Why Do Guys Get Morning Erections?
This is a post all about Morning Wood (early morning erections).
The article goes into quite a bit of detail, so I’m going to summarize things right here at the top for those who want the short version.
Here we go…
- Morning wood is an absolutely essential biological process.
- When they stop coming around, something has clearly gone wrong and the situation needs to be addressed.
- Common causes of morning wood loss are low testosterone, diabetes, heart disease and depression.
- Morning wood happens during REM sleep, so poor sleep patterns can also contribute to the problem.
- Research has shown that the lack of morning wood may be an indicator of impending sexual impotence.
If you wound up on this page because you’ve lost your AM wood, your first step should be to download my free Ebook.
Once you have it in hand, turn to page 23 and prepare the juice described on that page.
You’ll be provided a link to the Morning Wood Report after you request the ebook, and I’d suggest you download that too.
If you don’t have severe vascular problems the info inside these two free reports will probably be enough to get you back on track.
If not, your situation may be serious because lack of morning wood is also an indicator of future heart attack risk.
So make sure you don’t take the situation lightly.
Now here’s the main article written by guest author Gip Plaster…
Why Do Guys Get Morning Wood?
Morning wood is a common and natural occurrence that healthy guys have to deal with, often every morning. And while it may be annoying or even embarrassing, you can hardly call it a problem.
In fact, when it stops for you, it could be a sign of medical problems or even impending impotence.
Having an erection when you wake up in the morning is simply one of those things that happens. It’s one of the marvels of being a guy.
And one thing’s certain: you’ll miss morning erections if they go away.
Morning erections go by many names — including morning wood, morning glories or flagpoles.
But morning wood is really penile tumescence, and those extra-hard erections you experience when you wake up actually happen to you all through the night.
They’re called nocturnal penile tumescence (NPT) — and losing your NPT is a clear sign of sexual dysfunction.
As you get older, you may not get morning wood as often, but eating right, dumping unnecessary medications…
Staying in good shape, taking the right supplements and maintaining a healthy attitude toward sex can go a long way toward maintaining your morning wood — and maintaining or restoring your sex drive and sex life in general.
What Causes Morning Wood
A lot of guys think morning wood keeps you from going to the bathroom in your sleep, but that’s not really the reason it happens at all.
Morning NPT is something almost all guys have regularly — whether they need to go to the bathroom or not.
It makes it hard to get out of bed without looking seriously aroused. And it makes going to the bathroom first thing in the morning practically impossible.
But it’s normal. As a matter of fact…
Your morning glories happen spontaneously and all through the night. If you don’t have erectile dysfunction, you should have these hard-ons three or perhaps even five time EVERY NIGHT!
Here’s a study of young men that proves it:
The normative characteristics of nocturnal penile tumescence (NPT) in a group of 20- to 26-year-old men were measured during continuous all-night recordings.
Each penile erection during the night was recorded and compared with periods of (REM) activity during sleep.
Subjects averaged 4.22 erection episodes per night which averaged 32.66 minutes, with 91.4% of all tumescence episodes occurring, at least in part, during a REM period. (source)
Even weirder, these things start happening before you’re born.
But your mother can’t exactly blame you for these spontaneous occurrences. She probably knows from personal experience that women get vaginal engorgement and clitoral erections during their sleep.
And plenty of other mammals get morning wood too.
According to Columbia University, the exact cause of NPT is uncertain. But there are a number of theories that make sense. And as you saw in the study snippet above, there seems to be a connection between NPT and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.
Possibility #1
When you’re in REM sleep, noradrenergic cells located in a special part of your brainstem switch off. This means the inhibitors for your penis are asleep. But your testosterone isn’t asleep, and it does what it does and gets you hard.
So without inhibition, you get wood naturally.
Possibility #2
When you sleep, nitric oxide is released by some the cells that line your blood vessels. This gas gets into smooth muscles, causing relaxation.
Blood vessels naturally dilate and more blood flows to the penis, leading to a involuntary nocturnal erection.
Still, there’s a connection with what’s happening in your brain stem during REM sleep, so these two possibilities are very likely connected.
But here’s the deal: whatever the reason they happen, nighttime and morning wood is doing you a world of good.
That’s right: morning wood is like exercise for you penis. This is the most valid theory, and it’s the one that makes the most sense.
Your morning wood causes your corpora cavernosa — that is, your erectile tissue — to swell up, and fill with oxygenated blood
Oxygen helps it maintain its viability and can help prevent a condition called cavernous fibrosis, which can result in erectile dysfunction.
Reflex erections like those that happen during the night can result from needing to urinate. The nerves for the bladder and for reflex erections are both located in the spinal cord’s sacral nerves.
But remember that women get something similar, and it wouldn’t help them prevent nighttime urination. So that blows a bit of a hole in this theory.
Do All Guys Get Morning Wood?
All guys without erectile dysfunction get morning wood. The penis of a healthy man might stay erect for as long as two hours at a time during the night or early in the morning.
But you shouldn’t automatically think something is wrong if you don’t always wake up with an erection.
It simply could be that…
You were hard just a few minutes before waking up and the REM cycle ended before you woke up.
That’s normal.
You were actually hard when you first woke up, but you come to awareness some mornings slowly, and you didn’t even realize you had a morning erection until it was gone.
That’s normal too.
You didn’t sleep that well and didn’t experience much REM sleep. That’s not good. But it does happen to all of us occasionally.
A lot of guys only notice morning erections two or three times a week. Others notice them every morning.
But when men don’t have them at all, that really isn’t normal, according to researchers.
If you experience fear, anxiety or stress, that could explain why you don’t have morning wood. You obviously need a change in your thinking to get your morning erections back.
Medical Reasons Why Morning Wood Stops
Morning wood shouldn’t stop just because you get older. For a lot of guys, it never stops.
Others take action to make sure it never does.
While morning wood may seem like an annoyance, you’ll miss them when they’re gone. They’re doing you good.
There are a number of medical reasons why morning wood stops. Here are a few:
Low Testosterone
If you have testicles that are a bit on the small side — perhaps less than an inch in length, you may have low testosterone. And that can reduce or eliminate morning wood.
And if you have very low ejaculation volume, that’s another sign of low testosterone.
If you have lower than normal sex drive or can’t gain much muscle no matter how much you exercise, those are also strong signs of low T.
Fortunately, there are supplements and other methods of overcoming this cause of no morning wood.
Diabetes Or Heart Disease
Of course, diabetes and heart disease aren’t the same thing. But they often go together, and their impact on morning wood is about the same.
When blood vessels don’t carry blood efficiently, erections don’t happen as much or as well — day or night.
Both heart disease and diabetes cause blood vessel inefficiency. And without blood flow, a stiffy can’t happen very effectively in either the day or the night.
Getting these conditions under control can help get you fully functional again.
Depression
It also makes sense that guys who have a problem with depression might be less interested in sex and therefore have fewer erections while awake, but studies have found that depression actually may mean fewer instances of NPT and morning wood.
NPT time was reduced … below the control mean in 40% of depressives and was comparable to the level seen in 14 non-depressed patients with a clinical diagnosis of organic impotence. (source)
And remember, depression is a treatable condition. Mild to moderate depression can be treated with lifestyle changes, exercise, dietary changes and sunlight exposure.
You also just may need someone to set you on a better course in life — or work out relationship problems you may be having.
Even if your depression is severe, there are plenty of psychological treatments available to help as well.
Morning Wood As An Impotence Indicator
Research has shown that the lack of morning wood may be an indicator of sexual impotence. And not getting hard during the night is one thing, but when it impacts your sex life, that’s quite another.
But what does morning wood have to do with impotence?
It can actually help you determine if impotence is in your future — even if you aren’t having any daytime signs yet.
And that can be vital in helping you reverse the trend toward a permanent inability to have an erection.
Some research has shown that morning and nighttime penile tumescence can also help determine if impotence is a physiological or psychological issue for a guy.
In other words, guys who get hard all night long obviously don’t suffer from a physical inability to get an erection.
If they can’t get it up with their partners, there’s another reason — maybe fear, anxiety, stress or something else psychological happening.
And a psychological inability to perform needs to be treated differently than a physical one.
To see how often you achieve nighttime and morning wood, specialists can put a device around your penis during the night to monitor the situation.
There are also other tests that can help determine if your lack of morning wood is an indicator that impotence in your future if you don’t take action.
These other tests, according to the Mayo Clinic, include:
Physical examination of your penis and testicles to see if you have the expected level of sensation and complete nerve function
Blood tests to look for underlying medical conditions like diabetes, heart disease and low testosterone
Urine tests, which can be used alongside blood tests to look for underlying disease
Ultrasound or MRI to see inside your penis and the surrounding area to examine the level and path of blood flow
Psychological tests to check for signs of depression and other possible causes of dysfunction outside the physiological realm.
Conclusion:
Morning wood may seem like an inconvenience. It may seem like one of those things you just have to deal with — like decaying teeth and poison ivy.
But morning wood is actually one of the signs of a healthy, virile, fully functioning body.
If you don’t notice an erection in the morning here and there, thats no big deal.
You may have just slept poorly that night.
But if you’re an aging man who used to get morning erections and rarely notice them anymore, it could be a sign that your body isn’t working to its fullest potential.
That’s no reason to panic. But it is reason enough to take action…because that morning wood is exercising, building and repairing your penis and keeping it in tip top shape while you’re asleep.
When it stops, consider whether you’re noticing other signs of sexual dysfunction. And also consider whether you may have other medical problems that need to be dealt with.
Every action your body takes — voluntary or involuntary — has a purpose.
Research shows that all guys should get morning wood, consistently.
And if yours have stopped, you need to think seriously about why it isn’t happening for you — and what you can do about it.
References:
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0006322388901199
2. http://goaskalice.columbia.edu/answered-questions/whats-morning-erections
3. https://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=490634
4. https://academic.oup.com/geronj/article-abstract/43/5/M146/734932
5. http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/erectile-dysfunction/basics/tests-diagnosis/con-20034244
6. http://joe.endocrinology-journals.org/content/186/3/411.full
