sober October is over and now it's no nut November but should you really participate in no nut November I'm Dr Reena Malik urologist and pelvic surgeon and I'm going to give you five reasons why you shouldn't participate in nut November as a disclaimer this is not a video to shame anyone who wants to participate in nut November if you find some benefit from doing so and it's not affecting you negatively in any way then please by all means go ahead but these are five reasons that if you're kind of skittish about doing it that really you shouldn't do it so number one reason is that it actually reduces the quality of your sperm this is interesting because we do tell people that optimally when you're trying to conceive and have babies you should try not to have sex every day necessarily maybe every other day however emerging data says that it may be okay to just have sex every day and here's why so as you abstain from sex Studies have shown that yes sperm number and the seamen volume in increase Over time however the quality of that sperm decreases with longer periods of abstinence specifically over five days you find that we see increases in sperm DNA fragmentation so what does that mean it means that the DNA is not as good quality as it is in the sperm that you would have after day one or day two and when you're trying to create an embryo right trying to conceive a baby it's really important for the sperm to have good quality DNA otherwise the embryo doesn't usually take in fact in one study looking at over 5,000 semen analyses after men who had not a jacked for 11 to 14 days they found that sperm motility which means the ability of the sperm to move to get to the egg decreased as well as sperm morphology which is the shape of the sperm so you may not know this but sperm is always pictured in this beautiful little head and tail but often we see sperm that are looking a little bit different they may be more round they may not have a tail they may look a little bit different and those sperm are not capable of fertilizing an egg number two reason and this is a big one so listen up it doesn't affect testosterone levels hear me out everyone quotes this one study they looked at 30 men after 7 days of abstinence and found that their testosterone increased by over 100% but that study has since been retracted meaning that for some reason from scientific reason it was actually pulled from the literature as being a good supportive evidence one of the big reasons that seen retention proponents talk about doing this process is because it boosts testosterone and what are the benefits of having higher testosterone well it can boost your libido increase your muscle mass reduce your fatigue and even improve your cognitive function meaning it might sharpen your memory that sounds great if you could do something to give you all those things naturally of course you would do it in another study they only looked at 10 men between the ages of 22 and 29 and they evaluated their testosterone levels after 21 days of abstinence and what they found was they did have an increase in testosterone but it wasn't sustained for any long period of time it was only 20 to 30 minutes so if you're looking for a sustained boost in testosterone make sure you check out my video on natural ways to boost testosterone and also if you're older and not trying to conceive talk to your urologist about getting testost tone replacement I've also made videos on that so make sure you check out my video on testosterone replacement as well number three it does not enhance your athletic performance since Roman and Greek times Educators have been touting the benefits of abstaining from sex before athletic performance and the reason was that they thought that sexual frustration would cause some increased aggression whereas sex may lead people to be more calm relaxed and maybe even tired in a meta analysis of nine studies looking at sports performance or athletic performance after abstaining from sex what they found was that there was no impact on a number of different factors one of these was a stationary bike stress test and they looked at differences in output after abstinence versus after sex they found no difference they also found that there was no difference in Focus another study looked at hand grip strength which is a measure of muscular performance and strength and the only only thing they found was that in people who had sex 2 hours before performing they did have an increased heart rate which means that yes if you are having sex two hours before going to a performance or going to a game or a competition of some sort it may affect your recovery a little bit ultimately I think the key here is that not every single person is the same what you want to think about is your personal routine what do you normally do because increase stress in certain typ of activities is not actually good so if avoiding sex is causing a lot of stress that can actually hamper your performance generally speaking the night before you're going to have a big performance is not the time to be changing your general routine so if you have sex every day then have sex every day if that's a normal part of your life then you should go ahead and do that and number four if you're not a jack leting during the day your body will often take care of it at night while you sleep so I've made a video on nocturnal emissions or wet dreams or Nightfall whatever you want to call it but essentially these are normally occurring ejaculations that happen during your sleep they're not always associated with erotic dreams but we've seen that in studies it's correlated people who have more nocturnal emissions are those who've had a longer duration between having an orgasm and their sleep time if this is really stressing you out it can cause what we call blue balls or pelvic Flor dysfunction so blue balls is actually a real thing it's called epid hypertension what that means is when you're aroused blood flow goes to the penis and to the testicles and usually after you have a active stimulation and you release all that blood flow goes away however Sometimes some of that blood flow still stays around and it can cause this discomfort and achy feeling that many people describe as blue balls or for women blue vulva also if this is really stressing you out it can cause something called pelvic floor dysfunction basically pelvic floor muscles are the bowl of muscles that sit in our pelvis that hold all our organs up but they can also carry a lot of stress if you're getting very stressed and trying to control your ejaculation over and over again the pelvic floor muscles can get really tense and they can start holding tension all the time when that happens you can develop a number of different symptoms this can include symptoms like pain with ejaculation testicular pain can cause pain with defecation or back pain it can also cause urgency like got to go got to go in the bathroom as well as constipation so if you're trying to do nut November and you realize that you're having a lot of discomfort this may be why and it's important to see a urologist and go to a pelvic floor physical therapist to help take care of all this pelvic floor tension I hope you all have a wonderful November and whatever you decide to practice that's all fine with me as long as you are happy and healthy as always going to take care of yourself because you are worth it [Music] [Music]