Semen Retention: Should You Stop Ejaculating?

Speaker 1 I'm Wendy Zuckerman. You're listening to Science Versus.
Today on the show, we're pitting facts against fapping.

Speaker 1 That's right, with No Nut November just around the corner. We thought it was a great time to ask,

Speaker 1 what are the benefits of saving your seed and not ejaculating?

Speaker 1 And this is something that former tax accountant and current comedian and also my friend, Seren Jayamata, has been curious about for a little while now. Hi, Seren.
Hello.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's correct. Now, for those who are

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 When When did you start getting curious about

Speaker 1 semen retention?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And tantra in the West, we think of it as very sex-oriented, but it's actually just kind of like ritualistic ways to to build meditation and practice that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 A lot of those eastern philosophies are based on energy and like, is the, are you leaking energy? Aha is ejaculating leaking energy.

Speaker 1 And I guess the at a very high level, this is the stuff that you make people with.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It's funny because it is true that for thousands of years, men in particular have been conflicted over whether to fap or not to fap. Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Like apparently the Sumerian god Enki came and that's how we got the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 And then because, but then on the other hand, it's like this conflict that we've had for so long because then you've got Hippocrates.

Speaker 1 and Taoist mystical practitioners and then the 18th century but philosophers and the 19th century you've got American doctors all on team cock block saying that things like masturbation and losing your semen weaken a man's body and brain

Speaker 1 it's it is quite funny actually throughout history how much it's like all these big thinkers and this is it's occupying a lot of space

Speaker 1 yeah and a lot of these ideas are still out there yeah when you go online and it was very interesting that there are just loads of guys out there loads is probably the wrong word when you're doing what you're doing or is it the right word yeah man the right word um 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.

Speaker 2 How to start semen retention.

Speaker 3 All right, guys.

Speaker 4 Bruh, these are the results of one month of semen retention.

Speaker 1 We're going to make it into the end of this year. No sex, no porn, no masturbation, none of that.

Speaker 2 I ended up relapsing on day 96, but I'm 14 days clean. So, guys, I just reached one year of semen retention.

Speaker 1 yes I didn't bust a single nut in over one year

Speaker 1 the theme that's emerging there is it sound there almost sounds like it's like alcoholics anonymous or it's like wankers anonymous

Speaker 1 yeah it's been 16 days since my last fab and you can you can watch video after video of folks who are really struggling but want to keep this going and i ain't gonna even lie bro i was so distraught i was just moving around like i was just so frustrated and i'm like man i just want to i just want to jack my dick off right now man i just but i i know the perks that come with semen rotation.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 the perks that come with not coming are apparently amazing. I mean, you hear people's guys saying that mentally you just feel like your best self.
Yeah, right.

Speaker 4 Bro, I became a beast. I feel more confident.
I feel more energy. I feel more magnetic.
Bro, your energy is going to be insane.

Speaker 4 And you could do 100 push-ups and ad workout, do whatever the fuck you want with so much energy. And you're not going to have any anxiety or stress.

Speaker 1 And it's not just your mind, but all through your body. People say they are feeling these benefits.

Speaker 3 Higher testosterone, better libido, better erection.

Speaker 1 Your skin glows.

Speaker 3 Your voice is deep.

Speaker 1 That's pretty good. Right.

Speaker 1 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 like out of control. Best quality sperm

Speaker 1 you've ever produced. See, that was something that I would think would be the opposite.
And there's actually, I was sort of surprised, but do I want to call it groundbreaking science on this?

Speaker 1 I think I do. Yeah, I think I do.

Speaker 1 On the flip side, there are other people who are then saying it's actually risky to not

Speaker 1 ejaculate.

Speaker 1 So one headline screamed, doctor issues warning against men taking part in No Nut November.

Speaker 1 Another says, quote, shocking research shows what what happens to your body if you stop masturbating forever. Oh, okay.
Yeah, forever. Yeah.
That is, that's a lot.

Speaker 1 These people are counting up from zero.

Speaker 1 They're not counting back from infinity. See, that's the accounting.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Right.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 You were very excited about that idea. Yeah, I like that idea.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 will it boost the quality of your sperm? And three,

Speaker 1 are there any risks to holding it in? Okay.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And we're not going to get into that too deeply into this episode because we've got enough to cover. We've got enough to cover.

Speaker 1 So when it comes to semen retention, there's a lot of folks saying, bro, I became a beast.

Speaker 1 But then there's science.

Speaker 1 Beautiful. All right.

Speaker 1 You're not coming up after the break. Do you know when I wrote that?

Speaker 1 Oh, that one was written. That one was written.
And I didn't realize how awkward. I like, I almost wasn't going to say it.
And then I was like,

Speaker 1 say it. I wish you didn't look me in the eyes, to be honest.

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Speaker 1 Welcome 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, let's say that. Yeah.
Yeah. Surround Jai Amana.
Also,

Speaker 1 No Nut November. I'm like azan an anaphylactic, I thought that was something completely different.

Speaker 1 I thought that was a different thing altogether. You never heard of No Nut November.

Speaker 1 No, but I thought it was like, let's raise awareness about allergies, guys.

Speaker 1 I just thought everyone knew No Nut November, where you don't ejaculate for November. Okay.
That's the idea. Makes sense.
Should you do it? Yep. I get it.
My first question was a fairly naive one.

Speaker 1 I asked it to Justin Dubin, a urologist and andrologist at Memorial Healthcare System in Florida. What's the faf in no fap?

Speaker 7 See, you got to be deep in the internet for some of this stuff.

Speaker 7 Fortunately, I have had the time.

Speaker 1 Bring me in.

Speaker 1 Put me in, coach.

Speaker 7 Fap is this idea of masturbation or fap is like the noise that you make when you masturbate or have sex.

Speaker 1 Got it.

Speaker 1 Did you, I mean, I knew fap meant masturbation, but I didn't know it was the noise. Yeah, neither did I.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 7 And so he asked his mentors, Hey, did you ever hear this thing called semi-retention? It's all over the internet. And they're like, no.
And these are guys who are been in the game for 30 years, right?

Speaker 7 No one knew what the hell that was. And I was like, we got to look into it.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And there was just so much stuff out there that Justin said he was actually quite overwhelmed.

Speaker 7 Oh, I was going crazy. I was watching hours and hours and hours of these videos.

Speaker 7 I was texting my friends and my colleagues at the time. I was like, man, I think I got to go see a therapist.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 7 All of us were surprised surprised to see that by far,

Speaker 7 semen retention was the most popular topic being talked about with over 1 billion with a B views. Wow.

Speaker 7 Really, really insanely popular. And

Speaker 7 by far, the data, which was semen retention, was the least accurate.

Speaker 1 Really saying something, right? Yeah. But I guess that makes sense because if these doctors that field haven't heard of it, who's been doing the science? Who's talking about it? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Justin said it was a lot of young, young guys. Yeah.
So, all right. So we're going to give some accurate information about semen retention.
Great.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 to orgasm at precisely 4.30 p.m. on the first day of the experiment.

Speaker 1 Then 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?

Speaker 1 Yeah, fine. Probably.
Yeah. I feel like it would probably be out of my hands a little bit.
Right. Oh, it's very much in your hand.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. True.

Speaker 1 I could, I mean, 20 20 days without masturbating, I think I could do. Yeah, yeah.
So, okay, so on day 21, they come into the lab. Oh, literally,

Speaker 1 they got to masturbate.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 throughout this experiment, like on day 20, on day one, day 21, before and after the wanks, researchers are measuring their testosterone levels.

Speaker 1 They also asked the men about their levels of sexual arousal.

Speaker 1 And 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.

Speaker 1 So it was sort of like a better orgasm. Yeah.
Which Justin says, checks out.

Speaker 7 I think it makes sense. I think if you are, you know, it's the anticipation buildup.
You know, delaying pleasure can be pleasurable.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it makes sense. It's sort of like if you eat Thai food.
every day of the week. Yes.

Speaker 1 But if you if you go 20 days without eating Thai food, you'll fucking love can sorry can i swear yeah you will love that on our semen retention episode yeah after my like i've had thai will be i feel i feel a bit sad that i've just compared thai food to having a chiz no but absolutely absolutely you have that thai food every day yeah you're not gonna enjoy it yeah 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.

Speaker 1 The researchers wrote baseline testosterones were, quote, similar before and after abstinence.

Speaker 1 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. Oh.
Right.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And in fact, the only study that I could find that suggested something a little bit fabulous, if you're not into faffy, 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.

Speaker 1 Ah.

Speaker 1 But the thing is that paper's been retracted. Oh, okay.
So it's interesting this idea persists.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So, you're just walking around feeling better because you're not fapping, but you're making everyone else horny now.

Speaker 1 That seems unfair.

Speaker 1 And 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 7 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.

Speaker 7 Physiologically, it just doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 not ejaculating boost testosterone levels? Like, what could possibly be happening in the body to bump that up? He just, he starts shooting blanks.

Speaker 7 And I look at the research, I think it is pretty clear that holding your semen does not increase your testosterone levels. So, you know,

Speaker 7 there's really no good data to suggest that there's any testosterone boosting benefit to semen retention.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 other exciting stuff that people are talking about. Oh, yeah, okay, great.
Yeah. That might actually help their case a little more.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 That's right. I mean, in the 1998 World Cup,

Speaker 1 the English coach forbade his players from having sex. Yeah, 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Muhammad Ali was also into it. Yeah.
He built a whole farm

Speaker 1 so that he could be away from his wife before a fight.

Speaker 1 So could it be true?

Speaker 1 And the thing is, when you orgasm,

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 so if you don't ejaculate, you don't get that sense of

Speaker 1 relaxation, which some may interpret as tiredness. You would therefore feel more energy, potentially.

Speaker 7 Potentially, 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.

Speaker 7 You're, you know, a lot of your listeners, some, I mean, have ejaculated.

Speaker 7 I think so.

Speaker 1 I think so.

Speaker 7 It's not like, yeah, it's not like you're like, oh, God, I have no energy for the rest of the day.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's true right i i guess um but you do sometimes feel like ready for a nap yeah i feel like yeah and so there have been studies that have actually looked at this in terms of sports performance

Speaker 1 so for example there's this research that basically gets guys it's all i think it's all men in these studies um that tells them like not to have sex the night before

Speaker 1 And then they'll test whether they can lift more weights or cycle faster. Okay.
Or my favorite, test their grip strength.

Speaker 1 oh yes yep and so I asked Justin what have these studies found you know most studies do

Speaker 1 show that there is no impact of sexual activity on athlete performance it doesn't it doesn't affect does not impact athletic athlete performance I'm surprised but maybe just because of 1998 World Cup that's like lodged in my brain but it it 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.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, right, right, right.

Speaker 1 I would have once had an ejaculation and then gone to a gig and then it didn't go well. Yes.
And in my head, I've just created a narrative now that like the people, I wasn't glowing enough on stage.

Speaker 1 Ah. My hair looked too frail.
Your energy, you wasted your seeds. Yeah.
You wasted your energy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There is one

Speaker 1 sort of exception to this this idea that perhaps it doesn't matter that maybe might make you feel better about your thinking around gigs okay

Speaker 7 except

Speaker 7 if you're having sexual activity within two hours of the event which

Speaker 7 makes sense right that 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 and trying to perform.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And then two hours later, they basically had to go on this like fancy exercise bike

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 ride as hard as they could go.

Speaker 1 while their heart rate was being measured. Now, interestingly,

Speaker 1 whether they had sex or not, it didn't affect how hard they could go on the bike. But after in the recovery phase, their heart rate was a little bit higher.
Okay.

Speaker 1 And some of them said the exercise bike, even though they could do it, it was a bit tougher. Yeah, well,

Speaker 1 okay. So, so two hours is the window.

Speaker 1 Two hours, sure, maybe it's relevant. Yeah, maybe it's relevant.
10 hours, night before,

Speaker 1 you are absolutely fine. Okay.

Speaker 1 Is there a difference between an ejaculation solo versus with a partner? Great question. So hormonally,

Speaker 1 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.
Yeah, okay. Okay.

Speaker 1 That like oxytocin goes up, prolactin goes up, testosterone goes up.

Speaker 1 So that was the closest I could find. Probably on a psychological level, it does make a difference.
Yeah. I would imagine that you people feel differently after

Speaker 1 just

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 But the no fappers did feel more self-control on average.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And they wrote these abstinence diaries that researchers then analyzed. And some men, they did really value this activity.
So one 20. one year old said he did feel more happiness.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, which could be from just discipline in general. Like if you, yeah, if you restrain yourself or restrict yourself from certain activities, that requires a level of discipline, I guess.

Speaker 1 It might not be the fapping itself. It's the 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 But I do think in the in these forums, yeah, what they're getting wrong is they're kind of blaming

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 When it's, I think it is really more of a

Speaker 1 evidence for that. I think that's where we're at.
Yeah, great. Okay.
I feel empowered and um

Speaker 1 to return to my fat lifestyle.

Speaker 1 But after the break, can saving your seed boost the quality of your sperm? Oh, great question.

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How are participants selected? How do findings connect across research?

Speaker 6 Claude is an AI that works through these questions with you, helping you explore scientific methodology and build richer understanding of evidence for minds that love discovering how we know what we know.

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Speaker 1 Welcome back. Today on the show, Should You Try to Stop ejaculating for a month more?

Speaker 1 We've just learned it probably won't bump up your testosterone levels or give you more energy. But now we're finding out, can it boost your sperm quality? For this, we need Brent Hansen.

Speaker 1 He's a reproductive endocrinologist and fertility specialist at CCRM Fertility of Minneapolis. How many people's sperm have you looked at?

Speaker 3 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 Many thousands. I don't have an exact number for you, but we're talking in the thousands.

Speaker 1 Wow. Okay.
Can you paint a picture of when you're looking at the sperm under the microscope, what's a sample that makes you really happy? That you're like, this is a great sample of swimmers.

Speaker 3 When I, you know, as I'm still focusing the microscope, if I'm just seeing like,

Speaker 3 I almost view it as fish. Like you're thinking of like a pond with like fish in it, and you're like, there's nothing but fish here.
It's full of fish. You can hardly see the water.

Speaker 3 If all I'm seeing is like a swarm, that makes me happy.

Speaker 1 So, the question is: how do we make Brent happy? Yeah, right. We want to swarm.
We want to swarm. How do we get the swarm? That's a great question.
I love your question, but

Speaker 1 my real question is:

Speaker 1 Is it true that they have like a little face that looks like your face?

Speaker 1 I thought that's where you were going to go. Like, what do you want to see? And I thought he was going to, if I see that the face matches

Speaker 1 the guy's face,

Speaker 1 I'll know. He didn't switch the sounds.
He didn't switch the sound.

Speaker 1 Now, this question of how we get

Speaker 1 a swarm of fish swimming in our gun.

Speaker 1 It's important because a lot of folks are struggling with fertility issues right now. Sperm counts have been going down.

Speaker 1 So could saving your seed and not ejaculating be the answer here? And Brent did this big review paper looking at this.

Speaker 1 And a big reason he did it is because when patients would say, you know, we're struggling to have a baby. How long should I be waiting here before I come into my partner?

Speaker 1 He didn't have a great answer for them. And he thought, shouldn't we have a better understanding of this?

Speaker 3 Because it's so simple, you know, you should be able to look at six hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, and three weeks and get a really good estimation of like, what is the optimal time?

Speaker 3 And it seemed kind of baffling to me that no one had really looked into that in quite some time.

Speaker 1 Right. It feels like, it doesn't feel like dark matter, you know?

Speaker 1 It feels like something we should get a handle on. It's famously white

Speaker 1 but yeah i know what you mean like this is a an experiment that you would think would yeah no brainer no-brainer right so brent and his team looked at more than two dozen studies on how abstaining from ejaculating could affect various things related to sperm and so i actually didn't realize how many different things could affect the quality of your sperm, but I asked Brent to list them.

Speaker 3 There are a lot. So concentration is one.
The number of sperm per milliliter. The volume.

Speaker 1 Semen volume. That's just how much gunk is coming out in total.

Speaker 3 The liquid volume, yep.

Speaker 1 Can we not call it gunk?

Speaker 1 My editor said the same thing.

Speaker 1 You don't like gunk? No.

Speaker 1 Gunk is very derogatory. It sounds like it's waste.
Oh.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 what do you think we should use instead? Semen? Yeah.

Speaker 1 To be

Speaker 1 scientific. Yeah, anything else we could go for? Load.
Cheers. Cheers.
Gunk creates. It's like waste.
Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Like gunk is, you get spray and wipe for gunk. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Like you want to be.

Speaker 1 But semen, you might leave around for a little bit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we don't want to add to the guilt around this. No guilt.
That's right. That's right.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So it looks at DNA of the sperm, pH of the sample, motility, how well the sperm are moving.

Speaker 1 Under the the microscope, yeah, he can also look at the shape of the sperm.

Speaker 3 There are some that you just look at and it's like, yeah, double head, we're out. That's not normal.
Double tail, same thing. It's like, if there's two of anything, we're done.

Speaker 3 That's not a normal one.

Speaker 1 And all of these things can affect the chance that a sperm is going to sneak its way

Speaker 1 into, you know, through the cervix and ultimately make a baby. And so.
If you avoid jerking off for a few days or even a few weeks, what happens to all these things? Yes. All right.

Speaker 1 Let's start with sperm count and volume. Okay.

Speaker 1 Studies over and over again have found that less fapping on average means more sperm when you do come. Okay.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And so the take-homes, you know, from this were really that the longer you go without ejaculating, the larger that sample will be.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's like if you

Speaker 1 If it, you know, when the train is delayed or cancelled, there's more people on the platform. And that's, that's basically it.
It's like the semen is collecting in there, pipes are fuller.

Speaker 1 One small study calculated that for every day the men held on and didn't ejaculate, their sperm volume increased by around 12%. Oh, that's okay.
Yeah, now that huge bump, it doesn't last forever.

Speaker 1 After four days of not fapping, the benefits get smaller and smaller. Okay.

Speaker 1 But still, no fappers are absolutely onto something here. But when it comes to the egg and sperm race, quantity is not the only game in town.
Okay. Nice.
Quality too, right?

Speaker 1 What's the point having a bunch of swimmers if they can't

Speaker 1 reach the target? And studies have found, including one that looked at sperm samples from more than 2,000 men, that if you are looking at swimming in particular, so motility, fapping is your friend.

Speaker 1 So people who got off more tended to pump out better swimmers. Yes.
Okay. But the longer they've been waiting on the platform, the more frustrated they are

Speaker 1 when they get on the phone.

Speaker 1 Yes. Okay.
So to give you some more details details about what frustration looks like to a sperm.

Speaker 1 Now we're talking gunk. Yes.
After four days, it's a bit gunkier. Right.

Speaker 1 After

Speaker 1 is so one way we can look at this is through DNA damage. Okay.

Speaker 1 And so when your sperm gets a little damaged, that can make it harder to, for that sperm to then go on to create a baby. And so let's look at what Brent found.

Speaker 1 So what did you find in terms of does retaining your semen improve your sperm's DNA?

Speaker 3 Yeah, so what we found is that the longer the abstinence period, the more these kind of DNA,

Speaker 3 you know, errors, so to speak, accumulate.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so the more time between busting a nut, on average, more DNA damage in the sperms. And this makes sense once you have a better idea of where sperm gets stored.
and made in the body.

Speaker 1 So basically sperm are made in the testicles and they're really happy there. The temperature's great.
They got this blood-testes barrier. So here's Justin again.

Speaker 7 Just like you've heard of the blood-brain barrier, they have the testis-blood barrier to protect the sperm, right?

Speaker 1 I didn't know about this barrier. Yeah, right.
And so it protects the sperm from a whole bunch of things like inflammation.

Speaker 1 So they love it in there, love it in the testicles, but eventually the body's like, you've got to move on.

Speaker 1 And the spermies get pushed along to this wiggly, tightly coiled tube, which is called the epididymis. Okay.

Speaker 7 When it goes through your epididymis, which is where it actually becomes mature, it is no longer in that barrier that protects you.

Speaker 1 It's like high school, like a little high school for sperm. It's a bit stressful.

Speaker 7 Yeah, exactly. It takes on some additional stress.
And that good sperm can develop some dysfunctional DNA.

Speaker 1 And when they're in the epididymis, they can get exposed to things like oxidative stress, other things that can damage DNA.

Speaker 1 But yeah, if you ejaculate more often, you're not hanging out in that place for longer. And then, so I guess my question was: what is the optimum time to wait then? Yeah, great.

Speaker 1 And if you're trying to make a baby the old-fashioned way, like through sex, not rather than IVF, you need to balance quality and quantity.

Speaker 1 So, because if you, if you are

Speaker 1 jerking off too many times, the quantity will go down. Yeah.
And you still need numbers. It's still a numbers game.
It's a numbers game. Hey, I'm a former accountant.

Speaker 1 If anyone understands that, it's me.

Speaker 1 So Brent, the fertility specialist in Minneapolis, told me, like, basically, as you're heading into that fertile window of your partner, they're about to ovulate. Yes.

Speaker 1 Try not to have ejaculated for, he says, two to five days. Okay.

Speaker 1 But for some folks, they have a lot of DNA damage in their sperm, which you can check by doing a test.

Speaker 1 And for those people, he actually recommends just one day. Oh, okay.
Because the DNA is clearing the pot. Clearing the pot is faster.

Speaker 1 But as for this idea that you want to be waiting weeks or months or doing no nut November, friends, like.

Speaker 3 I think if you're going beyond five days, certainly beyond 10 days, you're not doing yourself as any favors.

Speaker 3 You will just be increasing the number of probably non-viable, non-modal, abnormally shaped sperm with high rates of DNA fragmentation because because those will continue to accumulate and they don't get flushed.

Speaker 1 The question, though, would be like if you

Speaker 1 probably have to have a few shots on goal, potentially, to get pregnant. That's exactly right.
And because your partner's fertile window is really only around five or six days long each month.

Speaker 1 So the first one, you might have that gap of two to five days. Yes.
But then if you want to have another. Once you're in the window, he says, go for it.

Speaker 1 He says, if you've got the question of once you're in the window, do I have sex or not? He's like, have sex. But he also said that by the time people are seeing him in the clinic, it's so stressful.

Speaker 1 There's nothing fun about sex at that point. Yes.
And he saying to someone, you just have sex, whatever, can also be very stressful. So he wanted to give

Speaker 1 time for that.

Speaker 1 All right. Our last question for the day.
I asked Justin. So then, are there any risks to seben retention?

Speaker 1 I guess if you are not in the baby-making world, is it bad if you feel good about not ejaculating?

Speaker 7 Listen, if you're enjoying yourself, you feel good. You don't have to ever ejaculate.
I don't really think that's a problem. And, you know, people don't ejaculate for a long time, right?

Speaker 7 You have people who are not sexually active. They're asexual.
Totally fine.

Speaker 1 Yes, because online you do see some quite hysteric headlines about the

Speaker 1 dangers of not ejaculating. Yes.
And the one thing that people do point to, there's sort of one bit of science evidence for this, is around prostate cancer. Okay.
Have you heard this? No, I haven't.

Speaker 1 No. There is some research suggesting that folks who ejaculate a lot have a lower risk of prostate cancer than those who ejaculate a little, but we're not really sure what's going on here.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Prostate's big job is to help make semen. And so possibly by clearing out the pipes, you are clearing out potentially harmful things that could build up in there.
It's not a crazy idea.

Speaker 1 But both Brent and Justin aren't sure if the ejaculating is actually helping you to avoid prostate cancer or perhaps if something else might be going on here.

Speaker 1 And it highlights that there have been other studies that do not find this connection. Yeah.
So it's not very conclusive, is what we're saying. Exactly.
Much like masturbation, it's a bit messy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 So Justin actually told me that, you know, his bigger concern for people when he's thinking about the risks is that if you are really into not fapping and you join

Speaker 1 these communities that then tell you jerking off is bad and terrible for you,

Speaker 1 that that is going to cause harm in itself. Oh, right, right.

Speaker 7 Here's the thing, right? A lot of these groups, you have to understand, create guilt. You can have guilt about wanting to ejaculate.
You can have stress around not ejaculating.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And if you buy into this stuff online, that it is so bad to ejaculate.

Speaker 1 You can start to feel crappy about yourself when you start to feel horny or when you relapse, even using sort of language like that.

Speaker 1 And in fact, as a study found that people who hang out more on the nofap

Speaker 1 Reddit forums tend to feel more shame, more worthlessness. Some even have suicidal thoughts.
after ejaculating. Okay, wow.

Speaker 1 Which is different too, because there's a lot of support groups out there for if you have cancer or various diseases.

Speaker 1 And studies tend to find the more time on these forums, the better people feel because they're sort of communing with each other. They're sharing how difficult it is.

Speaker 1 So it's quite telling that in this case, it's kind of going the opposite. Opposite.
Yeah, yeah. That's interesting.
Yeah. Justin says that that totally makes sense.

Speaker 7 Of course.

Speaker 7 If someone's telling you online that you should not ejaculate because it's bad for you and you should like, it's it's so funny because it's almost like in all these videos it's like your whole day is thinking about just not ejaculating which is like

Speaker 1 which i'd go crazy i'd go crazy valora you know at worst i did not know this before i thought no fapping was all about sex and and fapping um

Speaker 1 but on those forums They kind of have got a little crazy, to say the least.

Speaker 1 They are filled with misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism. Yes.
It gets real dark real fast.

Speaker 1 But away from the culture of no fab, if you are interested in going for a month or maybe even more without ejaculating, Brent and Justin were very aligned on this.

Speaker 7 I think that the idea here is that you should not feel bad about doing things like ejaculating. If you don't want to ejaculate, don't ejaculate.
It's okay to ejaculate a lot.

Speaker 7 It's okay to ejaculate a little. It's okay to not ejaculate at all.

Speaker 1 you're gonna be fine do you want me to keep saying ejaculate a couple more times

Speaker 1 yeah what he's trying to say is are you the master of your domain

Speaker 1 that's right

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 how do you feel about your relationship with um fapping at this point yeah i like all of that um that they're there i like the idea that there's no guilt around it and that it can be healthy, but also everything in moderation.

Speaker 1 Do you think you're going to try No Not November after this? Is this a challenge that after hearing Messiah

Speaker 1 want to rise to? I don't know. It doesn't feel like a challenge that is calling me, but also now I know that it's not detrimental to do it either way, really.

Speaker 1 To be honest, the opposite feels truer now. Where after this discussion, I feel like I should the pipes thing.

Speaker 1 Part of it, DNA damage sounds so

Speaker 1 serious. Extreme.
I mean, it's just.

Speaker 1 It only matters if you're going to use the pipes. Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. It's fine to...
The sock doesn't matter. It doesn't mind.

Speaker 1 I don't care. Espawn with two heads, the sock's fine with that.
That's a novelty for the sock. That is exactly right.
Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much.
No, thank you. I've learnt a lot.

Speaker 1 I'm no longer curious. You're no longer curious.
Oh, I'm sorry, though.

Speaker 1 That's science versus.

Speaker 1 This episode has 71 citations in it. So if you want to read more about anything that we talked about, you can just go to the show notes and click on our transcript, and it is fully cited.

Speaker 1 So, go have fun. There's some fun papers to read.
You can find Seren on Instagram at Seren, which is S-U-R-E-N Comedy. We are on Instagram too, science underscore VS.
I'm on TikTok at WendyZook.

Speaker 1 Come and say hello.

Speaker 1 This episode was produced by me, Wendy Zuckerman, with help from Michelle Dang, Meryl Horne, Rose Rimmler, and Aketti Foster Keys. We're edited by Blythe Terrell.
Fact-checking by Erica Akiko-Howard.

Speaker 1 Mix and sound design by Bobby Lorde. Music written by Emma Munger, So Wiley, Peter Leonard, Bumi Hidaka, and Bobby Lorde.
A big thanks to Joseph Lavelle Wilson and the Zuckerman family.

Speaker 1 Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
We are everywhere.

Speaker 1 And if you like what we're doing, please tell your friends about us, share the love for the show around, give us a five-star review.

Speaker 1 And if you are listening on Spotify, you can follow us and tap the bell icon so you get notifications when new episodes come out. I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and I'll fact you next time.

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Speaker 8 Yutine, adjective. Used to describe an individual whose spirit is unyielding, unconstrained, one who navigates life on their own terms, effortlessly.

Speaker 8 They do not always show up on time, but when they arrive, you notice an individual confident in their contradictions.

Speaker 8 They know the rules, but behave as if they do not exist.

Speaker 8 Mutine, the new fragrance by Mew Mew, defined by you.