Does having heaps of orgasms make you less productive?

By James Branson

“Having sex makes you happy,” said Olympic 1500 metre runner Marty Liquori. “And happy people do not run a 3:47 mile.”

Numerous athletes, tantric practitioners and health gurus will tell you that frequent orgasm can lead to a loss of energy and motivation. After experiencing something similar, James looked into whether “semen retention” or “male continence” as a method for keeping focused and effective is a load of crap – or if it has some scientific evidence.

FOR THE LAST FEW WEEKS, I’ve been having a lot of sex. After a few days weeks months one whole year of abstinence brought on by my crippling inability to talk to women (or anybody, really), I finally fooled someone into thinking that I was worth spending time with.

Sucker.

Everybody knows that having regular sex does great things for your happiness and goes a long way to killing off all that stress and social anxiety everyone seems to suffer from these days. And it’s certainly done that for me. I’ve stopped thinking about plane crashes all the time and I even went to a party for a whole hour over the weekend.

One study even estimated that getting laid on the regular made you as happy as a $50,000 salary bump.

But for me, one thing this newfound torrent of boning has brought on is a large and completely unwanted dose of tiredness and apathy when it comes to getting shit done.

I just don’t care that much at the moment. I’m having trouble getting motivated at work. I’ve started falling asleep at eight in the evening. I’m waking up in the morning, having a quickie and then facing the day with no enthusiasm or energy.

What is going on here?

Well, if a number of athletes, tantric practitioners and health gurus are to be believed, the problem is that I’m coming too often.

As a nod to how much sex Olympic athletes were having during the Sydney games, 72,000 condoms were supplied to the Olympic village.

“SEMEN RETENTION” is a pseudoscientific concept that’s been around since ancient times, and even now is still practised by professional athletes. During the 1998 FIFA World Cup, English coach Glenn Hoddle famously banned his players from any sexual activity – including jerking it – in the lead up to the tournament.

England didn’t even make the quarter-finals.

Science on the subject of whether pent-up sexual frustration equals Olympic gold is largely inconclusive. A study by Sports Medicine Australia concluded that having sex anytime 10-12 hours before a competition has almost zero effect on performance – and as a nod to how much sex Olympic athletes were having during the Sydney games, 72,000 condoms were supplied to the Olympic village.

However, another survey mentioned that 40% of athletes “felt worse” when performing or exercising two hours after achieving orgasm.

The same study noted that it wasn’t just physical performance that suffered two hours after sex – athletes also reported feeling less attentive and focused.

Now, I’m not going to start comparing myself to Olympic athletes, BUT THAT IS EXACTLY HOW I FEEL. Less attentive. Less focused.

But I also find claims of semen being the “elixir of life”, a “vital bodily fluid” and “the essence of man” to be absolutely ridiculous, verging on clairvoyant-esque absurdity.

I need some hard science to tell me what’s going on here.

After orgasm, your dopamine levels fall sharply, and with that come the usual symptoms of low dopamine levels – one of which is a lack of ambition or drive.

SEX AND ORGASM release a flood of chemicals to the brain. We’re talking dopamine, the reward hormone; prolactin, the hormone of satiation; oxytocin, the cuddle hormone, and levels of androgen receptors, which all powerfully affect our mood, our desire for intimacy, our perception of our mate, as well as our susceptibility to addictive activities and substances.

Let’s start with dopamine. After orgasm, your dopamine levels fall sharply, and with that comes the usual symptoms of low dopamine levels – one of which is a lack of ambition or drive.

Now we can move on to prolactin, which also floods the brain during and after orgasm. Excess prolactin levels are associated with loss of libido (duh, you’ve just had sex) as well as lower energy and decreased levels of testosterone – which is vitally important in keeping motivated and energetic.

So, whilst almost nobody has conducted studies specific to my question of whether or not having buttloads (but not “butt” loads) of sex correlates with a lack of focus and motivation in work and life, there is some neurological evidence that it might.

At Oneida Community, young men were trained in the art of avoiding ejaculation during sex by a team of post-menopausal women.

SOME PEOPLE HAVE TAKEN SEMEN RETENTION to absolutely mental levels of commitment.

In 1848, an American man named John Humphrey Noyes founded a religious commune called the Oneida Community that had Male Continence (the practise of avoiding ejaculation) as one of its cornerstones. The community grew to 306 people in just 30 years.

Despite being deeply Christian, Noyes believed that sex was something to be shared and enjoyed by all members of the community – just as long as nobody ejaculated.

Noyes might be considered a free-love/casual sex pioneer: Any member of the community, whether married or not, was able to have sex with any other who consented – without it being considered sinful at all.

In fact, young men were trained in the art of avoiding ejaculation during sex by a team of post-menopausal women, and despite members of the community engaging in regular sex with multiple partners, only 12 surprise pregnancies occurred over thirty years – all due to the practise of semen retention.

But Noyes was also a bit of a nut-job, so Oneida Community can hardly be used as proof of the benefits of avoiding orgasm: he was a fervent believer in the whole “vital bodily fluid” thing, stating that ejaculation “drained men’s vitality and led to disease”, and that the resulting childbirth “levied a heavy tax on the vitality of women.”

He also believed that in order for the kingdom of God to come about, a true union of the sexes was required – and that ejaculation got in the way of this “true union” due to the “unease” felt between men and women immediately after orgasm.

So it’s entirely possible that avoiding orgasm might send you a little mental.

(As an interesting sidenote, Oneida Community eventually folded in the late-1800s, but has continued on as one of the world’s largest silverware manufacturers, Oneida Limited.)

Then you’ve got Chinese Emperors, who would have sex with numerous concubines without reaching orgasm, all in an effort to strengthen their “essence”. This in turn was supposed to enhance the likelihood of creating a male heir when he eventually relieved himself of what would have undoubtedly have been an epic case of blue balls.

BUT I’M GETTING SIDETRACKED HERE. The fact is that only anecdotal evidence exists that having amazing orgasms on the regular drains a person of their energy and motivation. Sure, there’s some neurological evidence that might point things in that direction, but there are also a shitload of studies that have concluded that regular (and even super-kinky) sex is highly beneficial to your sense of well-being and happiness.

Which are in turn important for productivity and motivation.

 

SO, HOW TO CONCLUDE? Well, like I said, no serious scientist has actually put any time into studying the subject because they’ve generally got more important things to do like fighting Ebola or finding the cure for baldness (please hurry up on that one guys).

For now, I should probably just count my lucky stars that someone is into me, and try my very best to keep disguising the fact that I’m a giant loser.

Update: Not that this is backed up by any science or anything, but today was the first day in a while that I didn’t have sex in the morning. Same with my partner. We both had the most productive days we’d had in months. Hmmmm.