Men have always been looking for an extra edge. Whether they want to become better at performing tasks or as human beings, it is in their nature to seek new ways to improve themselves. In the pursuit of perfection, many men have stumbled upon the benefits of not ejaculating. While that might sound counterintuitive, people claim abstaining from ejaculation for a period of time can have tangible positive effects.
But is there any truth behind these claims? And if yes, what are the actual benefits of semen retention, and should you try it yourself? It’s time to find out!
What Is Semen Retention?
Generally speaking, semen retention is the practice of not ejaculating for a set time. In its simplest form, semen retention involves abstaining from all sexual activity. However, some people have taken it a step further and have learned how to orgasm without ejaculating, an action known as a dry orgasm. While there is still some debate on which practice is healthier, it is believed that both can have mental and physical benefits.
Even though semen retention might look like another online fad, the concept has been around for centuries. According to the ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism, sexual self-control is a way of increasing and maintaining one’s life force, and ejaculation depletes it. In fact, many techniques that men use during semen retention periods, like retrograde ejaculation and edging, are inspired by Taoist teachings.
It’s important to mention that some people confuse semen retention with the NoFap movement. Yet, while both communities might overlap, the goal of each practice is different. On the one hand, NoFap aims to help people who suffer from sex and porn addiction. On the other hand, the purpose of semen retention is to achieve a higher state of mind and to improve one’s physical and mental prowess.
17 Benefits of Semen Retention
As previously noted, the reason people try semen retention depends from person to person. But usually, they boil down to improving mental, physical, and spiritual health.
Here are just a few of the potential benefits of not ejaculating:
1. Boost Your Energy Levels
Semen contains a small amount of Vitamin B12 which is crucial for stamina. It also helps transform the food you eat into energy that your body uses throughout the day. And lastly, Vitamin B12 maintains the health of your nerve and blood cells, preventing a form of anemia, called megaloblastic anemia, which can make you weak and tired.
Since you lose Vitamin B12 when you ejaculate, you may feel weak and tired right after the act. As a result, if you want to preserve or even increase your energy levels, you should avoid ejaculating as often or even at all. That way, you can maintain a healthy amount of this vitamin in your body while also boosting your energy levels.
Additionally, research shows that at least seven days of semen retention can improve your testosterone levels by 45%. However, that is a temporary peak that returns to its regular levels even with continued abstinence. But if you are someone that constantly masturbates and loses testosterone constantly, you can use semen retention to replenish it.
Remember that testosterone is linked with a variety of body functions, including sex drive and energy consumption. Therefore, low testosterone levels can cause a loss of interest in sex, fatigue, and even erectile dysfunction.
2. Increase Your Confidence
Most people get their satisfaction from working hard and achieving their goals. However, unfortunately, humans are hardwired to always seek shortcuts and stick to them once discovered. That’s why so many people fall into the trap of excessive masturbation, which provides short-term gratification at seemingly no cost.
But that’s not the case. As proven time and again, masturbation and regular ejaculation can hurt your dopamine receptors, leading to dopamine deficiency.
So how does that relate to confidence? Simply put, people with low dopamine levels generally have low confidence. That’s because dopamine deficiency has a negative impact on willpower and motivation, making it nearly impossible to become confident and outgoing.
In some instances, this condition has also been tied to depression and anxiety. Thus, by practicing semen retention, you boost dopamine sensitivity and ultimately increase your confidence.
3. Sharpen Your Memory
Although there is no scientific evidence to back up this claim, people are praising semen retention for sharpening their memory. They claim that you’ll be able to memorize information much more easily because not ejaculating will help you keep a clear mind and avoid distractions.
And if you think about it, this statement does make some sense, especially if you suffer from porn or masturbation addiction. How many times have you forgotten to finish an assignment or attend an event because you’ve been ejaculating too often?
The chances are that, by using masturbation as a way to escape your daily routine, you will slowly begin to forget and even ignore responsibilities. If you find yourself in this situation, it’s best to give semen retention a try to improve your memory and ability to concentrate.
4. Relieve Depression
According to research, depression is one of the most common mental disorders in the United States, with over 16 million adults suffering from it. While people develop depression for various reasons, it’s believed that low testosterone levels can increase the risk. Naturally, people that ejaculate too often will reduce their testosterone supplies and make themselves more vulnerable to depression.
What’s even worse is that depression itself can prompt people to masturbate more than usual in order to feel better, which will only accentuate the condition. This loop can be fatal to the brain. It will affect your emotions deeply, pushing you into the darkest corners of your mind and making you feel like there is no escape.
If that happens, you should take a long break from masturbating and ejaculating to allow your brain to rewire itself and heal your depression. You should also talk to a professional and get some advice to avoid further downward spirals.
5. Improve Sleep Quality
Testosterone levels are also associated with sleep quality. As a result, lowering them can disrupt your sleeping pattern, forcing you to wake up multiple times during the night, thus reducing sleep duration.
What’s interesting about this connection is that sleeping can also increase testosterone levels. In other words, not only will masturbation reduce your testosterone levels and, therefore, your sleep quality, but it will prevent your body from replenishing the missing testosterone due to ejaculation’s negative impact on sleep duration. But luckily, semen retention will solve this problem, allowing you to enjoy a good night’s sleep.
6. Curb Self-Control Problems
Experts consider that urges for masturbation and porn are stronger than most addictions, and it’s easy to see why. Unlike drugs and alcohol, excessive masturbation seems to have no real downsides and only benefits, like immense amounts of pleasure.
However, those who suffer from porn addiction know how hard it can be to stop. That can also affect your self-control ability, which influences other aspects of your life. For example, if masturbation is negatively affecting your self-control, you might become prone to other addictions such as gambling or drugs.
While there are several ways to improve restraint, including yoga and meditation, some believe that semen retention is the most effective. It will force you to find other methods of relaxing, increasing the chance of picking up healthy habits.
Over time, you will build a strong sense of self-control that will help you throughout your life. If you want practical proof, just take a look at how many successful people used semen retention to improve their focusing and self-control abilities, such as Nikola Tesla, Steve Jobs, and Muhammad Ali.
7. Strengthen Your Hair
Keratin is an essential nutrient that maintains the health of your nails and hair. Thus, keratin deficiency can result in hair roughness, dryness, thinning, and even hair loss.
What many don’t know is that semen also contains moderate amounts of keratin. Actually, that’s why you might notice that your scalp becomes dry and starts to itch when you masturbate too much. Some have even reported the growth of lice when ejaculating daily for months.
If you want to preserve your hair and prevent it from falling out, you should cut down on masturbation and try semen retention. While it will take some time to notice any results, your hair will become smoother and easier to manage after a couple of months.
8. Make Your Voice Deeper
By now, you should know that semen retention can boost your testosterone levels by up to 45% in just one week. Since testosterone is tied to your tone of voice, it’s not a stretch to assume that abstaining from ejaculation will deepen your voice.
As a matter of fact, many members of the NoFap community have stated that their voices have deepened significantly after just one week of retention. So be sure to try this method if you think that your voice is too soft or if you experience voice inflections.
9. Boost Libido
Libido is described as an individual’s desire for sexual activity or overall sexual drive. When it comes to men, this libido is tied to hormone levels, more specifically, testosterone. In other words, if your testosterone levels drop, so will your desire for intimacy.
As established, ejaculation will reduce the amount of testosterone your body produces. That’s why many men deal with erectile dysfunction even before the age of 40. Not only that, but while excessive masturbation will make some people hornier, it won’t be the same as natural libido.
More specifically, while they will be comfortable ejaculating using porn or their preferred sexual arousal source, they might struggle with real-life interactions. But by cutting down on masturbation, you will increase your libido and sexual prowess, leading to a happier and more fulfilled sex life.
10. Strengthen Your Muscles
The semen retention community has praised their practice for helping them build muscles and increase their physical strength. While that might seem like an unsupported claim, it’s a known fact that testosterone is directly linked to your muscle mass.
To put it simply, the more testosterone you have, the easier it is to build muscles and achieve your desired workout goals. That’s why many gym trainers recommend people control or abstain completely from masturbating.
Furthermore, testosterone also strengthens the bones, playing a big role in bone mineral density. And, the weaker your bones are, the harder it will be to support your internal organs and muscles.
11. Help Awaken the Root Chakra
The root chakra is one of the most important chakras with its energy based on the earth element. It is often linked with the feeling of grounding and safety and sets the foundation for expansion in your life. This chakra is found at the base of the spine, with its corresponding body area being the perineum. In fact, it is often represented as a cone of energy that goes down from your perineum and slightly bends up.
People that follow NoFap and semen retention for long periods of time have stated that they can feel their root chakra opening up. As a result, they’ve experienced increased feelings of confidence, safety, and comfort.
12. Improve Your Sports Performance
Besides promoting muscle growth, semen retention can actually improve your overall sports performance. That’s because ejaculating reduces your energy levels and clouds your mind. As David Haye, former Heavyweight Champion, puts it: “Climaxing releases too much tension. It releases a lot of minerals and nutrients that your body needs. Releasing weakens the knees and your legs.”
Other famous athletes, like Myke Tyson and Muhammed Ali, also used to refrain from masturbation and sex before matches. The Olympic boxing coach, Harry Wiley, said this about Mohammed Ali: “I believe his thing is sexual control. Any kid who can control it can win the title.” So, if you feel like your athletic performance is lacking, you can try semen retention and follow in the footsteps of many well-known sportsmen.
13. Help You Save Time
Have you ever stepped back and thought about how much time you waste consuming pornography? The odds are that you are spending at least a couple of hours each day masturbating. It’s important to remember that your time on this planet is finite, so why waste even more of it with meaningless activities like masturbation? Think about how much you could do instead, like starting a hobby or learning a new craft.
And don’t forget that time is money. By carefully investing your time, you could generate more money and climb the social ladder. Yes, it will take some effort to do it, but the rewards will be much more meaningful than what ejaculation has to offer.
14. Make You More Charismatic
Charisma is the ability to attract, influence, and charm people around you. Usually, it’s easy to identify charismatic people by the way they act and carry themselves. But nowadays, it’s harder than ever to find truly charismatic people, mainly because most men are engaging in damaging activities like masturbation more than ever before.
Unfortunately, people who watch porn and ejaculate regularly don’t know how bad it can affect their minds. Porn, masturbation, and orgasm can reduce confidence and fill their minds with self-doubt. And let’s be honest — people with self-doubt will have a hard time being charismatic. If you want to have a likable personality, it’s time to quit wasting your semen and focus on self-improvement.
15. Boost Your Motivation
Motivation is the driving force behind all of our actions. It is the reason why people push forward no matter what challenges await them. However, masturbation addicts struggle to find the motivation to do anything else than watch porn and ejaculate. Other activities that involve hard work are eclipsed by the instant pleasure that porn gives them.
Therefore, if you feel that you lack motivation, you might want to join the semen retention community and test it for yourself.
16. Improve Your Immune System
Semen contains all sorts of essential minerals and vitamins, like Calcium, Lactic acid, Citric acid, Vitamin B12, Vitamin C, Magnesium, Potassium, Sodium, and Zinc. These minerals and nutrients work as antioxidants and promote the health of your immune system by fighting free radicals. Thus, it’s counterproductive to want to eliminate them by ejaculating into the night.
17. Make Females More Attracted To You
One of the main biological functions of humans is to reproduce. As a matter of fact, most activities that people do revolve around that specific purpose, whether it is to groom themselves or achieve a higher social status. Yet, when you get sexual gratification through porn and masturbation, you don’t feel the biological need to go out, socialize, and meet other people.
Thus, you’ll slowly forget how to attract females and when you eventually decide to try your luck, you’ll most likely face rejection.
Taking a break from ejaculating can have positive effects on your desire and drive to meet other people. More specifically, your brain will force you to engage in social activities in order to receive the same sexual pleasure that you were accustomed to. But to do that, you may have to work on your looks, personality, and behavior first, which will ultimately make you more attractive to females.
Frequently Asked Questions About Semen Retention
Semen retention is a complex topic that can confuse a lot of people. These are just a few of the most common questions that you might ask regarding this practice.
Is This Meant to be a Short or Long-Term Practice?
At the end of the day, semen retention is a personal choice, and you should tailor it to your specific needs. If you feel like it’s working out for you and doesn’t cause any harm, then why stop? Just remember that it might take some time before you experience any benefits, so don’t give up after just a couple of weeks.
But if you notice pain and discomfort during the practice, make sure to stop immediately and seek medical help. While semen retention shouldn’t cause severe medical problems, there isn’t enough research regarding the matter. So don’t take any unnecessary risks and always put your health above everything else.
Can You Still Engage In Sexual Activities?
Absolutely. Semen retention doesn’t mean abstaining from all sexual interaction. In fact, doing that can put a lot of strain on your partner.
However, you’ll have to communicate and express your desire to avoid ejaculation. There are a lot of techniques you can use to have sex and experience sexual pleasure without the fear of releasing your semen, such as learning how to have a dry orgasm. Or, you could give edging a try and work on controlling your ejaculatory response.
Are There Any Risks Associated With Semen Retention?
Even though people believe that semen retention is risk-free, there are some complications that can occasionally occur:
• Epididymal Hypertension: Also known as blue balls, epididymal hypertension happens when you are sexually aroused but don’t ejaculate. You might experience pain in the testicles due to a buildup of blood in that area. While it is a harmless condition, blue balls can be annoying and frustrating. But you can get rid of it by either orgasming or avoiding sources of arousal.
• Ejaculation Issues: If you avoid ejaculating for prolonged periods of time, you could develop ejaculatory issues. For instance, premature ejaculation is pretty common amongst men who haven’t orgasmed for a while. You might also experience retrograde ejaculation, which causes semen to travel back into the bladder.
• Semen Blood: After periods of semen retention, you may find blood in your semen. But don’t panic, as that condition is completely normal and should resolve itself within a few days.
Can Semen Retention Lead To More Satisfying Orgasms?
People have reported an increase in the intensity of their orgasms after not ejaculating for a long time. While there’s no research to support this theory, there are many who claim that semen retention has improved their sexual lives drastically. So why not check it out yourself?
What Happens to Sperm If There Is No Ejaculation?
During regular ejaculation, sperm travels through the vas deferens, where it combines with seminal fluid. The mixture then moves through the urethra and out of the penis. However, semen retention disrupts the process similar to a vasectomy. In other words, sperm is unable to finish the journey and is broken down and reabsorbed into the body.
