October 12, 2011 • 18 mins
Cristen and Caroline investigate the pros and cons of masturbation from a health and wellness perspective. Does it threaten relationships? What happens when masturbation provokes jealousy in relationships? Tune in to find out.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You?
From House Towards dot com. This podcast is brought to
you by Audible dot com, the Internet's leading provider of
audio books, with more than eighty five thousand downloadable titles
(00:21):
across all types of literature. For Stuff Mom Never Told
You listeners, Audible is offering a free audio book to
give you a chance to try out their service. One
audiobook to consider is bossy Pants by comedian Tina fe Fas.
Story is a great example of a woman who goes
after what she wants and gets it, albeit with pitfalls
and humor along the way. That's bossy Pants, available from Audible.
(00:44):
To try Audible free today and get a free audiobook
of your choice, go to Audible podcast dot com, slash
mom Stuff. That's Audible podcast dot com slash mom Stuff.
Hello and welcome to the pod cast. I'm Caroline and
I'm Kristin Kristin. The other day we talked about masturbation
(01:05):
by the numbers, Who does it? How often? Everybody? All
the time? UM, But today we're going to talk more
about the health and relationship aspect of masturbation and how
it can be involved in those things. You know, is
it possible to masturbate too often and to hurt yourself
and hurt your relationships? Or can masturbation be more of
a vitamin a shot to the arm for a relationship. Yeah. Um,
(01:28):
And since since we want to, we like to end
things on high notes and stuff momentary told you, so
let's start with the bad news, such as specifically men
masturbating face down, face down right, Um, yeah, you can
actually hurt yourself if you are a man who frequently
(01:50):
masturbates face down by um, maybe thrusting too hard and
two sheets, pillows or even the floor. I actually ran
this by a couple of friends of mine, and a
lot of them had not even thought about it. This
had not even crossed their mind. They could not really comprehend.
I had one who was like, really had to think
about it, and he turned around and started making hand
motions to try to imagine, and I was like, please, no,
(02:11):
we're in publicly stop you have to stop that. So well,
that's good to know, because since they had not been
habitually masturating face down, lowered their chances therefore of injuring
the urethra so much that it would actually cause the
yearn to exit the penis not in a stream, but
(02:32):
in a hard to control spray. And Dr Barbara Bartlett,
who was a psychiatrist and sex therapists in New York
City UH talked about men who have done this, like
injured their urethra from master reading facedowns and so much
that they had to pe sitting down right. Yeah, I
could make using a urinal difficult. Um, It's not the
(02:54):
only thing. There could be a penile fracture when an
erect penis strikes a hard object. And this know, I'm
as you know, could also happen when you're thrusting on
a floor. Um. This is basically a tear in the
tissue in the penis that's around the spongey tissue, and
this often requires surgery to repair. Yeah. Um. And along
(03:14):
those same lines, UM, a couple of doctors mentioned sexual
dysfunction possibly brought on by over simulation, which one doctor
described as UH. If a man is is masturbating in
a way that it does not mimic typical intercourse or
sexual contact, UM, that could strain the penis in some
(03:37):
kind of way and actually make it harder for him
to achieve orgasm um when he is engaging in intercourse. Right,
And they recommend if this becomes a problem in your
life for your relationship and you know, just having sex
with your partner isn't doing it for you anymore, they
recommend kind of braining it back in and trying to
kind of wean off that method and maybe starting to
(03:59):
masturbate in such a way that simulates sex with a
partner so that you're more used to the idea and
the in the sensation. Yeah, um, and don't worry, women,
we will talk about you very soon. But one more
thing that typically is associated with male masturbation is this
kind of worst case scenario of developing into a compulsive
(04:25):
psychological behavior that could certainly affect relationships. Right. Um, It
is possible for some people to become obsessed with porn
and or masturbation, and it could actually cause your sex
life to suffer if you turn your attention away from
your partner, if you withdraw from friendships, from family, from
your job to just masturbate all the time. And and luckily,
(04:47):
like you said, you know this is not very widespread.
It's not every case, just just if you masturbate a lot,
it doesn't mean you're obsessed or compulsive or whatever, right,
and that would go under the umbrella too of the
kind of controversi all classification of sex addiction in general,
and that it can happen to uh two women as well.
So we're not we're not excluded from that, gals. But
(05:11):
since we have now terrified all of our male listeners
about masturbating, here's some good news guys. All right, don't
be scared. No one be scared because, according to the
Mayo Clinic three things, masturbation does not reduce your sperm count,
It does not affect your ability to achieve an erection,
and it also does not wait a second. And it
(05:36):
also does not tinker with your fertility in any way.
So if you, um, if you're masturbating once a week,
once a day, three times a day, you're you're all right. Yeah,
And on top of all of this, masturbation is the
safest sex. Yes, you're not likely to catch an STD
or catch a baby, so there's that. But if you
(05:59):
are are sharing toys or incorporating toys and too partnered masturbation,
health experts recommend that you do use a condom on
those toys or objects of any kind. Since we've been
talking so much about about men, let's talk about the ladies,
right right, And speaking of you mentioned toys, Caroline, and
(06:19):
this would be an excellent time to talk about vibrators
because this is a common question that comes up, and
it is whether or not using a vibrator will desensitize
you to uh physical like sexual contact with a partner,
whether it will kind of quote unquote replace um sex
(06:40):
with someone else. And the answer is no. Actually, with
or without a toy, masturbation helps women increase clteral sense,
clteral sensations, improving the quality of their orgasms. Any discomfort, numbness,
tangling you feel with the use of a vibrator, it's
only temporary. And let me underscore this from go ask
(07:02):
Alice at Columbia University. It's an excellent sex health resource online.
Using vibrators causes no long term risk of clitoral desensitization none. Yeah,
and you know what, looking at the stat that only
of women orgasm through vaginal intercourse alone, I mean, you know, hey,
(07:23):
if it helps. Yeah, sexual health educators are very pro
female masturbation because, like you said, it's a way for
women to understand get to know their bodies first of all,
become more comfortable with their volvas and their vaginas, and
understand what turns them on and what brings them to
(07:43):
an orgasm so that they can then communicate to their
partner to have a more sexually fulfilling experience. Right, Masturbation
is definitely a learning experience. You learn, you learn what
you like, you learn what turns you on, and you
learn hopefully how to better communicate that to your part
now and same thing goes for guys. It can be
a learning experience for you two men because a lot
(08:06):
of sex health educators will point out too that it
can what what's the what's the phrase moment of inevitability.
Inevitability Basically, you learn when you're about to reach orgasm
or when you're getting close, and you can either try
to slow that process down or alert your partner and
that will be good for both partners because it can
(08:27):
help ward off instances of premature ejaculation. Right, And there
are so many other benefits that experts have listed from masturbation,
including having it be a coping mechanism. Maybe you haven't
had sex in a while or your partner doesn't have
as biggest sex drive as you do. We have done
podcasts on long distance relationships, right, yeah, yeah, whole different podcasts. Yeah,
(08:50):
for sure. It also can relieve stress, tension, and in
some cases PMS symptoms like crankiness and irritability, and it
can help induced Yeah. And in addition, that's not all, Caroline,
Oh my god, there's more. That's not even all. It
can strengthen muscle tone in the genital region. And Slate
also reported on a small study that found that orgasming
(09:14):
through masturbation or intercourse can lower your blood pressure response
for days. It has a cripple off. Now, not everybody
can calm down about masturbation. It is actually a source
of stress for some couples because of the question of
is it is it like cheating, is it going behind
your partner's back, does it make is it making someone
(09:35):
feel inadequate? Yeah, because masturbation is still such a cultural taboo,
even though it's a it's more of a jokey thing
when it's applied to male culture, but still for female
culture it's not It's not as acceptable for for you
to engage in masturbation. And a lot of times you'll
see in a lot of advice columns, especially UM couples
(09:57):
heterosexual couples writing in with the wives jealous that their
husband is masturbating, kind of like that scene in American
Beauty where it Benning freaks out when Kevin Spacey, her
husband in the film, is masterbating beside her in the morning. Right,
I mean, it's natural. UM. Psychiatrist Barbara Bartlet, who you
mentioned earlier, says that we can't assume that just because
(10:18):
a man masturbates that there is a problem with his
primary relationship. You know, we talked in the last podcast
about how the more sex people have in a relationship
or whenever, um, the more they masturbate because along with
more sexual activity comes more sexual fantasies and desires. So
it all sort of goes hand in hand. So just
because your husband or your wife or your partner is
(10:39):
masturbating more, UM, it doesn't mean that you're inadequate at
all or masturbating without you. But you mentioned the fantasy thing,
and I think that that might be where a lot
of this relationship jealousy might come up. UM. For instance,
psychologist William Harley says that most women want all of
their husband's sexual express and to be exclusively with them.
(11:02):
And this is a quote he says, my basic role
for marriage is that all of your sex, including fantasies,
should be with each other and that will enhance your
romantic relationship, to which I say, Mr Harley, you should
chat with Dan Savage because that, um, that's an insanely
high bar who has the time, frankly to be part
(11:24):
of every sexual escapade and thought and desire. Long term
monogamy can be a challenging process if you have to
be even even psychologically monogamous, because there are plenty of
sexual health experts and psychologists out there who will say
that it is perfectly normal and healthy, um to engage
in fantasy play outside of uh, you know, the person
(11:47):
sitting next to you, and that's a that's a healthy behavior.
And again it all goes back. All of this goes
back to sexual communication. If the you know, if if
a per and is jealous that their partner is masturbating
instead of having sex with them, then it might it's
probably not so much the actual masturbation as maybe some
(12:09):
underlying issues going on. Right. Yeah, Luanne Cole Weston a
counselor and sex therapist disagrees with Mr Harley. Dr Harley.
She says that sometimes people think when they marry that
they've just gotten a license to run the life of
the other person, including their sexual thoughts and feeling. So
there needs to be more communication for sure. Yeah. And um,
(12:30):
just to add like one more, one more expert voice
to the conversation. This is from Sally Fully, who's the
director of the Center for Sexual Health at the University
of Michigan Health System, and in response to um, a
husband's quandary about his wife being perturbed at his masturbation habits,
she says that you two need to build rebuild your
(12:51):
intimacy outside of the bedroom. Like you said earlier, Caroline,
you're talking about kind of recoiling a little bit, backing
things up. If master vision has become an issue in
a relationship, maybe it's time to not so much focused
on the bedroom, but take baby steps starting outside of
the bedroom and work in your way back in. And
to bust one final myth about masturbation, Um, you are
(13:15):
not going to get prostate cancer just because you masturbate
a lot. Yeah, this is a headline that has come
up a lot because typically one thing I noticed when
I was researching this, a lot of scholarly information health
information about masturbation is almost solely directed toward men, kind
of negating all of the majority of women who do it.
(13:39):
But there were was a study that came out in
the British Journal of Urology in two thousand nine UM
that found a correlation between ejaculation, either through masturbation or intercourse,
and higher rates of prostate cancer. But then a study
came out later that sort of counterbalance all of them, right, UM,
(14:03):
Men who masturbate more often might do so because they
have high levels of sex hormones, so they feel like
they need to do it more often, And young men
predisposed to having hormone sensitive prostate cancer will be at
a higher risk if they have more male hormones. So
the connection isn't necessarily that I'm going to masturbate or
have sex so much that it's going to create this
(14:26):
problem of cancer. It's more that if you have a
lot of these sex hormones, you might feel the need
or the desire to have sex more often, and then
those hormones are the ones that will eventually possibly cause
problems if you're predisposed to prostate cancer. Um and I
guess just on a On a final note, to sum
up this two parter on masturbation, I would say, Caroline,
(14:50):
if I would like people to take away anything, it
would be that the a masturbation is the normal, healthy
sexual and safe sexual behavior that a lot of us,
almost all of us. I'm looking at the percentages right
now from ages twenty to forty nine, and men it's
(15:10):
over and in women it's roughly. So Look, it's normal.
Just have an open mind about it. Yeah, and the
pros certainly outweighed the cons. I think that's all we
can say. Yeah, I think we've covered it. If you
have any questions, comments, suggestions, let us know. Mom stuff
(15:30):
at House of Works dot com is our email address,
and we've got time for an email here. From Megan.
This is a response to our episode on pickup artists
and whether or not the game really works, and she says,
my fiance has admitted to me that he used the
rules of the game to pick me up five years ago.
I think it worked because he was able to do
(15:52):
it without being a misogynist. First, he picked me up
in a class, not a bar, And for peacocking, he
used a poster. Now, many people had just bought posters
for their dorms up on the quad, so when I
asked him what his poster was, I was expecting it
to be two girls making out or of Carmen Electra's boobs.
But no, it was of Albert Einstein. Needless to say,
(16:14):
I was extremely impressed, a hot, cute, funny guy that
didn't think of women as objects and was kind of nerdy.
Oh boy, was I excited. But after that class I
didn't see him again. I started to worry that he
had dropped the class. And one day we got a
huge paper assignment and he came up to me and
asked if I would help him, since I wasn't totally
lost like him, I was so happy to see him
(16:35):
again that of course I said yes, and we have
been inseparable since. So I guess my point is that
the game can help guys who are shy to talk
to girls, but they can't take it too literally. They
have to put their own spin on it and think
about what type of girl they would like to attract.
So I guess my point is that the game can
help guys who were too shy to talk to girls,
but they can't take it too literally. Yeah, that's interesting
(16:57):
though that he didn't seem to drop an egg. H
you didn't come up to her and be like, hey,
you seem pretty stupid. Do you want me to help
you with your report? How did you get in this
honors clove? Yeah? So that's good that he was actually
a nice person. Yeah, leave the negging alone. Pick up
artists out there. Uh, and again, if you would like
to send us an email r R way, hopefully it's
got an egg Mom stuff and also works dot com.
(17:19):
It's our email address, and you can send us a
comment up on Facebook, and you can follow us on
Twitter at mom Stuff Podcasts. And finally, you can check
out our blog during the week It's stuff Mom Never
Told You at how Stuff works dot com. This podcast
is brought to you by Audible dot com, the Internet's
(17:41):
leading provider of audiobooks, with more than eighty five thousand
downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio
versions of many New York Times bestsellers. To try Audible
free today and get a free audio book of your choice,
go to audible podcast dot com, slash mom Stuff. That's
Audible podcast Com slash Mom stuff the house, Stuff Works,
(18:03):
iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes.
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You?
From House Towards dot com. This podcast is brought to
you by Audible dot com, the Internet's leading provider of
audio books, with more than eighty five thousand downloadable titles
(00:21):
across all types of literature. For Stuff Mom Never Told
You listeners, Audible is offering a free audio book to
give you a chance to try out their service. One
audiobook to consider is bossy Pants by comedian Tina fe Fas.
Story is a great example of a woman who goes
after what she wants and gets it, albeit with pitfalls
and humor along the way. That's bossy Pants, available from Audible.
(00:44):
To try Audible free today and get a free audiobook
of your choice, go to Audible podcast dot com, slash
mom Stuff. That's Audible podcast dot com slash mom Stuff.
Hello and welcome to the pod cast. I'm Caroline and
I'm Kristin Kristin. The other day we talked about masturbation
(01:05):
by the numbers, Who does it? How often? Everybody? All
the time? UM, But today we're going to talk more
about the health and relationship aspect of masturbation and how
it can be involved in those things. You know, is
it possible to masturbate too often and to hurt yourself
and hurt your relationships? Or can masturbation be more of
a vitamin a shot to the arm for a relationship. Yeah. Um,
(01:28):
And since since we want to, we like to end
things on high notes and stuff momentary told you, so
let's start with the bad news, such as specifically men
masturbating face down, face down right, Um, yeah, you can
actually hurt yourself if you are a man who frequently
(01:50):
masturbates face down by um, maybe thrusting too hard and
two sheets, pillows or even the floor. I actually ran
this by a couple of friends of mine, and a
lot of them had not even thought about it. This
had not even crossed their mind. They could not really comprehend.
I had one who was like, really had to think
about it, and he turned around and started making hand
motions to try to imagine, and I was like, please, no,
(02:11):
we're in publicly stop you have to stop that. So well,
that's good to know, because since they had not been
habitually masturating face down, lowered their chances therefore of injuring
the urethra so much that it would actually cause the
yearn to exit the penis not in a stream, but
(02:32):
in a hard to control spray. And Dr Barbara Bartlett,
who was a psychiatrist and sex therapists in New York
City UH talked about men who have done this, like
injured their urethra from master reading facedowns and so much
that they had to pe sitting down right. Yeah, I
could make using a urinal difficult. Um, It's not the
(02:54):
only thing. There could be a penile fracture when an
erect penis strikes a hard object. And this know, I'm
as you know, could also happen when you're thrusting on
a floor. Um. This is basically a tear in the
tissue in the penis that's around the spongey tissue, and
this often requires surgery to repair. Yeah. Um. And along
(03:14):
those same lines, UM, a couple of doctors mentioned sexual
dysfunction possibly brought on by over simulation, which one doctor
described as UH. If a man is is masturbating in
a way that it does not mimic typical intercourse or
sexual contact, UM, that could strain the penis in some
(03:37):
kind of way and actually make it harder for him
to achieve orgasm um when he is engaging in intercourse. Right,
And they recommend if this becomes a problem in your
life for your relationship and you know, just having sex
with your partner isn't doing it for you anymore, they
recommend kind of braining it back in and trying to
kind of wean off that method and maybe starting to
(03:59):
masturbate in such a way that simulates sex with a
partner so that you're more used to the idea and
the in the sensation. Yeah, um, and don't worry, women,
we will talk about you very soon. But one more
thing that typically is associated with male masturbation is this
kind of worst case scenario of developing into a compulsive
(04:25):
psychological behavior that could certainly affect relationships. Right. Um, It
is possible for some people to become obsessed with porn
and or masturbation, and it could actually cause your sex
life to suffer if you turn your attention away from
your partner, if you withdraw from friendships, from family, from
your job to just masturbate all the time. And and luckily,
(04:47):
like you said, you know this is not very widespread.
It's not every case, just just if you masturbate a lot,
it doesn't mean you're obsessed or compulsive or whatever, right,
and that would go under the umbrella too of the
kind of controversi all classification of sex addiction in general,
and that it can happen to uh two women as well.
So we're not we're not excluded from that, gals. But
(05:11):
since we have now terrified all of our male listeners
about masturbating, here's some good news guys. All right, don't
be scared. No one be scared because, according to the
Mayo Clinic three things, masturbation does not reduce your sperm count,
It does not affect your ability to achieve an erection,
and it also does not wait a second. And it
(05:36):
also does not tinker with your fertility in any way.
So if you, um, if you're masturbating once a week,
once a day, three times a day, you're you're all right. Yeah,
And on top of all of this, masturbation is the
safest sex. Yes, you're not likely to catch an STD
or catch a baby, so there's that. But if you
(05:59):
are are sharing toys or incorporating toys and too partnered masturbation,
health experts recommend that you do use a condom on
those toys or objects of any kind. Since we've been
talking so much about about men, let's talk about the ladies,
right right, And speaking of you mentioned toys, Caroline, and
(06:19):
this would be an excellent time to talk about vibrators
because this is a common question that comes up, and
it is whether or not using a vibrator will desensitize
you to uh physical like sexual contact with a partner,
whether it will kind of quote unquote replace um sex
(06:40):
with someone else. And the answer is no. Actually, with
or without a toy, masturbation helps women increase clteral sense,
clteral sensations, improving the quality of their orgasms. Any discomfort, numbness,
tangling you feel with the use of a vibrator, it's
only temporary. And let me underscore this from go ask
(07:02):
Alice at Columbia University. It's an excellent sex health resource online.
Using vibrators causes no long term risk of clitoral desensitization none. Yeah,
and you know what, looking at the stat that only
of women orgasm through vaginal intercourse alone, I mean, you know, hey,
(07:23):
if it helps. Yeah, sexual health educators are very pro
female masturbation because, like you said, it's a way for
women to understand get to know their bodies first of all,
become more comfortable with their volvas and their vaginas, and
understand what turns them on and what brings them to
(07:43):
an orgasm so that they can then communicate to their
partner to have a more sexually fulfilling experience. Right, Masturbation
is definitely a learning experience. You learn, you learn what
you like, you learn what turns you on, and you
learn hopefully how to better communicate that to your part
now and same thing goes for guys. It can be
a learning experience for you two men because a lot
(08:06):
of sex health educators will point out too that it
can what what's the what's the phrase moment of inevitability.
Inevitability Basically, you learn when you're about to reach orgasm
or when you're getting close, and you can either try
to slow that process down or alert your partner and
that will be good for both partners because it can
(08:27):
help ward off instances of premature ejaculation. Right, And there
are so many other benefits that experts have listed from masturbation,
including having it be a coping mechanism. Maybe you haven't
had sex in a while or your partner doesn't have
as biggest sex drive as you do. We have done
podcasts on long distance relationships, right, yeah, yeah, whole different podcasts. Yeah,
(08:50):
for sure. It also can relieve stress, tension, and in
some cases PMS symptoms like crankiness and irritability, and it
can help induced Yeah. And in addition, that's not all, Caroline,
Oh my god, there's more. That's not even all. It
can strengthen muscle tone in the genital region. And Slate
also reported on a small study that found that orgasming
(09:14):
through masturbation or intercourse can lower your blood pressure response
for days. It has a cripple off. Now, not everybody
can calm down about masturbation. It is actually a source
of stress for some couples because of the question of
is it is it like cheating, is it going behind
your partner's back, does it make is it making someone
(09:35):
feel inadequate? Yeah, because masturbation is still such a cultural taboo,
even though it's a it's more of a jokey thing
when it's applied to male culture, but still for female
culture it's not It's not as acceptable for for you
to engage in masturbation. And a lot of times you'll
see in a lot of advice columns, especially UM couples
(09:57):
heterosexual couples writing in with the wives jealous that their
husband is masturbating, kind of like that scene in American
Beauty where it Benning freaks out when Kevin Spacey, her
husband in the film, is masterbating beside her in the morning. Right,
I mean, it's natural. UM. Psychiatrist Barbara Bartlet, who you
mentioned earlier, says that we can't assume that just because
(10:18):
a man masturbates that there is a problem with his
primary relationship. You know, we talked in the last podcast
about how the more sex people have in a relationship
or whenever, um, the more they masturbate because along with
more sexual activity comes more sexual fantasies and desires. So
it all sort of goes hand in hand. So just
because your husband or your wife or your partner is
(10:39):
masturbating more, UM, it doesn't mean that you're inadequate at
all or masturbating without you. But you mentioned the fantasy thing,
and I think that that might be where a lot
of this relationship jealousy might come up. UM. For instance,
psychologist William Harley says that most women want all of
their husband's sexual express and to be exclusively with them.
(11:02):
And this is a quote he says, my basic role
for marriage is that all of your sex, including fantasies,
should be with each other and that will enhance your
romantic relationship, to which I say, Mr Harley, you should
chat with Dan Savage because that, um, that's an insanely
high bar who has the time, frankly to be part
(11:24):
of every sexual escapade and thought and desire. Long term
monogamy can be a challenging process if you have to
be even even psychologically monogamous, because there are plenty of
sexual health experts and psychologists out there who will say
that it is perfectly normal and healthy, um to engage
in fantasy play outside of uh, you know, the person
(11:47):
sitting next to you, and that's a that's a healthy behavior.
And again it all goes back. All of this goes
back to sexual communication. If the you know, if if
a per and is jealous that their partner is masturbating
instead of having sex with them, then it might it's
probably not so much the actual masturbation as maybe some
(12:09):
underlying issues going on. Right. Yeah, Luanne Cole Weston a
counselor and sex therapist disagrees with Mr Harley. Dr Harley.
She says that sometimes people think when they marry that
they've just gotten a license to run the life of
the other person, including their sexual thoughts and feeling. So
there needs to be more communication for sure. Yeah. And um,
(12:30):
just to add like one more, one more expert voice
to the conversation. This is from Sally Fully, who's the
director of the Center for Sexual Health at the University
of Michigan Health System, and in response to um, a
husband's quandary about his wife being perturbed at his masturbation habits,
she says that you two need to build rebuild your
(12:51):
intimacy outside of the bedroom. Like you said earlier, Caroline,
you're talking about kind of recoiling a little bit, backing
things up. If master vision has become an issue in
a relationship, maybe it's time to not so much focused
on the bedroom, but take baby steps starting outside of
the bedroom and work in your way back in. And
to bust one final myth about masturbation, Um, you are
(13:15):
not going to get prostate cancer just because you masturbate
a lot. Yeah, this is a headline that has come
up a lot because typically one thing I noticed when
I was researching this, a lot of scholarly information health
information about masturbation is almost solely directed toward men, kind
of negating all of the majority of women who do it.
(13:39):
But there were was a study that came out in
the British Journal of Urology in two thousand nine UM
that found a correlation between ejaculation, either through masturbation or intercourse,
and higher rates of prostate cancer. But then a study
came out later that sort of counterbalance all of them, right, UM,
(14:03):
Men who masturbate more often might do so because they
have high levels of sex hormones, so they feel like
they need to do it more often, And young men
predisposed to having hormone sensitive prostate cancer will be at
a higher risk if they have more male hormones. So
the connection isn't necessarily that I'm going to masturbate or
have sex so much that it's going to create this
(14:26):
problem of cancer. It's more that if you have a
lot of these sex hormones, you might feel the need
or the desire to have sex more often, and then
those hormones are the ones that will eventually possibly cause
problems if you're predisposed to prostate cancer. Um and I
guess just on a On a final note, to sum
up this two parter on masturbation, I would say, Caroline,
(14:50):
if I would like people to take away anything, it
would be that the a masturbation is the normal, healthy
sexual and safe sexual behavior that a lot of us,
almost all of us. I'm looking at the percentages right
now from ages twenty to forty nine, and men it's
(15:10):
over and in women it's roughly. So Look, it's normal.
Just have an open mind about it. Yeah, and the
pros certainly outweighed the cons. I think that's all we
can say. Yeah, I think we've covered it. If you
have any questions, comments, suggestions, let us know. Mom stuff
(15:30):
at House of Works dot com is our email address,
and we've got time for an email here. From Megan.
This is a response to our episode on pickup artists
and whether or not the game really works, and she says,
my fiance has admitted to me that he used the
rules of the game to pick me up five years ago.
I think it worked because he was able to do
(15:52):
it without being a misogynist. First, he picked me up
in a class, not a bar, And for peacocking, he
used a poster. Now, many people had just bought posters
for their dorms up on the quad, so when I
asked him what his poster was, I was expecting it
to be two girls making out or of Carmen Electra's boobs.
But no, it was of Albert Einstein. Needless to say,
(16:14):
I was extremely impressed, a hot, cute, funny guy that
didn't think of women as objects and was kind of nerdy.
Oh boy, was I excited. But after that class I
didn't see him again. I started to worry that he
had dropped the class. And one day we got a
huge paper assignment and he came up to me and
asked if I would help him, since I wasn't totally
lost like him, I was so happy to see him
(16:35):
again that of course I said yes, and we have
been inseparable since. So I guess my point is that
the game can help guys who are shy to talk
to girls, but they can't take it too literally. They
have to put their own spin on it and think
about what type of girl they would like to attract.
So I guess my point is that the game can
help guys who were too shy to talk to girls,
but they can't take it too literally. Yeah, that's interesting
(16:57):
though that he didn't seem to drop an egg. H
you didn't come up to her and be like, hey,
you seem pretty stupid. Do you want me to help
you with your report? How did you get in this
honors clove? Yeah? So that's good that he was actually
a nice person. Yeah, leave the negging alone. Pick up
artists out there. Uh, and again, if you would like
to send us an email r R way, hopefully it's
got an egg Mom stuff and also works dot com.
(17:19):
It's our email address, and you can send us a
comment up on Facebook, and you can follow us on
Twitter at mom Stuff Podcasts. And finally, you can check
out our blog during the week It's stuff Mom Never
Told You at how Stuff works dot com. This podcast
is brought to you by Audible dot com, the Internet's
(17:41):
leading provider of audiobooks, with more than eighty five thousand
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(18:03):
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