After only three minutes of exercise, men react more strongly to sexual stimuli

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Those who are active in sports not only feel better physically, but also mentally. So far, so well known. Researchers from the Universities of Siegen and Trier have now investigated another component. They investigated whether physical activity makes men more receptive to sexual stimuli.

This is how the participants were selected

For their study, they recruited 45 male students. All had a body mass index (BMI) between 18 and 30, which means they were neither underweight nor overweight. They were also not allowed to suffer from any chronic or mental illness, not to smoke a lot (less than five cigarettes a day) and not to use medication or drugs. They were also not allowed to exercise more than eight hours a week or work night shifts. The background is that all these points can have a negative impact on sexuality.

For 3 minutes “grip strength test”

The 45 students were then randomly divided into two groups – the stress (exercise) group and the control group. All subjects had to do a so-called grip strength test. A hand device is pressed with maximum force. In this way, the scientists were able to measure the individual maximum strength.

Then had to

the stress group pressed the handle at 45 percent of their maximum force (heavy pressure) for three minutes and the control group at only 10 percent of their maximum force (light pressure).

A computer display was used to check whether the subjects exerted the correct pressure calculated for them individually.

Read here: Handshake – what your grip strength reveals about physical health and mental fitness

Images presented with different content

After a ten-minute break for the stress group and a seven-minute break for the control group, the participants were presented with images from the areas of violence/threat, sport, erotic couples, everyday situations and nature.

Meanwhile, the researchers recorded data on blood pressure (sphygmomanometer), changes in heart rate (electrocardiograms), the activity of various muscles (electromyograms), pupil diameter (eye tracker) and skin conductance.

The result: Heart rate increased and pupils dilated in participants who completed the more physically strenuous grip strength test.

“Taken together, our results provide strong evidence for an increase in sexual processing from acute stress in men,” the authors write. “And suggest a different involvement of parasympathetic and sympathetic mechanisms.” Sympathetic and parasympathetic are part of the autonomic nervous system and are considered opponents – the sympathetic adjusts the organism to increased activity (“fight or flight”), the parasympathetic to rest and regeneration phases ( “rest and digest”).

Limitations: As a limitation, the authors state that while the physiological indices do provide some insight “about the exact neurocognitive mechanisms that mediate the effects in question, [können wir jedoch] only speculate”.

Further research is needed to explore the causal relationship in more detail. They add: “A direct comparison of different types of appetite stimuli (sexual vs. non-sexual, such as food stimuli) would also be instructive with regard to the specificity of the observed effects.”