LADIES: 3 Things That Happen When You Masturbate

There are many perks of masturbation. It helps relieve stress, helps you understand what your body likes, and helps you find pleasure when you don’t have a man. But how exactly does your body react to masturbation?

Here are three main things that happen when you masturbate.

1. You get aroused

Arousal in the case of masturbation isn’t substantively different from arousal in sex with partners; your body reacts in the same way. The most obvious reaction to arousal is the vagina lubricating and clitoris hardening with blood. Arousal during masturbation will cause everything from muscle tension to a quicker pulse and the rearrangement of the uterus inside the body, retracting slightly in order to help penetration (useful if you’re using a toy). And the brain’s reward circuit is being bombarded with pleasurable messages, with positive neurochemicals swilling around to prompt some serious mental highs.

2. The imaginative center of your brain comes on

Arousal and orgasm light up the brain like a firework: the hippocampus, amygdala, cerebellum and hypothalamus combine to get you to your peak. But that’s not all. We’re gradually beginning to understand that (in the female brain at least) the mental patterns of arousal and stimulation visible in the brain actually differ between partner sex and solo masturbation. And a lot of it seems to be involved with fantasy and our brain’s capacity for imagination.

Back in 2011, New Scientist reported on two competing studies documenting the female brain at the moment of orgasm, which seemed seemed to indicate two very different things. But it turned out that the studies had one crucial difference: in one, the subjects were being aroused by their partners, while in the other they were solely responsible for their good vibes, as it were.

And the brain seemed to react differently to the solo adventure. In masturbation, the female brain’s prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain heavily associated with creative thinking (you can actually zap it with electricity to spark some imagination), turns up the volume. In the case of partner sex, it seemed that certain elements of it actually turned off, specifically the part that seems responsible for self-control.

Interestingly, female masturbation also seems to have the benefit of lowering the possibility of vaginal and urinary tract infections through clearing out accumulated bacteria in the vagina through a process called “tenting,” a function during arousal wherein the uterus is drawn upwards and the cervix withdraws a bit. The process of tenting stretches and pulls the mucous within the cervix, allowing for a rise in acidity in the cervical fluid. This increases ‘friendly’ bacteria and allows more fluid to move from the cervix into the vagina. When ‘old’ fluid moves from the tented cervix, it not only lubricates the vagina, but also flushes out unfriendly organisms that can cause infections.