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  • Hi, I'm Aaron Carroll. You can usually find me here at Healthcare Triage,

  • but today we're going to head over to the salon for, Mental Floss

  • where I'll be talking to you about 20 myths and misconceptions about sex.

  • Look, fair warning here

  • This is an episode about sex. If you think that's inappropriate or it's not

  • your thing, probably a good idea to turn this off now.

  • Did you know that it's a myth there's any correlation between penis between penis size and shoe size?

  • There have been many studies on this, amazingly enough and they failed to find

  • any link between the size of a man's shoes and the size of a man's stretched or erect penis.

  • There's also no relationship between his penis and the size of his hands or ears.

  • Or anything else for that matter. Looking at his shoes will only tell you about his taste in footwear.

  • And that's the first of many misconceptions about sex I'm gonna debunk today.

  • It's a myth that the average man has a seven inch penis.

  • Let's be honest, to study this correctly you can't ask man how big their penises are,

  • you have to get in there and measure yourself.

  • We found 15 studies that looked at scratched penile length and most men had

  • an average around five inches

  • Here in Indiana, the Kinsey Institute studied more than 1,600 men

  • and found an average erect penis size was about 5.6 inches.

  • Interestingly, erections brought about by oral sex were larger than

  • erections brought about by manual stimulation.

  • Is that cuz oral sex causes bigger erections,

  • or is it cuz bigger penises get oral sex? We have no idea.

  • It's a myth that wearing a condom makes you last longer.

  • In a study of 500 men from Europe and America,

  • their "intravaginal ejaculation latency time" was 5.4 minutes.

  • They literally clocked these men with a stopwatch.

  • Men, 18-30 years old lasted the longest, at 6.5 minutes on average.

  • Dropping to only 4.3 minutes for men over 51.

  • Wearing a condom made no difference. Nor did whether the men were circumcised.

  • Here Clark Kent's SuperSpeed backfires, Aquaman wins.

  • It's a myth that you can build up on much bigger load.

  • I'm not sure why so many people care about this but here we go.

  • In 2005, a study of more than 6,000 men who provided about 9,500 "samples" was published.

  • Men who waited a week had an average ejaculate volume of 3.7 ml.

  • Men who had sex the day before, had a volume of 2.3 ml.

  • That's a difference of less than 1/3 of a teaspoon.

  • But even men who came earlier that day still produced 2.4 ml,

  • so we can't imagine that waiting is worth it.

  • It's a myth that men want blondes more than brunettes.

  • Sure, there've been some local studies that point to the fact that men may say this.

  • But they're usually in places were blonde hair is less common.

  • In areas where blonde hair is more common, the preference is not as clear.

  • There's also no correlation in studies between women having blonde hair

  • and having more sexual partners, more sex, or more orgasms.

  • It's a myth that most women are going hairless these days.

  • Yes, it's true that Playboy centerfolds are more likely to have little or no pubic hair in recent years,

  • but that's a skewed sample.

  • A 2010 survey of more than 2,400 women

  • found that only 11% of women age 18-68 remove all of their hair most of the time.

  • 20% removed no hair at all,

  • and only about a quarter removed their pubic hair some of the time.

  • Going bare somewhat related to age,

  • with 21% of 18-24 year olds shaving it all off

  • versus 9% of women in their 30's or 2% of women over 50.

  • Bottom line though, is that the majority of women of all ages

  • keep some hair down there.

  • It's a myth that bigger breasts are less sensitive than smaller breasts.

  • Some people have argued that bigger breasts have longer nerves to get to the skin,

  • and that this makes them "feel" less. Of course, then, taller women would have less sensitivity, too,

  • and no one makes that argument.

  • The evidence for this comes from studies

  • that ask women if they could feel hair-like filaments of different sizes on their breasts.

  • There were differences,

  • but no woman ever defined sensitivity during sex as the ability to feel a single hair.

  • Besides, no one argues that men with smaller penises

  • derive more pleasure than men with large penises.

  • It's a myth that sex is great exercise.

  • Yeah, it burns off some calories but most people aren't active for that long.

  • 30 minutes of sex might burn off 85-150 calories

  • but remember the average intravaginal ejaculation latency time I mentioned before?

  • Not even close. The time that sex is aerobic

  • where your heart rate goes up is even shorter.

  • Despite what you've learned from our highly scientific competitor, Mad Men

  • it's a myth that all men cheat or that there's a difference between men and women

  • If you define cheating as intercourse then yeah men cheat more often.

  • If you broaden it to include other acts, then women cheat pretty much as often as men

  • Surprisingly, age doesn't seem to be a factor, either.

  • The most comprehensive study we've seen showed that 23% of men,

  • and 19% of women, had cheated in their current relationship.

  • The biggest predictor was being unhappy or incompatible in terms of sexual attitudes or values.

  • It's a myth that men peak sexually long before women.

  • What does peak mean, anyway? If you define it to be the frequency of sex,

  • then both men and women are likely to go without it for a whole year during their 20's.

  • If we define it by masturbation, they're both most likely to do it in their late 20's.

  • If we define it by oral sex, men are most likely to get in their late twenties and

  • give it in their 30's.

  • Women are most likely to give and receive it in their late 20's.

  • If we define sex at least four times a week, it's 30's or 40's for men,

  • and late 20's for women. There's no metric that makes this myth true.

  • Speaking of sexual peaks, did you ever wonder if Spiderman was a metaphor for going

  • through puberty?

  • It's a myth that young men are more likely to ejaculate prematurely.

  • If we define that as climaxing too early then studies have shown that

  • 30% of 18-29 year olds have an issue. But so do 32% of men in their 30's,

  • 28% of men in their 40's and 32% of men in their 50's.

  • For most men, it's a transient issue that goes away.

  • For men with severe and lifelong premature ejaculation,

  • it actually worsens as men age.

  • It's a myth that men think about sex every 7 seconds. This one defies belief,

  • it would be, sex...

  • sex… sex,

  • all day! That would be more than 57,000 times a day.

  • It's pretty much every time you take a breath.

  • Over 40% of men report thinking about sex

  • only a few times a month or a few times a week.

  • 4% of men think about sex less than once a month

  • There's no truth to this one at all.

  • It's a myth that married people don't masturbate.

  • Lots and lots of people masturbate. A study of college students found that 98% of males

  • and 44% of females reported having masturbated.

  • Males averaged 12 times a month and females average 5.

  • A study of married people, found that 85% of men

  • and 45% of women had masturbated in the last year.

  • It's a myth the dead males can develop erections.

  • Who comes up with this stuff, anyway, do an internet search you're bound to

  • come up with a news story about a woman in Missouri who worked in a mortuary

  • and was arrested after becoming pregnant from a cadaver she, well, worked on.

  • It's a hoax. What is also a hoax is the idea that a cadaver could "develop" an erection.

  • Can't happen. If you die flaccid, you're flaccid for good.

  • It is possible to die with an erection, though. And keep it.

  • It actually occurred pretty often in men who died by hanging.

  • You still can't cause a dead body to ejaculate, though.

  • It's a myth that only males have wet dreams.

  • First of all, let's stipulate that a wet dream is a state of sexual arousal, while asleep,

  • that results in orgasm that wakes you up. More than one study has found that about

  • 40% of females report having had this happen to them.

  • About 30% of females report this happening in the last year.

  • The numbers for men are higher, but women ain't doing too badly.

  • It's a myth that masturbating will make you go blind. I mean, come on.

  • If this were true YouTube would be a total waste of time because almost none of you

  • would be able to see the videos. This is just totally untrue.

  • But here's a fun fact, John Harvey Kellogg, was a famous nutritionist and sexual adviser,

  • he developed a number of food including his eponymous corn flakes

  • to reduce sexual desire and stop masturbation.

  • I don't think they work.

  • It's a myth that the pill make you gain weight. When it was first developed, it contained very very high levels of both

  • estrogen and progesterone, but the pill as it exists today is much more refined

  • and contains far lower levels of hormones. A meta analysis by the Cochrane Collaboration

  • found 49, yes 49 studies that

  • compared the pill to a placebo, and other pills, with respect to weight gain.

  • None of the studies that compared the pill to placebo, showed that birth control pills

  • cause weight gain.

  • I'm not saying you're guaranteed not to gain weight if you go on the pill,

  • but it's likely not because of the pill. This pill full of candy will make you gain weight.

  • It still won't make your kids hyper, though.

  • It's a myth that you can game having a boy or girl by how you have sex.

  • You just can't. Some people say that X sperm are bigger than Y sperm,

  • because the X chromosome a significantly bigger than the Y chromosome.

  • Therefore, if ejaculation occurs further from the cervix,

  • Y sperm have a better chance of overtaking the X sperm and making it to the egg first,

  • So if you want a girl, go for a deeper ejaculation. If you want a boy, do the opposite.

  • Another explanation has it that X sperm are hardier than Y sperm.

  • So if you ejaculate farther from the cervix, X sperm are more likely to make it all the

  • way to the egg first.

  • If this is true, if you want a boy, go for a deeper ejaculation.

  • If you want a girl, do the opposite. Or just recognize that all this is ridiculous.

  • It's a myth that you don't need the HPV vaccine until you're having sex.

  • First of all, you need to be fully vaccinated before you're ever exposed to HPV for the vaccine to work.

  • And that takes time. So once you've had sex, it may be too late,

  • HPV is really common. So is sex.

  • By the end of their teenage years, more than 3 quarters of all adolescents have

  • engaged in sexual intercourse. More than 2 thirds of them had sex with at least 2 people.