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Physical exercise makes female body react more strongly to sexual stimuli
Women react more strongly physically to sexual stimuli after a short burst of physical exercise. And no, for once it has nothing to do with testosterone, according to the results of an experiment published by American psychologists in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
Exercise & pornography
In the mid-nineties psychologists at the University of British Columbia in Canada discovered that moderately intensive exercise caused women to physically react more strongly to a short pornographic film clip. [Behav Res Ther. 1995 Jul; 33(6): 651-64.]
The Canadians got women to cycle for 20 minutes at 70 percent of their VO2max: just a little bit too intensive to be able to still conduct a conversation. They observed that the blood circulation in the vaginal wall increased more when the women were shown erotic images after exercise than after a period of inactivity.
The effect reached its climax [no pun intended] a quarter of an hour after the cycling session, and half an hour later it had subsided. [Behav Res Ther. 1996 Feb; 34(2): 143-8.]
Study
In 2008 the psychologist Lisa Dawn Hamilton of the University of Texas at Austin published the results of a study in the same vein as that of the Canadians. Hamilton got women aged between 18 and 45 to run on a treadmill for 20 minutes at 70 percent of their VO2max. Afterwards she first showed them an excerpt from a travel documentary and then an erotic but woman-friendly film.
On another occasion the women were shown the same images, but without having first exercised.
Results
Hamilton used a vaginal photoplethysmograph to measure the blood circulation in the vagina, comparing the measurements during the travel documentary with the measurements taking during the erotic film. The bigger the difference, the stronger the physical sexual reaction to the images. As you can see below, the exercise session increased the sexual response.
The researchers took saliva samples and measured the testosterone concentration in them. Because there was hardly any rise, the researchers think that testosterone does not play a role in the pro-sexual effect of exercise.
The researchers also measured the concentration of alpha-amylase [structural formula shown below] in the saliva sample. This increased more while watching erotic images in the women who had exercised than in the women who had been inactive.
Your alpha-amylase concentrations increase when there's more noradrenalin circulating in your blood. And this happens when the nervous system stimulates the muscles to undertake physical labour.
Conclusion
The researchers conclude that the pro-sexual effect of exercise is a result of the activation of the sympathetic nervous system. They don't exclude the possibility that exercise boosts the production of dopamine in the brain, and that this in turn increases the physiological response to sexual stimuli.
The exercise had no effect of the experience of sexual arousal. The effects measured were purely physical.
Source:
J Sex Med. 2008 Apr;5(4):845-53.
More:
Better health = more sex 15.02.2013
Ephedrine increases arousal in women 24.09.2009
Beautiful women are more easily turned on 07.08.2009
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