Why do I wake up with lumber?

SO YOU MET the dawn in full salute. Maybe you attributed it to your partner's snuggling up extra close, or even to a full bladder. Could be, but "healthy males of all ages have three to five erections every night for reasons that have nothing to do with sexual arousal or the need to urinate," says J. Catesby Ware, Ph.D., chief of the division of sleep medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk and director of the Sleep Disorder Center at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.

NOCTURNAL ERECTIONS are actually a form of exercise. When the penis is flaccid, Ware explains, it receives little blood flow, which hinders the oxygenation and removal of waste products from penile cells.

WHILE YOU'RE awake and moving, the penis receives a healthy flow of blood. But during sleep, the body responds to the hematic slowdown with a genital workout roughly every 90 minutes. This usually occurs during rapid-eye-movement sleep--the time in which you also happen to be dreaming. REM periods grow longer as the night progresses, increasing the likelihood of a stiff wakeup call.

IF YOU REGULARLY rise sporting a pup tent, chances are that any occasional erectile difficulty is not physiological. If your plumbing works in the a.m., your p.m. shortfalls are probably psychological.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Weider Publications
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning