Featured Image Credit: Getty Stock Images
Topics: Sex and Relationships
Anish Vij
A sex and relationship expert has explained what happens to your body when you don’t have sex or masturbate for months, and some of it may surprise you.
Like every year, users across the internet say they will be taking part in 'No Nut November'.
The fad that's gained traction on social media encourages people (mainly men) to go through the whole month of November without sex or masturbation.
Despite many health benefit claims, like higher testosterone and regulated dopamine levels, scientists say there is not enough medically backed research available.
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Now, for those who go for more than a month without orgasming, Dr Tara has warned it can lead to many issues, like depression and anxiety.
But what will worry men the most is that the expert says no sex could lead to their genitalia shrinking, as reported by the Daily Mail.
She claims that if men go months without sex, they can develop a rare condition called penile atrophy.
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It's when penile tissue becomes less elastic, meaning that your willy will shrink by a couple centimetres.
And there are many reasons why your member may decrease in size over time.
This includes smoking, weight gain, medication and testosterone levels.
While some professionals are against the idea of not orgasming, others have opened about the negative effects pornography can have on the brain.
On Chris Williamson's Modern Wisdom podcast, Dr Andrew Huberman said: "I'm not trying to say that all pornography is bad but there are good data to support the idea that if your brain learns to be aroused by watching other people have sex it is not necessarily going to carry over to the ability to get aroused when you're one-on-one with somebody else.
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"So you're going to programme yourself into being a voyeur?" Williams asked, to which Huberman responded: "Yeah, or just create challenges with sexual interactions with a real partner."
"Extremely palatable food, extreme pornography, extreme experiences like bungee cord jumping - those set a threshold for dopamine release," he explained.
"The higher the dopamine peak, the bigger the drop afterwards.
"It's not that you drop to baseline, you drop below baseline.
"The amount of dopamine released over time goes down and down and down and pretty much traversing into the level of pain.
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"People are back to this thing where they’re scrolling internet porn eight, nine, then hours a day and they’re wondering why this isn’t effective for them anymore."