REVIEW ARTICLE
Why Do Healthy Men Experience Morning Erections?
Gahyun Youn*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2017Volume: 10
First Page: 49
Last Page: 54
Publisher ID: TOPSYJ-10-49
DOI: 10.2174/1874350101710010049
Article History:
Received Date: 04/03/2017Revision Received Date: 15/03/2017
Acceptance Date: 10/04/2017
Electronic publication date: 16/05/2017
Collection year: 2017
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
People begin the sleep cycle with a period of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, followed by a very short period of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. During a normal night of sleep, humans usually experience about four or five periods of REM sleep. Penile erections have generally been considered to be an epiphenomenon of REM sleep-related physiological changes for healthy males. Thus, men are very likely to awaken in the morning with a REM sleep-related erection, which is also known as nocturnal penile tumescence (NPT). Men who are physically under great strain or serious psychological stress may find it difficult to maintain a psychogenic erection. The best time for them to have sex would be during sleep time, such as when they are experiencing REM sleep-related erections. It is reasonable to assume that the NPT phenomena might have evolved as a tool for having sex, in the context of both procreation and recreation.
