Most men (boys?) of a certain age have entered into the realm of multiple ejaculative experiences — likely of the masturbatory variety — in a 24-hour period. Maybe you were home sick one day from school and had the house to yourself. Or perhaps you and your significant other attempted a how-many-times-can-I-physically-cum-in-one-day-before-my-dick-falls-off marathon. My point is that most men are at least somewhat familiar with their ejaculatory ceiling, and we’ve all wondered this before: How many times can you physically bust in 24 hours?
• Get a load of this: Is it “come” or “cum”? The debate is about more than just spelling.
“Most I’ve done is 5-6. When I was in my 20s. A long time ago, in a bed far far away…,” writes one redditor. Another added that he starts shooting dust after eight. “And that was me in my lonely prime,” he writes. “Maybe if you’re properly hydrated and take some zinc supplements you could break 10 or even 15, who knows...” Others remarked that it depends on their refractory period. “There’s one study on record of a man who had a prolactin deficiency and no refractory period,” one redditor wrote. “He masturbated and ejaculated six times in about 40 minutes, but he produced less fluid each time.”
According to Jamin Brahmbhatt, a board-certified urologist, the male refractory period can last minutes to days. The recovery, he says, depends on age, how much arousal you get between sessions, hormones and your overall health. “After sex, your penis becomes flaccid from neural signals telling your body to relax, especially the organ that’s been doing most of the work (i.e., the penis),” he explains. “Dopamine and testosterone levels drop. Prolactin [which decreases the level of testosterone in men] rises, and this change in hormones seems to be the reason for the length of the refractory period.” He adds that studies have found that teenagers can take minutes to recover whereas men in their 30s or 40s could take 30 to 60 minutes or longer. “There’s no hard-and-fast rule on how quickly you will recover,” he says.
But to the issue of how many times a guy can jolt himself past the O-faced finish line, assuming said man is in the prime of his sexual prowess, it’s a lot. “Research has found that men aged 18 have a refractory period of around 15 minutes, whereas 70-somethings can take up to 20 hours. The average across all age groups is about 30 minutes,” per NewHealthAdvisor.com. “So on average, if one has sex right after the refractory period is over, how many times can a guy come at most? That’s 24 x 2 = 48 times. But we all know this is a theoretical number because this is too physically demanding.”
• Aw, nuts. If you’re having trouble ejaculating, death grip might be the problem.
Brahmbhatt thinks the theoretical number is about half that. “I guess you could do it 24 times a day,” he says. “But no one can go that many times. Eventually it will become painful and provide no pleasure.”
To that end, Erik Wibowo, a lecturer at the University of Otago in New Zealand who wrote an article on multiple orgasms in men, tells me that it’s important to separate orgasm from ejaculation, because they are not the same process. “Some men are capable of having orgasms without having ejaculation, or vice versa,” he says. “Ejaculation involves the actual propulsion of semen, so it can be visually observed, though men with repeated ejaculations have diminished amount of ejaculates in the subsequent events. However, this isn’t the case for orgasms, i.e., some men can have non-ejaculatory orgasms.”
Wibowo’s research found that while most men claimed to have orgasmed between 2 to 9 times in a 24-hour period, the most was 16. Still, he admits that most of the research on multiple orgasms is anecdotal. “There’s minimal data with physiological assessments of orgasms,” he says. “This is partly because measuring an orgasm is challenging.”
Well, at least that’s something everyone can agree on.
Come Again?
Andrew Fiouzi
Andrew Fiouzi is a staff writer at MEL.
