We’ve all been there. Maybe you had one too many coffees, or gulped down half a gallon of water after your morning workout. Your bladder is full, but you’re stuck in a meeting or on public transportation. Whatever the scenario, the bottom line is you’re busting for a pee and have no option other than holding on.
Finally, you get to the toilet — you can let go! The sense of relief feels good. So good. A little too good. Enter the “peegasm.”
A “peegasm” is the intense feeling of relief you get after holding your pee for as long as possible and then finally going to the toilet. A Reddit thread dedicated to the phenomenon begins with a description:
“So my girlfriend recently told me if she’s had to hold her pee in for a while, when she actually goes to pee, she often has orgasms that she feels all the way up her spine to her head. If she does “reverse kegels” while peeing, they’re even more likely to happen.”
“She said these orgasms sometimes leave her lightheaded and off balance, and are pretty different from her clit or vaginal orgasms,” the Redditor writes.
Others attest to having similar experiences. “I call them the piss shivers (cringe) because they’re not quite orgasmic in my opinion but close enough,” another person comments.
Dr. Charlotte Elder is a gynecologist and spokesperson for the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. She says that while finally making it to the toilet after holding on for a while feels good (“some people describe an orgasm as relief,” she notes), the peegasm trend could actually cause bladder damage.
“Bladders need to be treated with respect. It’s important to go when you need to go, not when you’re busting,” she says.
It turns out that if you delay going to the toilet, you can stretch your bladder. This is a prospect that shouldn’t be taken lightly — Elder warns that bladder injuries can take years to recover from. In some cases, the damage is irreparable.
As a side note, Elder says it’s also important not to do “just in case” pees. “If you pee when you don’t need to go, you can reduce your bladder’s capacity to hold urine,” she says.
Another unintentional consequence of the “peegasm” could be getting a urinary tract infection because holding on too long can allow harmful bacteria to multiply in the urinary tract. Anyone who has suffered a bout of cystitis will know there is nothing remotely sexy about it.
Although intentionally holding on isn’t a good idea, there is no denying that there are some links between needing to pee and sexual pleasure. An example of this is the number of women reporting sleep orgasms that occurred when they had full bladders.
Elder says she wasn’t surprised by this. “A full bladder while you’re asleep will stimulate your pelvic floor nerves a bit which makes you more likely to have a sexy dream which can trigger an orgasm while you’re asleep,” she says.
Having said that, there is a big difference between waking up with a full bladder and deliberately holding on too long. Elder says that in her view, a “peegasm” just isn’t worth risking your bladder health to achieve.
“There are more practical and more pleasurable ways to have an orgasm,” she says. “My advice is to try something a bit more old-fashioned.”
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