Does watching pornography cause erectile dysfunction?
stuartritchie.substack.com
stuartritchie.substack.com
One thing it doesn’t mention is that ubiquitous promotion and availability of ED drugs has led to recreational use that can be statistically mistaken for incidence of ED.
What could be causing it? Well, there are quite a few candidates: there’s evidence for correlations with obesity, diabetes, smoking, drinking, and lack of exercise, anxiety, and more; and the evidence for any of these is a lot stronger and a lot clearer than that for pornography consumption.
Based on my limited understanding of biology, CVD, downstream effects of insulin resistance, I would lean more towards environmental inputs rather than visual stimulation and psychosomatic effects. I significantly changed my environmental inputs 15 years ago and just speaking anecdotally, I've seen all the porn and do not have these described physical limitations.
But I'm pretty healthy. I lift, I do HIIT, I do long slow distance etc. throughout the week and I eat very clean by most people's standards.
> obesity, diabetes, smoking, drinking, and lack of exercise, anxiety
which often cause, or share causes with, pornography consumption.
I doubt there is substantial evidence for this statement.
Can you share what environmental inputs you changed?
Pornography should be strictly regulated, for the benefit of both the users and the "actors"
Who are these we?
HN is very anti regulation of drugs see the countless posts about micro dosing, LSD, marijuana etc.
This response is exactly what the above post was talking about
The child comment states that; actually, the people complaining tend to be the same people. So they're consistent.
Which actually jives with my understanding. People that are fine with Porn are usually fine with other little rushes', in so far as they aren't harmful outside of themselves.
Gambling without the poverty is: fine.
Enjoying food without the health complications: also fine.
imagine if cocaine was as freely available as pornography. Is that the type of world you'd like to live in, to raise your kids in?
and for the record, I think cocaine can be wonderful.
You’re not going to jail them? How about for a fifth offense? A six-hundredth offense?
You can’t propose regulation without enforcement.
Regulating porn is regulating sex. It’s been tried. Heck, look at Indonesia today. It’s adorably naive. It is much less practical than regulating drugs because literally every person on earth who has genitals and a cell phone can be a supplier.
Take a look at https://www.findlaw.com/criminal/criminal-law-basics/infract....
> Or, to change the angle, tell me about your proposed porn regulations and what happens to people who just cheerfully go on filming themselves fucking and ignore the regulations?
I haven't proposed any porn regulations whatsover... You seem to be confusing me with someone else.
Well, that's embarrassing and I apologize.
> Take a look at
Yes, to the extent being cited for an single infraction will stop horny people from filming themselves having sex and sharing the video, that is very relevant.
However, most (all?) jurisdictions treat repeated infractions as misdemeanors. When it comes to the hypothetical of "regulating" porn, there are two possible outcomes: 1) porn producers who ignore infractions and any resulting fine are not prosecuted, and the regulation is meaningless, or 2) punishments for repeatedly ignoring the regulation are severe enough to deter repeat offense.
I just don't see how you get (2) without jail. Therefore, I stand by the assertion that any regulation of porn that is going to be effective is going to have to be prepared to jail people.
Well, it is. Place your order on whatsapp or telegram, and it's delivered to your door by envelope. You should really get with the times.
Overindulgence, dissolution, and complete shift towards hedonism and away from eudaimonia. Those two should be balanced.
Why would anyone under 18 buy pornography?
When I was under 18, more porn magazines were found and salvaged than bought at a newsstand. Quality over quantity.
The government should fuck off and not get the idea that it has any authority over the sexuality of consenting adults.
I feel like this is in keeping with regulation in the real world. A kid needs an id to buy adult magazines, a person needs to be involved selling that item. With the internet, where are those societal safety's? It doesn't stop all, but it would handle most.
I feel like this regulation is outdated in today's world. We have an opportunity to review existing practices to see if they make sense. With the internet, will children have issues? We don't know so we shouldn't jump the gun.
Plenty of people who have gotten completely out of pornography can tell you directly about the difference in their lives. That doesn't require a study. It's as simple as, I touched the hot stove, I got burned. Perspective provides better answers than numbers. We don't need a controlled study of 1500 randomly sampled people to establish that touching a hot stove is bad. The difficulty is that this "touch" can play out over years or a lifetime and is done principally within your mind and affects your relationships and emotions. You can find various studies [0] to support these general conclusions also.
When you're a regular consumer of porn, you cannot really see its effect on you unless you have a clear perspective of what it is like to not be a regular consumer of porn and indulging in objectifying sex objects in your mind. Teenagers, or worse, children, who have become addicted, haven't had the time or experience to have any other perspective. All they know is the haze of porn sexuality.
It clogs up your love receptors and transmitters like a drug. It's like seeing love through a thick fog, being unable to really comprehend it. Without perspective the individual just assumes they can see everything clearly. That a sexual relationship can be cheaply bought at a glance and satisfied in a moment and then tossed in the trash when inconvenient without even needing to talk to someone. It creates the appetite for low effort relationships, which are often short-lived instead of durable. We should strive for the kind that can go 60 years of happiness for both parties and be more in love than when they started. That's what we're capable of. But with lust addled minds mired in selfish indulgence — we don't get there.
0: https://marripedia.org/effects_of_pornography_on_marriage
> The government should fuck off and not get the idea that it has any authority over the sexuality of consenting adults.
Zealous adherence to oversimple principles like that are the root cause of a lot of harm.
> Pornography should be strictly regulated, for the benefit of both the users and the "actors"
Can we at least admit that calling for something to be "strictly regulated" is a stronger, more extreme position than "any critique"?
Should we strictly regulate laughing in social settings, by that same argument?
Replace all instances of laughing with friends with masturbating alone in your room and tell me that’s a good, meaningful life you want to live
To me it seems clear that we need some sort of regulation and/or cultural defence mechanisms against this stuff like we have for alcohol and drugs. What exactly it would look like, I don't know. Otherwise we are just going to entertain and eat ourselves to death.
How did you want to die?
...and then you go on to list a bunch of things that share the property that they are enjoyable.
There really are addictive substances; but honestly, sugar isn't one of them. These are behaviours that people become habituated to. It's not fair on real addicts to claim that your serial adultery is the consequence of "sex addiction".
If you're finding that people react poorly towards your criticisms of pornography, you might want to do a little introspection about the bad faith engagement on display in this sentence.
There are plenty of people who identify themselves in ways that would certainly distinguish them from a devout/peculiar religious community... and still have their own critiques of pornography or concerns about access, and will engage thoughtful discussion about how it should be treated.
But if you come at it from a conservative religious position ("it's bad because it violates my purity culture norms but I'm gonna dress it up using terms I don't understand like 'dopaminergic reward system' because I know that bestows a hint of modern legitimacy"), you might get treated like a conservative religionist.
Sure buddy, I don't understand. I'm just a stranger online after all. But what about the literature ?
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3402/snp.v3i0.20767
https://fincham.info/papers/2016-j-of-sex-research-delay%20d...
Also, I'm not religious. So everything you assumed seems to be wrong so far. Feel free to give it another go
For example:
https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/55540853/TJP_32_66-70-...
>There have been multiple neurotransmitters that have been implicated in addictions that range from dopamine to serotonin and now a role for glutamate and dynorphin has been elucidated.(37-38) The same has not yet been elucidated in research of pornography addiction. Further studies in this direction are warranted. Evidence regarding neurotransmitter activity in pornography addictions and substance use disorders (39) has tended to be complementary.
Since the article I linked mentions structural MRI findings, I feel the need to point out that this does not establish any causality; furthermore, evidence of heritability of compulsive pornography use could of course suggest the causal arrow goes the other way. See also:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3115160/
You will also find studies showing that dopamine agonists increased hypersexual behavior, which is rather the opposite of the suggestion that pornography use is a dopamine releasing activity (usually, the brain wants to suppress the effects of a drug!). Other studies show that naloxone (opioid antagonist) decreases pornography use. Dopamine is a stimulating neurotransmitter, and most people would not report feeling more energetic after engaging in sexual activity.
Porn, especially the industry, is already regulated in many ways.
It is besides the age verification part on the viewership's part.
I know a number of highly intelligent people in the sciences who make decisions like this (searching/waiting for Science to tell them what’s right) and who laugh at me when I follow intuition/folk knowledge.
Don’t get me wrong, academic research is an amazing thing. I follow many research backed protocols for fitness, diet etc. But I also think when it comes to systems as complex as our bodies, there’s much collective wisdom in our intuition and societal traditions that science hasn’t and may never catch up to.
Just browsing the replies here I see many guys saying effectively “Well I watch tons of porn and my penis still works” which is kind of a level 1 analysis on how porn might be affecting their brain
Learn to listen to your body, this is inordinately important. I didn't pay attention to these chills I was getting that weren't warranted by the weather nor were accompanied by fever and... let a few days slice and I was admitted to the ICU with sepsis + an immune system shutting down.
But you wouldn't be in a good position to argue against anyone saying otherwise.
There are numerous problems with folk beliefs and personal intuitions. Much like we are 100% fooled every time when we look at optical illusions, we can be fooled about other things. I'm glad you've figured out what works for you, but it's not anecdotes but only good science that can tell us what is "on average" going to happen (without investigating the individual particularities).
Isn’t that inherently what happens when you play telephone across time and cultures? You end up with stories stripped down to the essence, the most important advice from those who came before us boiled down.
Are you advocating that when we find what works for us we don’t share that finding with others? I think that’s exactly what’s wrong with the “science is the only right answer” mindset..
It'd be nice to get some studies etc. to back it up, because it's still just a hypothesis at this point, but now that I reflect upon this, it should have been like, stunningly obvious. It should be the sort of thing parents tell their kids at puberty, basic word of caution. Yet just typing it out triggered all sorts of "oh, that's socially taboo!" warning bells for me. You shouldn't speak about conditioning in humans, you shouldn't speak so openly about pornography, etc.
The mainstream stuff seems all the same, "rough and with step-$x". Eating the same meal over and over and over is gonna cause issues.
I also suspect the people who take No Nut November seriously include a higher than chance number with actual problem behaviour. Maybe the not-quite-porn-addicts and the not-quite-alcoholics self-select for No Nut November and Sober October because they know they've got a problem, and these months provide a nudge to make a change.
The one scientific study the author of this post links to is really not worth refuting. It just asked college students how aroused they got after watching a short film in a psychology lab.
For a much more robust review, please read: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/6/3/17/htm
You may want to see a physician. Your reaction sounds like there's a kink in your plumbing somewhere.
Fucking idiotic trend that permanently altered my sex drive in a negative way.
I still have no idea what that would have meant.
Last time checked my T levels, well i was not really able to compare them b.c. im in europe and units made my head explode, but it actually seemed in the low end.
I think erection and sexual desire are 100% psychological, and even more precisely, super contextual of whats on your mind right now. At some point i did a bit of meditation and found that with a girl, focusing on emptying my brain and just smelling her and focusing on that made me horny 100% of the time.
Also id recommend reading "Sex god méthod" (even though i disagree with the overall life vision of the author) and "conversations impudiques" for the french people (a free thinking book where a guy tells his path of discovering sexual stuff which include erectionless orgasms, mutiple layerd orgasms for girls and is basically a super nice and enlightning conversation about sex.)
That's a problem that extends beyond pornography and the sex impulse. Watching people have a life on YouTube even displaces having a life.
How much more reluctant must men be about having erectile dysfunction? This is a taboo subject and a great source of shame for many people. I'm sure plenty don't admit having it if they do, or just don't want to talk about it at all.
So all these studies consisting of people answering questionnaires on the subject are pretty suspect.
What we need to get to the bottom of this are measurements.... and, ideally, large double-blind studies. But that's obviously never going to happen.
So for the foreseeable future bloggers, pundits, psychologists, and social media users are going to be arguing about studies that are next to worthless.
But if you don't have ED you're not likely to either go to a doctor for a condition you don't have, nor participate in such studies.
The finding wasn't shared very widely or at least didn't turn a lot of heads. Which is odd given the pretty existential nature of the issue. In places where I saw it shared on social media the consensus was: "good!", but that seems to be the response to any news that hints at population decline/collapse.
Spoiler, they probably aren't.
There are questions with the quality of the studies used:
> Even so, Marion Boulicault of Harvard, Sarah S. Richardson and colleagues, publishing in the journal Human Fertility, suggest weaknesses in the data, such as men’s ages only being known in two-thirds of the cases and other missing crucial information.
sperm count is not linearly tied to fertility:
> Who says the sperm count observed in the ’70s in the “West” was the species’ optimum? Sperm count above a critical threshold “is not necessarily an indicator of better health or higher probability of fertility relative to less,”
and finally, no one as far as I am aware is able to present solid data on any causal link which makes projecting the trend out to apocalyptic scenarios another 30+ years in the future a very fraught endeavor in the first place.
https://www.haaretz.com/science-and-health/2021-05-10/ty-art...
I believe this is the crucial point of the article. it’s not that porn use per se causes ED, but that “problematic” usage can, presumably from guilt, shame, regret, and even desensitization, especially if you’re hiding it from your partner.
EDIT: Yup, it's not a muscle ^^, but I am still certain that I read in some medical journal that a lot of masturbation does not cause ED and that it can actually help to prevent ED.
I think the suggestion that the causation (to the extent that it exists at all) may be in the other direction is more plausible.
In many Western nations, we have a plummeting birth rate, and this may well be because women are increasingly refusing to have sex on men's terms. Immersed in violent, degrading pornography, the expectations of many men regarding sex are now incompatible with women who want a loving relationship in which to raise a family.
[citation needed]
This is just traditional gender roles applied to the bedroom. There are certainly women (and men) who want nothing except gentle, loving sex. But that's not universal for either gender. Likewise for any fetish you can name. The trick is finding someone who you overlap with enough to make things work, which is why "no sex before marriage" seems so self-defeating to me.
The situation is really very simple. Many people in developing nations NEED to have children due to the lack of a pension system. Secondary factors are a lack of education, contraception, and traditional societal expectations. All of these reasons can be summed up as the choice of having children, as well as how many, not being fully free.
In a situation where people are free to decide on wanting children (and how many), and not really REQUIRE them, they will go for 0-2. When given the choice, people simply do not want more. It's as simple as that. This is a universal finding throughout the world.
0-2, which typically averages to 1.6 - 1.8 in many countries, is below replacement rate. Mystery solved. We simply don't want more.
What if we would need to work less, would we have more children? No. What if we had higher incomes, better child support, would we have more children? No.
Counter intuitively, the "luxury" of having a say in having children means we have less of them.
That's not it at all. Women are more picky with regards to partners because they have more economic agency. Kids also aren't a given for the same reason, plus less societal pressure to have kids.
This is purely anecdotal but more of my partners were into "rough" sex than 18 year old me would have ever expected. Women (and men) also have much different criteria for casual sex versus life partners...