Five things you didn’t know about orgasms, coming right up.
Yesterday’s Sunday Times column is here:
HAPPY OAM – By Paige Nick
Scientists widely report that the brain is our least understood area. Since we’re talking about body parts, I’m going to go out on a limb here, and suggest that our bits are possibly the second least understood parts. Of course here ‘bits’ is the technical, scientific term for our sexual organs.
We have an Aids awareness month and a breast cancer awareness month, so I thought it high time we declared an Orgasm Awareness Month. I realise facial hair has already bagsed this month with Movember, but I’m hoping they’ll find it in themselves (next to the crumbs) to share.
So in celebration of Orgasm Awareness Month (OAM being a fitting acronym as it’s also the sound many people make when they orgasm), I’d like to share with you, Five Things You Didn’t Know About Orgasms:
- You don’t need genitals to have an orgasm:
True story. In her popular Orgasm Ted Talk, Mary Roach, author of Bonk; the curious coupling of science and sex, talks about a women who could be brought to orgasm by stroking her eyebrow. I suppose to discredit this fact, you could stroke her eyebrow with your penis, but the point is that a hand would do the job just as effectively.
Mary Roach also tells us that people with spinal cord injuries resulting in quad or paraplegia, often develop very sensitive areas right above their injury. There’s also such a thing as a knee orgasm. And I know of many women who have foot orgasms when they buy shoes.
There is also a study in a medical journal out there, of a woman who had an orgasm every time she brushed her teeth. Research showed it wasn’t something in her toothpaste, any brand did the job. They also tried stimulating her gums with a toothpick, but found that it was the act of brushing that did it for her. You’d think she had great oral hygiene, but I’m terribly sad to report that she thought she was possessed by demons and switched to mouthwash. Such a waste of a good time. Plus, the dental industry could have used her in their commercials. Brush: it will make you happy.
- Orgasms are more powerful than you think:
A neuroscientist in the Netherlands carried out brain scans on men as they orgasmed, and discovered that a good orgasm can have the same impact on a man’s brainwaves as heroin has on an addict’s brainwaves. Which proves how addictive sex can really be. The good sex that is. I suspect bad sex has the same impact on a man’s brain as a Bette Midler concert or a prostate exam.
- Orgasms can cause bad breath and cure hiccoughs:
These facts also from Mary Roach’s Ted Talk: Dr Theodoor Hendrik van de Velde, author of The Perfect Marriage (published in 1926), claimed that a slight seminal odour could be detected on a woman’s breath within an hour of having sex. (I wonder if she swallowed?)
And in Israel in 1999, there was a man with severe hiccoughs. He tried everything and days went by and they still wouldn’t stop. Until he eventually had sex with his wife and then they stopped. Perhaps she did something in bed that gave him a fright?
- You’re not the only one who takes a long time to orgasm:
The world record for the longest time spent masturbating to reach orgasm is six and a half hours for a woman, and eight and a half hours for a man. Forget a hand job, that’s a full day job. Dear long masturbator, get a life and get a girlfriend. Oh and get a tube of KY Jelly and an ice pack too, it sounds like you might need it.
- Orgasms can take longer than you thought:
The average female orgasm lasts between six and ten seconds – although for some lucky women it can last up to 20 seconds. And fake orgasms have been known to go on for decades.
There are another five thousand three hundred things we don’t know about orgasms, but that’s the great thing about being humans, we get to go off and discover each and every one of them. Happy OAM everybody.
