Finally: The Masturbation and Testosterone question answered!

[YJ87]

Hey,

There have been so many people asking this question and they keep getting abuse and being told that - sexualy activity does not affect testosterone levels.

well, look at this:

This current study examined the effect of a 3-week period of sexual abstinence on the neuroendocrine response to masturbation-induced orgasm. Hormonal and cardiovascular parameters were examined in ten healthy adult men during sexual arousal and masturbation-induced orgasm. Blood was drawn continuously and cardiovascular parameters were constantly monitored. This procedure was conducted for each participant twice, both before and after a 3-week period of sexual abstinence. Plasma was subsequently analysed for concentrations of adrenaline, noradrenaline, cortisol, prolactin, luteinizing hormone and testosterone concentrations. Orgasm increased blood pressure, heart rate, plasma catecholamines and prolactin. These effects were observed both before and after sexual abstinence. In contrast, although plasma testosterone was unaltered by orgasm, higher testosterone concentrations were observed following the period of abstinence. These data demonstrate that acute abstinence does not change the neuroendocrine response to orgasm but does produce elevated levels of testosterone in males.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1...ubmed_RVDocSum

More testosterone means more muscle!

Hope this answers the question.

[Hopeful_Griz]

[QQ]

why did you repost dumbass?

[ruga buga]

repost !

[Aiden 16yrs]

So the more you masturbate, the more testosterone you will produce?

[Erric]

So the more you masturbate, the more testosterone you will produce?

I think thats what it says

[Bigdank]

Hey,

These data demonstrate that acute abstinence does produce elevated levels of testosterone in males.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1...ubmed_RVDocSum

More testosterone means more muscle!

Hope this answers the question.

So the more you masturbate, the more testosterone you will produce?

other way around

[Aiden 16yrs]

So masturbating is going to lower your testosterone?

[d34dlift]

lmao, masturbating won't cause that huge of a difference in test lvls let alone gains...if your horny just maturbate ffs and don't come posting new threads about masturbating affecting test (not directed at op)

[MidwestMonster]

Masturbation increases testosterone levels. If you've ever watched the show called "Sports Science", they had professional boxer Chris Byrd on the show. They took his test level, him and his wife had sex, then he came back and re-took his test level, and it was higher.

[sdnet]

Read the study, folks - it's right there in black and white. The pertinent information is quoted below:

"In contrast, although plasma testosterone was unaltered by orgasm, higher testosterone concentrations were observed following the period of abstinence. These data demonstrate that acute abstinence does not change the neuroendocrine response to orgasm but does produce elevated levels of testosterone in males."

That's saying if you abstain for several weeks, your testosterone levels have been shown to increase over what they would be had you engaged in regular sexual activity. If course masturbating with increase your testosterone levels, but only temporarily. The study is referring to a more constant level of testosterone.

[SlammaJamma]

How do you get the link to the full text or a more detailed desciption of the study?

[SilvrBckGorilla]

nice 2 month bump

[lancs_hotpot]

lol i couldnt be bothered to read all that but i always wondered about that question. I never wank before a workout because i always believe that this would decrease my testosterone levels. Id rather go into the gym horny.

[Pandaz619]

2 month bump.... someone translate this 4 me. so it doesnt effect test levels much rite?

[chicky9914]

So um, does it have the same effect on girls? LOL

[CaptConservativ]

just PIITB with no bag, than shell get your load and the test

[SilvrBckGorilla]

[Italian_man]

steroids increase testosterone

[holysnikey]

That's with 10 males I wouldn't consider that a valid study really.

[albedo]

That's with 10 males I wouldn't consider that a valid study really.

Bingo. A good rule of thumb for statistical purposes is if a study has less than 30, it's really open to error.

Nevertheless, there have been some studies done aside from this and they seem to all show the same thing...abstaining from orgasm for prolonged periods results in increased test levels. The largest one I read said it took seven days before they increased. Abstaining for longer periods didn't exponentially increase it though (which is to say after the increase occurs, it doesn't keep going up the longer you go).

[MondoPest]

LOL, even then Gunter cracks a smile. He is always so happy.

[nflballer4ever]

brb gonna go raise my test levals
haha

[sickonstorm]

other way around

yea thats what i got too. after reading the other post ithought i was stupid lol i guess he was.


heres ur sign =)

[Socrates13]

Makes since that abstinence would rais testosterone. By denying your body sex or well.....simulated sex you probably trigger some sort of rut type response that triggers a raise in testosterone to get you ready to hunt down and fight for a mate. Watched a documentery once on sex and they observed something similar in males when their partners were away for an extended period test rose as did sperm count.

[Aro2220]

Masturbation increases testosterone levels. If you've ever watched the show called "Sports Science", they had professional boxer Chris Byrd on the show. They took his test level, him and his wife had sex, then he came back and re-took his test level, and it was higher.

Oh yeah right, television is much more credible than a published scientific journal.

inb4 someone quotes Mythbusters as fact.

[Aro2220]

How do you get the link to the full text or a more detailed desciption of the study?

You need to pay for it, or go through a university portal (if you're a university student you can probably access the publication through the school library web-portal)

Honestly, though, unless you're well educated in the respected field it's going to sound like greek to you. The majority of a scientific journal describes the experimental procedure so other scientists can follow their method and see if they get the same results. The only parts that really talk about what any of the data 'means' is maybe the abstract, a bit of the intro where they frame the problem and possibly the discussion.

I checked it out -- I can download it but it would otherwise cost $34usd.

A few interesting quotes from the article:
"Specifically, retrospective studies have shown that features of semen quality are reduced during long periods of sexual abstinence"

"In contrast, periods of abstinence between 12h and 10 days have generally revealed enhanced sperm quality parameters, although this is not consistent across all measures of sperm quality."

"Nevertheless, acute sexual abstinence is commonly employed prior to clinical sperm donation to enhance sperm quality."

"no data exist that examines the effect of abstinence on the physiological response to sexual arousal and orgasm."

"We have established a method for examining the neuroendocrine response to masturbation-induced orgasm in men and women based upon a continuous blood sampling technique."

OH COOL check this out!!

"These investigations demonstrated that masturbation-induced orgasm produced a pronounced increase in cardiovascular responses and plasma catecholamine concentrations. Furthermore, sexual arousal was characterized by a large, persistent increase in concentrations of plasma prolactin. Since hyperprolactinemia is known to inhibit sexual arousal and function, these data suggest that prolactin may act as a peripheral and/or central feedback signal in controlling sexual arousal following orgasm."

That is so cool.

and omfg...get this...
They gave people a VHS porn tape, a clinical bed, some privacy and then hooked a tube into their arm or something....which drew blood samples....while they were sitting int he room masturbating...the tube would draw their blood through a hole in the wall and on the other side were the scientists with their machine.

ROFL!!!! That would totally get me hard.

Omfg this just gets better...

So they brought people into the bedroom, hooked them up to the blood sampling machine thingie and then put on a documentary....you know so they could get a baseline to see what the subject's blood levels were like BEFORE being aroused...

Anyway, 20 mins of this 'emotionally neutral' documentary, then 20 mins of porn ("After 10 min of the pornographic video had been watched, subjects in the experimental session were required to masturbate until orgasm.") Then 20 mins of emotionally neutral documentary after that.

LOL!!!! 10 mins in you gotta start...not 9, not 11. 10!!! Oh, and you have to ORGASM exactly at the end of the porno. EXACTLY.

How did they deal with sexual arousal being subjective? (How, exactly, can you quantify just how sexually aroused you are compared to someone else?)

Their solution?..."To provide a measurement for sexual arousal, participants completed a visual analogue scale by rating their subjective level of sexual arousal from "not at all sexually aroused" to "extremely sexually aroused"
lol!!

Omfg...then they had a 5 point scale question for the quality of the orgasm...broken down into categories of duration, intensity, and speed of orgasm compared to a typical orgasm.

Anyway, it seems that people who were abstinent were 'more' aroused by the porno than people who were not. No surprise there.

The levels of Prolactin were about the same in people who are abstinent or not. That's the stuff that helps bring your arousal down after an orgasm.

Testosterone, on the other hand, seems to be fairly significant but I don't get the diagram. The testosterone level at the start of the movie (boring beginning) was almost the same...4.5 for the non-masturbator and 4.38 for the masturbator. What's weird is that at 20 minutes (the porno is just beginning) the abstinent person's testosterone levels drop like crazy, down to 3.6 ng/ml. That's HUGE. Then when the porno starts they go back up a bit to 3.9 stay up there for 20 mins (porno) and then it drops down to about 3.6.

The person who is abstinent followed a similar pattern but the whole time his testosterone level stayed above 4.25.

I'm trying to figure out what they have to say about that huge dip...the diagram notes don't mention anything. They just say they were the same except people who were abstinent just had a higher base line.

They also tested for Heart rate, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline levels but found no significant information (though there were differences the p value was > 0.05 which means there was over a 5% chance that the results could have been obtained by chance thus they are dismissed) BASICALLY, the way being aroused and the way having an orgasm affects your heart rate, adrenaline levels, etc....is the same for someone who has been abstinent or not.

However, they did find that people who were abstinent for 3 weeks had a higher base-level of testosterone, reported 'better' orgasms (no surprise, it's been 3 weeks) and high levels of sexual arousal (again, no surprise).

The surprise is the testosterone. The rest of the stuff they looked at ended up being irrelevant. Oh, and how they point to Prolactin as probably being involved with lowering arousal levels after orgasm. Prolactin goes up, arousal goes down.

Oh haha, remember how I was making fun of their 'survey' as a way to measure arousal levels? They write, "...the subjective scores used presently may not provide an accurate assessment of physiological quality of the orgasm. Thus, future studies should incorporate a more complete assessment of orgasm quality, by integrating a more robust masurement of orgasmic characteristics."

lollolololol...then they give suggestions on how to do that "e.g. exact timing of orgasm duration, erectile response"
ROFL...imagine you having an orgasm and some scientist sitting next to you with a stopwatch telling you to tell them when its over. Oh, and they'd be poking and prodding your penis to see just how hard you are compared to previous times.

LAFF

OOOOOOOOOO, hold everything...they're disputing their own findings:

"On the other hand, the increased testosterone concentrations may have resulted from enhanced sensitivity to anticipatory cues, since testosterone secretion increases in anticipation of sexual interaction. Thus, the increase in testosterone following abstinence may have resulted from increased anticipation of the erotic film."

They go on to suggest that the reason you have increased testosterone levels when you are abstinent is to increase your arousal levels, and how ambitious you are to get laid. Basically, it's natures way of forcing you go copulate if you're refusing.

I want to, again, point out that in graph C, 10 minutes into the movie both the abstinent and sexually active have almost the same levels of testosterone. But, as soon as the porno drops the testosterone levels of the sexually active person dropped A LOT compared to the other one. And they didn't check to see how long before they went back up to the same levels and they don't have a testosterone level measurement for 0m...only 10m in (They said they did that so they could establish a baseline, basically because everyone is coming from different lives and some might be stressed, some might be tired, some might be hyper, etc...so they let them watch 10 mins to drop them all down to the same levels)

This does prove that tesosterone levels are higher once the movie starts but they author says one final thing about it that I found interesting:

"Additionally, some evidence suggests that testosterone stimulates the erectile response to experimentally-induced sexual arousal"

hahaha...so if you are abstinent it means you'll find it easier to get a boner in a laboratory while hooked up to blood sucking and monitoring devices watching old used VHS documentary/porn/documentary videos.

hahaha, i love this paper.

But, all this proves is that if you don't masturbate your testosterone levels are higher when you get horny than when you don't. I don't know if you can say your levels are higher all the time since they didn't test to find out how long before their testosterone levels returned back to the same levels they started at.

Such a shame.

oh p.s. Did you catch the part about how 10-12 hours after you have an orgasm is when your sperm is top notch and if you are abstinent you actually lower the quality of your sperm over time? :P

[dowg16]

Yeah but masturbation leads to forearm growth.

[Legends]

Hmm, that's interesting though.

[Aro2220]

Makes since that abstinence would rais testosterone. By denying your body sex or well.....simulated sex you probably trigger some sort of rut type response that triggers a raise in testosterone to get you ready to hunt down and fight for a mate. Watched a documentery once on sex and they observed something similar in males when their partners were away for an extended period test rose as did sperm count.

I read every post except the last one before posting.

Now I just noticed this guys post and I'd like to point out that this guy's guess was correct. This is exactly what these scientist guys found evidence for.

The question is...EXACTLY HOW MUCH does it raise or lower it over WHAT amount of time? What is the optimal rate of orgasm for a healthy male looking to body build but not suffer the indignity of no sex or even masturbation or drastically reducing sperm quality.