Do you want to make sex and masturbation more pleasurable? Do you have trouble orgasming during sex? Do you cum too quickly and want to find ways to make sex last longer? Different techniques, supplements, and strategies can help you increase male sensitivity and make both sex and masturbation more pleasurable.
We’ll start with general tips to increase penis sensitivity and then how to get sensation back (if you’re lost it), how to increase sexual stamina, and whether masturbation is bad for your health.
We’ll start with general tips to increase penis sensitivity. Firstly, recognize that penis sensitivity is to some degree fixed by your body’s unique anatomy. Your ability to feel touch is thanks to various receptors in the skin called “mechanoreceptors”. These receptors respond to stimulation such as touch or friction. The relative density of these receptors varies throughout the body (3) and varies from person to person.
You can’t change your anatomy, so what can you do? Lifestyle changes can have a huge impact on penis sensitivity. Improving your diet, increasing your daily physical activity, quitting smoking, and reducing alcohol intake can improve your overall health and increase blood flow to the penis, which can help with sensitivity.
Supplements such as L-arginine can increase blood flow and improve penis sensitivity.
But what if you’ve tried the things above and you’re still not as sensitive as you’d like to be?
When it comes to masturbation: too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. While masturbation itself is not harmful (we’ll talk more about that later) masturbating can “train” your penis to respond a particular type of stimulation which can impact your ability to orgasm while having sex.
“Death-grip syndrome” is a term that was coined by sex columnist Dan Savage to describe the inability for someone to orgasm while having sex as a result of masturbating with too tight of a grip. When you grab your penis very firmly while masturbating regularly the more subtle sensations of partnered sex may not be strong enough for you to orgasm.
One solution for “death-grip syndrome” is to abstain from masturbating and allowing your penis to readjust to partnered sex. If you are having sex and unable to orgasm, it is tempting to pull out and finish yourself off. However, you need to “relearn” how to cum without stroking yourself so do not revert to masturbating to climax. This can be frustrating (no one likes blue balls!), but with time your male sensitivity will increase and you will find that you can orgasm again with a partner.
Let’s take a second to level-set our expectations. A survey done in 2005 of 500 couples from five countries found that the average total time for penetrative sex was 5.4 minutes. (6) Alright, feeling a bit better about yourself? Let’s look at a couple ways to increase your sexual stamina.
5.4 minutes is only the time taken to reach orgasm once penis-in-vagina (PIV) sex begins. This does not include foreplay, oral sex, cuddling, or just rolling around with your partner and having fun. The absolute easiest way to improve your sexual stamina is to increase the range of activities that you think of as sex. Take your time and focus on your partner. Don’t rush to bring your penis on-stage. Your dick should be a supporting actor to an otherwise already excellent performance.
If you’re already focusing on all the right things (taking your time, focusing on your partner’s pleasure, etc.), but you want to increase your sexual stamina further let’s dive deeper. Fortunately male sensitivity is not correlated with premature ejaculation. (5) You can still do everything else listed in this article to increase your male sensitivity and you’re not going to make yourself ejaculate faster.
We talked about masturbation techniques in the previous section on “how to get sensation back”. It turns out that how you masturbate can also impact your overall sexual stamina. If you condition yourself to ejaculate quickly while masturbating (for example, if you’re used to masturbating quickly as a teenage to avoid getting caught) then you may have trouble breaking this habit during sex. (7) So slow down… even when you’re alone!
Similar to our recommendation to take it slow (both solo or partnered), educate yourself on edging. Edging is the act of bringing yourself to the edge of orgasm and then pulling back. Doing this repeatedly helps you build a sense of where your “orgasmic inevitability” lies. This is the line over which no matter what you do, you will cum. Figuring out how to tiptoe up to this line and then pulling back, slowing down, or changing stimulation can help you increase sexual stamina.
No. Jerking is not bad for your health.
At least, not in the ways that common myths present. Masturbating will not make you go blind, it won’t give you erectile dysfunction, and it won’t cause low testosterone (8). Jerking off can cause issues if done in ways that cause death-grip syndrome or condition yourself to ejaculate too quickly, but masturbating itself is normal and healthy.
Too much masturbation has been known to cause Erectile Dysfunction, but that amount is different depending on the person.
There are certain supplements which you can take to increase the pleasure that you get from masturbation and ejaculation. Supplements such as zinc, pygeum, and lecithin can all increase your semen volume and orgasm intensity.
Circumcision is the removal of the foreskin which normally covers the head (or glans) of the penis. The majority of newborns in the United States are circumcised (4).
Let’s start with some good news: studies have found that circumcision has no adverse effect on penis sensitivity. (1) This is good news because unless you have a time machine that’s one thing you’re not going to easily change about your anatomy (although foreskin restoration is possible!). (2)
When it comes to sexual stamina, studies have shown no difference between people with circumcised or uncircumcised penises. (6)
✔️ References
1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23937309/
2. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/foreskin-restoration
3. https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/jn.00313.2020
4. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/circumcision_2013/circumcision_2013.htm
5. https://www.nature.com/articles/3900368
6. https://www.jsm.jsexmed.org/article/S1743-6095(15)31189-9/fulltext
