Delivering to a sexual activity – whether solo or with a partner – can lead to better sleep, according to a new pilot study published in the journal Sleep health. Research revealed that sexual masturbation in partnership and solo reduced the time that people spent waking up overnight and improved the overall sleep efficiency. These effects are not reflected in subjective reports of sleep quality, but objective surveillance of sleep has shown coherent improvements after sexual activity compared to nights without it.
While many people believe that orgasm has a relaxing effect and promotes sleep, most existing evidence has relied on subjective relationships. Only one study – conducted more than three decades ago – had tried to objectively measure sleep after sexual activity, and it had important design limitations. This research aimed to fill this gap using a portable brain monitoring device to measure the stages of sleep and the quality of sleep in a real frame.
“I have studied sleep behaviors in the adult population for several years, when this has mainly focused on improving the sleep behavior of elite athletes, I am always asked various questions about sleep,” said study author, Michele Lastella, lecturer at Cquniversity Australia.
“A frequent question asked” how is it that my partner falls asleep immediately after sex and I cannot “and I thought that if people frequently ask me questions about this, then it must be indicative that there was a real lack of proof of research around him. This can be something related to orgasm. »»
The new study is part of a broader research effort on the relationship between sex and sleep. LASTELLA previous work and her colleagues interviewed 778 people and found The fact that men and women have perceived that sex with orgasm helped them fall asleep faster and sleep better. These results prompted this study, which provides a more detailed and objective overview of how sexual activity influences sleep physiology.
The researchers recruited seven heterosexual couples, including 14 participants in total, who were all healthy, sexually active and lived together in South Australia. The participants were detected to ensure that they had no sleep disorders, were not pregnant and had no children, which could affect sleep routines. All participants said they are engaging in sexual activity at least twice a week. The final sample was made up of 7 men and 7 women, each about 26 years old.
Participants were monitored over 11 consecutive nights using a repeated measurement crossover design. Each couple made nights under three different conditions: no sexual activity, solo masturbation (with orgasm) and sex in partnership (with orgasm). To measure sleeping objectively, the participants wore a wireless polysomnographic device (DREEM3 banner), which recorded brain activity, movement and breathing during the night. Participants also finished the self-assessment newspapers each morning, detailing their sexual activity, their quality of sleep, their mood and their preparation for the coming day.
The nights where participants engaged in a sexual activity, they went to bed later than the nights without sex. However, they also spent much less waking up after falling asleep and had higher sleep efficiency, which means that they spent a greater proportion of their time in the bed to sleep. Sleep efficiency was 93.2% after solo masturbation and 93.4% after a sex in partnership, against 91.5% in nights without sexual activity. Participants spent about 7 minutes less awake during the night after sexual activity.
Interestingly, sleep improvements were only obvious in objective data. Participants did not report significant differences in the way they thought they had slept under the three conditions.
“We have observed that engaging in sexual activity, whether it is solo masturbation or sexual activity in partnership, improvement in the quality of objective sleep by reducing the time spent waking up throughout the night and an improvement in the overall effectiveness of sleep,” said Lastella to Psypost. “There was no difference during sleep, sleep latency and subjective sleep measures.”
However, they said they felt more motivated and ready for the day after sex in partnership. On average, the participants evaluated their motivation and their preparation 8 to 11 higher points (on a scale of 100 points) after a night of sex in partnership compared to the nights without sex.
Another aspect that the study examined was how sexual activity could influence the synchronization of sleep stages between partners, known as concordance at the sleep stage. Previous studies have shown that couples that share a bed tend to go into paradoxical sleep at similar moments, which suggests that the Cosle can influence sleep habits. This study revealed that the concordance of the paragraph stadium was significantly longer when couples were sleeping together – without knowing if they had engaged in sexual relations – compared to their sleep alone. This suggests that the sleep act itself can promote sleep synchronized by REM, potentially due to shared environmental and physiological indices.
By examining specific sleep stages, the researchers discovered that the participants spent more time in the lightest sleep stadium (N1) the nights without sexual activity. Although the difference – about 2 minutes – is statistically significant, it is unlikely that it has clinical meaning. Other sleep stages, including deep sleep (N3) and paradoxical sleep, have not shown significant differences between the three conditions, although there were trends suggesting certain improvements after sexual activity.
These results comply with previous research. For example, a study in 2023 published in the Journal of Sleep Research used a 14 -day newspaper method and revealed that sex in partnership with Orgasm was associated with a shorter time to fall asleep and a better quality of self -depressed sleep. However, this study did not include objective sleep measures and found incoherent results for solo masturbation. This study supports the idea that orgasm, whether it occurs alone or with a partner, can have effects promoting sleep – but these effects are more clearly captured by an objective measure.
Study authors suggest that hormonal changes after orgasm could explain the advantages observed to sleep. Orgasm is known to increase the release of oxytocin and prolactin while reducing cortisol levels. The oxytocin, often called “liaison hormone”, has been linked to lower stress and better sleep, while prolactin is associated with sexual satisfaction and relaxation. These hormonal changes can reduce excitation and promote a smoother transition to a relaxing sleep.
However, the study had several limits. The sample was small, made up of only 14 participants, who were all healthy heterosexual couples. This limits the ability to generalize the results to wider populations, such as the elderly, people with sleep disorders or those of non -heterosexual relationships. Participants also had to activate their sleep surveillance devices after sexual activity, which may have interfered with the natural transition to sleep and reduces the chances of capturing latencies with very short sleep.
“One of the main challenges is to set up the device to record the sequel to sexual activity, because in an ideal real world scenario, individuals could simply try to sleep after sexual activity without having to activate / record on a device,” noted Lastella.
Another limitation was the potential for social desirability in self -depressed measures. Although objective data is less sensitive to this, participants could have felt inclined to assess their sleep or sexual experiences more positively. Researchers note that future studies should aim to include a more diverse and more important sample and should explore if sexual activity could be used as behavioral intervention for people with poor sleep.
“We are actively looking for funding to support our third part of the survey by recruiting a larger sample with participants with poor quality or sleep behaviors and examine whether sexual activity can help a subsequent sleep behavior,” said Lastella. “This type of research is important because it provides us with a non-pharmaceutical approach to improve not only sleep behavior, but also health and well-being as a collective. Please contact if this research is interested, and there are funding opportunities that could support this type of research. ”
The study, “Sleep above: a pilot study exploring the impact of sexual activity on sleep results in cohabiting couples“, Was written by Michele Lastella, Dean J. Miller, Ashley Montero, Madeline Sprajcer, Sally A. Ferguson, Matthew Browne and Grace E. Vincent.
