Have you ever had a nocturnal orgasm that you may never have talked to anyone about? Don’t worry, the nocturnal erections they orgasms in sleep (male and female) are perfectly normal and have a scientific explanation. Let’s see which one.
Nocturnal erection and pollution: why does it happen?
The corpora cavernosa, the vascular tissue that swells with blood like the inner tube of a bicycle to cause an erection, is – strange to say – anything but blood-rich. Indeed, when it is at rest, limp, the penis is an organ where little blood arrives. This is precisely the point: little blood means little oxygen. Almost literally, tissues that receive little oxygen gasp, suffer, wither and even die as if suffocated. The penis, hypo-oxygenated at rest, however, has a trick to survive: erections, which carry a lot of blood – and oxygen -. Each erection is therefore a sort of “breath of air”, of real gymnastics of the corpora cavernosa. If we had two to three complete and satisfying sexual intercourse a day, 365 days a year, the erectile tissue would be oxygenated properly. But this doesn’t happen, for one reason or another. Sexual intercourse is infinitely less, for the vast majority of humans. Here then is that it is necessary to invent erections unrelated to daytime erotic activity. They are precisely the nocturnal and morning ones: three to five episodes per night, which in a healthy young non-smoker and non-drinker are also of excellent consistency and duration.
But there is more. Non-ejaculated spermatozoa inexorably age. It is therefore wise to have a trick to wash out old cells. And here it is night pollution. A male who ejaculates normally, once or twice a week, does not emit semen during the night. Instead, it happens to teenagers quite frequently, and it’s perfectly normal. Those who do not use their genital sexuality at all can see the nocturnal pollutions diminish over the years, almost to disappear. And his penis, for the reasons mentioned above, literally atrophy: the cavernous, erectile tissue is replaced by the fibrous, inert and passive one. Just as a muscle that is not used becomes small, ineffective and atrophic, so does the penis that does not perform the necessary amateur gymnastics.
Female night orgasm: why does it happen?
And the women? What happens on the other side of the moon? In contrast to males, whose wet dreams peak before the age of 20, it seems that the forties are the ones who most easily have nocturnal orgasms, reported by about 40% of women before menopause. And the others? Do they not remember (as often happens with dreams) or have they never told it to anyone, maybe not even to themselves? It is certainly interesting to note that this percentage far exceeds the 25% of those who regularly orgasm during mating. My friends Barry R. Komisaruk and Beverly Whipple, with whom I wrote for the Journal of Sexual Medicine the article Female orgasm (s): one, two, several, think that orgasms during sleep are not just the result of genital stimulation, but rather the result of a specific activity of the brain. Their studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey showed that people with spinal cord injuries, and thus resulting in a lack of connection between the brain and genitals, can still have an orgasm while sleeping.
The psychological component it would once again seem to predominate in female sexuality. But since before these orgasms the vaginal lubrication it also occurs copiously, we can think that even in women these same nocturnal excitations have first of all the role of bringing oxygen to the genitals. And this happens in healthy women during their childbearing age, less so if the watershed of an untreated menopause has been crossed. In fact, female lubrication is, in many respects, the vascular, neurological and hormonal equivalent of male erection. And therefore also the vagina, like the penis, needs that oxygen that lubrication brings to the genital tissues.
Erotic dreams and fantasies: is it normal?
One last point is missing to explain what changes in our sexuality when we sleep. The fantasies. Orgasms, pollutions, erections and lubrications can, even if it does not always happen or we do not always remember it, go hand in hand with erotic dreams and fantasies. Their characteristic is that they are bizarre, strange, sometimes seemingly perverse. Many and many fear them as the demonstration of an unconscious sexual deviation, which one does not have the courage to carry in the daytime everyday. In reality, there is no proof that this is the case. They wouldn’t be fantasies if they weren’t free to gallop into uncharted and often unexplored territories. Fantasies and dreams are not, in fact, desires, even if they can become such.
Even erotic dreams they are a sign of health. In fact, we know that everything sexual that happens while we sleep is directly dependent on testosterone: those who have little of it (and for this reason it is called “hypogonadic”) will see dramatically diminish erotic fantasies and dreams, erections and nocturnal pollutions. It is enough for the endocrinologist to restore the correct levels of testosterone with a correct therapy (now there is a very comfortable injection that is done every three months) for the dreams to return to color the red of erotic passion and the genitals to sprinkle with blood during sleep, breathing. that oxygen they need so much. And it seems that the same happens to women, who are also testosterone-dependent for nighttime erotic activity.