: They know these cancers can take decades to develop, decades an 80-year-old doesn’t have. They know that even younger men have nothing to worry about in most cases. They know that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recently recommended doing away with the PSA test altogether.

They know all this… yet they’re screening anyway, and not just men.

The same study in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that 62 percent of women between the ages of 75 and 79, and 50 percent of women older than 80 have been given mammograms over the past two years.

And if PSA exams are useless for men, mammograms are every bit as useless for women — so useless that even mainstream docs are backing away from them.

That’s because all the mammograms in the world have barely made a dent in the breast cancer death rate. These screenings have succeeded in finding harmless cancers, which then end up being treated with disfiguring surgeries and dangerous radiation.

Similarly, the study also found that 53 percent of women between 75 and 79 and 38 percent of those older than 80 were given pap smears to test for cervical cancer.

It’s ridiculous — and even the mainstream groups that normally back most cancer screenings agree. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends ending pap smears as early as 65, while the American Cancer Society says there’s no benefit after the age of 70.

In reality, many of these screenings have no benefit at any age. But for seniors, many of whom are already fighting health issues, these screenings, biopsies, and inevitable cancer treatments can turn the golden years into a living nightmare.

Skip ‘em — because in this case, what you don’t know almost certainly won’t hurt you.