 Hi everybody and welcome back to our podcast from the Kamasutra to 2020 where we look at your questions, your concerns, even your worries around all things to do with sex and sexuality. So as always, we have with us Dr. Anvita Madan Pihel, Anvita is, as you know, a psychosexual therapist, and she brings the psychological perspective to the advice that the Kamasutra has to give. But today we're very excited because we also have with us Dr. Tenea Narendra or otherwise known as Dr. Cutress, as most of you will know her because she's a huge personality on social media, and she goes by the name Dr. Cutress and Tenea is studying to be a gynecologist. Tenea is also somebody who speaks up a lot for vaginal health, for literal health and literacy. So we're really, really excited to have Tenea with us today. Tenea, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here and talk more about interesting things. Absolutely. So Tenea, I know that one of the things that you told me is that your masters was in a subject called assisted reproduction. And I'm going to ask you to explain that in a minute to people. I'll tell you why I bring that up is because I know that the other thing that you're very passionate about. And it's something that Anrita and I have talked about a lot is this whole idea of semen retention and all the misconceptions and the myths around it and what people on social media are saying about it and how much it is influencing the younger generation who are listening in. And I really think it's time to clear up some of these issues. So tell us a little bit about assisted reproduction. I'm so my masters are definitely in a subject called clinical embryology I just say assisted reproduction because we pretend to understand that a little bit more than clinical embryology that's a very vague term. But essentially what I studied was how we can help people who are battling infertility or battling fertility issues how we can help them conceive, which meant that I spent three quarters of my masters examining a lot of semen. So I'm very familiar with it. Even after my masters. A lot of my work involves analyzing semen, seeing what kind of spawn people have is it healthy or not, and how they can use it better to make their partner pregnant. So I guess the question that is always asked is that if you master weight, are you wasting your ceiling like this gets asked and when we were doing sex education. There was so many myths around and so many cultures would stop young men from masturbating, because you know the idea was that it would impact your fertility or virility and everything. Yes, we have you here to break this first myth in some ways. Does masturbation or when you ejaculate does that impact your, you know, fertility in any way or masculinity, because that's a big question as well. That's a very important question. Thank you for asking it. It's also something I tend to receive very very often and masturbating or ejaculating or losing your semen is not bad for your health in any way. This is a very commonly quoted thing that you will hear at Jin's actually that gym instructors will tell you that you can masturbate because you're going to lose the protein in your body and it's going to lead you to lose muscle mass. I don't see how that can happen because semen doesn't contain testosterone of protein and such quantities that you know ejaculating it would, you know, dramatically alter your health profile. If that were the case then we wouldn't need to look for food we could just survive on semen which we don't so it's a really interesting idea actually semen diet, but yeah no moving on from that very very quickly. So the thing is that we have actually grown up with and I think there's a lot of medical journals that say that it's made up of 60% of the vitamins and the minerals in your body or 60% of each quantity of ejaculate has vitamins and minerals and things. And I know that again that's a question that gets asked because a lot of people would say I used to masturbate a lot and now I've lost so much weight I can't gain it back again. Aside from the semen diet yeah. I do want to point out here that there's a correlation between a lot of people saying that they've either lost a lot of weight or they've gotten acne or they've gotten hairier as they masturbated and that's because there's something in science that we call correlation versus causation, which is basically that just because two things are happening at the same time they correlated that doesn't mean they're causing the other thing, for example, in Australia. If you have in the summertime a lot of people eat ice cream right and in the summertime because a lot of people go to the beach there's a rise in shark attacks. So if somebody were to read this data in a not scientifically educated way they would say that eating ice cream leads to an increase in shark attacks in Australia. This is a correlation causation would be that because it's summertime people are eating more ice cream and because it's summertime more people are at the beach which means there's more shark attacks. There's a wonderful preachers by the way can I just interact and say that they're not awful as we make them out to be. So, yeah, what essentially happens is that when we are just hitting puberty, there's an increase in sexual urges which means we're masturbating a lot more, which also means that because we just hit puberty our body is producing hormones in a way that it doesn't produce ever, which is leading to acne which is leading to an increase in facial hair and increase in body hair, and it's leading to weight loss because for most men, puberty also comes with a lot of definition in their muscles which means they suddenly shed a lot of weight and they just become a little bit more lean is the word possibly yeah. Masturbating in and of itself does not lead you to lose any of this and semen, an average amount of volume of semen is two to five milliliters that's a teaspoon or a half a teaspoon. That's how much sugar somebody would put in their chai on an average and that is not going to give you a lot of vitamins and minerals. The actual composition of semen is made up of secretions. These secretions contain a small amount of sugar, which is truck toes to give the little swimmers some energy so they can swim. And some minutes a little bit of zinc, but that's it nothing in extraordinary amounts that you would like to replace your supplements your regular supplements for your daily dose of semen. Before I'm with her before you say something I just want to put in a little point over here because I'm with her and I've also answered a lot of questions about oral sex over time. And so I want to say that from the makeup of it that you've given us I just want to say that obviously it's okay because again a lot of people always write in and say, this is all sweat and urine so at least we can say that if you are enjoying oral sex. It is okay to do so that there is things like proctors and zinc and so on so you're all right with it. Sorry, you're over to you. No, I was just going to ask the question that you know I did not know that I knew it was a lot related to the health industry but I did not know that the gym instructors would recommend not masturbating. So I was wondering, where do you think like is this the cross connection with the no fat movement and this whole idea of like not masturbating and the health industry and everything joining together like is that where all these ideas are getting muddled up in some ways Do you want to also tell people about how no FAP is different from like the semen retention and like all because I feel like there's so many terms out there now that people just you interuse you know interchangeably use them and they're all different things in some ways. While he was speaking I just came upon this idea about the wellness industry which is it's quite interesting that if you talk about the wellness industry in general, they will always push the idea of female sexual liberation, and they will always push the idea of feminine energy and unie eggs and things like that that women should embrace their sexuality. And at the same time for some strange reason men are told not to embrace their sexuality or run away from it and they're given these ideas that embracing your sexuality or your sexual needs and urges is somehow a bad thing. I don't know this is just a random thought that came into my mind. That's such an interesting thought because yeah like why is the movement going there like why are men being told that expressing your sexuality and like we were discussing before it is still coming from the male centric need in some ways because it is for their physique and their ability and their energy and all of it so that is being kept in question but it is interesting. It would be interesting to pose that question to a lot of people that why is the movement going towards, you know, reducing the male sexuality versus enhancing it in some ways. It's an interesting chain of thought that just I don't know. For example if you've seen Goop by Gwyneth Paltrow she has a lot of focus on masturbate generally anywhere if you talk about more new age ideas of health and wellness the wellness industry at large. It's quite interesting to think of it, but since we were on the know fat versus seeming attention idea I've just opened the know fat website in front of me. It says that know fat is a secular community centered sexual health platform designed to help you overcome porn addiction porn overuse and compulsive sexual behavior. So these are the three things we are here to help you quit or reduce porn use improve your relationships and reach your sexual health goals. And nowhere does it say that masturbation is bad nowhere does it say that we're here to tell you not to masturbate. It only says we are here to tell you to stop using or reduce your use of pornography. And that has somehow been completed and mixed with semen retention I believe Seema will be able to tell us much better about semen retention in general, but I know that it's distinct from know fat so over to you Seema. No, so this idea of semen retention has just kind of. I think it's like you said it's kind of got mixed up all in one. But when you look at our old mythologies the stories are always about retaining semen you know it's like the man was supposed to lose his semen and I think you know that this must have been when they were trying to build up society they were trying to build up the numbers so this is going back into the ancient past when these stories are written, because whenever you read a story, you know the king is sitting by the riverside he sees something gets very excited he ejaculates, then he carefully gathers it up on a leaf and he sends it with a bird to his wife or it falls you know what I mean like it's always used it's to be wasted. And I imagine that it was, because they believed that it wasn't something that they could have on tap all the time it would take time for a man to ejaculate regularly or very regularly or maybe twice in a row or whatever so I guess they must have thought that this was important for them to be able to build up their society. And that's why there was this whole point of retaining semen. Now, in ancient I did a video some years ago about what all the ancient erotic texts talk about you know on different subjects. And the, I did one on semen retention by the way which is probably got the most hits of any other video that I did in the past, because I personally think that the ones that were very exciting with the ones about jewelry during sex or love bites or love scratches but no it's the one on semen retention that got the most hits. And all I said was that it's the Chinese text actually that offer how to hold back your semen so the ancient Indian texts the scripture talks a little bit about to hold it back. But that's during love making during sex. Because the Chinese texts are the ones that really focus in on it because they kind of, they tell you that if you are going to be having sex then you need to do a minimum of four to 5000 trusts to prove that you are. It's, it's like a wild amount you know to prove that you're a good lover, anything less than that 300 trusts are like useless you can't do it. And hence for 5000 trusts you really had to be able to retain your semen. And so they give you all these ideas about visualize monkeys jumping from branch to branch and you can hold your ejaculation back. Not endingly but you know I guess the idea here was to shift your focus. So basically, if you stop thinking about what you're doing, you are going to stop you might even go a little bit. Flags, you know, I mean you might even go a bit soft so you would automatically stop or there's this one about there's a particular point on the left side of your chest if you press that point. I don't think it's any one particular point but it was about the focus of looking for that one particular point, focusing on that putting your finger there or putting your tongue against the palate. Again that's another one that they suggest. These are all ideas to stop yourself from ejaculating while you're having sex, so that you can continue longer. And I have to say that the kamasutra and the ancient Indian text, talk about pleasuring the woman before you penetrate her. They say, at least bring her to orgasm twice before you penetrate her so that you're not over there saying that you're just going to be you know trusting away for hour upon hour upon hour, because frankly as I've said before, most women don't find that extremely pleasurable at all not for that long anyway. But yeah, semen retention seems to just have become such a fascinating subject for a lot of people and like you said, a lot of them are mixing it up with masturbation with no fat with celibacy because we hear that this is all about celibacy about this being sinful in ancient Christian belief for instance they would constantly tell you will go blind if you masturbate. Yeah, those are the ancient cultural ideas around this. Yeah. And that is really interesting because I think it has always like it has been so confusing and people have really struggled with the idea of masturbation and see it as something sinful and you know when we start talking about the cultural values and how then you're seen as the bad person because you masturbate and all those things and and you start judging yourself and I have worked with both men and women who then really struggle with their own values and morality when it comes to masturbation because they're all these culturally it's not something that you know has been transmitted saying that that's healthy it's normal it's normal to have sexual feelings and to masturbate and obviously like you're saying Seema all these religious or cultural ideas around like not wasting your semen then come into the picture as well and then wondering if either of you have thoughts around this. I tend to see it a lot in my practice, for example, so at Oxford we had along with my degree they were obviously several other degrees one of the degrees was a PhD in theology. And at one of these dinners I met a theologian and I told him what I do. And he was obviously very upset because a large part of infertility treatments involves somebody masturbating in a cup. So we can use that semen, take the sperm out of it and artificially injected into the egg and make a baby or you know, different other variations of this. And he was really upset about the the number of others from that are going to be lost there. So, I was a very confused because you know if somebody has an inherent desire to have a child for you to comment on what's happening with the others. That means that every active sex that does not lead to a baby being formed is a waste. And, you know, I mean, if somebody is trying that means they're being sinful. Is this some sort of a punishment that they're getting that they're not able to conceive that's a very shameful idea to, you know, put on to and trust on to somebody who's already struggling so much with their fertility issues. But this is, you know, sort of the more extreme end of the spectrum on the very basic and there is so much shame around sexuality because of ideas like this. And that we have physical manifestations of this in, you know, conditions like vaginismus where, you know, a vagina owner just their vagina basically just just closes shut if they have a very rigorously negative ideology towards sex, the vagina physically clamps shut and they cannot be penetrated. And it takes a lot of therapy it takes a lot of physically dilating the vagina with different, you know, instruments that they can eventually maybe experience sex in their life at all, or not even sex, you know, something as simple as inserting a tampon is a nightmare for people with vaginismus. The amount of shame and the amount of stigma we're associating with something as natural and as simple as masturbation is so damaging to, you know, the sexual psyche of people in the long run that it's Yeah, I have a question for you. So a lot of people in recent times on social media I've actually seen a couple of people talk about how if the semen is not ejaculated in the normal way so if it's not you don't masturbate it out or if you don't use it in sex. Basically, that the semen will travel inwards and upwards in your body and do wonderful things for the rest of you is that something that can happen. I mean, I'm almost frightened at the thought of something that's supposed to go out traveling back upwards but tell us the actual scientific detail behind that. Let me see if I have one of my models lying around. I have three uteruses on my table and not a single ball sack. But essentially what happens is that the scrotum or the testicles, these are the semen producing factories. So this is where you make semen. You can get rid of it even if you don't get rid of it you're going to get a new batch in three months, even if you don't masturbate and even if you don't ejaculate. There's a fresh new batch like a new wholesale delivery, new stock of sperm every three months. From the testicles, there is one exit out. It will exit out through a channel, a highway of sorts and that highway leads on to the main road which is the penis. So imagine there's a giant highway and the main road on the highway is the duct through which the semen comes out. There is no possible way that the semen that is being produced can go out anywhere other than out through the penis. It can stay in there and it can eventually die off and then obviously make new sperm in three months. But sperm can't travel upwards and one distinction that I'd like to make here is that sperm and semen are two different things. So sperm are little tiny tadpole like things that are there in the semen itself. Imagine they're small men or small people and semen is the vehicle in which these small people travel in. So imagine semen is the car. So the car is produced because the people need to travel. If you're not going to masturbate, if you're not going to ejaculate, the remaining part of the semen will not be produced. The sperm will still be there in a precursor form in like a more less mature form. And if the process of ejaculation were to happen, then they will move out, sit in their car and drive out. If they don't have to drive out, they won't get the car in the first place. It's just not going to be produced. It's not like it's going to go travel upwards in some other direction and give you some superpower. So you see, because in Tanthra, we talk about the idea of harnessing your sexual energy. And so it's about, it's very much about the energy. It's about understanding that when you raise your, I guess, call it metabolism and scientific terms, but basically when you raise your energy, that energy floods every part of your body. It's not going to sort of stick to one part or two. It goes through your body and we say that it starts at the Moolabhar Chakra, which is right at the bottom. And that's where the energy starts to radiate upwards from. And we, over here, we talk about a very intangible Shakti. It's about energy. It's about a whole lot of other things. And again, this is something that people confuse with the idea of semen with sperm. I mean, a lot of people don't actually understand that the two things are separate, semen and sperm are separate, but there are just so many misconceptions around it. And we do. And with that, I get a lot of questions around this thing where people get very good, I mean, it all kind of gets mixed up one into the other. So it's one question with like a gazillion tentacles to it. But is there just something that you can actually explain in terms of what is the difference between, let's say, you know, I know we start off by saying what's the difference between semen retention and no fat. But what is the distinct difference between what are the benefits of either, if at all? Are there any benefits? Let's see. So ejaculating releases a hormone called prolactin and prolactin helps you be sleepy like it makes you sleepy. So if you don't ejaculate, you won't release a lot of prolactin, which means you won't feel very sleepy. So if you really want to stay up, not ejaculating might help. But I don't know what the, what the point of that. Some people like staying up. Okay. Yeah. Oh, it's like people don't really master it only at night. Like, you know, people would masturbate all the time. Right. So, or the morning masturbation is a very normal routine that a lot of people practice. So I feel like once again, you know, people can confuse the ideas with like, so it does I do think masturbation relaxes you so it helps in sleeping, because it de stresses you and it relaxes you and then I think you sleep better and you know, that helps with it. But it also is for some people it energizes them and then morning masturbation routine is a very common routine that we hear often from people. It's certainly a self pleasure routine for me is extremely important, because I think that it just, it just sort of sheds a lot of unwanted baggage. On to the next thing. So to me, it's as important as saying, okay, you know, I have to do this much exercise for my body. I do this much exercise for my brain. And I do this much exercise for myself. You know, so you have the three different things. I think that's a great way of putting it. And you know, yes, there's so many different kinds of masturbation practices and people masturbate in the morning, some at night, some in the middle of the day. A lot of people masturbate when they're stressed, especially, you know, there's been a huge upsurge in people masturbating right now because of the pandemic and you know, sort of stress that comes with it. Because it's a great form of stress release. It's like biochemically documented that it reduces your stress that your body feels it can reduce it can lead to a reduction in your blood pressure. It can promote the secretion of oxytocin, which means you bond better if you're doing it with yourself and you want better with yourself and what's better than self love. And if you do it with somebody else, then you know, it increases the bond you have between you and your partner if you're masturbating or if you're ejaculating as a part of your coupled sexual practice. There's a very interesting study that I always like to quote when somebody asks me about the bad side of masturbation. And this is that this is not the bad side heads up, which is that this is a study from Howard no less. It's not like some shady study in some back alley, but they compared the risk of prostate cancer in people who masturbated and people who did not masturbate. And they found that if you masturbate over 21 times a month, which is almost every day, you have a 30% lower risk of getting prostate cancer. It's a big, big number. It's not a small number. And you're literally protecting yourself from cancer by pleasuring yourself like quite literally. So we had this thing about saying that you know you heal through pain you can heal through brief and you can heal through pleasure. And certainly there are a lot of texts that talk about healing through pleasure, you know, using different types of means, including we have, you know, and I actually created a chapter in my book on this about how there's a whole study in different times about how you can use different sexual positions to heal chronic illnesses. Yeah, so where you use trusting and your breath to to push your energy through certain parts of your body so you know it's something that has been used for thousands of years it's something that's been talked about for thousands of years. We seem to have come to a point I do I do get the point that maybe people have have started to get addicted to it and fair enough anything that you get addicted to is not a good idea. But as on with as always said that you know you reach a certain age, you automatically I mean like you have nightfall there are things that you automatically do it's not a bad thing to be masturbating and it's not an unnatural thing particularly in younger people Yes, isn't that right on with the absolutely involuntary will always have a release right and we talk about wet dreams or night falls and everything. And also I actually feel this idea of addiction is something once again. People just assume and you know than I just said that masturbating 21 days actually helps in your physical health. And people literally when they come in they speak about addiction they would say, oh and I'm masturbating three times a week I'm addicted you know and that's and I've defined this before we only consider something an addiction if it is. Not allowing you to complete your daily function so that you know when we talk about masturbation addiction or porn addiction. We're talking about people who are unable to go to work, or unable to finish their studies or they work because there is such a strong urge that they need to watch porn, or they need to masturbate that they're actually unable to attend their classes or attend work meetings and they feel the compulsiveness to do it, just because you're masturbating every day does not mean that you have an addiction in any way possible. It actually could be as Seema was saying or as Tenaya was saying could be your self care or self love or taking care of your sexuality every day so you could see it as a self care routine that you practice every day rather than seeing it negatively in some ways. So that is another you know point to consider because I think a lot of time people start worrying about this that masturbation is something bad and I'm doing it every day and like we said at the beginning they also connected to values about themselves that oh if they're then they're like bad people because they're engaging in masturbation. Sorry I was going to ask that is there a point that you would say, as I was saying you know that when you're a certain age it's sort of so natural. You have nightfall even if you don't voluntarily masturbate, you know you don't sort of that Seema is going to come through it will happen. Is there a point at which it becomes a lot more controlled and there is when you start thinking of this as an issue. I know that we've said that at no point is this an issue to be considered but let's talk about it in the wider spectrum that is there at any point where you would say that it becomes something to think about a lot more or consider before doing life and with I mentioned of course you know if it's becoming a compulsive behavior where you're not able to perform daily life activities they are skipping work to stay at home and masturbate say you're skipping. I don't know eating lunch to stay home and masturbate these things happen and this is a part of compulsory sexual behavior. But aside from this their physical ramifications as well as for example if you're masturbating so much that you have chafed genitals or you know if you're just if it's becoming inflamed and painful, then obviously it's a good marker that you need to stop. Largely, I think it's kind of like is exercising bad for you if you're exercising to a degree that it's hurting your knees, and you're losing the mobility in your joints because you know you just what you call it gives the iron go. If it's gotten to that degree then of course you know you have to stop but exercise in general is good for you. Overdoing it to the degree that it's physically hurting you or mentally hurting you in some way is possibly the time when you stand outside with the stop sign and you like okay you need to chill. But largely in itself there's no reason to not do it. And think of the kind of shame that will come to somebody who is having you know is experiencing nightfall and nightfall is a very very natural and routine part of your sexual development. People have it well into their adulthood as well so it's not like it's something you experience only when you're younger. But imagine the amount of shame it must bring to somebody who is feeling like I've lost a lot of routine in my body or I've lost a lot of good energy or I've lost something precious that I should be storing away. You know it's such a negative thought to put in somebody's head. And especially somebody that much younger who is going to grow up thinking oh my God this is so bad for me and what have I done to myself. Absolutely. And I think what it also does is that it increases little bit of sexual frustration because if you take young people they are sexually curious. They are hormones are creating havoc in their body and masturbation is a safe way of releasing some of that sexual energy and thing. You know when you create all these myths around them and they then feel negatively about themselves it just creates a very complex pattern of growing up in identity in some ways. Whereas masturbation is a very simple and healthy way of sexually expressing yourself or releasing sexual energy that might be present as a young person with the hormones being very present. So I guess from my side. So if we were going to say that there are the three of us sitting over here trying to bust a few myths about this idea of semen retention. And in so my offering, if you will, is to say that okay. People generally the questions that come to me are what is the comma sutra say about such and such a thing. So I just wanted to say that in the cat in the time of the comma sutra, the idea of semen retention, if at all would have been mentioned during sexual activity. The idea of holding yourself back a little bit longer so that you don't come too soon so that you can pleasure your partner. And the comes with it definitely says that women take far longer to come to pleasure than men do. And you being able to hold your semen for that long and keep trusting is not going to do it. So if you are trying to retain your semen while having sex in order to give your partner more pleasure, it does say very categorically. Bring her to pleasure with a bunch of other things, make sure that she has at least two orgasms before you penetrate her, and then have sex. And then at that point let it be mutual don't hold yourself back to such a long time that nobody really knows what's going to happen next. And if you want to hold on a little bit longer, that's fine but so long as there is an end in sight. So from the point of view of the comma sutra. I am merely saying that the idea of semen retention was about giving your partner more pleasure. I think something on with that that you mentioned that it never seems to be about the other gender at the moment when people talk about it. Yes. So that's what they were talking about. And as far as we are concerned, find a lot of other ways of giving your partner pleasure because honestly, there are many other ways of doing it as well. Almost things like this was sort of an ancient way of practicing edging, which is where you just get to the brink of orgasm and then stop to make yourself last longer in bed if you know people have these ideas that they're having premature ejaculation which most often they're not. But it almost sounds like this was just a practice of edging as opposed to a practice of, oh my God, it's going to be awful if you mess if you release your semen and yeah. Yeah, so I think definitely it was either about edging or even if they say like you said, a lot of people don't have the ability they get to that point of such excitement they don't have the ability to hold back. You just want to make sure that your partner has also been pleasure to make sure that she has orgasms before you decide to do it so that you don't have to go through this thing of saying, have I prematurely ejaculated or should I have been retaining my semen because honestly you would not believe the number of people who seem to be worried about it and the number of emails that I've been getting on it. Anvita, what do you say? So I just want to say obviously that I think there are lots of myths around there and people say them with such strong conviction about like I started the video about virility and fertility and masculinity being lost by it and they transfer that idea that it really creates a complex world for young people and their sexuality. So there are a lot of myths, look up the scientific things like Tenaya helped us a lot telling us the physiology, the makeup, the pro, you know, all those myths in some ways. So read up about it in some ways before you just take what is out there, you know, in societal and cultural ways. So read up and look up the scientific knowledge before you make up your mind. And finally, normally Tenaya, I finished this video by sort of, you know, compressing everything that we've talked about making the points and reiterating them. But today I'm going to actually ask you to do that as our expert on semen. I want you to give us your offering on the idea of semen retention. Plus, just reiterate in sort of bullet points all the wonderful advice and information that you brought to us. Okay, so I'm going to sum it up in one line if it makes you happy in some way, don't masturbate, but not masturbating is not going to do anything magical for your health. That's it. That's literally it. This is the crux of the modern myth of semen retention and becoming a superhero from there. Amasturbation in and of itself is actually pretty good for you. It leads to better cardiovascular health, which means better heart health. It leads to some studies have reported a lower risk of cancer. It can make you feel more relaxed. It can lead to better bonding with yourself and your partner. It does sound like a good thing. It does sound like a good thing. And yet, it's always viewed, I think it's just because it's got this taboo and this whole sort of aura around it. And there must be somebody out there who is pushing this. I mean, you know, all these thoughts get pushed on a multimillion dollar industry for some some benefit or the other. And unfortunately, I've noticed I have a 23 year old in my house and I've noticed how deeply impacted the younger people are by what they hear on social media. And I think that it's such, I mean, you know, it is such a huge position of responsibility. People out there on social media when they say certain things because I we have a pretty open household where we talk about almost everything and she knows that she can come and discuss things with me but still she will choose to follow a lot of the stuff that she hears on social media because it's almost gospel because when one of the influencers has said it, they must know what they're talking about. So there is, there are billions of people out there like that of that age group. And I think it's very irresponsible to report incorrect stuff. So whether you think it's a good thing or a bad thing, that's fine, but just get the facts right. And don't put people in situations where they end up feeling miserable and almost like want to self harm because they think that they've done the wrong thing. And I think that's really, really important. So do you want to tell everybody just one more time that it won't do anything for their protein levels and their their mineral levels etc. It will not lead you to losing protein. It will not lead to poor muscle formation if you are, you know, working out if you're at gym and you're trying to build a more muscular physique, masturbation will not harm you. Masturbation does not affect your athletic performance in any way. It gives you better heart, which is the same thing that exercise and, you know, working out does. So it's possibly going to boost it if anything. Yeah. See, I do know that almost all football coaches will say, or a lot of sports coaches will say to their team that, you know, before a game before a match, or at least when the teams are training that sex is definitely not permitted. They're not allowed to have women in the locker rooms. They're not allowed to have women their rooms before that. And I'm imagining, I mean, I always think it's because it's about distractions and it's about getting to bed early and so on and so forth. But as as our in-house doctor today, would you like to reiterate any of that? I completely agree with you. I think it's a distraction thing. There is the few studies that we have do show that, you know, masturbating right before a sports activity that can cause maybe a reduction in your performance right before. But if you masturbate the night before you're going to be alright. The only thing is distraction for sure. Is there anything to add before we finish? No, I was, the thing that keeps coming up for me again and again as we've spoken so much about Seaman today and assisted reproduction and all his wiki donor and for a lot of our Indian viewers, this idea, which is what I've been reflecting it on is that though it was a lovely movie that, you know, broke myths around IVF and everything. There was a strong idea that it wasn't something that he should have been shameful about or, you know, hide that he was donating his female and that made him not a acceptable person or cool person or it wasn't, you know, a nice thing to be doing. And so it was, it once again it was had a lot of value judgment and morality attached to it. And it was only because it had helped so many people have children it was made acceptable but you know Seaman samples are given for a lot of people and a lot of men feel very awkward about that whole act of going and giving Seaman for testing and otherwise and and it just and there was a lot of things that Seema that you had said and I had said which all somewhere feels like society trying to you know control people's sexuality or ways of being and all these ideas. So that you know I just as a last thought like, I just felt like how could we talk so much about Seaman and not about the key donor in some ways so yeah, there was just on my mind. I think that's a great thing to bring in and I'm glad you mentioned him. He's very important culturally, actually, because I think it was a bit of a breakthrough that well. Absolutely. Well, you know, as we sign off I'd like to say thank you to both Anne with Anthony for being with us here today, and bringing their thoughts and their experience and their expertise and their knowledge to the program because I personally have found it really really interesting there's a lot of things than that you told me today which I didn't know about. And I have to say that whenever we have done one of these programs. There's always somebody or the other who writes in and says, don't listen to these women they're trying to lead you down the wrong path they're trying to lead you down the back path. They're trying to make you evil. We're not trying to make anybody evil. We're truly not trying to lead anybody down the right path if anything. We're trying to clear away misconceptions so that whatever you choose to do, as then I said if you choose to not masturbate or you choose to retain your semen that isn't it's a it's a choice that is completely up to you to make. If you choose to masturbate and not retain your semen that is also your choice, just do it from a point of knowledge, understand what you're doing. Well, this chat is about and I really hope that you will take this away and and I hope that this will help you in the next sort of phase of your life because I think that we have enough things to worry about genuinely to worry about. And we don't need to add misconceptions and myths to that. I think that we can all live healthily mental health is what we're after over here. So, if you need to get in touch with me, I am on info.seema.anand.gmail.com. You can send your questions into that. Anvita is on. Anvita.madanbehel.gmail.com and the spellings and everything will be in the text below. And Tenea is on. Dr. underscore cutress at gmail.no wait that's not my email I think what's my email. Dr. cutress and at gmail.com. That's okay it will be in the in the description down below. If you found the video useful if you enjoyed listening to it please do like comment subscribe. Stay healthy stay well things are difficult at the moment. We hope that you come out of it in good mental physical and emotional health and we will see you again soon.