From the optimal number of orgasms to the best time of day to have sex, tune in to hear from gynaecologist Dr Sara Matthews and Dr Anna Hushlak of Ferly on everything you need to know about orgasms.
Transcript
00:00:01:01 - 00:00:25:01
Tom Livesey
In the third episode of the Thriva podcast, we're discussing the topic of how orgasms can affect your health. We're lucky to have two phenomenal experts with us today. Dr Sarah Mathews, a senior gynaecologist at the Portland Hospital in London, and Dr Anna Herschbach, the co-founder and chief scientific officer of Sexual Wellness, helping transform society's relationship with sex. And Sarah, thanks so much for joining me today.
00:00:26:00 - 00:00:28:17
Tom Livesey
So firstly, first things first. What is an orgasm?
00:00:29:10 - 00:01:00:03
Dr Sarah Matthews
Well, the medical definition of an orgasm is a feeling of intense sexual pleasure. Usually at the end of the sex act. But for ladies, they have the option of possibly having multiple orgasms before they go into what we call the resolution phase. Which is the end comes with this wash of hormones that cause this lovely relaxing feeling and that very pleasurable sensation That's my definition.
00:01:01:00 - 00:01:16:23
Tom Livesey
That's interesting because I think there seems to be some kind of difference in opinion between the kind of physiological side of an orgasm, which is just fine, and the kind of some of the mental side as well. And seems like different types of doses kind of seem to think kind of define it slightly differently. Is that is that true?
00:01:18:15 - 00:01:44:21
Dr Anna Herschbach
I guess that's a bigger kind of question around are there such things as different types of orgasm or is it more that there's one type of orgasm and we respond to them in different ways via different stimuli? I'm by no means a medical doctor in that sense. My background science and research, so to speak, from having done a lot of kind of research around the domain and in the kind of studies that I've looked at more generally, it's actually kind of leaning towards the idea that there's only one type.
00:01:44:21 - 00:01:47:07
Dr Anna Herschbach
But the way in which we respond to different stimuli varies.
00:01:47:09 - 00:02:09:12
Dr Sarah Matthews
Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, there are there's the, the vaginal orgasm, the clitoral orgasm. And I think for men there's only one type really. Ladies we're so complex, we have a lot more options. There's the one that people can get when they're exercising, but you still usually depend on a bit of stimulation. Usually if the clitoris or a pelvic floor.
00:02:10:10 - 00:02:44:14
Dr Sarah Matthews
And it culminates in the same sort of physical response, but you can get that from different types of stimulation, and it doesn't always have to be direct stimulation. For example, spinal cord injury patients can orgasm, so that doesn't involve direct stimulation because they have no sensation at all in the groin area. And also people who are transgender, who have had transgender surgery will be able to orgasm, which sort of fuels the fact that the brain is the best sexual organ in the body, certainly for women.
00:02:44:14 - 00:03:06:01
Tom Livesey
So I think that's a good kind of segway into the next question about about the different types of orgasms. So listen, if you hear got multiple pressure, relaxation, tension, G-spot and some studies have looked since orgasm purely through the mind. And are they all the same and create the same reaction or are there kind of differences and better or worse in terms of various types.
00:03:07:02 - 00:03:38:05
Dr Sarah Matthews
I would suggest that the the sort of physical reaction and what you experience is probably the same although I'm no expert in something like tantric sex, certainly the intensity varies from day to day. And there are certain things that will turn you on as a person and that will work better for you. But that's very affected by your hormones, may be affected by other things, like if you're tired or stressed or on medications.
00:03:38:05 - 00:03:48:01
Dr Sarah Matthews
So there's various things that can affect how you perceive an orgasm. Intense it is. But in terms of the actual experience it's the same as just how good it is.
00:03:48:21 - 00:04:08:20
Dr Anna Herschbach
From the historic and a sociological perspective. I think it's a really interesting topic because I think again, I'm speaking through the lens more around female orgasm. But if you think about the kind of the history of what we know about the clitoris, for example, you know, it's it used to be seen as a dirty organ. It used to be seen as something that was undeveloped.
00:04:08:21 - 00:04:33:00
Dr Anna Herschbach
You know, there's this whole if you look at the influence of Freud on the way in which we think about vaginal orgasms versus clitoral orgasms, if you can actually type them differently in that way, there is a kind of emphasis on penetrative orgasm saying generally heterosexual penetrative orgasms, that those are more mature and actually clitoral orgasms are kind of seen as less are seen as more insignificant and often were actually associated with mental illness.
00:04:33:09 - 00:05:00:02
Dr Anna Herschbach
And so I think it's interesting how the history and centuries before that narrated this myth that actually deeper true orgasm comes from penetration when actually a lot of recent research, the stuff coming out of the Kinsey Institute, for example, has found that, you know, almost two thirds of women require some type of clitoral stimulation. We also, you know, have only, quote, discovered the clitoris in the nineties and actually recognizing that as a whole organ, much of it that sits inside the body, not just outside.
00:05:00:12 - 00:05:14:07
Dr Anna Herschbach
And so I think when we often talk about things as well as like the G-spot there's a lot of debate on whether it even exists or whether it's actually kind of the body of the of the clitoris and whether that's combined with the pelvic floor. And it's actually a much more of a whole kind of complex an area.
00:05:14:08 - 00:05:40:19
Dr Anna Herschbach
So I think when we talk about whether there's these different types, whether it's the G-spot or the clitoral or vaginal or whatnot, it's actually almost simplifying what is a very complex process that actually involves a whole combination of muscles and organs and all these things working together in tandem and historically and I think particularly around a lot of shame around the female body, a lot of that has been neglected.
00:05:40:20 - 00:05:56:10
Dr Anna Herschbach
The clitoris was removed from Gray's Anatomy I think in the 1940s from the textbook and only put in in the last kind of 20 decades. A lot of it also comes from misinformation about the body and kind of things that we take as truths that actually we're still discovering aren't really true at all.
00:05:56:17 - 00:06:14:04
Dr Sarah Matthews
Further to that, we've now realized that the stems of the clitoris go internally right along with terrible of the vagina for up to four inches each. And then we think possibly the original sin is with the root of the clitoris is so it's all linked together.
00:06:14:05 - 00:06:25:05
Tom Livesey
Yes. And it seems like we're still kind of not necessarily kind of at the point where we understand everything about about the process. Has there been a lot of research into this stuff kind of historically because it's seen as taboo and.
00:06:25:12 - 00:07:01:17
Dr Sarah Matthews
I think definitely, certainly a lot more research on the male side than the lady side because of all those issues. Whether the clitoral orgasm is related to the vaginal orgasm and whether vaginal orgasm happens independently completely. There was a lady called Maria Bonaparte who did some research in the States in the 1940s, and she looked at the distance between the clitoris and the tunnel opening and find that women who had a smaller distance between the clitoris and the vaginal opening were much more likely to orgasm during penetrative sex.
00:07:01:23 - 00:07:24:00
Dr Sarah Matthews
And it makes sense because then the clitoris is directly stimulated. But if you look at the variation between women, that distance can be anything from one centimeter to nearly five centimeters. And if it's a longer distance, it just makes sense that those women need independent clitoral stimulation if they're having penetration to be able to come.
00:07:24:03 - 00:07:38:17
Tom Livesey
So we talk about what an orgasm is, but obviously I guess sometimes people might not experience orgasms in the acts of sexual assault and so do we need to be careful? It's kind of separate to the obviously most people consider pleasurable aspects of an orgasm from that side of things.
00:07:38:22 - 00:07:59:06
Dr Anna Herschbach
And I was going to ask you a question because I was thinking about this as we were talking about it, idea of the kind of like wash of delicious feelings of sexual pleasure that often comes with it as I was thinking about this in terms of the relationship to sexual violence or people who experience sexually violence, if they are climax in how we understand that in terms of the kind of intense feelings of sexual pleasure.
00:07:59:06 - 00:08:00:06
Dr Anna Herschbach
Alongside that, it.
00:08:00:06 - 00:08:28:05
Dr Sarah Matthews
Can be very confusing and you have to be very clear about what you agree to and what you like and what you don't agree to and what you don't like. And I'll throw up the example of men who are raped and quite often if they're a teenage boy and they're abused, then they will come doing the anal penetration.
00:08:28:05 - 00:09:04:11
Dr Sarah Matthews
But that does really confuse them because they're they're they're sitting with this scenario where they've been raped and they feel violated because of that. But yet they seem to have experienced pleasure from that. And I don't think it happens for women as much because our brains are much more involved in the orgasm process. But for men, there is another nervous reaction and it can be an issue for a lot of guys who end up confused about whether they're gay or not as a result, apart from the whole the whole terrible episode to deal with.
00:09:04:19 - 00:09:12:06
Dr Sarah Matthews
So that's really important when it comes to counseling. And I mean, it's the sort of set of violent situations.
00:09:12:14 - 00:09:17:18
Tom Livesey
So we've talked a lot about mainly female orgasms, but are there any differences between male and female orgasms?
00:09:18:01 - 00:09:44:13
Dr Sarah Matthews
Yeah, there are and Masters and Johnson, who did a huge amount of research in the sixties to look at the different variations and definitions of how an orgasm comes about and divided the process into three for men and four for women. So for men, they have an excitement phase. Then you have the climax and then you have resolution.
00:09:44:13 - 00:10:06:10
Dr Sarah Matthews
So ejaculation normally happens at the climax and then at the time of the resolution, they then go into a phase where they're unable to get another erection for a while. Now it could be a matter of hours and a young guy, if the guy's older, it can be up to a week. For ladies, there are four stages, so they get the excitement stage.
00:10:06:10 - 00:10:33:06
Dr Sarah Matthews
But instead of going straight to climax they reach a plateau of sexual excitement. And from the plateau you can go up and have a climax, possibly more than once a majority of women do one. But if you know the way your body works, you can, with the right stimulation, get repeated orgasms before you go into the resolution phase and we can come out of the resolution phase quicker.
00:10:33:08 - 00:10:57:14
Dr Anna Herschbach
There's an interesting thing, and this is probably in the kind of excitement phase, the difference between spontaneous and more responsive desire. I mean, I go ski boats and do quite a bit of research around this as well is the idea of and I think it's like it's around 875 or 80% of women experience response of desire. It's not this like I'm walking down the street and I see this sexy person and bam, I'm turned on and I'm ready for sex.
00:10:57:22 - 00:11:15:10
Dr Anna Herschbach
It's more of like, OK, I need the context to be right. I need to understand if my neighbors interrupt me, is that going to throw me off? Do I want to feel connected to my partner first? Do I need things to be done in a certain way and to kind of almost create an environment that's conducive for then me to respond to that, to feel desire and then arousal?
00:11:15:21 - 00:11:48:03
Dr Anna Herschbach
Whereas for men what she looks like is how actually the majority of them experience that. Bam, I'm now turned on spontaneous kind of desire in the moment. And so interesting to look at. There's actually a very small overlap between men and women in terms of where that desire, like if you think of event it diagram the kind of overlap between that's quite small and so I think exactly that thinking about the differences in terms of how we actually get to a point of excitement and get to a point of arousal in the build up to orgasm.
00:11:48:03 - 00:11:52:13
Dr Anna Herschbach
There's also kind of subtleties in that that I don't think we often explore. We often think about well.
00:11:52:13 - 00:12:12:19
Dr Sarah Matthews
Also it takes women longer. So men, according to some Canadian study, penetration, last somewhere between three and 7 minutes normally. And it's unusual to have penetration going on some more than 12 minutes and it takes women ten to 12 minutes to get round to coming. So it's a longer, slower process.
00:12:13:05 - 00:12:20:10
Tom Livesey
So in terms of the end result, the kind of processes that happen in the body at climax, are there a lot of differences there or they both are the same.
00:12:21:06 - 00:12:50:01
Dr Sarah Matthews
For men it's fairly standard. I think, you know they ejaculate then everything settles down, they lose their erection, the testicles drop again and they, they feel a sense of relaxation. For ladies, it depends whether it's a clitoral orgasm or vaginal orgasm. It's so it can go from just having the sensation that comes from a clitoral orgasm. You can have the vaginal contractions, the uterus will contract as well.
00:12:50:01 - 00:13:20:07
Dr Sarah Matthews
Quite often all the blood and gore cement around the labia and the clitoris is there. But then eventually that comes down with resolution. And as I said, in 5% of the ladies, there is this there's this entity of such elation which is not like humans in that it doesn't come from the clitoris. If you consider that to be equivalent to the penis, it actually comes from what we call skin's glands, which are little sort of mucus secreting veins at the base of the urethra.
00:13:20:14 - 00:13:32:19
Dr Sarah Matthews
And but again, that is probably linked to clitoral stimulation very closely. And then that to me is something we find out more would be very, very interesting because I think there probably is a direct link to that.
00:13:32:22 - 00:13:39:00
Tom Livesey
This is all really, really good stuff. Thank you so much. So the general consensus is that orgasms are good for us. What are some of the benefits?
00:13:39:06 - 00:14:01:23
Dr Anna Herschbach
I'm going to be slightly controversial and I think we put a lot of focus on orgasms as opposed to sex more broadly. And as a result, there's a lot of pressure for everyone on reaching orgasm, having an orgasm, giving an orgasm, you know, as if it's like some gift were bestowed on someone. When I was reflecting on the benefits, I was thinking about how do we move away from focusing on orgasm specifically and actually think about sex more broadly.
00:14:02:06 - 00:14:30:16
Dr Anna Herschbach
Obviously with orgasms, you got that kind of like the love hormones and like the stuff that comes afterwards and that like elated feeling and all of that. Just reflecting on whether with sex more broadly, not necessarily just with orgasm that also comes feelings of intimacy, feelings of connection, whether that helps to relieve stress, whether that helps to feel less alone, whether that kind of has those aspects, regardless of whether you orgasm or not, is also thinking about the kind of physical benefits.
00:14:30:16 - 00:14:40:11
Dr Anna Herschbach
Is it your heart rate? So you're doing a bit of exercise. Is that actually kind of good for you overall, cardiovascular wise? Does it help with blood pressure and happiness?
00:14:40:11 - 00:15:06:17
Dr Sarah Matthews
Yeah, it does, because you have to remember that not everybody has orgasms with someone that a lot of people have orgasms on the road. Yeah. So I'm completely with you in that there's a lot of a lot of importance attached to this idea of being able to have an orgasm and please your partner and, you know, which is why women fake orgasms all the time as a physical entity.
00:15:06:17 - 00:15:26:21
Dr Sarah Matthews
There is, there is a positive to it. But you're quite right, with the sexual relationship, there's a lot of satisfaction and communicating if you're having sex with a partner is really important. So if you don't come or he doesn't come, it's no big deal. You just enjoy the moment and enjoy the time together and the importance that that creates in the relationship.
00:15:27:17 - 00:15:55:09
Dr Sarah Matthews
But from a purely physical perspective, orgasms are actually physically very good for you. There's a quite a good study from the states, and that suggests that if you orgasm regularly these twice a week, that you reduce your overall mortality by 20% and I don't quite know how I interpret that really, because it depends what age you are. But overall, compared to the average person that doesn't have an orgasm that often it seems to be very good for your longevity.
00:15:55:17 - 00:16:17:18
Dr Sarah Matthews
There was quite a recent study looking at cardiovascular risk and suggesting that it also confers a protection cardiac ways, not just because you're stretching your muscles and increasing your heart rate, but there are some other elements at play. Maybe it's the reduction in stress. It comes with with regular orgasms or the hormone changes that can happen with it as well.
00:16:18:16 - 00:16:45:09
Dr Sarah Matthews
Of course, it promotes good sleep. If you're having sex at night, you because it's dark, it will then release the person which in turn stimulates your melatonin production. Then that sends you into a lovely deep sleep that doesn't happen in the daytime. So come on to that. I'm sure again, talking about when to have sex, but there's a good description of how the hormonal changes that come with an orgasm are very beneficial.
00:16:45:09 - 00:17:21:22
Dr Sarah Matthews
So you get good sleep. You also get that feeling of relaxation which lifts your mood and decreases anxiety and stress, which is obviously beneficial. It can help you get pregnant. Now, orgasms are not essential they're essential for a man to have, but not for a lady to have in order to achieve conception. But but they do help because as if the muscles are contracting in Janet, it helps to keep the sperm in and it also helps the sperm to be wafted up the right direction through the tubes.
00:17:22:05 - 00:17:52:04
Dr Sarah Matthews
So it can improve fertility as well. And the other thing is that it's, of course, nature's painkiller if you've got a headache instead of being, oh, no, darling, we can't have sex tonight, I have a headache. That's exactly what you should do because it's an amazing painkiller. You get these rush of endorphins, even having sex change, period. A little bit of a subject that culturally sometimes is not acceptable.
00:17:52:06 - 00:18:05:18
Dr Sarah Matthews
But if you have sex junior period, it does help with menstrual cramps. And also having sex with a partner on a regular basis can also help to regulate your menstrual cycle. There are lots of benefits.
00:18:06:23 - 00:18:23:24
Tom Livesey
I mean, I know you touched on, you know, some of the mental benefits as well, kind of a sense of connection and kind of physically if you're with a partner, that's a really important point, right? That's kind of something that maybe people don't think of as much during that. But with what you do as well as something you've definitely explored.
00:18:24:03 - 00:18:57:00
Dr Anna Herschbach
Mm. Yeah. I think for us, what we found is there's a lot of focus on wanting to have like, quote, better sex or wanting to be able to please partner and pleases than being defined as orgasm. And I think what we found certainly with our community and the women we speak to is there's, there's so much stress around the orgasm and there's this sense of either my sex is being judged to be successful depending on if I achieve orgasm and if they achieve orgasm.
00:18:57:00 - 00:19:23:10
Dr Anna Herschbach
And I think we found also a lot of our community doesn't orgasm and to a point is I think it's particularly speaking from the lens of women, it's not that physically they're broken, which is what I think a lot of them feel. It's that mentally they're not in the right space for it. What we found is that by is taking away the focus of orgasm and focusing more on intimacy, whether with oneself or with a partner and being more connected to one's body.
00:19:23:10 - 00:19:42:16
Dr Anna Herschbach
And this is more about what types of touch do I enjoy, what am I feeling, what sensations am I experience? Seen? Is my mind racing? Am I over thinking, how do I get out of my head? And learning how to kind of move through those processes actually ends up being a much more and satisfying experience, a pleasurable experience in the long run.
00:19:42:24 - 00:20:12:12
Dr Anna Herschbach
Then this kind of frustration of trying to get to this kind of 12 to 22nd climax. When you think about the whole period of sex, that's not that long and focusing on that, that really kind of intense moment of pleasure, which don't get me wrong, I absolutely love my orgasms, but I think the big kind of shift for us has been thinking about what's the experience like more broadly and, and whether that's with oneself, the connection I have to my body, to my mind, the the way I kind of feel about certain things, whether that's to somebody else.
00:20:12:18 - 00:20:32:24
Dr Anna Herschbach
There's actually a lot of pleasure and satisfaction in that. Often we tend to skip over that because of this focus on orgasms. And as a result of that, it almost becomes like a goal we have to hit. How do we rethink what that goal post is? And certainly for the women who are unable to it from the kind of stories they've shared with us, it feels like that goal post is always moving away.
00:20:33:09 - 00:20:51:02
Dr Anna Herschbach
And so if we don't redefine what it is and redefine that experience, then there's there's this kind of sense of not being good enough, not being able to please not being able to enjoy it. A lot of anxiety during sex, lack of enjoyment around it, and it actually creates a whole kind of mental context around pleasure and sexuality.
00:20:51:02 - 00:20:59:12
Dr Anna Herschbach
We found if there's less of an emphasis on on orgasm, our community has been able to actually enjoy being present with themselves and a partner much more.
00:21:00:03 - 00:21:12:13
Tom Livesey
That's really interesting because there's been a lot of research recently into the benefits of mindfulness, say, and those kind of things. And actually, if you take the the end goal out of the equation, a lot of the stuff you're talking about is very similar, right? Is being present and kind of being aware of your own body and being in the moment.
00:21:12:21 - 00:21:15:18
Tom Livesey
And actually, you know, lots of those same benefits probably apply.
00:21:16:14 - 00:21:18:21
Dr Sarah Matthews
Less skipping off and more turning on. Yeah.
00:21:20:02 - 00:21:41:24
Dr Anna Herschbach
Exactly. And actually the getting off if if you get to the gut enough is probably more likely to be enjoyable if you spend more time on turning on, there's a difference, which I've only recently been discovering through conversations with experts in the space between this concept of masturbation versus of pleasure and the idea around self pleasure is that actually it is much more about this kind of mindful experience.
00:21:41:24 - 00:22:08:16
Dr Anna Herschbach
So it's about this connection to exploring what I like about my body under what circumstances and what contexts, what type of touch I like, when, where, how, as opposed to I'm a bit bored, I'm going to get my vibrator out, put it on like speed ten, use it quickly, climax and then carry on. And neither one is right or wrong, but they have very different functions and they're very different experiences and often we tend to treat masturbation in some way as a bit like scratching an itch.
00:22:09:01 - 00:22:24:12
Dr Anna Herschbach
Like it's a bit like, I mean the sleep's a really good example when I'm sharing more information than probably necessary but when I was studying it was this thing of like I was trying to navigate insomnia and for me it was like, OK, if I have an orgasm, it'll help me sleep. So I'm just going to orgasm to sleep.
00:22:24:12 - 00:22:44:06
Dr Anna Herschbach
But then it almost became this thing of where so in my head and I was so worried about sleeping that I then ended up not being able to orgasm because I was so focused on that. And, and so it's this interesting kind of balance between why are we doing it, how are we doing it, and are we even being aware that actually in a lot of ways, so much more than just a physical thing.
00:22:44:13 - 00:22:55:05
Tom Livesey
Right. And Sarah, you mentioned that kind of hormonal changes. And I think there's been some research into the effects of orgasm, particularly around menopause. In women. Is that is that the case?
00:22:55:16 - 00:23:26:05
Dr Sarah Matthews
Well, women, as they get older, actually have stronger sexual responses. And if you if you look at the development of sexual response in male versus female and boys, when they go through puberty when they hit 15, 95% of them will be bang, I can have an orgasm off, go for ladies. It's a very gradual learning curve. And so it means that by the time you hit 20 maybe 50% of ladies might have had an orgasm.
00:23:26:15 - 00:23:50:23
Dr Sarah Matthews
By the time you get 30, 80% of ladies will have had an orgasm and that curve keeps growing as you get older and then the menopause gets in the way or does it get in the way. Women as a progressive life become more confident in their own bodies, which means that having sex becomes more satisfying and more rewarding in terms of their potential to have orgasms.
00:23:50:23 - 00:24:29:17
Dr Sarah Matthews
But around the menopause there are obviously hormonal changes that have an impact on a woman's libido, which is not just governed by a decrease in estrogen and a decrease in testosterone, but it's also by all the other factors that happen around the menopause, like developing hot flushes, not sleeping well, being stressed, being anxious, being tired, and all of that has an impact on how you respond sexually, not just the sort of decrease in hormones and if you give HRT, it will certainly help and it will help with the physical symptoms like vaginal dryness that can cause pain during intercourse.
00:24:30:15 - 00:24:56:10
Dr Sarah Matthews
But normally post-menopausal women, as long as they keep having sex, respond very nicely. So, yes, the menopause does impact on sexual response. But there's certainly no reason to stop having sex and your libido will come back. You have to think sexy is back to the biggest sexual organize your brain. You think sexy, you can keep a very lovely, healthy sex life going.
00:24:56:18 - 00:25:02:13
Dr Sarah Matthews
The other thing is I forgot to mention with health benefits is that it lowers your risk of prostate cancer that was a prostate cancer study.
00:25:02:16 - 00:25:07:10
Tom Livesey
But is there an optimal number of orgasms in a time period to achieve some of these benefits? Well.
00:25:07:20 - 00:25:32:22
Dr Sarah Matthews
My take on this is that nobody knows is the answer and is probably different for everybody. But the one thing I would say is that can you have too many? The only thing related to that is the Masters and Johnsons and the lovely old adage, use it or lose it. And the more you have sex, the more you want to have sex, the less you have sex, the less you want to have sex.
00:25:33:02 - 00:25:51:17
Dr Sarah Matthews
So if we get to the point that having an orgasm a day is important to you, you're going to not be able to focus on things and other things just as well because you're constantly waiting for your next sex. And it's why we have issues with sex addiction. But you have to get your life as well. So can't take over your life.
00:25:51:24 - 00:26:13:13
Dr Anna Herschbach
There's a couple of different things around that, whether it's like porn addiction or a woman's perspective. Addiction to toys for men. What we found comes up with those kind of shared experiences around porn addiction is that it becomes very focused on needing a huge amount of stimulation and in there kind of everyday experiences with partners, it's not stimulating enough.
00:26:14:13 - 00:26:39:17
Dr Anna Herschbach
And so there's a sense of not being able to actually be present with that partner or get to orgasm because it's it's almost too slow for them. And I think it's interesting because if we look at women, there's some of the things we found around the use of toys and does that then compare with their partners with a vibrator, are they able to achieve orgasm in a minute, 2 minutes, and then somehow with a partner, it actually takes a lot longer and therefore they become anxious about that or it doesn't feel the same.
00:26:39:17 - 00:26:46:12
Dr Anna Herschbach
So it does create those dependencies which often take away from one's experience with oneself or one's experience with someone else.
00:26:46:12 - 00:27:02:06
Dr Sarah Matthews
It can be a positive thing and because often with couples sex gets a bit formulaic and so trying out new things just brings something new that sort of creates a spark again, that can be quite important, especially in a long term relationship.
00:27:02:06 - 00:27:28:10
Dr Anna Herschbach
Whether that's toys or pornography. And especially there's a whole movement towards more ethical porn, more feminist porn and more practical porn. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Erica Lust, if anybody hasn't checked our goals. Brilliant, brilliant. I'm there speaking kind of from the perspective of our community. There's been a sense of I was feeling guilty about wanting to watch porn because it's a thing of saying, as is it somehow make me anti-feminist or unethical?
00:27:28:10 - 00:27:45:18
Dr Anna Herschbach
Or does it overemphasize this performance in the perspective of men we found? Does it do I have to this kind of narrative of toxic masculinity and do I need to behave a certain way and look a certain way? But on the other hand, it's also a really interesting way of exploring boundaries and exploring likes and dislikes. And we think about porn.
00:27:45:18 - 00:28:07:01
Dr Anna Herschbach
We often also think about visual pornography. Whereas if you've got, you know, whether it's erotica stories, whether it's kind of audio stuff, it's a much more passive way of exploring what makes us comfortable and uncomfortable and sort of fantasies that we think, Oh, is that normal to have? Actually, exploring pornography is a way of kind of saying, Oh, actually, I'm, you know, I've got a bit of a flutter here.
00:28:07:01 - 00:28:17:05
Dr Anna Herschbach
I've got a little bit of a curiosity about this, and maybe this is something I want to explore a bit more. So I do think there are kind of definitely advantages to it. Again, it's this whole thing of like everything kind of in moderation.
00:28:17:07 - 00:28:25:20
Tom Livesey
So is it fair to say that there's not any direct physical downsides to having too many orgasms, but people just need to be aware of any kind of mental side effects?
00:28:25:20 - 00:28:30:21
Dr Sarah Matthews
I think if it takes over other aspects of your life, like your work, then that's negative.
00:28:31:13 - 00:28:45:24
Tom Livesey
Yeah, absolutely. That's really good. So we talked about benefits of orgasms in general, but are there any differences depending on the time of day? We talked about sex before bed can improve sleep, but you know, can sex in the morning have different benefits kind of wake you up for the day? Are there anything else we should be thinking that?
00:28:46:04 - 00:29:08:06
Dr Sarah Matthews
Well, as a lovely vitamin company, you did a big study a couple of years ago. He has concluded that 7:30 a.m. is the best time to have sex and have an orgasm. If you can't manage 730 in the morning within 45 minutes of waking up is supposedly the best time to have sex because it relaxes you for the day ahead.
00:29:08:06 - 00:29:26:05
Dr Sarah Matthews
It energizes you. You feel closer to your partner and it lifts your mood and so you get on better with everything you have to do with in your day. You know, at nighttime, quite often people are tired and then go to bed and there's a lot of pressure if they do have sex for everything to be absolutely perfect.
00:29:26:11 - 00:29:28:02
Dr Sarah Matthews
Apparently morning is better.
00:29:28:07 - 00:29:43:14
Tom Livesey
Great. And so you it's a bit about orgasms helping just kind of some of the hormonal side effects, helping with sleep at night. Are there any downsides to say if it was in the middle of the day, is it going to make it hard for us? Are the differences between men and women that how we react often?
00:29:43:15 - 00:30:08:04
Dr Sarah Matthews
Well, there are some old studies that suggest that most women are isolated in the afternoon. So afternoon sex, I think, is the best not to be fully woken up. Hopefully you've done your day's work, you've got more time to spend and and on the whole idea, you know, the French, we go off and see the mistresses and have a son kiss that.
00:30:08:10 - 00:30:20:10
Dr Sarah Matthews
It's a perfect time, I think, to have sex also because women tend to overlap. So that's when they tend to feel the most sexy apparently. So women varies from woman to woman.
00:30:20:10 - 00:30:22:02
Tom Livesey
But yeah, we're that time of day.
00:30:22:13 - 00:30:22:20
Dr Sarah Matthews
Yep.
00:30:23:07 - 00:30:38:23
Tom Livesey
Interesting. Yeah. So morning, afternoon, nighttime. So we've talked a bit about multiple orgasms and also some women who, you know, struggle to have orgasms at all. All the stats around the number of females that can have multiple orgasms or orgasms at home.
00:30:39:08 - 00:31:42:00
Dr Anna Herschbach
So some of the research I was looking at came from the again, the Kinsey Institute and it was a large scale survey and what they found in sampling. 47% of those women were able to have multiple orgasms so close to 5050. But it is still the minority of women that can and I think it is an interesting point because again tying it back into this kind of concept around porn, for example, and this idea of performance and kind of perpetuating this idea of what it means to feel pleasure and what success looks like is that this woman who's you know, back to, back to back orgasms and their partners keeping track on how many they have. And then that kind of plays into this, this pressure to, to achieve it. Is it pressure to achieve multiple it's even from personal experience. And I was with somebody who would often ask me that, how many have you had? Did you have another one? And suddenly it was it almost felt like, well, if I haven't, then I almost feel like I'm letting you down or I feel like you are judging your performance.
00:31:42:00 - 00:31:58:12
Dr Anna Herschbach
Based on how many I have rather than me being like, actually, I'm feeling, like really great. I'm feeling, like really connected to you. I'm really enjoying this. And we ended up actually have a moment having a conversation where I said to him, it makes me really uncomfortable when you ask me that because it takes mentally, it takes me out of that moment.
00:31:58:12 - 00:32:19:12
Dr Anna Herschbach
What we found is before I even get into masturbation, it's actually much more about being present in one's body. So one of the tools and kind of practices that we've been using, and this is in the work we've been doing with psychosexual therapists, is around the idea of body mapping, for example. And that's going through your body and saying, Cool, actually, I really like this type of touch on my collarbone.
00:32:20:07 - 00:32:26:19
Dr Anna Herschbach
I really like my nipple to be pinched and starting to understand what actually works for your body.
00:32:26:19 - 00:32:42:22
Tom Livesey
Yeah, and we've talked a bit about some of the risks of maybe having too many blossoms or using toys and maybe the wrong way in general can orgasm through masturbation affects your ability to get an orgasm via sex. If it's kind of very different, you get used to a certain thing. Maybe that isn't possible with a partner.
00:32:43:02 - 00:33:01:08
Dr Sarah Matthews
Once you know what makes you work, then you can make that work with a partner. So you choose positions that stimulate the areas that you need to be stimulated. And as long as you communicate with your partner, then hopefully they're going to listen to you and work with you. That has to be a two way process. Of course.
00:33:02:01 - 00:33:20:11
Dr Anna Herschbach
One of the kind of tools we've looked at quite a bit with some of the sexologists and also psychosexual therapists is this idea of your kind of sex menu or your sex inventory or whatever it is. And it sounds a bit ridiculous because it sounds quite forced, and I think a lot of people are like, Oh God, do I really want to actually have to like sit down and do that?
00:33:20:11 - 00:33:35:07
Dr Anna Herschbach
It takes away the romance, it takes away the passion, but it's and you can literally Google it and get printouts of this. It's basically a thing saying, cool, like, I like this, I like this, I like this. Don't like this. This is like red, this is a green, this is an amber. And certain situations, I'm cool with it.
00:33:35:07 - 00:33:57:02
Dr Anna Herschbach
Not this is how I feel about nipples. This is how I feel about anal play. This is how I feel about my neck being touched, all these different things. And it's a way of basically saying, cool, we've had this discussion now we know things might change. We're still going to check in with each other, but we can adapt and we can kind of have that that compromise on certain things versus saying, actually, this is absolutely kind of hard news.
00:33:57:09 - 00:33:59:04
Dr Anna Herschbach
And I think it's interesting because that.
00:33:59:04 - 00:34:00:15
Dr Sarah Matthews
Takes dating to a whole new level.
00:34:00:15 - 00:34:18:08
Tom Livesey
Yeah, great. Perfect. That was great. So in addition to, you know, some of the taboos that we've talked about in terms of masturbation, there's also a bit of hush hush surrounds having sex while a woman is on her periods, but some say actually relieves period pains and even makes sex more sensitive for females. What what other kind of pros and cons here.
00:34:19:14 - 00:34:58:08
Dr Sarah Matthews
It certainly can relieve menstrual cramps. We know that like it has a painkiller effect and everything that a lot of cultures, it's just not acceptable. It's a bit messy. There is also an issue around infection. If you are having sex with a casual partner and you were on your period, if there is chlamydia around or you have plasma or any of the other stories that are common, you're much more likely to get an upper genital tract infection than just a bit of irritation vaginally that can have a permanent effect on your fertility.
00:34:58:08 - 00:35:07:24
Dr Sarah Matthews
So definitely worth having a think about if you've got a casual partner and you're on your period. And of course, there is also the risk of transmitting HIV and hepatitis.
00:35:08:22 - 00:35:19:00
Dr Anna Herschbach
One of the kind of myths around like you can't get pregnant if you're on your period. Yeah, definitely. I think also period sex doesn't mean protection against not only skies, but also against pregnancy, which.
00:35:19:02 - 00:35:25:02
Dr Sarah Matthews
Is from the fertility side. Sperm can live up to six days, so you can easily get pregnant towards the end of your period.
00:35:25:04 - 00:35:48:18
Tom Livesey
We talk about we've already talked about how much mental in the moment can can affect orgasm. And you're having all these cultural things playing into me. All of us can make things much more difficult for women or men and so we talk a bit about, you know, pain relieving effects of orgasms and touched on various things. But orgasm during childbirth, is it true that some women kind of use this as a as a tactic during childbirth?
00:35:48:21 - 00:36:20:20
Dr Sarah Matthews
I personally, I have never come across someone who's been able to order up an orgasm. I feel like in labor, spontaneous orgasms do happen. They're very rare and usually when the lady's actually trying to push the baby out. But you can keep oxytocin. Oxytocin is what drives labor. It's what makes a huge waves that make the uterus contract to push the baby out and dilate the cervix.
00:36:20:20 - 00:36:36:04
Dr Sarah Matthews
So nipple tweaking, stroking lots of low intensity sexual stimuli can help labor along not and it gives us an orgasm, but it can promote more oxytocin release birth orgasm right.
00:36:36:06 - 00:36:59:04
Tom Livesey
OK. A big topic of conversation when it comes to orgasms is the mental health side. We touched on a few points already, but for example, from not being able to orgasm at all to the effects of antidepressants, there seems to be a whole load of questions and uncertainty around this. So some people genuinely can't orgasm. How common is this and how does it affect your health and are there mental and physical causes to this?
00:37:00:08 - 00:37:07:20
Dr Anna Herschbach
So I don't know the exact numbers around who genuinely can orgasm, although my my understanding of it is actually quite low.
00:37:08:05 - 00:37:10:16
Dr Sarah Matthews
And somewhere between ten and 15%.
00:37:10:23 - 00:37:33:22
Dr Anna Herschbach
If I think about the percentage of women that I know that or have had stories I've shared with me that they can't orgasm, but actually it's not that they can't, it's that they haven't. And I think that to me is the difference is that it's still a high percentage of women who can't, but it's much lower than the percentage of women that, that just haven't yet.
00:37:34:03 - 00:37:54:15
Dr Anna Herschbach
In that group. And it's often much more of a mental block or than it is more of a kind of physical blocker. And I think what we've found is the kind of framework we've been looking at is what's called the kind of bio psychosocial model. And it's arguing that in order to understand our pleasure, we need to think about our body in a system.
00:37:54:15 - 00:38:11:08
Dr Anna Herschbach
And one component to that is understanding our biology, how it works, what the language is, how our responses are, what a what a body needs than a massive component that often gets left out is the psychology and the sociology side of it. And I think we've we've touched on some of the sociology in terms of the shame, the taboo, the stigma.
00:38:11:16 - 00:38:33:06
Dr Anna Herschbach
But then there's this psychological aspect in the middle. And I think often we tend to think about still stigma around mental health, but we kind of only really go there if we think we have kind of, quote, dysfunction and obviously dysfunction is a real thing. But it's an interesting question around how much of it is actually just about giving ourselves permission or again, not focusing on orgasm.
00:38:33:06 - 00:38:50:09
Dr Anna Herschbach
Being the goal. How much of it is about body image and how confident do I feel being naked? How confident do I feel about how I look, how I taste, how I smell am I self-conscious about having somebody go down on me and all these kind of things where we often find women get very stuck in their heads?
00:38:50:16 - 00:39:12:15
Dr Anna Herschbach
And when you factor that in with the idea of most of them are not going to be experiencing spontaneous desire, but responsive desire, then you've kind of got this potent cocktail of of inability to actually orgasm. Knowing how your mind works is as important to knowing how your body works, which is also as important to knowing where the beliefs come from that you have and the stories you've been told.
00:39:13:10 - 00:39:45:21
Dr Sarah Matthews
Well, there are some physical causes of and against me and that including multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, disease, where it's a nerve ending issue that can be the problem. But quite often other physical causes would include things like having had a hysterectomy, common surgeries that are done for gynecological reasons, whether it's a true physical difference or whether they feel mentally different about themselves after the surgery.
00:39:46:10 - 00:40:14:17
Dr Sarah Matthews
But they can have an impact on their potential to have an orgasm. There's the medical ones that affect your capability to have an orgasm. So women who are on antidepressants, especially in our eyes, it's very commonly known that they can inhibit libido and response to sex, but at the same time counteracting the Depression itself will have an effect on the libido and sexual response.
00:40:14:17 - 00:40:39:06
Dr Sarah Matthews
So it's chicken and egg. What's going to make it better? And it can go either way. If your sexual response has been fine and you put on fluoxetine, which is Prozac, and you find that suddenly you can't have an orgasm or your libido is severely affected, then there are alternate it's under your medical supervision. You can change up to maybe it's a similar type of drugs, but they don't all have the same side effect profile.
00:40:39:15 - 00:40:52:22
Dr Sarah Matthews
So don't don't assume that it's because you're feeling down and you're on this drug and you can change and you can't let go because it might be making you feel better. But this is one of the downsides. There are alternatives.
00:40:53:06 - 00:41:23:04
Dr Anna Herschbach
It's interesting. I was on a search plane, which is an antidepressant, and for about nine months a couple of years ago, and it was going through a period of and my therapist puts it a fabulous breakdown, but it was an interesting one. So pre antidepressants, I thought that like through kind of navigating depression and anxiety that my libido basically just doesn't exist whatsoever.
00:41:23:04 - 00:41:42:08
Dr Anna Herschbach
It's just absolutely gone. And I think it was interesting to start to observe these changes over time because going back to some of the challenges with sex ed, for example, is they don't really talk about in sex education how your sexuality fluctuates. So it's this thing of like, cool, here's all the facts. Now go with it and it's not actually saying, has it changed during my cycle?
00:41:42:08 - 00:42:00:12
Dr Anna Herschbach
How does it change in my relationships? How does it change when I'm stressed, et cetera. So it's an interesting thing to kind of come back and start terms like temperature check against more regularly. I think specifically when we're thinking about health and wellbeing more broadly. And but when I was going through it, I noticed that actually my libido dropped off entirely.
00:42:00:21 - 00:42:19:08
Dr Anna Herschbach
And then when I went on antidepressants, but that was again alongside kind of going through therapy and doing that work and kind of getting back into a state of more positive mental health. My libido came back, but then I wasn't able to orgasm almost like I could I could feel it or I could feel the desire to, but I couldn't actually have it.
00:42:19:14 - 00:42:29:10
Dr Anna Herschbach
But and it was an interesting thing because it was that momentary thing of something wrong with me. Have I lost this ability? And then already the mind's not necessarily working. And in the most rational way.
00:42:29:16 - 00:42:57:18
Dr Sarah Matthews
Well, I mean, your hormones are very contributory as well. So some women on the pill get a massive drop in their libido and they don't realize. And quite often, if you imagine the average lady goes on the pill at about 15, 16, 17 qualified and doesn't come off until they're in their thirties and they have all these relationships in their twenties and whether their sex life should be, you know, expanding and they should be gaining all that sexual confidence.
00:42:57:24 - 00:43:10:09
Dr Sarah Matthews
And it's only when they stop the pill, they go, Oh, wow, this is what it's all really about. And the other thing is during pregnancy, because some people get very sexual in pregnancy and that's again related to all the hormone levels.
00:43:10:23 - 00:43:34:16
Tom Livesey
I think it sounds like from a lot of what we talk about, there's so much pressure in such a complex system that people shouldn't be worried, that they shouldn't kind of like put too much pressure on themselves. And particularly with antidepressants and the kind of negative feedback cycle you can get into that it can be really dangerous. It sounds like a lot of what we should be encouraging people to think about is to remove some of that pressure of the goalpost for that kind of and just enjoy everything that comes around it.
00:43:34:24 - 00:43:55:05
Dr Sarah Matthews
Well, the other thing coming back to Marie Bonaparte, who was actually in the 1920s and who did the study about the distance between the clitoris and the vagina, she went on to get this Austrian doctor to do an operation to move closer to the vagina. But in doing so she cut off the nerve endings to the clitoris and it didn't work.
00:43:55:13 - 00:44:19:05
Dr Sarah Matthews
They did it, I think for a series of 15 women and it didn't work. So there's no surgical solution. There's a surgical solution for that type of an orgasm. But, but what I have done myself with one of my ladies who had gone through life, it's very sexual in every other way, but never really been able to have an orgasm.
00:44:19:05 - 00:44:43:07
Dr Sarah Matthews
And her clitoral hood completely covered her clitoris, so she should no sensation at all even when the clitoris is wrecked, she's still it didn't come past the head. So I operated to remove the hood, which is not for the faint hearted but we did it and she's able to have an orgasm now. But that's quite a rare, rare, rare thing.
00:44:44:06 - 00:45:01:06
Tom Livesey
And so we talked a bit about some of the physical mental reasons why people might not be able to achieve orgasm, but things like previous physical or sexual abuse or trauma can play into people's abilities to achieve orgasm or enjoy sex in that way.
00:45:01:12 - 00:45:33:12
Dr Sarah Matthews
Yeah, absolutely. And especially when it happens before your sex mature. So if you have experiences in your childhood or a teenage years where a third party is imposing some sort of sexual event through grooming or touching inappropriately for some women, they will interpret that in a way that it means that it becomes increasingly difficult for them when they become sexually mature and get into relationships to be able to enjoy sex.
00:45:33:18 - 00:45:58:13
Dr Sarah Matthews
And because they associate that sort of sensation with something quite different and shameful, which they quite often keep hidden to themselves. And it is something, of course, that you can treat but it takes a while. And with the right partner and a lot of communication, you can get there. But it's not uncommon to find a history of abuse somewhere in the background.
00:45:58:19 - 00:46:00:23
Dr Sarah Matthews
And a woman who cannot have an orgasm.
00:46:00:23 - 00:46:31:15
Dr Anna Herschbach
Another one that that we've noticed has come up. Women have gone through abortions and and especially women who have gone through them when they've been younger, how you start exploring sex again and see yourself as a sexual being afterwards and I know that's something that's come up quite a bit in some of the conversations we've had of, again, to your point, particularly the younger, the shame and the kind of stigma around that and the fear and then how to rediscover yourself and your sexuality after going through that.
00:46:32:04 - 00:46:42:07
Dr Anna Herschbach
And I think a lot of that time, those are things that we continue not to speak about just because of that shame and stigma around it. There's not necessarily the kind of resources or tools in place to speak about it openly.
00:46:42:12 - 00:46:55:16
Tom Livesey
So with regards to mental health, he talks a lot about women there, but presumably there's lots of things that impact men when it comes to general thoughts around sex and how various things can affect that yeah.
00:46:55:16 - 00:47:16:19
Dr Anna Herschbach
I think I'm well, most of the work we've done with family has been focused on women. What we found is actually we do have a very large male audience coming into that and there's kind of several reasons around that. I think one which we touched on earlier was this desire to know how the female body works. Speaking from the lens of kind of heterosexual couples.
00:47:16:19 - 00:47:54:00
Dr Anna Herschbach
And that's an embarrassment or a shame around not knowing how to please. And I think what we found definitely in speaking to those men and having interviews with them, is that the main things that tie in to it would be, again, this kind of pornography and then the idea of what it means to the kind of male role and what it means to be a man when it comes to sex as more generally, you know, certainly within the UK men's mental health, you think about suicide rates, for example, are particularly high and I think that tends to still be the shame and stigma around and miss having to be the kind of the strong rock,
00:47:54:00 - 00:48:21:21
Dr Anna Herschbach
Not showing vulnerability, not showing and one's feelings and all that sort of thing. And I think what we found is there's the kind of group that's interested in what we do and it actually and oh my God, yes. Which is another company that did a lot of work around and the female orgasm and just seeing they found a lot of the people using their platform, which is the combination of audio and visual exercises that are designed around learning different masturbation techniques for women.
00:48:22:11 - 00:48:43:01
Dr Anna Herschbach
The majority of the audience was actually men. And the reason was that there was the shame around not saying not being able to ask or not worrying that they couldn't perform, they couldn't pleasure and this kind of stigma around that. And I think that certainly has very real implications. So this idea that sex starts with self, it's the same thing regardless of genders.
00:48:43:09 - 00:49:11:08
Dr Anna Herschbach
There's kind of a also this emphasis on you need to be, you know, this amount of hard or you need to last this amount of time or you need to have this technique down. And I think actually when it comes to the mental side of things, the performance anxiety is very real. And from my own experience with partners and also kind of looking at the men that are within our community is there's a huge amount of insecurity.
00:49:11:08 - 00:49:40:19
Dr Anna Herschbach
There's a huge amount of fear, there's a huge amount of defining one's self-worth based on their ability to please. And I think often in these conversations we kind of we forgot about that. Again, it's this whole concept that it's not just a kind of either or issue. It's an everybody's thing. You know, the more that we're able to to know all about one's bodies and each other's bodies, the better able we are to communicate that, the better able we are to say, actually, you know, it's cool to be intimate, it's cool to be vulnerable, it's cool to show feelings.
00:49:40:20 - 00:49:56:05
Dr Anna Herschbach
I remember I was interviewing interviewing one guy, and he was, you know, like kind of your typical lad. And he was saying to me after all this, like, bravado and this and that, he's like, I just want to go home and I just want to look her in the eyes and tell her that I think she's beautiful and I just want to have a cuddle, you know?
00:49:56:05 - 00:50:14:04
Dr Anna Herschbach
And it was this thing of like, well, why don't you do that? And it was this whole thing of like, No, I can't do that. Because she's going to think less of me. And I need to be confident and I need to be smooth and all this kind of thing. And so I think these beliefs we have around in general around masculinity, but particularly around masculinity in the bedroom and masculinity in sex is actually really difficult for men.
00:50:15:04 - 00:50:33:06
Dr Anna Herschbach
And I also think right now it's a very confusing time for a lot of guys navigating consent as well. There's a lot of fear around what if I do something wrong? What if I don't get it in the right way? Is it all down to me? Have I done something wrong? You know, comes again down to that communication piece.
00:50:33:06 - 00:51:01:04
Dr Anna Herschbach
That's a huge amount of pressure on speaking in the heterosexual land and particularly off the backs of like the MeToo movement and that kind of thing. And is, hmm, is this now you need to be a certain amount of man and a certain amount of confidence, but also not too much man. And confidence that actually across the boundaries and I think it's going to be incredibly difficult to try and find that balance between this perceived idea of masculinity, but also this balancing of respect and emotion.
00:51:01:04 - 00:51:15:22
Dr Anna Herschbach
Yeah, exactly. And I think from a mental perspective, that that definitely wraps up into questions around performance questions around vulnerability, questions around redefining masculinity. And it's very difficult to kind of disentangle all of that.
00:51:16:11 - 00:51:41:10
Dr Sarah Matthews
But I must admit, and from a fertility perspective, I mean, so often it's almost the norm when a couple have been trying to become pregnant for a while for the guy to develop impotence. And because it's also performance anxiety and pressure around ovulation, when the lady is stressed, she's desperate to get pregnant you must do it tonight, you know, and they just can't.
00:51:42:10 - 00:52:09:03
Dr Sarah Matthews
And it's very difficult. It requires a little bit of management. The other thing at the other time, when you you can see issues with men is if they've seen a particularly traumatic delivery and watched their partner push a baby out of the chain, usually it's more for that than this is Aryans and how much pain she's had to go through to do that.
00:52:09:21 - 00:52:31:09
Dr Sarah Matthews
And there are men who have been permanently traumatized as a result of that to the extent that they've been unable to have sex with their partner again, because they're terrified of getting pregnant, because they just could not possibly envisage her going through that again, no matter how much she tells them, it's fine and they just hold that trauma in their heads.
00:52:31:17 - 00:52:44:07
Dr Sarah Matthews
And you have to add in the other physical things. So for women and men, the effect of drugs, the effect that recreational drugs, the effects of alcohol, you look at your lifestyle as well. And if you're not fit as well, it can be an issue.
00:52:44:22 - 00:53:01:06
Tom Livesey
Yes. So many systems at work together in so many different ways. That so many things can knock on, I think is this we've already talked about just kind of orgasms. And this has been so complex and so much to think about from a mental side as well as a physical. But I think it is really worth being aware of, you know, your lifestyle and everything kind of your health in general can really affect that.
00:53:01:06 - 00:53:04:06
Tom Livesey
And it's just another part of your health and a really important part.
00:53:04:20 - 00:53:30:05
Dr Anna Herschbach
I think it's also worth noting that when we talk about kind of differences and when we speak about orgasm, there's obviously a pleasure gap. And for heterosexual couples and that's rates around. Research has shown that women typically climax around 40 to 65% of the time, whereas heterosexual men generally climax around 85 to 95% of the time. So there's there's obviously a massive gap between that.
00:53:30:15 - 00:53:42:03
Dr Anna Herschbach
And I think what's really cool is noticing that you don't have that same gap in same sex couples. So it's actually much more equal in terms of the frequency of climax.
00:53:42:15 - 00:54:01:22
Tom Livesey
Fantastic. Thank you so much. So I think what we've learned from this is that huge amount of complexity when it comes to orgasms, sex lives, the mental, physical aspects of it. There are lots of benefits. Clearly knowing all of these. Can you both share a top tip for a healthy sex life, be it with someone else or with yourself?
00:54:03:00 - 00:54:34:11
Dr Anna Herschbach
Yeah, I can I can kick off. So I think the the kind of first thing I would say is I strongly believe that sex starts with oneself. So I think regardless of gender, regardless of religion, age, orientation, any of that, that it's absolutely so fundamentally critical to explore your body, you know, looking at your body in a mirror or and touching your body or smelling your body or tasting your body and just getting familiar with what it does and knowing that your body is absolutely normal.
00:54:35:07 - 00:54:39:06
Dr Anna Herschbach
Would be the first tip that I would say second ago.
00:54:39:06 - 00:55:12:00
Dr Sarah Matthews
Communication. Communication is the key. It's only the communicating with your partner that you will be relaxed to be confident in, to trust them and to let them know what you like and what you don't like. So I would also say don't be formulaic, long term relationships. Sometimes the sex gets a bit boring and it's just missionary on a Sunday night and a Tuesday night and between Netflix and whatever and you know, and mix it up a little bit better, put a bit spice in there.
00:55:13:07 - 00:55:13:20
Tom Livesey
And sometimes.
00:55:13:20 - 00:55:20:11
Dr Sarah Matthews
You haven't said yes, set that alarm for 730 by introducing fantasy sex, toys, porn, all.
00:55:20:11 - 00:55:38:24
Dr Anna Herschbach
Those things. To your point, mix it up and also learn from other communities and whether mixing it up might also, you know, include mixing it up with other couples or mixing it up with other partners or roleplaying or things like that. There's an opportunity, I think, for us to to learn from looking beyond just our own relationships as well.
00:55:39:23 - 00:55:48:03
Tom Livesey
So if people want to learn more about their SO here and I mean particularly about both of your experiences when it comes to these issues, are there places they can go and learn more about this stuff?
00:55:49:10 - 00:56:20:04
Dr Sarah Matthews
Well, I'm obviously a consultant gynecologist, so I this is just a very, very small aspect of my work. But I'm on WW dot Sarah de Mathews with two Ts dot com there's a lot of information on my website about various gynecological things typically in relation to the menopausal fertility, which are my specialist areas. If you want to contact me, come see me then the contact details are there and be delighted to to see anybody who has any issues.
00:56:20:10 - 00:56:52:16
Dr Anna Herschbach
Yeah. So our work is with family, which is an audio guide that's focused on helping folks feel more healthy, confident and sexually empowered to have pleasurable sex. We are available at the moment as an app, which is an audio guide to mindful sex on iOS Android to come soon. We are in the works of developing and I promise and if you want more information about us you can go to WW W dot we are Furley dot com and that's f e r l y.
00:56:53:19 - 00:57:12:00
Tom Livesey
Thanks for listening to this week's episode. I've been your host on this. We leave your feedback, email me at home, throw it up k or like comment, share or subscribe on your favorite podcast. And if you haven't used the over before the code orgasms gets you £30 off your first test of a £15 thanks. See you next time.
