Semen Retention: Should You Stop Ejaculating?

0:00Hi, I'm Wendy Zukerman. 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?

0:22And 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 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 stuff, which is like Hindu kind of, I guess, philosophy.

1:18And 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? Uh-huh, 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.

1:58Yeah, 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 the 18th century, you've got philosophers, and 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.

2:35It 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.

3:15We'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, 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 going to even lie, bro. I was so distraught.

3:52I was just moving around. Like, I was just so frustrated. And I'm like, man, I just want to jack my dick off right now, man. 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 like you're best at. Yeah, great. Bro, I became a beast. I feel more confidence. 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.

4:29And it's not just your mind, but all through your body. People say they are feeling these benefits. Higher testosterone, better libido, better erection. 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. it. And there's actually, I was sort of surprised, but do I want to call it groundbreaking science on this? I think I do. Yeah, okay. I think I do.

5:10On 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, So shocking research shows what happens to your body if you stop masturbating forever. Oh, okay. Yeah, forever. Yeah. That is... That's a lot. These people are counting up from zero. They're not counting back from infinity. See, that's the account in infinity. 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?

5:56You 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. Yeah, 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.

6:32Beautiful. 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 realize how awkward. I almost wasn't going to say it. And then I was like, do you say it? I wish you didn't look for the eyes, to be honest.

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8:16welcome 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 um no nut november i'm like 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 Not November? No, but I thought it was like, let's raise awareness about allergies, guys. I just thought everyone knew No Not November, where you don't ejaculate for November. Okay. That's the idea. Makes sense. Should you do it?

8:57Yep, 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 no fap? 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. 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.

9:43And 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.

10:20I was texting my friends and my colleagues at the time. I was like, man, I think I gotta 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. And 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?

11:09Who's talking about it? Yeah. Justin said it was a lot of young guys. Yeah. So, 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, to orgasm, at precisely 4.30 p.m. on the first day of the experiment.

11:46Then 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 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.

12:28And 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?

13:12I have to mark this explicit. Like the pad thai will be, 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.

13:51Right. 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. Uh-huh. 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.

14:42Oh. 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 now.

15:19That seems unfair.

15:24And 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. And 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?

16:11Like what could possibly be happening in the body to bump that up? He just, 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. So, you know, 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 like 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...

16:53The 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. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. The English coach forbade his players from having sex.

17:30Yeah, 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.

18:15Potentially, 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. It's all, I think it's all men in these studies that tells them like not to have sex the night before.

18:57And 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. 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.

19:41Oh, yeah. Right, right, right. Yeah. I would have once had an ejaculation and then gone to a gig and then it didn't go well. 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'd wasted your seed. Yeah. You'd 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 your thinking around gigs. Okay. Except if you're having sexual activity within two hours of the event. which kind of makes sense, right?

20:20That 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, whether they had sex or not, it didn't affect how hard they could go on the bike.

21:09But 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. 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.

21:56Yeah, okay. That like oxytocin goes up, prolactin goes up, testosterone goes up. So that was the closest I could find. Probably on a psychological level, it does make a difference. Yeah. I would imagine that people feel differently after sex with someone else. Yeah. 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.

22:37Yeah. 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.

23:22It might not be the fapping self, it's the practice. This is what I think. 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.

24:03Okay, 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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