did you know that just like men get morning wood women also get morning erections or morning Bean I'm Dr Reena Malik urologist and pelvic surgeon and today we're going to talk all about what happens in the female body that causes them to also get erect or to mess the clitoral tissue and in fact it happens throughout the night just like men get nocturnal erections and in the early morning sometimes so if you're new here you may not know that the clitoris and the penis are homologues so the erectile tissue of the penis you often see part of it and in fact that's not all of it right the erectile tissue that you see is just what's visible on the external part of your body but it actually goes deep into the body and then goes down and separates out similarly in the female anatomy all you're seeing is the clitoral head or the glands of the clitoris there's also a shaft of the Claris internally as well as corpra and the cura or the ends of it and why that is is because they are both developed from the same tissue embryologically so when you're developing fetus you have these tissues that then grow on specifically the genitor urinary tubric that goes on to then become the penis or the clitoris and so just like any erectile tissue male erectile tissue and female erectile tissue the way it works is that you have these little sinuses in the tissue so it's like spongy and when you have relaxation of the muscles or the sinuses blood can then flow in fill up all that space and it can get engorged and so essentially just like men experience engorgement or erection of their penis women experience engorgement of their clitoris when they're aroused or when they are participating in sexual activities and just like men can extend or expand the length of their penis when they get erect women also their clitoral shaft and clitoris can also get engorged and longer and girthier when they have an erection and so the interesting thing however is that we know that men get erections all throughout the night in fact it's a completely normal phenomenon that men will have somewhere between four to six erections over the course of a night and often wake up with an erection but women also will have clitoral tessin throughout the night now how do we know that right so there's actually been a few studies mostly in the 1970s and 1980s looking at a whole bunch of different factors that are associated with clitoral engorgement and now before I go into these studies you may be wondering like why does this even happen if you didn't know the Baseline oxygenation of the tissue in the penis is about 40 to 50 mm of mercury ideally when it's fully o oxygenated and fully erea as 100 mm of mercury so in order to keep the health of the tissue you need blood flow to periodically engorge the penis so what happens if you're not having sex or you're not having regular erections well this is why your body then has nighttime erections that can help continue to oxygenate those tissues throughout the night whether you're having intercourse whether you're getting aroused during the day or not and similarly same thing for the female anatomy you will get engorgement of these tissues to essentially maintain the health of these tissues the other interesting thing is that when they've looked at animals who have similar patterns of erections during the nighttime of their erectile tissue what they found is that when you sleep deprive these animals they become more aggressive and hypersexual because they have not had these erections throughout the night so it may be a protective mechanism to prevent having compulsive sexual behavior in addition to this compulsive sexual behavior you also saw these animals have other really strong motivational type behaviors like looking for food and feeling hungry like eating food even when eating that food would be dangerous like from a candle dish for example or um trying to be more aggressive with grooming or trying to mate and so ultimately this may again we've not seen this in humans specifically or hasn't been studied specifically in humans but it's sort of an interesting Theory so getting these nocturnal erections is actually a good thing not only because it helps the health of the tissue but it's also showing you your body is showing you that your spinal cord your nerves that go to these organs as well as the blood supply to these organs is completely intact that's why we see sometimes in patients who have spinal cord injuries they'll still get erections and they may not actually be aroused because it's more of a reflex sometimes you can get these erections without actually being aroused and that's the interesting part is that sometimes these erections happen and you may not have a sexual dream or you may not remember having a sexual dream and so it's not always correlated with having sexual desire or dreaming about sex or other things sometimes it is and that's totally fine so let's talk about these studies so there have been a handful of small studies that have been done in women using different methodologies to measure vag blood flow the most recent study that was actually done not too long ago looked at vaginal pH so the reason they studied pH is because the Bartholin glands which make lubricant when you're aroused actually secrete an alkaline solution now the normal vagina is acidic the normal environment in the vagina is acidic with a pH of around 4 4.5 so when you are aroused the barlin glands excrete this more alkaline solution and actually raises the pH to about six and this makes sense physiologically because you want the pH to be hospitable for sperm that will eventually fertilize an egg and be able to reach an egg and so it all makes sense in terms of physiology and this was really interesting because it did work looking at pH did correlate with clitoral increased blood flow which they measured using ultrasound and so yeah this is an interesting way and easier way to then measure um changes over the course of long periods of time whether it's during arousal or at night during sleep the interesting thing they also found was that when they measured these factors during either the daytime like watching erotic films versus watching them at night they found that the amount of blood flow increase was about the same so maybe there is a certain maximum amount of blood flow which makes sense right your tissues can only handle so much that you can achieve and that's the maximum oxygenation that you can provide divide but that means that these nighttime erections are just as impressive or as robust as the ones you're getting when you're watching something that's arousing you so ultimately why does this happen well sleep is a parasympathetic state right rest and digest so parasympathetic is when you're resting and digesting which also allows you to get erection so when you are in the parasympathetic State your body is readily available and relaxed sufficiently the muscle mus are relaxed sufficiently to allow blood to then flow into those erectile tissues and create erections the other reason is hormones so we know that testosterone follows a circadian rhythm and over the course of the night particularly early in the morning you're going to have more higher levels of testosterone which will then even in women in addition to men so at that point in the early morning you may wake up with an erection and that can be women can wake up with erections in their clitoris and men can wake up with erections in their penis the other reason is very often you are lying in bed and you can have friction against your genitals so whether you're lying stomach down or prone on your mattress you can actually you know have friction on the area which can cause a reflex erection or the sheets themselves can cause friction and then cause a reflex erection and lastly it may be that as your bladder fills it sets off a reflex to the spinal cord sending signals to then create an erection so ultimately all of this is completely normal physiologic and healthy and so it's very fascinating to know and I think ultimately it's a great way that our bodies have developed to protect us to continue allowing us to have a healthy vibrant sex life so that we can go on and reproduce which is essentially the whole point of our existence is to reproduce and create more babies I hope you guys all found this interesting let me know in the comments below what you thought and if you are looking for a urologist I am now practicing in both Beverly Hills and Newport Beach and happy to see you make an appointment at www.md.com appointments and as always remember to take care of yourself because you are worth it