Featured Image Credit: Getty Images/Elena Noviello
Topics: Sex and Relationships, Health, Sleep, News
Niamh Shackleton
Topics: Sex and Relationships, Health, Sleep, News
While it can often take a lot of work for someone to reach orgasm, some people can literally do it in their sleep.
There's something known as the orgasm gap and yep, you guessed it, it's women who have drawn the short straw.
Per Psychology Today, in heterosexual encounters only 50 to 70 percent of women climax while 95 percent of men do. Sigh.
However, one woman has claimed to have orgasms in her sleep, something that's known as a nocturnal orgasm or 'sleepgasm'.
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Discussing the matter on the Just Between Us podcast, Diana Vickers (who once appeared on the British version of The X Factor) revealed that her sleepgasms will actually wake her up.
"Sometimes I’m asleep and then I’ll wake up having an orgasm — it’ll wake me up," she said, adding: "I don’t know whether the dream is very sexy, or what’s going on, but I’ll open my eyes and have to attend to the fact it’s happening. It happened to me this morning."
Women’s health expert Dr Hana Patel has now lifted the lid on exactly what sleepgasms are and why they happen.
"They’re a healthy part of sexual function, often linked to erotic dreams or subconscious arousal," she told Metro Online.
According to the expert, a sleepgasm is most likely to happen during REM sleep; this is when you're in a deep sleep and your eyes move around quickly. It's during this period of sleep that your brain is most active and when vivid (and sexy) dreams can occur.
"This is when the brain regions tied to emotion, memory, and arousal are activated," shared Dr Patel.
Further explaining how exactly sleepgasms work, she said: "Your brain being highly active is to process emotions, memories, and vivid dreams.
"The body reacts on its own during sleep: this could mean more blood flows to the genitals, the muscles in the pelvic area might tighten, and without the brain holding anything back, an orgasm can happen automatically.
"Despite this, your body will remain mostly paralysed to prevent you acting out dreams."
While you'd think you'd need to be having a dream where you're being fireman's-lifted by Henry Cavill to reach such a feat, apparently you don't necessarily need to be having a racy dream to have a sleepgasm.
"People often report waking up mid-orgasm with no memory of a sexual dream," said Dr Patel. "This means sleepgasms can occur quite spontaneously, likely triggered by things like body positioning or even hormonal shifts."