Love Thyself

You may not know this, but May has officially been deemed International Masturbation Month. If you did a search for this term online, you'd come across a number of sites running events like "Diddle for Dollars" to raise money for some great charities. In honour of starting up this column during the month of May, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about some of the health benefits of masturbation.

It turns out that masturbation (i.e. ejaculating/orgasming) is actually pretty important for both guys and gals (especially if you're not having sex often or at all).

The findings of a study lead by Graham Giles, of the Cancer Council Victoria in Melbourne, suggest that masturbation is actually really important for men in their twenties.

According to Giles, "frequent" (five times a week) masturbation to ejaculation by males in their twenties helps prevent prostate cancer later in life. Prostate cancer kills more than half a million men each year, but the more that men masturbate between the ages of 20 and 50, the less likely they are to develop the disease.

It is likely that masturbation is preventative of prostate cancer because frequent stimulation by ejaculation keeps carcinogens from building up in the testicles and prostate.

That's a definite health benefit, specifically for men, but there are many more benefits of masturbation for everyone.

For instance, masturbation improves your muscle tone. For ladies, it will strengthen your internal muscles - better muscle tone inside your vagina is fun for sex, because you can intensify and control orgasms; strong muscles are also handy when you're older, to help prevent urinary leakage.

Also for women, masturbating to orgasm will also help with PMS and can help relieve menstrual cramps.

Masturbation and sex also make one feel more soothed - it helps in making a person fall asleep. It reduces stress, enhances your self esteem, and can boost your immune system to protect you from infection. Orgasms have also been linked with improved public speaking.

When you orgasm, your brain releases opioid neurotransmitters called endorphins, which give you a feeling of physical and mental well-being.

Masturbation also helps you explore your own sexuality in ways that are sometimes impossible when you are with a partner - letting you get to know your triggers/hot spots and, for some of you, helping you learn to control your orgasms for when you are with a partner.

Now that you know how good masturbation is for you (especially if you aren't having any sex), I bet you're wondering why some people think it's wrong and just won't do it.

Masturbation has had a bad rap for centuries. In fact, even the word "masturbate" comes from the Latin "masturbari" which means: "to pollute oneself." Not a very encouraging term.

In Victorian times, children and young adolescents weren't allowed to put their hands in their pockets in case they touched themselves through the material. At bedtime, some little boys had to go to sleep with a metal band around their penis; an alarm would go off if they got hard during the night so that they could wake up and be punished.

Although those terrible times are over, when you were kids or young teens, I'm sure a few of you heard that masturbation is bad for you - it could give you pimples, make you go blind, ruin you for marital sex, or cause you to grow fur on your palms!

If you're Jewish or Christian, you may have even been told by your parents or rabbi/pastor/priest that masturbation is a sin! As "proof" they would usually bring up the story of Onan (masturbation is sometimes called "onanism") - the passage that this idea comes from is Genesis 38:8-10:

"And Judah said unto Onan. Go in unto thy brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother.

And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.

And the thing which he did displeased the Lord: wherefore he slew him also."

There you go, so many years of guilty feelings about masturbation all because of a misinterpretation of that little bible passage. Many readers assumed that Onan masturbated to get rid of the magically rendered sperm and thus extrapolated that God disapproves of masturbation.

What's really going on in that passage is this: Onan's brother is dead, but God wanted a kid from Onan's brother. So god tells Onan to go marry the brother's widow (which was actually a common practice) and have sex with her - at this time, God would miraculously change Onan's sperm into his brother's sperm, so the child begotten would have the dead brother's DNA (not that they knew about DNA back then, but that's the concept they were getting at).

But Onan wasn't down with this plan - why should he squirt sperm that is not his into his new wife and then raise a kid that belongs to his brother?! Perhaps he and his brother were not very close?

However, he didn't masturbate to get rid of his brother's sperm - "he went in unto his brother's wife" - Onan still had sex with her, he just pulled out!

So really, I guess a more accurate interpretation of this passage is that: God hates it when you pull out - however, I would go on to postulate that God really only hated it when Onan pulled out .

[BUT!!! I don't recommend the withdrawal "method" over using a real form of birth control. ]

Voila! As far as I know, the only bad things that can happen to a person if they masturbate too much is: wrist or elbow strain, chaffing/temporary loss of sensitivity, stains, or loss of a social life and friends (if you spend too much time locked in your room).

And these can all remedied by taking a break from masturbating for a little while (or at least masturbating in moderation) - except for the stains, you're going to have to use detergent and water on those.

So there you go! It's safe, so be healthy and masturbate regularly - Happy Masturbation Month!