Here’s a cool new study that could help the future of women’s orgasms. Scientists at the University of Michigan were studying the effects of electrical nerve stimulation to treat urinary incontinence (peeing your pants), and ended up discovering that it stimulated women into having orgasms!
That study led to a study called “Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation to improve female sexual dysfunction symptoms. A pilot study.”
The discovery happened in the same way as the invention of Viagra, which happened when researchers conducted tests on patients with high blood pressure and cardiac angina (chest pain caused by reduced blood flow to the heart). Viagra did nothing for heart problems, but it did cause unexpected boners. Hello!
Researchers zapped nerves in their female subject’s hoo ha’s for 30 minutes, as well as their tibial (ankle) nerve, with the results indicating more blood flow to the lady business. Subjects said the stimulation did not hurt and felt like a “tingling or buzzing” sensation.
According to Keely Malcom, a blogger at the University’s lab blog, Tim Bruns, Ph.D., an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at University of Michigan reported, “In this particular treatment, a patient receives nerve stimulation therapy once a week to improve neural signaling and function in the muscles that control the bladder. The nerves controlling the pelvic organs start out in the same location in the spinal cord and branch. One form of stimulation is effective for bladder dysfunction despite an odd placement of the electrodes: near the tibial nerve in the ankle.”
The current theory, Bruns explains, “is that the nerves that travel down to the foot overlap near the spinal cord with some of the nerves to the pelvic organs, leading to a possible overlap in synaptic routes.”
Michigan Medicine OB-GYN Mitchell Berger, M.D., Ph.D., and urologic surgeon Priyanka Gupta, M.D.says they were so encouraged by these early findings, that the the researchers are seeking funding for a larger study. “This study presents an alternative method for treating female sexual dysfunction that is nonpharmacologic and noninvasive. Through studies like this, we can further understand female sexual arousal and offer treatments for a disorder that has very few options.”
The study was funded by a grant from the Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health.
With studies like these, who knows; in the future scientists could come up with a sex machine, an “orgasmatron” that we could use at home. We’d never leave the house.
Photo: Wikipedia Commons
“Psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich declared the existence of a universal healing and revitalizing force in the 1950’s, called “orgone”, (from the word “orgasm”) and created devices (the booth and breathing apparatus are pictured here) to capture and administer it.”