so let's talk about orgasm um what happens yeah yay what happens sort of as you get closer to orgasm and then when you achieve orgasm in the brain great I get to say my wild Theory so we had this uh crazy thing U my collaborator Greg seagull and I at Pittsburgh we're watching all these brains and the sympathetic nervous system measure while this uh small group of men and women were going through climax in our lab and we saw exactly what we expected goes in up up up up up and at some point it like
turns and goes down we're like oh no it fell off right we're watching from next door just to be clear some people think we watch them have sex that does does not happen they were always next door this is not Masters and Johnson like that is they observe people have sex yeah that's not what's happening here so This Is Us looking at their signals from next door so we can't see in the lab uh we see these signals plummet so we see Alpha waves in the brain spikes so these are waves between 8 and 12
Herz or cycles per second the brain um start to increase a lot Sy like nervous system goes down and we assume something's wrong with the equipment and we see in another woman and another woman and we're like what the hell is this and we think now it's not published so that's why I said my wild Theory we think this is a real effect we think it's an undocumented phase of the sexual response cycle so I think what's occurring and it could be what they used to call Plateau phase that we' say like oh we get
so around and then we hang out there until climax happens I was like I don't believe for a second that like nothing's happening in that period like oh I'm just trying this is why like just getting a stronger vibrator won't necessarily fix an anorgasmia issue it could but not necessarily so what we think is happening is that you have to get aroused enough whatever that is so I the early arousal stuff all stands it's there yeah but remember it was all 3 to 5 minutes that's all we ever saw so it looks like as you
start to approach clim so when we now separate out people so you must be watching people for longer then right cuz we know on average it's taking women 14 minutes or so we tell them literally take as much time as you need the only reason you should tap out is if you get tired of it because we're not leaving we're in it good that's exciting what's the longest you've had to stay I think we had 24 minutes we had one woman Tap Out actually which is kind of interesting because I thought it'd be higher than
that it's like it is a lab setting right out of how many uh 24 in that study okay so one out 24 tapped out because she couldn't orgasm or she got tired so this is one of those back things so I don't know if this will make the paper on literally a fight broke out in the hallway of where we're not our staff we could hear screaming she said she could hear screaming and we're like yeah that would make it difficult so she lost her Focus got it yes I was so upset we could have
had 100% anyway right lab uh life happens so generally they they got to that point but we learned from the early subjects in that study that we had to separate out those phases so we would say like you know get try and get aroused try and get aroused say okay now try and have a climax if you can if you feel like you're not going to get there you can hit the button anyway you just tell us afterwards if you actually had one or not no problem you know they get paid either way we do
everything to incentivize like please be honest you know like there's no reason to lie here um we think they were now we're also recording to make sure that we knew but uh you know once we gave that instruction of like try and have a climax that's when all the physiology shifted so it seems to be really tied to this uh time when you try and get to that point and we're guessing that it has to do with cognitive control so it's like if you get a a certain amount of arousal at some point uh you
don't want your brain just orgasming all the time that's not safe that's not effective that there's lots of reasons not to have that too easy so if it's safe in your environment to have a climax you know how would you know how would you want to allow that to happen it's also uh gross synchronous firing across the brain which is frighteningly close to a seizure you know you don't have motor control during this period so we're saying like it kind of makes sense you know you may have to reduce the control of your brain that
allows it to go into a synchronous firing State interesting so we still don't know how orgasm is triggered no one does there are lots of speculations about that there are some uh studies you probably know of like spinal implants where they've been triggered but it's not in the uh the usual way you so unless we kind of subvert psychology and go straight to the spinal cord we don't really know how it's normally triggered so I wonder if people who have uh who get to that state more readily or more easily or more they have like
persistent genital arousal disorders 100% that's what we wonder Y and so is this like the state that people are trying to get into like is it supposed to be a euphoric State like a good like a flow State that's what we think they're describing so a lot of meditations have a similar brain state from the electroen graphic data we have to these high arousal states which then brings up another point of like instead of masturbating uh excuse me instead of meditating see it was already in my brain like see you could just there's that question
of like uh whatever health benefits you get if it's the brain state in me in meditation that's important can we also get that in high arousal States in sexual interaction and could that be useful for health is there something we can do with that but you know one step at a time so we're doing the study in men now the challenge with guys is their latency is so much shorter than women's that you know we joke and we tell them okay go ahead and do like I'm done EG is very fast so we should be
okay but their latency makes it more difficult to capture because it might be a shorter period even even if it's first of all short in general but then it's shorter so is this where maybe people who practice edging are like trying to get that state or stay in that 100% that's what I think it is and it was like when we saw that we like and this makes sense now that makes sense now like we're so I'm trying not to get over excited you know because you don't want to uh buy your own data too
much until you have some backup until we more than men it makes sense makes so it's very seductive yeah yeah and and you know I I think you and I both agree that there's no at least to date no physiologic or benefit to Sean retention but perhaps some people who are walking around like aroused for days at a time because they're trying to be if they're able to do it maybe they're achieving that brain State yeah it it could be part of it um we've also published a few papers on something called orgasmic meditation which
is this practice this is how we ended up doing the partner stimulations uh someone can be any gender stimulates the cliteral shaft of someone for 15 minutes with their hand there's more to it than that but that's the basic setup the idea is to just feel there are no instructions given to this and then they stop and so like well what does that do you know so they're uh they kind of practice it like a meditation and they'll often do it daily or twice a day you know and it's not meant to be precursor to
sex so they actually say like you have to stand up they have a whole procedure this is not meant to lead into a sexual interaction even though they call it orgasmic meditation they don't necessarily have an orgasm from it so this made that make more sense too because when we studied these meditat the PE receiving the stimulation uh got into that high Alva State very quickly interesting and are they doing something to avoid so we know obviously that there's this thing called like blue balls and blue vva right where people get frustrated because of congestion
discomfort in the genitals so do you think that they're using like breathing tools or other tools to sort of offset the discomfort or maintain sort of maybe parasympathetic control or things like that I yeah I don't know why the distinction is isn't uncomfortable in those situations they report in many but not all cases still getting sexually aroused I mean they're touching their genitals so it's not like a purely meditative kind of experience like this is baked into the the biology I don't know why they aren't saying that it's uncomfortable and I don't think it's due
to having a low arousal response like I think they are experiencing some significant level of arousal in most cases so interesting I want to learn more yeah us too that is that is so fascinating so let's talk about semen retention you know I think that like it comes from a place of there are these you know Ancient Ancient societies that use Sean retention to achieve higher levels of meditation or some sort of brain uh cognition Focus control do you think that there could be a physiologic basis for that so physiologic basis for that for that
improv brain Focus or maybe some you know something you know in terms of like what we just talked about in terms of like potentially improving the ability of the brain to focus and be more active in other ways being as generous as I can I think uh there are some data that right sex is somewhat a use it or lose it function and people sometimes we call it sex drive I'm I've probably even done it today and not been aware of it but it's not really a drive you can't deplete it so the longer you
go without sexual activity of some kind that eventually so there's an acute period where it seems to go up in 48 hourish range uh then starting to after starting after that the drive actually kind of drops off and we think this may be why some women struggle when they haven't had sex for a long period to kind of reignite that drive see I did it I did it desire we would say incentive motivation in okay like why they struggle is after it's been inactive a long time like the body's like oh we don't need that
anymore great we're done so I could see where seon retention like if you truly you know do not engage with sexual stimuli for a long time or have any kind of interaction your brain may think like oh good we're done with that I don't need to think about it and now you're just you're distracting thoughts interesting okay okay I mean I think that and I want to talk about this but if you're open to it I think you've unfortunately you know I think this is important to talk about and we can delete if you don't
want to but you as a researcher have gotten some death threats and uh because of the research you've done on these groups uh who promote Seaman retention or avoiding pornography and I think that it's important to talk about these things because you know people are having really uh unintended consequences suicide things like that that you actually alerted me to a couple years ago a few years ago and so I you know talking about this is challenging but you still do it so I want to commend you for that because really hard to continue doing all
this research and really putting yourself out there in a way where your own life is being threatened so I think I just want people to realize that like researchers are not just like nerds sitting in their Labs doing work like they're actually facing some real potential consequences it's interesting in the US especially the folks who do sexual psychophysiological work are very few in far between we're a tiny tiny field but most of the people who trained in the US leave and it's for exactly those kind of reasons so our federal funding agencies don't support that
kind of work other governments don't necessarily like just give money away either they tend to have smaller grants but they fund it so there are lots of very active Labs Canada was lucky a few years ago they actually had a female sexual health initiative I was like I wish so the climate in the US is very hostile to this type of work and most scientists are leaving who do this kind of work because of that so uh in general there's more science hostility across the board I think that's very well documented so the the kind
of threats to scientists you know thinking we're all in somebody's pocket somebody is getting paid off with something has just become more common uh women are more targeted in general I think the data are pretty clear on that so like the when a lot of the threats started for me um I was I think I was the last author on a paper with six guys they big me you know we all did this y'all like are you getting death like no what do you oh my God you know my co-authors were awesome they're like that's
horrible don't know what to do though right uh and it really seems to be some of it is uh here's this woman who's telling men how their bodies are that always struck me as funny because like when you train probably as a physician too but as a therapist you know it's like if you're training to do couples therapy and you're not married you can still be a trained expert in that area we don't say like oh you can't be a couple's therapist cuz you haven't had a successful relationship ship or you can't treat alcoholism because
you have not had alcoholism of course not like it's an expertise area I couldn't develop and I have you know I have a strong background in that I was trained to measure penal responses in the lab I've been on large grants that have done that and published a lot of those so I think there's just this General resistance in the US to science more broadly but then that targeting has always been on sexuality and especially women and man did I pick the worst possible kind of segment because it's almost all men a lot of it's
manosphere groups so the manosphere is generally uh men online who seek to disseminate anti-feminist values so you know there's in the 70s we had men's rights groups that very reasonably said you know we get abused at home sometimes too and we want resources and when we go to court don't assume the mom should have the kids like we want to be hurt also because we want custody and they would partner with feminists to say we want equality we all want equality and the manosphere is new and different they said women are scum they're taking it
away from us we have to take our power back and then they all do that in different ways so men going their own way are like we're not going to get married because women are all you know secret sneaky and trying to undermine us and so some of the Seaman retention communities have gone into that a kind of manosphere area where they really seek to battle with women and when you're in a space like I when I do stuff in neuroscience and Mathematics there are far fewer women in that space in Psychology is much more
more women in that space for sure um but some of these spaces it's like I'm there aren't many people who do sexual psychophysiology and addictions you know and in that space there aren't many women sitting pornography I think there are two of us so and the other ones in Europe she cheated she left yeah so so I think it's just a whole kind of train wreck of different things that could make you a Target and they all just hit at the same time that's really scary in terms of things let's let's not like call out
groups I think but let's say for someone say who's interested in SE in retention and again I don't have a problem with it as long as you're not harming yourself or harming someone else right I think potentially maybe there are benefits that we don't know in the scientific literature but what are some things these people should be looking out for when they're engaging in these online forums there's a group that we have a few papers published on which is noap and there are a few dozen papers published on this group now so they have an
abstinence focus and they started as an anti-masturbation group and they've since expanded so they say no pmo which is porn masturbation or orgasm and they recommend 90 days they call it their gold standard and claim they can treat sexual dysfunction with that and they're very specific about their cure claims there's no evidence that it does any of that and our papers show that it's quite the opposite that people who follow them seem to end up with more symptomology over time the more engaged they are the more symptoms of depression anxiety and erectile dysfunction they report
and it's not due to the severity we check that so I think in general groups that are make very strong claims about something with no scientific basis are probably good to avoid yeah however if there's a group that says we're doing no fat this is going to be hysterical you know we're going to do this and then at the end you know we're going to give this award because these are three buddies from college no problem with that I mean that's how noof faab started right well it's like a meme right right so originally this
was like supposed to it started on a bodybuilding Forum because they thought that abstaining would increase their testosterone which is hilarious because it does like the opposite in the best studies we have that is if you want more testosterone it's you should probably have more sexual activity even masturbation does it although there are limits to that you know you can't make super physiological you can't like masturbate to really increase muscles I think but it started in this forum and then originally it was taken on to Reddit and they said hey we're doing this masturbation challenge
isn't it funny and then they realized they could make money at it and it got trademarked and they sold coaching and they sld groups now and like there's this whole industry that's popped up around it so now it's like they have to make these very or I guess feel like maybe they have to make these very strong scientific claims without evidence so if you say like hey does it need to be 90 days hey what about this claim you made like I'm not seeing that they can quite violently shut that down some so we looked
at the violent posts in that forum for example on Reddit and uh the nature of the violence that was being posted so we like had this um collection of terms including you know kill rape uh all these kind of stems of kind of obvious violent activity and found most of the posts that were violent were Direct directed at other users so uh some of them are directed at scientists uh you know this scientist is a sh you know we're going to piss on their grave like that was one of the more mild ones sure um
and some are directed at the porn industry so they're like take down the the women you know they're trying to bring us down they're trying to keep us weak they would name the pornography Executives where they lived like this should not be on here why is this relevant to what you're doing but again to them it's like a battle but then they're threatening other users to say like you know if I catch you I'm going to find you I have your IP address like okay they probably don't have their IP address but they're mostly youth
like a lot of the Reddit allows people from age 13 and up to be on the Forum so it's a lot of Youth who don't know any better necessarily and are being told like you're going to do this to scre up your brain you know this is going to hurt you in that way and it probably has none of the effects they're claiming um the healing effects are very unlikely the form seem to be very violent to me it's it's an obvious like anyone that's really kind of enforcing like you need abstinence and you must
do it in the way I prescribed and give me money I would say probably not a great group but if you're doing it on a lark you don't think it's tied to you know a dysfunction you're trying to cure probably not a bad thing to do as long as you keep it in that perspective of like fun interesting curious if you want to see if it has any of the claims that people say yeah there was a question from a user does porn affect the ability to pair bond with a person to know for sure
if porn affects the ability to pair bond we would have to do a study that has not been done and I don't want to be responsible for um so we got really interested after we did this couple study we're like you know the next thing is to bring in people who don't know each other we're like we can never get that through ethics that's that will never happen so the challenge right is you in general uh closeness and romantic relationships is best predicted by the frequency of activities that are novel and exciting that are done
together and what I love about that whole area of research and literature is they always give the example of jet skis like we should go jet skiing together like or or you could have kinky sex that also is both novel and exciting yeah um but it's funny they never mention that so I think pornography has some possibility of improving pair bonding if uh you're thinking well pair bonding is closeness like my ability to feel uh overlap with this person that we're one in some sense uh then to the extent that pornography has those features it
may be helpful and there is some evidence that couples who view pornography together tend to report higher relationship and sexual satisfaction but what I think what this user was asking was if I watch it will I have a harder time hair bonding with someone else yeah so bottom line is we don't know like the study to do that is probably impossible right but I I think again like it may be the context you know when someone's in a relationship and using pornography that may be different than single and I'm waiting or single and I'm dating
and single and one common thing I see with this is people talk about the oxytocin that results uh after a climax which absolutely you know these things increase and they say well that's supposed to be the love hormone that's 20-year-old science and a role but it turns out oxytocin seems to be doing something quite different than we thought U it's part of it but uh oxytocin does not equal love oxytocin does not equal bonding so I would not worry that just the presence of oxytocin is doing something you also get oxytocin with friend interactions there
are lots of ways that you have that that I'm not worried are going to make you unable to have a romantic relationship if you enjoyed that clip from the Reena malic MD podcast with Dr Nicole pry make sure you check out the full video right here
