Watching a lot of porn can affect your brain, scientists reckon.
It’s a guilty pleasure best enjoyed in moderation, apparently, because too much can make you desensitised in real sexual situations.
Porn can also bring out the same characteristics found in drug addicts – but sadly enthusiasts often get diminished pleasure from each ‘fix’.
Teenagers as young as 13 regularly watch it, and for millions of adults it is their guilty pleasure.
Pornography offers men and women alike a chance to explore their sexual fantasies
But while X-rated images and films can help boost your libido, and many report it improves relationships, there is another side affecting your health.
From releasing mood-boosting hormones to triggering addictive tendencies, porn can have a sinister effect on our brains
THE MORE PORN YOU WATCH, THE MORE YOU NEED
Both having sex and watching porn causes dopamine, the neurotransmitter responsible for reward and pleasure, to be released.
But repeatedly causing this surge in dopamine – by regularly watching pornography – means the brain become desensitised to its effects.
A study published in JAMA Psychiatry in 2014 found regularly viewing pornography seemed to dull the response to sexual stimulation over time.
This means the brain needs more dopamine in order to feel the same ‘high’, which causes a person to watch more porn, German researchers found.
And a 2011 study, published in Psychology Today, found that these dopamine spikes mean porn-users start needing increasingly extreme experiences to become sexually aroused.
After being exposed to so many lurid images in films, men have become de-sensitised and are increasingly unable to become excited by ordinary sexual encounters.
Pornography is creating a generation of young men who are hopeless in the bedroom, the report concluded.
PORN SHRINKS THE BRAIN
Men who watch pornography may be shrinking their brains, the German researchers described above discovered.
The striatum area of the brain, linked with the motivation and reward response, shrank in size the more porn a person viewed.
The study marked the first time researchers found a possible link between regularly viewing pornography and physical harm.
However, they noted that is possible that people who spend more time looking at pornography are born with a certain type of brain.
PORN ADDICTS HAVE MINDS LIKE DRUG ADDICTS
When porn addicts watch X-rated material, the ‘addiction’ part of the brain lights up on scans, Cambridge University researchers discovered in 2013.
The brains of young men who are obsessed by online pornography ‘lit up like Christmas trees’ upon being shown erotic images, a pioneering study has found.
The area stimulated – the part of the brain involved in processing reward, motivation and pleasure – is the same part that is highly active among drug and alcohol addicts.
A year later, another study by the same University found sex addicts who watched porn from an early age had three regions of the brain that were more active than their counterparts who were not addicted to sex.
The ventral striatum, dorsal anterior cingulate and amygdala – were active in the sex addicts – and experts said these are the regions that are also particularly activated in drug addicts when shown drug stimuli.
The ventral striatum is involved in processing reward and motivation, whilst the dorsal anterior cingulate is implicated in anticipating rewards and drug craving.
The amygdala is involved in processing the significance of events and emotions.
