Nocturnal erection

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A nocturnal erection is the erection of the penis during nocturnal dream phases. Takes it to the morning awakening, this is morning erection ( colloquially morning latte ) called. It has already been observed in fetuses .

root cause

Normal nocturnal sleep pattern with REM phases

The erection of the penis is controlled by the autonomic nervous system through the interaction of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems . During the REM phase ( dream phase ) of sleep, sleeping people go through intense dreams. In this phase, erection-promoting neural activities can predominate in males, whereby contact stimuli also lead to erections. With the exception of nightmares , an erection often occurs in these phases, regardless of whether the content of the dream is sexual or not.

Even men who are unable to achieve sexual erections with certain diseases can experience normal erections while they sleep, even infants or old people. A healthy man can have anywhere from one to five erections at night, and each of them can last anywhere from 15 to 40 minutes or more. The morning erection is just the last sleep erection of the night. The frequency and duration of the REM phases increase into the morning hours, the deep sleep phases become shorter. For this reason, waking up or being awakened in the morning is more likely to have an erection than waking up in the middle of the night.

If there has been no ejaculation for a long time (through masturbation or sexual intercourse ), pollution (nocturnal ejaculation) can also occur. Normally, however, the sleep erections occur without ejaculation.

Women also often experience vaginal arousal during REM sleep ( moistening of the vagina , swelling of the clitoris and labia ) - a phenomenon that is less noticeable when waking up and is therefore much less known.

Absence of night / morning erections

A complete absence of sleep erections can be an indication of erectile dysfunction . Conversely, morning (and night) erections rule out a physical cause for many forms of erectile dysfunction and suggest a psychogenic cause.

The absence of morning erections, on the other hand, does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about erectile function, as some people have nocturnal sleep erections, but no erections when they wake up in the morning. For this reason, in cases of doubt, phallographic examinations are carried out in sleep laboratories , in which any sleep erections are recorded.

Popular belief

Occasionally another possible cause for the morning erection is mentioned: The filled urinary bladder presses on the prostate and thereby causes the erection (so-called "water latte"), as is known at least in male babies and toddlers during the day.

In adult men, however, this theory contradicts the physiology and general experience that a full urinary bladder when awake usually does not cause an erection and an erect penis prevents the urinary bladder from emptying. In addition, it can be observed that erections, as already mentioned, were present hours before waking up even as nocturnal erections during REM sleep, but disappear on their own within minutes after waking up (and lying in bed), even if the bladder has not been emptied in the meantime. According to medical opinion, this view is at least wrong in adult men.

Related topics

  • Priapism - a pathological permanent erection

literature

  • Robie H. Harris, Michael Emberley: Totally Normal. Everything you always wanted to know about sex (from Franziska Weber's English). Beltz & Gelberg, Weinheim 2003, ISBN 3-407-75317-9 .
  • Gisela Grupe u. a .: anthropology. An introductory textbook. Springer, Berlin a. a. 2005, ISBN 3-540-21159-4 .
  • Yvonne Trapp: The morning latte. Solitude, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-929085-60-7 .

Individual evidence

  1. REM sleep determined using in utero penile tumescence in the human fetus at term . PMID 1958756
  2. ^ Tests for Erection Problems . webmd.com, Erectile Dysfunction Health Center, last update: September 9, 2014; Retrieved August 3, 2016.
  3. Eberhard Nieschlag, Hermann M. Behre (Ed.): Andrology. Basics and Clinic of Male Reproductive Health. 2nd edition, Springer-Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg 2000, ISBN 978-3-662-05739-1 , p. 217 ( limited preview in the Google book search)
  4. Klaus Felgner: Long-term results of the treatment of erectile dysfunction of venous etiology using an external sciocavernous stimulator (EIS) . Saarland University, uni-saarland.de (PDF)
  5. a b c d Helga Peter, Thomas Penzel, Jörg Hermann Peter: Encyclopedia of Sleep Medicine. Springer-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-540-28840-4 , p. 382 ( limited preview in Google book search)
  6. Wasserlatte . duden.de; Retrieved July 29, 2016.
  7. Wasserlatte . universal_lexikon.deacademic.com; Retrieved July 29, 2016.