Here’s another reason to have someone else in the room besides yourself when having sex. A study published in the Journal of Sleep Research found that those who had sex with a partner before bedtime tended to fall asleep faster and have better quality sleep. And, oh, there was one thing that had to happen during sex to see such associations: an orgasm.
Yes, apparently, when the sex had no climax then sleep was not more likely to come sooner, so to speak, and the quality of the sleep wasn’t more likely to be better than when no sex was had. This study didn’t offer great news for those who felt like masters of their own domain, either. Masturbation didn’t seem to be associated with either of these sleep benefits regardless of whether an orgasm resulted.
All of this was based on the diaries of 224 study participants in The Netherlands, including 67 men, 153 women, and four classified as other. Now, it wasn’t as if the research team from the University of Groningen in The Netherlands (Carlotta Florentine Oesterling, Charmaine Borg, Elina Juhola, and Marike Lancel) snuck into the rooms of the participants and read their personal diaries. No, these were sleep and sex diaries completed by the participants, the majority of whom were undergraduate psychology students, for 14 consecutive days for the very explicit purposes of the study.
Before this diary part of the study, participants first completed an initial set of questionnaires that asked them about their sleep-related and sex-related habits and their perceptions about how these two sets of things were related. This set of initial questionnaires asked participants about their ages, which ranged from 18 to 58 years with the average being 21.93 years, and other demographic characteristics as well as any mental health or sleep disorders, sexual dysfunction, medication use, alcohol use or caffeine consumption. There was also a seven item questionnaire that fed into the Insomnia Severity Index to determine their sleep quality at the time. In addition, participants completed an eight item questionnaire to assess how they felt different types of sexual activity may have been affecting their ability to fall asleep and maintain sleep.
This initial set of questionnaires revealed that both men and women believed that they had mastered the whole sleep thing, meaning that masturbation could help them fall asleep faster and have better quality sleep. They perceived the same to be true about sex with partners, regardless of whether the big “O” had occurred. The question then was whether the 14-day diary part of the study would support these perceptions.
After they completed this initial set of questionnaires, each morning the participants received email reminders for the next 14 days. These weren’t reminders to have sex with someone or masturbate, which could be an awkward email to receive, especially if someone else is reading your email. Rather, they were reminders to complete upon waking a diary entry on their sexual and sleep behaviors from the 24 hours prior. As part of the diary entry, the participant had to note whether he or she had any type of sexual activity during the preceding 24 hours and if so, how many times and when during the day did those activities occur and whether they were masturbation or partnered sex with oral/vaginal/anal sex. Participants were also asked whether orgasms had occurred. This presumably was just orgasms due to sexual activity and not someone like eating chocolate.
When the research team later analyzed the resulting data, they found only one type of sexual activity to be associated with decreased sleep latency (the time between going to bed and actually falling asleep) and increased sleep quality as mentioned earlier. That’s partnered sex specifically when an orgasm occurred. And not partnered sex without an orgasm. And not masturbation, even when an orgasm occurred.
Now, you may moan that such observations are not consistent with your experience. After all, many people do feel that whole lotta self-love can help with sleep, as seen by the study participants’ answers to the initial set of questionaires. While 14-day diary part of this study seemed to go against that masturbation belief, here’s the rub. This study did have a number of limitations.
First of all, this was a very specific population, a specific sample of students from a specific Dutch University. Do the sexual and sleep behaviors of this sample represent what happens in all other populations? Hard to say. They may or may not represent what happens with other members of the Dutch population. And even if it did, going Dutch may not be the same as going other countries. So, it’s not clear how broadly applicable these results may be.
Moreover, the study participants kept diaries for only a span of 14 days, which is one week less than how long March Madness lasts. As you can imagine, sexual and sleep behaviors can vary significantly over time. Heck some people even get married and divorced within a two week period. Therefore, really understanding the relationship between sexual activity and sleep may require studies conducted over longer periods of time.
Plus, people may not behave as they normally do when participating in a study. The study design itself could have affected participants’ sexual and sleep behaviors. Indeed, it’s not every day that someone will ask you something like, “By the way, did you masturbate yesterday?” So there’s a chance that such regular reminders could affect your sleep.
All told, this study did show how intimacy combined with physiological responses from sex can help improve sleep. Many Americans regularly struggle with getting enough sleep, as 50 million to 70 million people in the U.S. have ongoing sleep disorders, according to The Sleep Foundation. At the same time, a growing number of Americans are feeling lonely and disconnected, as I have previously described for Forbes. So, one does have to wonder how much these two trends may be connected at least to some degree. This doesn’t necessarily mean that your doctor will start writing Tinder prescriptions if you are having trouble sleeping. But if you are having problems falling sleep after you go to bed, before you try popping pills, you may want see what else you can do in bed.
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