Should you be getting morning erections and how often should you be getting them? I’m Dr. Reena Malik, urologist and pelvic surgeon. And recently, I posted a clip from when I was a guest on the Ever Forward podcast, and it’s been gaining a lot of interest. So, naturally, I thought I should talk about it. So, first up, why do men even wake up with an erection? Interestingly, it’s not actually just about having erotic dreams or sexual thoughts. Morning erections are a normal part of male physiology.
They’re what we call nocturnal penal tumes and they mostly happen during a specific stage of sleep called REM sleep which is when you dream the most. And now REM sleep typically occurs in the early morning hours. And that’s why typically men wake up with an erection usually when they wake up or right after REM sleep. Now most of you can remember probably when you were teenagers or if you are a teenager watching that you often wake up with your sheet tented with morning wood. But what is normal
after being a teenager? Interestingly, this has been studied for quite some time. The first study was done in 1975, and researchers brought in 125 healthy boys and men from either 3 years of age to 79 years of age in a sleep lab. They hooked them up to machines that specifically measured brain waves, eye movements, and changes in penile size while they slept. And each person had to spend three nights in the lab. And in order to really get accurate results, they tried to focus on the middle night
to get the most accurate data. They only included guys that had no sleep problems, no issues with erections, or weren’t taking any drugs that could affect the results. Based on this, they were able to identify baseline data for normal healthy individuals, meaning guys who don’t have any problems otherwise. So, from childhood, meaning ages 3 to nine, erections during sleep start happening already, and they’re pretty consistent. When you get to be a pre-teen to teenager, this is the peak,
so to speak. Erections are the most frequent and last the longest during sleep. Now, the average length that you’ll have an erection episode during REM sleep in the early teens is about 40 minutes. And that means if you look at all the numbers of times this happens, it’s about 40% of entire sleep time is when you’re going to have erections overnight. Now after puberty the average time with erections during sleep starts decreasing and levels up at about 20% of total sleep time which is about 1 and
1/2 hours per night with the average length of an erection lasting about 30 minutes. And so the average person will have somewhere between 3 to five episodes of tumes or erections during night time. Now you might wonder well probably there’s less REM sleep as you age. And actually that’s not true. REM sleep tends to stay pretty consistent after teenage years, which most adults getting about 100 minutes of REM sleep per night. Now, a more recent study looked at how these nighttime erections
change with age using a very specific device that measures nocturnal penile tumes. Now, in this study, they recruited 40 healthy sexually active men ranged from 20 to 60 years of age. None of them had issues with sexual dysfunction, sleep problems, or again used any medications that would affect sexual function. They each spent a night in a hospital room where again this device measured their erections. Again, this study, even though it was more recent, noticed that erections occurred in every single age group, no matter how
old they were. However, the amount of blood flow to those erections decreased. So, men in their 20s had an average increase of blood flow to 268% of normal. And when you were about 50, you got about 200% of normal. So they were still getting good blood flow, just not as much. And the number of times they had erections and the length of time that they had erections didn’t change. The average number of erections they had was a little less than four, so 3.78. And the average duration of the best or
longest erection was 31 minutes. Now, other studies since the 70s have replicated these results in other healthy men. So what does this really mean? This means that you should be waking up with morning erections or having nighttime erections well into your later years. And obviously, they’re going to be the most frequent and last the longest during your teenage years, and they will tend to decline a bit throughout age. However, if you notice that you’re never waking up with an erection, you’re rarely noticing
erections at night, then you want to take stock. The reason for this is multiffold, right? So, when you’re having good nighttime erections, it is a sign that you have good blood flow getting throughout your body. you have good hormonal health and you have good nervous function because all those things need to be intact for blood flow to get to the penis. And when it’s not getting to the penis, it is a sign that something else may be going on. You might start noticing changes in your erections when you’re awake, when you
want to have sex, or you might start noticing that you’re having other symptoms of, let’s say, low testosterone. So, I encourage anyone who’s noticing these changes to number one, check your testosterone levels because that is correlated with nocturnal erections. And so, sometimes guys will start having low testosterone and the first thing that goes is their nighttime erections. Also, you want to take stock look at everything else in your life because we want to optimize blood flow and optimize overall health.
So, what that means is we want to make sure that we are at a good healthy weight. We are exercising regularly both resistance training with heavy weights as well as aerobic exercise every single week to optimize blood flow and to optimize hormonal health. Also ensure that you’re doing other important things like reducing stress and sleeping well. All those things are going to overall improve your blood flow, your genital health and everything else. So bottom line, morning erections are an indicator. They are a biioarker of your
health. And if they are declining, it is a signal for you to take stock and look at what you can do to improve your overall health. And bonus, it’s a great way to identify issues before they become a problem, like before you start having erectile dysfunction or other issues. So, take it as your body’s way of telling you what’s going on. If you guys are enjoying this content, I think you guys are going to love my newsletter. Each week I have a men’s urology and women’s urology section in
the newsletter where I share new research that is appropriate for both men and women. We also answer a single newsletter subscribers question every week and I share with you what’s going on and what’s new with me. So if you want to keep up with that, make sure to sign up today and it’s completely free. And as always, remember to take care of yourself because you are worth
