Does Masturbation Kill your Gains?
I have always been a thin and lanky kid. At 1.77 meters or 5 feet 10 inches my wrist circumference is only 6 inches, which characterizes me as an extreme ectomorph. I have always been underweight through out my childhood and even now I find it really hard to gain weight. Amongst a lot of advice been given to me on how to gain weight the most interesting thing has been not to masturbate. I remember the time of freshmen hazing while starting college, when all the senior students were totally convinced that I had masturbation addiction because I was very thin. There is a general belief that masturbation makes you weak and less manly.
If you ask people why they think masturbation makes you lose muscle, the scientific explanation provided for this goes as follows. After you masturbate your testosterone level goes down. Since testosterone is the main hormone responsible for muscle growth, if you masturbate too often your testosterone level is going to drop and you will lose muscle. In terms of theory this makes sense. Any sexual activity for a guy is followed by a period where he is not very interested in sex. Since sexual drive is also related to testosterone levels, we can infer (incorrectly though) that right after performing a sexual activity there is a drop in testosterone for men. So the more you masturbate, lower will be your testosterone level and hence lower is your muscle mass going to be.
However one can argue the other way around also. Since your sexual drive depends on your testosterone levels, the guy who masturbates a lot must have higher inherent testosterone levels and therefore must have higher muscle mass. Moreover, performing strength training increases your testosterone levels and therefore strength training must boost your sexual drive and therefore the urge for masturbating. Going by this the guys who masturbate must have higher muscle mass.
As you can see, things are more complicated and you can argue either way in terms of the relationship between masturbation and muscle mass. The reason people prefer to stick more to the lower muscle mass with masturbation is because of the stigma in our society in relation to sex. Masturbation is generally viewed negatively by the society and there are genuine reasons for that. Because of this negative stigma, most of us only think in terms of the potential negative effects masturbation might have on our muscle mass and completely miss the positive side of the argument. So, will masturbation kill your gains or not? The straightforward answer is no. However there are a few nuances that you should keep in mind.
Scientific studies have looked at the effect on testosterone levels in males after a sexual activity. There is no conclusive evidence that there is a significant drop in testosterone levels after a sexual intercourse or masturbation. Some studies did not see any drop while others did see a drop in testosterone level after sexual activity. However this drop observed in some studies was only about 5–10% and only lasted for about half an hour to an hour after which testosterone levels returned to the baseline. Considering that muscle gain is a slow process, which happens over months and years a small drop in the testosterone level for half an hour will have very miniscule effect on your muscle gains. Moreover there are numerous other factors in our body, which affect testosterone levels besides masturbating. As an example your testosterone levels may drop from morning to night. When we place those factors in perspective we realize that any muscle loss due to masturbation will all be in the noise.
You must be careful though, if you masturbate multiple times a day then this is definitely going to have an effect on your gains. And it is not just the testosterone levels that you need to worry about. Such a high frequency of masturbation means that you are addicted to masturbation. Such an addiction might negatively affect your daily life. Under such a situation you should definitely look for reducing your masturbation frequency.
To conclude, if you are refraining from masturbation just because you are worried that it might affect your gain then you do not have to do it. Playing with yourself once or twice a week should not really affect your gains at all. However too much masturbation can have negative effects on your daily life.
Originally published at www.kaa-yaa.com.
