have you ever wondered why it's really
hard to go for round two you maybe feel
too sensitive or just too tired to get
it back up again i'm dr rita malek
urologist and pelvic surgeon and today
we're going to talk about the sexual
refractory period if you're new here i
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in order to understand what happens
after ejaculation you need to understand
what happens before it or the sexual
response cycle this was developed by
masters and johnson and it has four
major steps the first stage is
excitement during this phase your heart
rate goes up you start breathing faster
your muscles start to clench up and your
blood flow starts going to the genitals
then you reach the plateau phase at this
point your muscles continue to tense in
men or people with a penis you may
notice that your testicles start pulling
up towards your penis and women or women
with or vulva owners you may see the
clitoris retract under the clitoral hood
then you reach orgasm your muscles
finally contract and release all the
tension your body gets flushed and red
and in men specifically the pelvic floor
muscles help you expel semen or have
ejaculation your body also reacts you
have physical changes in your heart rate
your blood pressure as well as your
muscles contract and all of this results
in a feeling of pleasure and enjoyment
then we reach resolution this is when
your physiologic parameters your blood
pressure and heart rate start to
normalize your butt muscles start to
relax and you become less responsive to
sexual stimulation and this is called
this sexual refractory period in men
called the post ejaculatory
period so to start off you really need
to know the difference between orgasm
and ejaculation orgasm is technically
mediated by centers in your brain
whereas ejaculation is mediated by
centers in your spinal cord called the
spinal ejaculatory center during
ejaculation there's two separate phases
there's emission when the semen gets
released from the seminal vesicles and
prostate into the posterior urethra and
then expulsion when the urethral
sphincter contracts the pelvic floor
muscles relax allowing that fluid to
then go outside the body so what exactly
happens during this refractory period it
can be very difficult to get an erection
to get an orgasm ejaculate and it can be
very difficult to stimulate arousal this
can be due to physiologic changes where
your body will simply not allow further
ejaculation or stimulation whereas a
psychological type when you're just too
wiped out to go again and when they look
at this specific refractory time you can
divide this up as the absolute
refractory time or a period of time
where nothing is going to get you
stimulated at all and a relative
refractory period and at this point you
can get stimulated but it will require a
much stronger stimulus or a very novel
stimulus but they talk about this a lot
in men but does it happen in women in
women as i've talked about in my video
about female anatomy and the g-spot the
clitoris is homologous or identical to
the penis as far as how it develops it
has the same sort of nervous structure
and anatomical structure as the head of
the penis or the gland's penis and the
shaft and so you can imagine that if the
penis gets sensitive after having sex so
can the clitoris so they did a study
where they surveyed over a hundred
college age women and they asked them
how often did they have clitoral
sensitivity and how often did they not
want to have further clitoral
stimulation after sex was done and they
found that an overwhelming majority
about 96 of women did experience this
sensitivity after sex so very likely
women are also experiencing some sexual
refractory period although it's less
often discussed so the refractory period
varies due to a lot of different factors
but typically young men have a short
refractory period sometimes only a few
minutes whereas older men it can last
much longer usually between 12 to 24
hours but for some people even longer
than that but what does the data say so
in multiple different studies they found
average rates for young healthy men to
be somewhere between 11 minutes to one
hour however interestingly in a study
where they looked at people who
identified as premature ejaculators or
those who ejaculated before they felt
ready to they found that their
post-ejaculatory refractory time was
significantly longer with an average of
up to five hours why exactly would our
bodies have this particular protective
mechanism in place obviously there has
to be a scientific reason behind it one
reason that people think this
ejaculatory refractory period may occur
is because once you've expelled all the
sperm from your body it takes time for
those sperm to replenish and the whole
purpose evolutionarily of sex is to
procreate and continue
your species after ejaculation you've
completely depleted your sperm stores it
takes some time to repeat those fully
and they repeat at a rate of about 12.5
million per hour it still doesn't make
entire complete sense but that may be
one of the reasons why this happens
another reason that people think this
may exist is because it's to avoid
displacement or moving the semen that
you've already ejaculated so if you go
ahead and have sex a second time the
thrusting of the penis may actually
displace the semen you've just
ejaculated with of course semen that
will have very low sperm counts and the
last reason is that it may serve as a
protective mechanism to avoid people
getting over fatigued or exhausted from
sexual intercourse so what in our bodies
creates this variation in responsive
time well to be quite honest we still
don't know there's been several
different studies that have looked at
different causes being maybe the nervous
system and the actual conduction through
the nerves to the penis as well as
different hormonal pathways it was
believed that an elevated level of
prolactin was what caused this sexual
refractory period because there were
some small studies that showed that men
who were able to have multiple orgasms
had very low levels of prolactin however
this has later been debunked in other
animal studies also it's thought that
having an increase in dopamine in the
body can decrease the sexual refractory
period whereas things that increase
serotonin can actually increase the
refractory period there have been two
studies which have looked at the effect
of sildenafil or viagra on
post-ejaculatory refractory times and
what they found is that they did see a
slight difference in people who took
sildenafil of different doses on this
timing they actually had the subjects or
participants time themselves using a
stock watch and they found that the
post-ejaculatory refractory time was 10
minutes without getting the sildenafil
whereas it went down to two minutes with
the sildenafil that was in 2000 another
study in 2003 looked at the same thing
but with a 25 milligram dose and also
found a slight difference so there's
lots of different suggestions online and
one of these is because a lot of people
feel that if they orgasm without
ejaculation they then don't get that
sexual refractory period so a lot of the
discussion behind
trying to delay ejaculation but continue
having orgasms has potentially helped
some people however this can be very
stressful very frustrating so if this is
not for you please don't continue trying
to do it if it's bringing you a lot of
stress or anxiety
into the bedroom or about your sexual
performance other people have reported
having multiple orgasms when they're on
certain psychotropic medications and
also trying to incorporate some novelty
either with sex toys or different
partners if that's what you're into may
help reduce this period lastly what
about multiple orgasms in men does it
really happen i mean we hear about it in
women all the time but what about in men
do men really get multiple orgasms
essentially younger men between the ages
of 20 to 30 the estimates are about
eight to nine percent of men have
multiple orgasms however when you look
at the whole age demographic of men that
rate drops anywhere from three to seven
percent so it's relatively rare so
there's kind of two ways this has been
reported some people report having a
normal ejaculation followed by many
several dry orgasms following that or
others may report having multiple
orgasms or a burst of orgasms followed
by an ejaculation right at the end so
the take home from this video is that
everyone experiences a sexual refractory
period and that period can be widely
variable and potentially in younger men
it can be shorter and as you age it does
get longer while there's lots of
recommendations on public forums and
other things very few things have been
studied
in the scientific literature in
controlled studies so i hope you found
this helpful as always remember to take
care of yourself because you're worth it
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you