We all know that a good night’s sleep is good for your health.
A decent night’s sleep can help boost your mood, help to lower blood pressure, steady your blood sugar, improve concentration and productivity and even help you keep the pounds off.
But did you also know that good sleep can lead to even better sex?
In another recent study in healthy, young men found that testosterone levels were decreased by 10 to 15% after a week of their sleep being restricted to just five hours.
A separate study found that poor sleep patterns were associated with erectile dysfunction for men as well as arousal and orgasmic problems.
And a lack of sleep doesn’t only affect the man’s performance between the sheets.
A study published by The Journal of Sexual Medicine found that longer sleep duration was related to greater next-day sexual desire.
Each night, as little as an hour more sleep led to a “14% increase in odds of engaging in partnered sexual activity.” The report also showed that women with a longer average sleep duration reported better genital arousal than those with a shorter average sleep length.
Better sleep is also linked to better hormone production. REM sleep fosters testosterone production, an essential hormone for both men and women’s sex drives.
However, David Kalmbach, a researcher at the University of Michigan Sleep and Circadian Research Laboratory and study author, says more research needs to be done in this area.
“Some previous studies have hypothesized that sleep can affect hormone levels, which may cause changes in desire and arousal. But more research is needed in this area to identify the underlying mechanisms more confidently,” he said.
“The message is that sleep health is important for many areas of our daily living. Good sleep has been shown to improve mood, energy, concentration, overall health and, now, sexual desire and arousal.”
Moral of the story — good sleep — incredible sex.
