Thanks largely to social media, semen retention and the “No-Fap” movement are back. Or at least I’ve noticed a lot of replies on T Nation social media about it, mainly under our YouTube videos. Examples:
Lots of young men really getting off on not getting off. They seem to believe that all their faults are caused by “releasing the demons” and all their physique dreams will come true if they refrain.
Anyway, this was a T Nation Plus article a few months back. I’ve opened it up to everyone because apparently more people need to look into the science instead of just relying on TikTok trends.
Read and discuss, either here or under the article:
Sex (or having an orgasm) actually increases testosterone levels.
Charlie Francis (legendary track coach) once told a story about East German athletes being matched (one dude, one girl) and had to have sex the day before the competition of either athlete. Supposedly, their research showed that it boosted testosterone and competitiveness the next day. Supposedly, when a small East German endurance runner was asked who was paired with the big female shot putter he answered “Me, if I lose the race”.
Also, I don’t remember whom, but an American sprinter tested positive for testosterone at the Olympic games and his defense was that he has sex five time the night before, increasing his testosterone to illegal levels (EDIT: It was Denis Mitchell)
It is also well known that the number of free condoms (provided by the organizers) being used by athletes in the athlete village of the Olympic games is extremely high… kinda putting to rest the idea that athletes stop having sex around competitions.
I think that the belief that sex reduces testosterone is that after the orgasm there is a period when the guy is chill, relaxed, and not as driven. But that’s not from low testosterone, but rather the release of prolactin (which also causes the refractory period).
What many of these guys don’t seem to think about is this:
If you believe the single study (the results of which couldn’t be reproduced in follow-up studies) that 7 days of abstinence peaked T levels, and you believe that ejaculation decreases T level, then all you have to do is get horny again to bring those T levels back up. Multiple studies show this, like the one where men watching an adult film had a T boost of 35%.
So, it really seems like a wash in the end.
Yet some of these retainer guys reportedly turn down sex with real women (even their wives and GFs) out of fear of losing T. At least that’s what they say online through their pretend personas. Maybe in real life they’re not getting any anyway, so it protects their egos to pretend that abstinence is a choice. Sorta like how I’m not a billionaire because I believe that money corrupts and I don’t want to be corrupt. Yeah, that’s it.
Charlie Francis once told me a story about how another team sent a woman over to Ben Johnson’s room to get him into bed. It was either to make him miss the race or to “plummet his T levels.”
Well, Charlie said, Ben took the bait and almost did miss the race. He quickly put in his shoes and won anyway.
I often think about that woman. She really took one for the team… but it didn’t work.
I’d like to see a neurotransmitter based study. The subjective effects of frequent masturbation vs abstinence are the exact same for me on testosterone as when i was a teenager and when i was a natural adult.
I think a lot of the “NoFap” people are benefiting from living like a normal human and not masturbating 24/7. A lot of my generation had access to a lot of porn super young and that was probably somewhat damaging therefore nofaps rise is just the pendulum swinging in the other direction.
A lot of the self improvement people pushing semen retention selling it has the “answer to your problem”. For example, if you start nofap you will be the Adonis who gets all the girls because you have a magical glow. Lots of stupid bullshit with it but the biggest benefit of it is just people not watching porn all day.
Basically nofap and semen retention are the answer to a lot of people’s problem with porn but it’s the hardcore “jumping on the sword” of being abstinent that has become the selling point. Keep in mind, this is excluding religious reasons for it. Just more of what I’ve seen in the pop culture side of it
Also, it’s very rare I see extremely successful people (outside of the self improvement niche and sports) talking about how not masturbating made them successful. It’s almost like hard work and determination matters more than how many times you wack it
Good points. Sorta like how a lot of decent ideas get cultified.
Like, we learn that saturated fats aren’t the devil we once thought they were. Okay, great. Then someone comes along with the All Saturated Fat Diet and it’s promised to be a panacea and get you laid.
Really weird how people love to swing that pendulum from one side to the other when the answer to most questions is somewhere in the middle.
I think there is a conflation of “no nut” and “no fap” and obviously they aren’t the same. I’m not even confident that the hormonal effects of masturbation and partnered sex are the same, but the behavioral effects are almost certainly not the same.
When you remove the woo-woo stuff and the pseudoscience, my guess is that the pro-testosterone effects of “no nut” aren’t as good as, say, having one fewer beer per month, and 1000X less than getting adequate zinc/magnesium.
People often look for extreme strategies to fix something that can be fixed by much simpler means.
Does anyone have any proof that sex makes one’s T value drop several hundreds of ng/dl?
And like, I’m supposed to believe Mother Nature equipped us with hormones, partly for the sex drive to get men and women screwing each other, only for us to be depleted in such hormones after doing so.
Has anyone here not been able to get on with their day from intercourse?
Judging from the content about sex and male issues I’ve consumed, including what I’ve consumed while slumming around the armpits of male internet spaces, the men hung up with this goofy life hack are troubled men, addicted men, and desperate men. They are men with some hangup or another.
Masturbation can be addictive, but doing it here and there isn’t a big deal. Probably most people, including those who are not “extremely successful,” can masturbate, drink alcohol, eat junk food, and overeat on occasion and be just fine. Such people do not make announcements of their self-moderation.
For those who cannot moderate themselves, then abstinence actually is the remedy. And sex is not going to make someone T value drop several hundreds of ng/dl.
Nope. Appears to be (at the most) an inconsequential temporary dip, then T goes right back up.
I think you nailed it. And most of the men I’ve seen touting this practice are barely men. They’re young guys who aren’t successful with women… which can lead to a host of potential hang-ups and make it easy for them to be sucked into all sorts of nonsense.
Traditionally, before the field of psychology went woke, the combo of “wants a woman” and “can’t get a woman” was considered a foundational issue in many aberrant beliefs and behaviors.
see? Makes a lot more sense now, huh?
