Semen Retention: Should You Stop Ejaculating?

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman. You're listening to Science Versus. Today on the show, we're pitting facts against fapping. That's right. With No Nut November just around the corner, we thought it was a great time to ask. What are the benefits of saving your seed and not ejaculating? And this is something that former tax accountant and current comedian and also my friend, Saren Jayamana, has been curious about for a little while now. Hi, Saren. Hello.

How do you feel about being introduced as a sort of semen retention curious? Oh, I thought you were going to say as a former tax accountant. Yeah, that's correct. Now, for those who are... uninitiated, semen retention. I've now become very familiar with this term, but it basically means you retain your semen, you keep it in, you don't release it. Yes.

When did you start getting curious about this semen retention? Well, yes, I guess more recently as I've sort of delved into like meditation and more kind of yoga or I would say tantra type. which is like Hindu kind of, I guess, philosophy. And Tantra in the West, we think of it as very sex-oriented, but it's actually just kind of like ritualistic ways to...

build meditation and practice that kind of stuff. A lot of those Eastern philosophies are based on energy and like, are you leaking energy? Aha, is ejaculating leaking energy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I guess at a very high level, this is the stuff that you make people with. So it's like the creative force of life. Yes. And then if you're just kind of wasting it. Giving it to a sock. Yeah, giving it to a sock. It's funny because it is true that for...

thousands of years. Many in particular have been conflicted over whether to fap or not to fap. Yeah, right. And for some in the ancient world, semen was seen as this powerful thing. Sometimes this great powerful thing that could do super impressive stuff, like apparently the Sumerian god Enki came, and that's how we got the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Yeah, okay. But then on the other hand, it's like this conflict.

that we've had for so long, because then you've got Hippocrates and Taoist mystical practitioners, and then in the 18th century, you've got philosophers, and in the 19th century, you've got American doctors, all on Team Cockblock, saying... That things like masturbation and losing your semen weaken a man's body and brain. It is quite funny actually throughout history how much it's like all these big thinkers and it's occupying a lot of space. Yeah.

And a lot of these ideas are still out there. Yeah. When you go online, and it was very interesting, there are just loads of guys out there. Loads is probably the wrong word. Or is it the right word? who are kind of talking about their journeys into this world and how excited they are about being able to retain their semen and how you could come along on the journey too.

how to start semen retention, all right, guys? Bro, these are the results of one month of semen retention. We're going to make it into the end of this year. No sex, no porn, no masturbation, none of that. I ended up relapsing on day 96, but I'm 14 days clean. So guys, I just reached one year of semen retention. Yes, I didn't bust a single nut in over one year.

The theme that's emerging there is it sounds, they're almost sounds like it's like Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, it's like Wankers Anonymous. Yeah. It's been 16 days since my last fab. And you can watch video. after video of folks who are really struggling but want to keep this going. And I ain't gonna even lie, bro. I was so distraught. I was just moving around. Like, I was just so frustrated. And I'm like, man, I just want to... I just want to jack my dick off right now, man. I just...

But I know the perks that come with semen retention. Because the perks that come with not coming are apparently amazing. I mean, you hear people's guys saying that mentally you just feel... You'd like your best stuff. Yeah, great.

Bro, I became a beast. I feel more confident. I feel more energy. I feel more magnetic. Bro, your energy is going to be insane. And you can do 100 push-ups, an ab workout, do whatever the fuck you want with so much energy. And you're not going to have any anxiety or stress. And it's not just your mind, but all through your body. People say they are feeling these benefits. Higher testosterone, better libido, better erections. Your skin glows. Your voice is deep.

That's pretty good. Right? On top of all of this, some say that when you do eventually decide to jerk off, the sperm coming out of you is going to be out of control. best quality sperm you've ever produced. See, that was something that I would think would be the opposite. And there's actually, I was sort of surprised, but do I want to call it groundbreaking science on this? I think I do.

On the flip side, there are other people who are then saying it's actually risky to not ejaculate. So one headline screamed, Doctor issues warning against men taking part in No Nut November. Another says, quote, Shocking research shows what happens to your body if you stop masturbating forever. Oh, okay. Yeah, forever. Yeah. That's a lot. These people are counting up from zero. They're not counting back from infinity.

See, that's the account in you. Yeah. Right. So today on the show, we are going to find out, one, if you stop ejaculating for a period of time, does it bump up your testosterone? improving your mind and body, making you feel like a beast. You were very excited about that idea. Yeah, I like that idea, yeah. Two, will it boost the quality of your sperm? And three, are there any risks to holding it in? Okay.

And I do want to say that some folks who practice semen retention do it to break what they call an addiction to porn or sex. And we're not going to get into that too deeply into this episode because we've got enough to cover. We've got enough to cover. Great. So when it comes to semen retention, there's a lot of folks saying, Girl, I became a beast. But then there's science. Beautiful. All right. You're not...

Coming up after the break. Do you know when I wrote that? Oh, that one was written. That one was written. And I didn't realise how awkward. I almost wasn't going to say it. And then I was like, don't say it. I wish I didn't look for you in the eyes, to be honest. this episode is brought to you by McAfee During the holidays, everyone's online more than ever, booking trips, checking itineraries, and grabbing deals, often on public Wi-Fi.

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Available driver assist feature. Does not replace safe driving or drivers need to control the vehicle. Terms apply. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services. To read the full report and for additional details. Visit www.ford.com slash Blue Cruise. Welcome back today on the show. Should you try to not come for maybe a month? Give No Nut November a go. I'm here with comedian and semen retention curious. Yeah, yeah, let's say that. Yeah. Yeah.

Saran Jayamana. Also, no, not November. Because that's an anaphylactic. I thought that was something completely different. I thought that was a different thing altogether. You never heard of No Nut November? No, but I thought it was like, let's raise awareness about allergies, guys. I just thought everyone knew No Nut November, where you don't ejaculate.

For November. Okay. That's the idea. Makes sense. Should you do it? Yep, I get it. My first question was a fairly naive one. I asked it to Justin Dubin, a urologist and andrologist at Memorial Healthcare System in Florida.

What's the fap in NoFap? See, you got to be deep in the internet for some of this stuff. Fortunately, I have had the time. Bring me in. Put me in, coach. Fap is this idea of masturbation or fap is like the noise that you make when you masturbate or have sex, right? Got it. Did you, I mean, I knew fap meant...

masturbation, but I didn't know it was the noise. Yeah, neither did I. Justin, our urologist, being deep in the internet several years ago, he started noticing a lot of stuff on social media about the benefits of not ejaculating. And so he asked his mentors...

Hey, did you ever hear of this thing called semen retention? It's all over the internet. And they're like, no. And these are guys who have been in the game for 30 years, right? No one knew what the hell that was. And I was like, we got to look into it. So he does, Justin starts this study where he and his colleague basically scroll TikTok and Instagram, looking at how many people are talking about this and exactly what are they saying.

And there was just so much stuff out there that Justin said he was actually quite overwhelmed. Oh, I was going crazy. I was watching hours and hours and hours of these videos. I was texting my friends and my colleagues at the time. I was like, man, I think I got to go see a therapist. And by the way, they weren't just looking at semen retention. They were also looking at other men's health topics like male infertility and erectile dysfunction. All of us were surprised to see that by far...

semen retention was the most popular topic being talked about with over 1 billion with a B views. Wow. Really, really insanely popular. By far, the data, which was semen retention, was the least accurate. really saying something, right? Yeah. Well, I guess that makes sense because if these doctors in that field haven't heard of it, who's been doing the science?

Who's talking about it? Yeah, Justin said it was a lot of young guys. Yeah. All right, so we're going to give some accurate information about semen retention. Great. Starting with, can it bump up your testosterone and make you feel amazing? And so over and over again online, you see people quoting this one study to supposedly prove this point, that if you hold on to your semen, you don't ejaculate, it'll bump up testosterone. And here's what the study did. I love that researchers did this study.

They got 10 men to have a wank. Yep. To orgasm at precisely 4.30pm on the first day of the experiment. Okay. Then the men were told to abstain from any type of sexual activity for the next 20 days. How do you think you'd go? 20 days? Yeah, fine. Probably. Yeah. I feel like it would probably be out of my hands a little bit. Right. It's very much in your hand. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. True.

I could, I mean, 20 days without masturbating, I think I could do. Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so on day 21, they come into the lab. Oh, literally. They got to masturbate. And... Throughout this experiment, like on day one, day 21, before and after the wanks, researchers are measuring their testosterone levels. They also asked the men about their levels of sexual arousal. And so what did they find?

After no fapping for 20 days, the men were more aroused. They also said that once they had an orgasm in the lab, it felt more intense and it was longer. Okay. It was sort of like a better orgasm. Yeah. which Justin says checks out. I think it makes sense. I think if you are, you know, it's the anticipation buildup. You know, delaying pleasure can be pleasurable. Yeah, it makes sense. It's sort of like if you eat Thai food.

Every day of the week. Yes. But if you go 20 days without eating Thai food, you'll fucking love... Sorry, can I swear? Yeah. You will love that. On our semen retention episode. I feel a bit sad that I've just compared Thai food to having a jizz. No, but absolutely, absolutely. You have that Thai food every day. Yeah, you're not going to enjoy it. Exactly.

So then the question is, of course, what was happening to the testosterone? Okay. So generally speaking, the testosterone levels didn't change throughout the entire experiment. The researchers wrote baseline testosterone were, quote, similar before and after abstinence. And in fact, the only time they saw a little bit of a bump in testosterone levels was after the fellas had their big wank on day 21. Oh. Right.

Which is odd because this is somehow being used as evidence that not fapping bumps up testosterone levels. But to get the little boost of testosterone, you ultimately needed to wank. So what is interesting is that other studies have shown this kind of thing too, that after you orgasm, and this is for both men and women, you do get a little bump of testosterone. Okay. It doesn't last very long. It's just a little bump. Yeah.

But it's something that we've seen in experiment after experiment. Yeah, right. And in fact, the only study that I could find that suggested something a little bit fabulous, if you're not into fapping, is this small study from China that reported that after men... didn't ejaculate for a week. Testosterone levels went up and then went down on day eight. Oh. But the thing is that paper's been retracted. Oh, okay.

So it's interesting this idea persists, and I think one thing that really annoyed Justin while he was doing that sort of doom scrolling on this topic is that some of the benefits that people said flowed from this apparent bump in testosterone.

didn't make any sense to him. So, for example, people said that their skin looked better and their hair was thicker. Also, it seems kind of selfish, like you're not fapping. So your skin's glowing and your hair's thicker. So you're just walking around feeling better because you're not fapping, but you're making everyone else horny. That seems unfair. And.

From other research, we know that when you get a boost in testosterone, say you've just gone through male puberty. Yes. That's associated with acne. When there's some research to suggest that when men go on testosterone replacement therapy, for some folks, they actually start losing their hair.

Total opposites. If you have semen retention and it truly increases your testosterone to high levels, your skin's not going to get better. You might have thinning of your hair. Physiologically, it just doesn't make sense. And so bottom line, when he looks at the research that we have on testosterone and even tries to think of a mechanism, that's the other thing of like how would not ejaculating boost testosterone levels? Like what could possibly be happening in the body? Yeah.

To bump that up, he starts shooting blanks. When I look at the research, I think it is pretty clear that holding your semen does not increase your testosterone levels. There's really no good data to suggest that there's any testosterone-boosting benefit to semen retention. So what you're saying is, so far, Justin's conclusion is that he can't find any...

physiological basis for this, essentially is what you're saying. So far, we've just looked at testosterone, but there's other things that could be going on during ejaculating that could explain some of the... The other stuff. The other stuff, the other exciting stuff that people are talking about.

Oh, yeah. Okay, great. That might actually help their case a little more. So the next thing I wanted to look at is whether not ejaculating could improve your mood and energy and maybe even boost your athletic performance. which is something that a lot of athletes think about. Yes. Have you heard of this idea? It came up a bit during like the World Cup.

There was like a coach who banned his players from having sex. That's right. I mean, in the 1998 World Cup, the English coach forbade his players from having sex. Yeah, which I think I was probably 12 at that time. That's so funny, you remember that, right? Yeah, but that idea has lodged in my head. Yeah, Muhammad Ali was also into it. Yeah. He built a whole farm. Really? So that he could be away from his wife before a fight. So could it be true?

And the thing is, when you orgasm, it can lead to a rush of hormones like oxytocin and prolactin, which can make us feel relaxed and lower our energy. Yes, okay. And so I asked Justin, so... If you don't ejaculate, you don't get that sense of relaxation, which some may interpret as tiredness. You would therefore feel more energy. Potentially. Potentially. But here's the weird thing, right? Like, it's only in the moment. It's not like it's lasting for hours or anything.

You know, a lot of your listeners, I mean, have ejaculated. I think so. It's not like, yeah, it's not like you're like, oh, God, I have no energy for the rest of the day. Yeah, that's true. Right. I guess, but you do sometimes feel like... Ready for a nap, I feel like. Yeah. And so there have been studies that have actually looked at this in terms of sports performance. So, for example, there's this research that basically...

gets guys, I think it's all men in these studies, that tells them not to have sex the night before. And then they'll test whether they can lift more weights or cycle faster. Okay. Or my favorite, test their grip strength. Oh, yes. Yep. And so I asked, Justin, what have these studies found? You know, most studies do show that...

There is no impact of sexual activity on athlete performance. It doesn't affect it. Does not impact athlete performance. I'm surprised. But maybe just because of 1998 World Cup that's like lodged in my brain. But it does, and maybe, I mean, it's like I've just been making excuses, but sometimes I'll have a big gig and I've created this narrative in my head that I shouldn't have an ejaculation before a big gig. Oh, yeah.

Right, right, right. I would have once had an ejaculation and then gone to a gig and then it didn't go well. Yes. And in my head I've just created a narrative now that like the people, I wasn't glowing enough on stage. Ah. My hair looked too frail. Your energy, you wasted your seed. Yeah. You wasted your energy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is one sort of exception to this idea that perhaps it doesn't matter that maybe might make you feel better about.

You're thinking around gigs. Okay. Except if you're having sexual activity within two hours of the event, which kind of makes sense, right? That kind of makes sense. how you're tired, a little bit lower energy, and also you're straining yourself. You're exhausting your muscles. You're exerting yourself. So people could actually be just tired from...

The exertion of having sex when you're trying to perform. And so the study, Justin's actually referring to one particular study. It was a study of 15 male athletes randomly assigned to have sex and ejaculate or not have sex. And then two hours later, they basically had to go on this fancy exercise bike and ride as hard as they could go while their heart rate was being measured. Now, interestingly...

And whether they had sex or not, it didn't affect how hard they could go on the bike. But after in the recovery phase, their heart rate was a little bit higher. Okay. And some of them said the exercise bike, even though they could do it. It was a bit tougher. Yeah, right. On the sex days. So two hours is the window. Two hours? Sure. But maybe it's relevant. Yeah, maybe it's relevant. Ten hours, night before, you are absolutely fine. Okay.

Is there a difference between an ejaculation solo versus with a partner? Great question. So hormonally, not really. So both when studies look at... whether your prolactin, oxytocin, testosterone levels rise after sex versus after masturbating, they all see the same pattern. Yeah, okay. That like oxytocin goes up, prolactin goes up, testosterone goes up. Yeah.

So that was the closest I could find, probably on a psychological level. It does make a difference. Yeah. I would imagine that you people feel differently after just... after sex with someone else. And just quickly, I also looked at whether abstinence can boost your mood. People talk about how it can help with depression, anxiety.

And studies have looked into this. So one study compared 44 men who didn't masturbate for three weeks with guys that did. No difference in mood. But the NoFapers did feel more self-control on average. Yeah. There is this other study.

That looked at guys who were on a forum for trying to break pornography addiction. And in doing this, a bunch of them also tried to stop masturbating or orgasming at all. And they wrote these abstinence diaries. that researchers then analyzed. And some men, they did really value this activity. So one 21-year-old said he did feel more happiness. And another wrote, I just feel on a deeper level.

With work, friends, pastimes, there have been waves of emotion, good and bad, but it's a great thing. Yeah, which could be from just discipline in general. Like if you restrain yourself or restrict yourself from certain activities. That requires a level of discipline, I guess. It might not be the fapping self. It's the practice. This is what I think. And speaking to Justin and other researchers, it definitely feels like it's...

more psychological. Yeah, that makes sense. You didn't like how much you were masturbating or orgasming and now you've been able to control yourself and that's why you feel better. But I do think in these forums... Yeah, what they're getting wrong is they're kind of blaming what masturbating is doing in your body. Blaming the physiology of like, if you masturbate, it's sapping you from...

energy, hormones that you need, blah, blah, blah, when I think it is really more of a mental thing. Okay, so there's no evidence for that. I think that's where we're at. Yeah, great. Okay. I feel empowered and to return to my fat lifestyle. But after the break, can saving your seed boost the quality of your sperm? Oh, great question.

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Can it boost your sperm quality? For this, we need Brent Hansen. He's a reproductive endocrinologist and fertility specialist at CCRM Fertility of Minneapolis. How many people's sperm have you looked at? Oh my gosh. Many thousands. I don't have an exact number for you, but we're talking in the thousands. Wow, okay. Can you paint a picture of when you're looking at...

the sperm under the microscope. What's a sample that makes you really happy? That you're like, this is a great sample of swimmers. As I'm still focusing the microscope, if I'm just seeing like... I almost view it as fish. You're thinking of a pond with fish in it, and you're like, there's nothing but fish here. It's full of fish. You can hardly see the water. If all I'm seeing is a swarm, that makes me happy. So the question is...

How do we make Brenton happy? Yeah. Right. We want to swarm. We want to swarm. How do we get the swarm? That's a great, I love your question, but my real question is do... Is it true that they have like a little face that looks like your face? I thought that's where you were going to go. Like, what do you want to see? And I thought, if I see that the face matches.

The guy's face? Oh, no, he didn't switch the sperm at the last moment. Now this question of how we get a swarm of fish swimming in our garden. It's important because a lot of folks are struggling with fertility issues right now. Sperm counts have been going down. So could saving your seed and not ejaculating be the answer here?

And Brent did this big review paper looking at this. And a big reason he did it is because when patients would say, you know, we're struggling to have a baby. How long should I be waiting here before I come into my partner? He didn't have a great answer for them. And he thought... shouldn't we have a better understanding of this? Because it's so simple. You should be able to look at

six hours, 12 hours, 24 hours and three weeks and get a really good estimation of like, what is the optimal time? And it seemed kind of baffling to me that no one had really looked into that in quite some time. Right? It doesn't feel like Doc Meadow. You know? It was like something we should get a handle on. It's famously white. Sorry. But yeah, I know what you mean. This is an experiment that you would think would, yeah, no-brainer. No-brainer, right? So...

Brent and his team looked at more than two dozen studies on how abstaining from ejaculating could affect various things related to sperm. And so I actually didn't realize how many different things can affect sperm. the quality of your sperm, but I asked Brent to list them. There are a lot. So concentration is one, the number of sperm per milliliter, the volume. Semen volume, that's just how much...

Gunk is coming out in total. The liquid volume, yep. Can we not call it gunk? My editor said the same thing. You don't like gunk? No. Gunk is very derogatory. It sounds like it's waste. Oh. Oh, what do you think we should use instead? Semen? Yeah, to be... It's scientific. Yeah, anything else we could go for? Load. Jizz. Jizz. Gunk creates, it's like waste. Yeah, yeah, okay. Like gunk is, you get spray and wipe for gunk. You know what I mean? Like you want to be.

But semen you might leave around for a little bit. Yeah, we don't want to add to the guilt around this. No guilt. That's right. That's right. Okay. So it looks at DNA of the sperm. the pH of the sample, motility, how well the sperm are moving. Under the microscope, yeah, he can also look at the shape of the sperm. There are some that you just look at and it's like...

Yeah, double head, we're out. That's not normal. Double tail, same thing. It's like if there's two of anything, we're done. That's not a normal one. And all of these things can affect the chance that a sperm is going to sneak its way into, you know, through the cervix. ultimately make a baby and so if you avoid jerking off for a few days or even a few weeks what happens to all these things yes all right let's start with sperm count and volume okay

Studies over and over again have found that less fapping, on average, means more sperm when you do cum. Okay. Yeah, so the take-homes from this were really that... The longer you go without ejaculating, the larger that sample will be. Yeah, it's like if you, you know, when the train is delayed or cancelled, there's more people on the platform.

And that's basically it. It's like the semen is collecting in there, pipes are fuller. Yep. One small study calculated that for every day the men held on and didn't ejaculate, their sperm volume increased by around 12%. Oh, that's okay. Yeah, now that huge bump, it doesn't last forever. After four days of not fapping, the benefits get smaller and smaller. Okay. But still, no fappers are absolutely onto something here. But when it comes to the egg and sperm race...

Quantity is not the only game in town. Okay, nice. Quality too, right? What's the point of having a bunch of swimmers if they can't, you know, reach the target? And studies have found... including one that looked at sperm samples from more than 2,000 men, that if you are looking at swimming in particular, so motility, fapping is your friend. So people who got off more.

tended to pump out better swimmers. Yes. Okay. But the longer they've been waiting on the platform, the more frustrated they are when they get on the phone. Yes. Okay. So to give you some more details about... what frustration looks like to a sperm. Now we're talking gunk. After four days, it's a bit gunkier. Right. After is, so one way we can look at this is through DNA damage. Okay.

And so when your sperm gets a little damaged, that can make it harder for that sperm to then go on to create a baby. And so let's look at what Brent found. So what did you find in terms of does retaining your semen improve your sperm's DNA? Yeah, so what we found is that the longer the abstinence period, the more these kind of DNA... you know, errors, so to speak, accumulate. Yeah, so the more time between busting a nut, on average, more DNA damage in the sperms. And this makes sense once you...

have a better idea of where sperm gets stored and made in the body. So basically, sperm are made in the testicles, and they're really happy there. The temperature's great. They got this blood testes barrier. So here's Justin again. Just like you've heard of the blood-brain barrier, they have the testis blood barrier to protect the sperm, right? I didn't know about this barrier. Yeah, right. And so it protects the sperm from a whole bunch of things like inflammation. Uh-huh.

So they love it in there, love it in the testicles, but eventually the body's like, you've got to move on. And the spermies get pushed along to this wiggly, tightly coiled tube, which is called the epididymis. Okay. When it goes through your epididymis, which is where it actually becomes mature, it is no longer in that barrier that protects it. It's like high school, like a little high school for sperm. It's a bit stressful.

Yeah, exactly. It takes on some additional stress. And that good sperm can develop some dysfunctional DNA. And when they're in the epididymis, they can get exposed to things like oxidative stress. other things that can damage DNA. But yeah, if you ejaculate more often, you're not hanging out in that place for longer. And then so I guess my question was, what is the optimum time to wait then? Yeah, great.

And if you're trying to make a baby the old-fashioned way, like through sex rather than IVF, you need to balance quality and quantity. Uh-huh. Yes. Because if you are... jerking off too many times, the quantity will go down and you still need numbers. It's still a numbers game. It's a numbers game. Hey, I'm a former accountant. If anyone understands that, it's me. Yeah.

So Brent, the fertility specialist in Minneapolis, told me like basically as you're heading into that fertile window of your partner, they're about to ovulate. Yes. Try not to have ejaculated for, he says, two to five days. Okay. But... For some folks, they have a lot of DNA damage in their sperm, which you can check by doing a test. And for those people, he actually recommends just one day. Oh, okay. Keep clearing the pipes. Clearing the pipes faster.

But as for this idea that, you know, you want to be waiting weeks or months or, you know, doing No Nut November, Brent's like... I think if you're going beyond five days, certainly beyond 10 days, you're not doing yourself any favors. You will just be increasing the number of probably non-viable, non-modal.

abnormally shaped sperm with high rates of DNA fragmentation because those will continue to accumulate and they don't get flushed. The question, though, it would be like if you probably have to have a few shots on goal. Potentially, to get pregnant. That's exactly right. And because your partner's fertile window is really only around...

five or six days long each month. So the first one, you might have that gap of two to five days. Yes. But then if you want to have another go. Once you're in the window, he says, go for it. He says, if you've got the question of, once you're in the window, do I have sex or not? He's like, have sex.

But he also said that by the time people are seeing him in the clinic, it's so stressful. There's nothing fun about sex at that point. Yes. And he's saying to someone, you just have sex, whatever, can also be very stressful. Yeah, okay. So he wanted to give. Yeah, all right. Time for that. All right, our last question for the day I asked Justin. So then are there any risks to semen retention? I guess if you are not in the baby-making world.

Is it bad if you feel good about not ejaculating? Listen, if you're enjoying yourself, you feel good. You don't have to ever ejaculate. I don't really think that's a problem. And, you know, people don't ejaculate for a long time, right? You have people who are not sexually active. They're asexual. Totally fine. Yes, because online you do see some quite hysteric headlines about the...

dangers of not ejaculating. Yes. And the one thing that people do point to, there's sort of one bit of science evidence for this, is around prostate cancer. Okay. Have you heard this? No, I haven't, no. There is some research suggesting that folks who ejaculate a lot have a lower risk of prostate cancer than those who ejaculate a little, but we're not really sure what's going on here. Okay.

Prostate's big job is to help make semen. And so possibly by clearing out the pipes, you are clearing out potentially harmful things that could build up in there. It's not a crazy idea, but... Both Brent and Justin aren't sure if the ejaculating is actually helping you to...

avoid prostate cancer or perhaps if something else might be going on here. Okay. And it highlights that there have been other studies that do not find this connection. Yeah. So it's not very conclusive is what we're saying. Exactly. Much like masturbation, it's a bit messy. Yeah, okay. So Justin actually told me that, you know, his bigger concern for people when he's thinking about the risks is that if you are really into not fapping and you join these communities.

that then tell you jerking off is bad and terrible for you, that that is going to cause harm in itself. Oh, right, right. Here's the thing, right? A lot of these groups, you have to understand, create guilt. You can have guilt about wanting to ejaculate. You can have stress around not ejaculating.

buy into this stuff online, that it is so bad to ejaculate. You can start to feel crappy about yourself when you start to feel horny or when you relapse, even using sort of language like that. And in fact, a study found that... People who hang out more on the NoFap Reddit forums tend to feel more shame, more worthlessness. Some even have suicidal thoughts after ejaculating. Okay, wow.

Which is different to, because there's a lot of support groups out there for if you have cancer or various diseases and studies tend to find the more time on these forums, the better people feel because they're... sort of communing with each other. They're sharing how difficult it is. So it's quite telling that in this case, it's kind of going the opposite. The opposite. Yeah, yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, Justin says that totally makes sense. Of course.

If someone's telling you online that you should not ejaculate because it's bad for you and you should, like, it's so funny because it's almost like in all these videos, it's like your whole day is thinking about just not ejaculating, which is like... Which I'd go crazy. I'd go crazy about it. You know, at worst, I did not know this before. I thought no fapping was all about sex and fapping. But...

On those forums, they kind of have gone a little crazy, to say the least. They are filled with misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism. It gets real dark real fast, but away from the culture of NoFap.

If you are interested in going for a month or maybe even more without ejaculating, Brent and Justin were very aligned on this. I think that the idea here is that you should not feel bad about doing... things like ejaculating if you don't want to ejaculate don't ejaculate it's okay to ejaculate a lot it's okay to ejaculate a little it's okay to not ejaculate at all you're gonna be fine

Do you want me to keep saying ejaculate a couple more times? Yeah. What he's trying to say is, are you the master of your domain? That's right. How do you feel about your relationship with fapping at this point? Yeah, I like all of that. I like the idea that there's no guilt around it and that it can be healthy, but also everything in moderation.

Do you think you're going to try No Nut November after this? Is this a challenge that after hearing the science you want to rise to? I don't know. It doesn't feel like a challenge that is calling me. But also now I know that it's not detrimental. to do it either way, really. To be honest, the opposite feels truer now. Where after this discussion, I feel like I should, the pipes thing. Pardon me, DNA damage sounds so...

Serious. Extreme. I mean, it's just... It only matters if you're going to use them. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's fine to... The sock doesn't matter if it doesn't mind. The sock doesn't care. A sperm with two heads, the sock's fine with that. That's a novelty for the sock. That is exactly right. Thank you so much. No, thank you. I've learned a lot. I'm no longer curious. You're no longer curious. Oh, I'm sorry though. That's Science Versus.

This episode has 71 citations in it. So if you want to read more about anything that we talked about, you can just go to the show notes and click on our transcript and it is fully cited. So go have fun. There's some fun papers to read. You can find Seren on Instagram at which is S-U-R-E-N comedy. We are on Instagram too, science underscore V-S. I'm on TikTok at Wendy Zook. Come and say hello.

This episode was produced by me, Wendy Zuckerman, with help from Michelle Dang, Meryl Horne, Rose Rimler, and Aketi Foster Keys. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact-checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Emma Munger, So Wiley, Peter Leonard, Bumi Hidaka, and Bobby Lord. A big thanks to Joseph Lavelle Wilson and the Zuckerman family. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We are everywhere. And if you like what we're doing, please tell your friends about us, share the love for the show around, give us a five-star review. And if you are listening on Spotify, you can follow us and tap the bell icon so you get notifications. when new episodes come out. I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and I'll back to you next time.

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