Pornography consumption is emerging as a new factor that can cause erectile dysfunction, due to a variation in the production of a neurohormone in the brain, said American researcher Gary Wilson on Saturday.
Dopamine is a neurohormone released by the brain when we receive a series of stimuli, among which novelty and sexuality are at the top.
“Internet pornography has more ways to raise dopamine than simple sexual activity,” said the researcher, who warned that today Internet users reach orgasm after watching “dozens of videos,” as the sexual and hedonistic experience is reformulated.
The Internet also offers users a variety of sexual experiences, from fetishes to strange and disturbing fetishes that can cause anxiety but increase levels of sexual excitement, he said at a conference on sexuality in Mexico City.
Supernormal stimulus
Dopamine levels rise more quickly than in traditional sex, as pornography can be considered a “supernormal” stimulus.
“These stimuli are those that duplicate the qualities that we find very attractive,” the speaker explained.
Not only that, Wilson said, “High-speed pornography also allows you to control dopamine with the computer mouse.”
“We couldn’t do this with magazines or real encounters,” he added. The brain thus experiences two twin processes: sensitization and desensitization.
The first allows dopamine levels to rise, while the second increases tolerance, making people dependent on more and more stimuli to obtain pleasure.
The traditional sexual act, therefore, is inevitably permeated by these two phenomena.
“Sensitization is behind sexual conditioning,” he added, as it accustoms the brain to “wanting sex under certain conditions.”
The conditions imposed by the Internet are: “watching instead of participating, constant novelty, constantly looking for other videos, looking for other fetishes,” the researcher explained.
This is how occasional erectile dysfunction occurs during sexual activities, having repercussions in different places around the world.
Follow-up
Wilson has had contact with many men through his online platform. From 1998 to 2001, the rate of erectile dysfunction in men under 40 was 2 to 3 percent, before the advent of internet porn.
In 2006, everything changed with the invention of free porn sites. Many men in their 50s and 60s, the expert reports, said they “had no sexual problems until these websites were invented.”
Wilson found seven studies that “found a consistent jump in the rate of erectile dysfunction,” from 14 to 36 percent since the advent of Internet porn.
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