Is long-term abstinence healthy? (Edit)

Hello @ReZen8ster, thank you for joining this debate. I really appreciate the fresh air you have brought in.

Let me summarize your post:

1) If you want to reproduce have regular intercourse. (You say 2 weeks, I say 1 week. But this is not important, let's not focus on this right now).
2) If you (for x reasons) don't want to reproduce, save your semen in order to achieve success.​

I specially like how you advice to redirect the energy in the here and now, in the world (game?) we live now.

Your text has inspired me to express my ideas, so I am going to develop it and use it to support my way of thinking. Tell me if you agree with that use.

Requoting your boxing article:

The Real reward of success...What is the reward of success? Reproducing. You have work, have become strong, achieved power, gather resources and, finally, established security. You have succeeded, now is time to reproduce, to pass on your genes, the unique information that is in you.
Once you have achieved this position of power, you have to maintain it and increase it. Then, the following advice applies:

You confirm or increase your power, and then you reproduce again.
What we would think from a man who has not reproduce? That he is weak, that he has ben unable to reclaim his position.

This is true at least from a biological point of view. Of course, we can find many good reasons to abstain from reproducing in the current societies we may live. At least, western europe, where I live, is not precisely a spring society, is more like an autumm or winter society, one that encourages saving semen.

Now I want to comment other parts of your text:

In this analogy you equate "alcoholic" with "pmo addict", which is an error because I am talking about "factory settings people". But following your analogy, let us suppose that drinking water=fertile intercourse and that drinking wine=sterile intercourse. If you had only wine to drink, you would need to drink it in order to have the water you need. That is, even if we are not in a position that is inteligent to reproduce, we still need to pseudoreproduce to stay healthy.

I agree with the idea that abstaining will make you stronger and more virile, but maybe too much abstinence will produce the contrary effect. I am sure those boxers, football players, etc, that abstain, don't do it indefinitely. And that is what I am challenging: long-term abstinence. And for what I see, you also seem to agree on that:

I am starting to doubt the 7-days period as the most healthy. Tonight I had a wet dream after one week since the last evacuation I had, and today I have felt some minimal weakness in the knees (very different was the last week when I evacuated after more than 100 days).

I readed the article you linked the other day, and I liked. He suggest (well, taoist ancient wisdom) a 15 days period, and varies depending on seasons and in personal age. For example, it recommends little or none sex during winter, and very little after 50 years. Is good advice, but I think is also old, because today winter can be not that problematic in the houses with artifical heat that we have invented.

I would want to summon opinions about one thing your article says. Is the idea that our quantity is fixed when we born. More exactly, that the cells from which sperm is developed is fixed when we born. Has anybody scientific evidence to support that?

Final thoughts: Although maintaining your sperm inside for more than 7 days will progressively make your eventual semen sample more inefficient to fertilize, this doesn't mean that they will produce a problem by staying inside. As I said, all the fluids will be absorbed in the body. Which worries me more is the fact that having your sperm storage full will make innecessary for your body to create more in great quantity. I think that this process of creating great quantity of sperm to replenish the storage is good for the overall physical health. But again, weekly discharge may not be benefitial. Maybe montly discharge, as @Davidphd1866 suggested? Or maybe 3 months discharge? After all, I started to feel the overall weakness and back pain that led me to decide to evacuate only after 3 months.

But, accepting this long periods lead us to other problem. According to the study I posted, women need weekly intercourse (except in menstrual week) in order to have regular menstruation. I find this idea difficult to challenge; I have tried, but I don't find the way.

If we accept it, then we have:
1) Women than need sex 3 times at month.
2) Men than need sex 1 time each month (let us assume monthly discharge only for the sake of the argument).
3) An overall population of 50/50 men and women in the age of reproducing.

Maths don't add. Am I wrong in point 1? or in point 2? Or are the two okay, and we need to separate intercourse from ejaculation?
I don't like the idea, but may be is a solution. A couple having sex weekly, but the man ejaculating only once a month.

I don't like the idea because it not seems natural and bad for health, at least tantra and taoist sexual practices. They are corrupted and involve things like retroejaculation that is directing the semen into the bladder and expulsing it with the urine (of course they don't claim that: they say the divine essence goes to the brain). Practicing this may lead to cronical retroejaculation, that is, the physical impossibility to ejaculate normally through the urethra.
But, karezza practice may be the answer. I read it some time ago. Is a western practice that involves the man relaxing himself when he feels that ejaculation is approaching. When he has physically relaxed, he continues with the intercourse. As far as I have read, its practicioners tell than they feel good but that they feel the urge to ejaculate at least once a month (others longer periods). They have a forum: www.reuniting.info.

Final final thought:
Even if karezza is an option, we must not forget that this is only pseudoreproduction, that is, a lesser evil than we need (if it is true that long-term abstinence is bad) for our health. But we must remember that sterile intercourse it's problematic because it makes us to forget the biological basis of our desires and may lead us into a path of hedonism. I don't want to be an hedonist, only to stay healthy, physical and mentally.

Thank you all. Stay tunned to the debate. Where will it take us?

SpartanViking

 

These last days I have thinking about this topic and I have discover that I was wrong in some things. Thus, here are the corrections (I have edited the original post as well). As always, working to refute myself if possible:

I apologize for the vaguenes of the question "is long-term abstinence healthy?". Let us review:

• Long-term: How much time? It is not specified.
• Abstinence: Abstinence from what? Sex or ejaculation? In my original question I made the error of equating sex and ejaculation, when in truth they can exist separately: one can have sex without ejaculation (karezza) and also ejaculate without having sex.
  
• Healthy: It is not specified, some days ago I edited the meaning of it.

Let us reformulate the question. What is the state that give us optimal health?

1. No sex and no ejaculation. Total celibacy in mind, word and body.
2. Sex and no ejaculation. Practice of karezza, bonding sexual activity.
3. Sex and ejaculation. Regular ejaculatory sex once a month.

Maybe the second option is the best because it enables maintaining all the fluids (except for the bulbourethral gland's fluid) inside the body where it will be reabsorb, and also have the benefits of sex. I will continue investigating on it.

I strongly support that statement (fertility=health) in the case of the woman. If a woman has an irregular menstrual cycle her fertility will be compromised, and in consequence her health would be as well (she will develop early menopause and osteoporosis).
But in the case of man I don't think is the same. A man that has abstained of ejaculating for a month will be less fertile than a man that has abstained for 2-7 days.

Now, if we consider (as I explained in one of my answers) that the sperm that is not expelled is reabsorbed in the body (along with all the other fluids that compose semen) we cannot say that long-term ejaculation abstinence is unhealthy. Yes, after the 7 day of abstinence, the sperms will lose quality to fertilize, but that doesn't mean that they are causing any damage (studies of course proof the contrary). The most clear proof that they cause benefit lays in the fact that the body can reabsorb them.

 

Sorry for the delay in answering the last answers:

That is one of the things I want to investigate. We born with a limited quantity of potential sperm or do we can create infinite quantities of sperm? I have also readed people (not any serious study) asserting than woman don't have a limited number of ovums, as traditionally thought, but that they can create more if the conditions are good. I don't know, I will investigate more.

Great phrase, it is very true. I have had this feeling in the past. Only passingon to another level enables you to really understand the last one.

Yes, that is one of my main concerns. Our primal desire is to ejaculate and fertilize her egg. One of the form that energy blockage can express in physical term is in the form of vasocongestion. When we are excited, we got an erection, wich is caused by the blood flow to the pennis (the testes also fill with blood). The blood abandon the sexual organs when ejaculation is completed. My concern is that not ejaculating may cause the blood stay in the sexual organs area.
I need to investigate more. I will re-read your post, @David stone , you have some insight on this.

SpartanViking

 

In the original post I was referring to total abstinence of any kind of sexual activity. Now I am separating abstinence from sex and abstinence from ejaculation. In any case, masturbation is discarded.