What’s the deal with “morning wood”? My psychology of human sexuality teacher said that erections are not uncommon in males during REM sleep and so if a male is woken up during REM sleep, he may still have an erection. I disagree with this explanation. I think that it has something to do with the blood flow in your body when you come out of sleep. I also think it might have to do with the position of your body in relation to your blood flow. I might be going into too much detail here, but speaking from personal experience, if I have an erection when I wake up and I sit up, it goes away. Then if I lie down again, it comes back. Okay, sorry you had to read that, but anyways, can anyone explain morning wood?
sorry for posting twice, i thought i was disconnected before the last one got through
I’ve always thought that it just a chemical thing. Different chemicals are more active in our bodies at various times of day. Maybe whatever chemicals are involved with sex are heightened in men during the mornings.
I can certainly attest that I feel hornier in the morning and my wife feels hornier at night!
I thought it was an automatic thing to keep you from pissing yourself when you’re asleep. Back when we had predators, pissing one’s self whilst sleeping would alert them to one’s position…hence the defense mechanism…
Let me get this straight. Your teacher, who presumably knows the subject he is teaching, says something. You, who doesn’t really know the subject, think that he’s wrong. And all you can do is put forth a couple of hypotheses based solely upon your personal experience, rather than any sort of clinical study.
Hmmm. There’s something wrong with this picture.
Whether you want to believe it or not, scientists studying sleep have consistently noted that males get erections during REM sleep (indeed, one test of the causes of male impotence, the postage stamp test*, is based upon this observation). The morning erection is a remnant of REM sleep; men may feel more horny in the morning because they’re better rested and they have had erections during the night.
*Basically, you wrap part of a roll of postage stamps (the old fashioned perforated kind) around the penis and go to sleep. If the perforations are broken in the morning, you have had an erection and the impotence doesn’t have a physical cause.
An Arky may not have it on the nose, but he’s got the right idea. Ordinarily (as opposed to being wakened from an erotic dream), the body utilizes the erectile facility as a means of assisting the urethral sphincter in preventing unwilled urination. A night’s sleep means a night when the heart is pumping blood through the body, filling the cells’ little food reservoirs and taking away the waste products, and filtering the soluble waste products through the kidney, which will pull them out and turn them into the solute in urine, along with any excess fluid you accumulated, e.g., from that six-pack you drank last night (which becomes the solvent in the urine). By the end of your eight hours of sleep, the bladder is well stocked with liquid nitrogenous waste, ready for fertilizing the grass above your septic system or the hungry bacteria in your city’s waste treatment plant. And so you experience the symptoms of full bladder, which can and usually does include the gallant reflex.
Erection is a response that has to be inhibited, not consciously, by certain functions in the brain. When asleep this inhibition is turn off at a certain point. People in comas go through this, as do pre-puberty males.
RealityChuck, the REM association does not explain the phenomenon that gutterhippo described, namely, that without REM sleep, he can get a morning errection. That’s probably why he doesn’t agree with the teacher’s explanation. Lighten up a little, this is just a message board, not the New England Journal of Medicine.
I have a similar experience. If I awake with wood, and get up right away - poof - it’s gone. But if I stay in bed awake for say a half hour or so (daydreaming, listening to radio, whatever) Mr. Woody is right there the whole time. But as soon as I get up - poof- gone.
And you guys who think it has to do with a full bladder, tell me, do you get a hard on when you’re awake with a full bladder? I never do.
Besides, except for the geometry of the situation, I would never have any trouble peeing though an erection anyway.
And there was me thinking it was a self preservation thing.
You know, your body helping you out by providing a kick-stand to stop you rolling over out of bed whilst asleep…
J.
This is a common phallucy…er, fallacy. I rolled out of bed on the wrong side once and pole vaulted out the window.
So it is most definitely not a bed safety mechanism.
I think it might have something to do with the body’s “internal clock” because I’ll get morning wood around 5-6 AM whether I’m in bed or up and about. Though if I have it when I wake up, it does go away quickly.
It’s called nocturnal penile tumescence. As mentioned kindly above, it usually occurs during REM sleep. What’s not quite know is if the content of the dreams effects whether you get the erections or not. In my opinion, there doesn’t seem to be any clear reason why they occur yet.
as for the erection functioning to prevent unwanted urination…I’ve had many a morning when I’ve woken without an erection, and I’ve never peed myself. In fact, erection or not, I’ve never urinated in my sleep. So I’m not really buying the argument that it’s main function is prevent urination…
Most mornings I wake up with an erection, and it will not go away. Often I need to pee at the same time, which is a hazardous operation under such conditions (you guys know what I mean). So I have to wait (and wait some more), or try to go back to sleep for another half hour.
Isn’t it fun being a guy?
Um. . . “to prevent peeing during sleep”? I find this a funny idea. Slightly over half the population of the damn planet never have erections while we sleep, but aren’t pissing ourselves all the time.
That’s 'cause you aren’t slobs like us guys are. You don’t drink out of milk bottles, either.
DD
I’m sure it happens during REM, but like Incubus I believe it has more to do with time than anything else. I also will get stirrings down there whether I am asleep or not. I first noticed this when I was in the service. On guard duty, it seemed to always happen between 4 and 5 A.M. Many other guys reported the same. It was our “moondial”.
Hey Mac, relief should be here anytime. I’m getting a hard on.
Yeah Joe, must be about four. Wanna swordfight?
These days, I usually get up about 5:30 without incident. If I wake up a bit earlier, I have a ragin cajun that doesn’t have to pee. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night for no other reason than to take a leak without sporting wood. Some mornings, I also awake with an extreme need to hit the potty but have a steel I-beam swinging around, and I’m getting too old and portly to comfortably sit on the pot with my head on the floor.
I figure it this way. We are guys. What absolutely WILL cause a nighttime erection? Nobody knows. What CAN cause one? A dream, an errant thought, a breeze through the window, the sound of the neighbor’s hamster pulling off a strip of duct tape. Whatever the cause, who cares? It’s an indication that the darn thing still works, and an excuse to start your day with a smile. Brush your teeth with the good hand and use the hand you slept on for another purpose. Being numb, it feels like someone elses hand, which is a bonus.
[sub]But it doesn’t explain the nights I dream of eating chocolate pudding and waking up with a spoon in my butt[/sub]
Just weighing in here… I used to get wood in the AM all the time, now it’s just about only when I have to pee. Before you jump all over me, I’m not saying that’s why I have it, just that that seems to be the only time I have it. I can’t possibly see the facts as I see them and the submissions of others, to be complete coincidence, just because nay-sayers have REM theories that have been “proven”. I’ll have you know that most of the times I’m actually awakened by the erection itself “being a kickstand”, and then realize that I have to urinate…and do so. So, before you discount entirely these phenomena, consider that there might be a correlation. I’ve sure seen evidence of it.
LMAO Turbo Dog!
All you guys have trouble peeing when your little (well, hopefully not so little) friend is awake? Jeez guys, that’s what the shower’s for 
FyreFiend, first, before you start harboring fantasies, it’s quite little. Second, the shower is another problem altogether. I can’t speak for all guys, but I think I do for some, while on the occasions when I wake up having to go “in that condition”, I REALLY have to go. And in that condition, it is sort of like frozen molasses in a squeeze bottle. In other words, it’s pretty tough to get going and keep going. So you have to wait until the shower warms up which is pretty painful. A cold shower compounds the problem. Cold makes things want to “relax”, but not “go”. And wanting to go, when in that state, makes things not want to relax. By the time the shower warms up, you still wind up with your feet against the back of the shower, head on the other wall, and even if you are an athiest, you are invoking the aid of many deities by name during the process. You can choke the chicken or drain the lizard but trying to drain Super Chicken is not an easy or pleasant feat.