Misplaced Pages

Nocturnal penile tumescence

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by PeaceNT (talk | contribs) at 08:15, 25 May 2007 (Reverted 1 edit by 68.108.109.152 to last revision by 129.33.49.251. using TW). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 08:15, 25 May 2007 by PeaceNT (talk | contribs) (Reverted 1 edit by 68.108.109.152 to last revision by 129.33.49.251. using TW)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
This article does not cite any sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Nocturnal penile tumescence" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

In anatomy and physiology, nocturnal penile tumescence, is the spontaneous occurrence of a penile erection during sleep in the absence of any sexual stimulation. All men who are physically able to achieve erection do so during sleep, typically several times in a night. It typically happens during REM sleep and it is not uncommon for an erection to be present when a man wakes up — such an erection is colloquially referred to as morning wood in North America, and as morning glory in the United Kingdom (though the U.K. often uses the adjective piss proud instead).

The existence and predictability of nocturnal tumescence is used by sexual health practitioners to ascertain whether a given case of erectile dysfunction (E.D.) is psychological or physiological in origin. A patient presenting with E.D. is fitted with an elastic device to wear around his penis during sleep; the device detects changes in girth and relays the information to a computer for later analysis. If nocturnal tumescence is detected, then the E.D. is presumed to be due to a psychosomatic illness such as sexual anxiety; if not, then it is presumed to be due to a physiological cause.

References

  1. "Tests for Erection Problems". WebMD, Inc. Retrieved 2007-03-03. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

External links


Stub icon

This health-related article is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

Categories: