does semen retention or participating in non nut November actually increase semen volume I'm Dr Reena Malik urologist and pelvic surgeon and today we're going to be talking about seamen retention now seen retention is the act of essentially avoiding ejaculation in any form through masturbation or sex or any way in which you would normally ejaculate now it becomes really a big topic of conversation in the month of November because there is this thing called No nut no November where people challenge other men to abstain from ejaculating for 30 days of November now that means no sex no masturbation if you do participate in some form of masturbation you cannot ejaculate now the practice of seman retention has actually ancient Roots so basically beliefs were that celibacy increased a man's Vitality or strength and so people often practiced semen retention now knut November starting in 2011 based on a Reddit post and was then subsequently popularized and it sort of comes up every year in the month of November now people think that semen retention improves testosterone fertility and semen volume now in my previous videos I've talked about the science behind seman retention particularly in terms of testosterone and fertility there's only been two really small studies with 10 men and 29 men that look at testosterone levels after doing a period of semen retention so it's through 10 days 3 weeks through all the literature there's only two small studies which have looked at the change in testosterone concentration in the blood after a period of Sean retention and in those small studies of course there was only 10 and 29 young healthy men who abstained from masturbation during that period of time and in one study they did see an increase in testosterone after 3 weeks of abstinence but again these are young healthy men and they also know that at the end of the study they're going to get to watch an erotic film and masturbate and so anticipatory cues are actually very powerful in terms of sex hormones there's there's a number of studies that have shown that your sex hormones actually increase when you have anticipatory cues so when you think you're going to get a certain reward and in this case Sex Your Body Works by increasing those sex hormones to increase your drive to go get it and the other study which included 29 men did show an increase in testosterone after 7 days but then it quickly decreased so these increases are likely very short-lived and these increases are likely due again to um these anticipatory cues and if they do increase are likely very very shortlived and in terms of fertility you actually see a decline in seamen quality the longer you obstain from ejaculating so after about 5 to 7 days you're seeing more DNA frag pigmentation and worsening morphology meaning the shape of the sperm and motility or movement of the sperm now what about seamen volume a lot of people say like look I participated in donut November and I had a huge ejaculate volume now is that true so partially if you abstain from ejaculating you will increase your semen volume now a number of Studies have looked at seen volume after periods of absence particularly in terms of looking at the ideal fertile window so how long should you abstain from ejecting before having sex to ideally conceive and have a viable embryo and so when they've looked at these studies there's been a couple of metaanalyses now meta analyses are are taking all the studies that have looked at abstinence and its impact on sperm quality and taking all those studies together and seeing if truly when you combine all the data from all these studies are you still seeing an effect so in the first systematic review they sought 17 studies and in that 17 studies they generally did absence up to 14 days in a variety of studies and what they found was that there was a significant increase in seen volume for those who had longer abstinence periods now in the other systematic review they saw the same thing they looked at 30 studies and they found again an increase in seam in volume as you increase the length of abstinence but the kicker here is they looked at the rate of change what was the greatest increase in seen volume during that period perod and the greatest overall increase was 11.9% per day in the first 4 days of abstinence so it seems like the the majority of the semen volume increase occurs within the first four to 5 days and this makes sense because we do know that the body does tend to absorb some of the semen if it's not ejaculated and also as you increase abstinence from ejaculation there's a high highly likelihood that you will have a nocturnal emission meaning you will ejaculate in your sleep and it is completely out of your control so this is really important if you are participating in an period of semen retention or non nut November it is very possible that you will have a wet dream and that is completely normal response of your body trying to empty out essentially what you have not done in your own time and so this is again not in your control not something you can prevent from happening and so if you do that you're then again back at Baseline starting from essentially Day Zero in terms of seam in volume and so probably if you're really trying to increase SE in volume the best option is to just go four or five days and then ejectulate at that point if you're trying to have babies we generally recommend somewhere between 2 to 5 days between sex what I usually recommend for couples is to go every other day during the fertile window because that is you know only so long and so that allow allows you to optimize your chances of fertility if you did enjoy this video make sure you check out my video on increasing your erections naturally and if you're looking for a urologist I am located in Newport Beach California I take care of plenty of patients who have sexual dysfunction both men and women hormone management pelvic pain as well as bladder dysfunction and prolapse for women so feel free to make an appointment online very easily aralik md.com slappointment and as always remember going to take care of yourself because your worth it