Can men have too many orgasms? Can you run out of semen?

Anonymous
asks:
My boyfriend is worried that if he orgasms too often, he'll run out of "man juice" and start "shooting blanks". This makes him wary of orgasming twice in one day. This sounds like a myth to me- as long as a guy waits long enough between orgasms, he won't "run out" of semen right?
David replies:

Hi Marie, your boyfriend doesn't have anything to worry about.

You might not even believe this but the man who invented corn flakes, Dr. Harvey Kellogg, as well as the guy who invented Graham crackers, Dr. Sylvester Graham, and most experts of their day, believed that any man who ejaculated "as often as" ten times *a year* would be physically and mentally so weakened that he'd go insane before age 30 and die by age 40. The doctors each invented their cornflakes and crackers because they really believed a bland diet reduced deadly "excitation."

A lot of people believed it too! You know how the big modern word for orgasm is "come" or "cum?" Up to about 100 years ago the word was "spend" because, like Dr. Kellogg and Graham people believed men were born with only so much semen, and once that was gone the were done for. They believed, literally, that they had to "spend" their semen wisely.

And you know how some people still get all bent out of shape about masturbation? That's a holdover from the old days when it was believed you could run out.

Now is any of that true? Of course not! Bodies create semen, like most other bodily fluids, at a fairly steady rate. If your boyfriend had a few orgasms in a short enough period he'd ejaculate less fluid the last time than he did the first but...

- Ok, first of all he's never going to run out by having too many orgasms. The next day his penis could be a little sore but internally he'll be ready to produce just as much semen as if he'd only ejaculated once that day. So physically there's nothing to worry about.

- And there's another thing: sex, or orgasms, aren't measured by how much "man juice" you make during one but by whether it feels good. There might not be quite as much semen in the third ejaculation in a day but it's going to feel just about as nice to him.

- One last thing, though, and in a lot of ways it's the most important: it might not hurt him to ejaculate more often, but if he only wants to have sex once a day, if that feels best to him, then fine -- it's his decision. No one should let fears of too many orgasms keep them from having sex, but neither should we let ourselves be pressured into having it more often that we want.

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