When visiting your doctor, there are always going to be some questions that are too embarrassing, or uncomfortable to talk about, but they shouldn’t be. Your doctor is there to help you understand what might be going on with your body and talk to you about the steps you can take to ensure you’re living a healthy lifestyle.

Most of the time, those uncomfortable questions are related to sex, human sexuality, and reproductive parts of our bodies. We all know the different parts of our bodies and how they function, but there’s just something that comes with talking about our sexual nature that makes some people uncomfortable, even when it comes to discussions with their doctors.

One such subject that doesn’t get talked about very often is masturbation.

There are lots of myths surrounding masturbation and negative side effects surrounding too much masturbation, but the question we hear, which people are afraid to ask about, is whether or not masturbation can cause hair loss?

Hair loss can be caused by many different things – medications, health issues, lifestyle changes, and most commonly, genetics. Outside of hereditary hair loss (androgenic alopecia), most temporary hair loss issues can be resolved by making changes in your life. If you’re under a lot of stress and your doctor feels that could be leading to your hair loss, relaxation will help alleviate the hair loss. If you’re on a certain medication that causes hair loss as a side effect (cancer drugs), then once you finish the course of the medication your hair should begin to grow back.

But where did this notion that masturbation, or too much masturbation, can lead to your hair falling out? Let’s take a look.

Masturbation and Hair Loss

So, does masturbation cause hair loss? The answer is no. There is no scientific evidence that shows that masturbation, to any degree, will cause hair loss in males or females.

You can file this myth in the same column as masturbation causing hair to grow on your palms, blindness, make you infertile, or cause permanent damage to your reproductive organs.

Masturbation is actually a very healthy part of human sexuality and other than redness and/or possible chaffing when done too often, there are no major physical downsides to it. If you do find yourself skipping out on social gatherings, canceling plans, or all you’re doing is masturbating, then there can be some mental complications from that, but in general masturbation is a very healthy, and very safe, sexual activity.

So then if masturbation doesn’t cause hair loss, how did this notion even get started?

The Myth of Masturbation Leading to Hair Loss

This myth that masturbation can cause hair loss may be rooted in a couple ideas related to what happens to the male body upon ejaculation.

One idea stems from the release of semen from the body and that semen causing a decreased level of protein in the body, which hair needs to grow.

While it is true that there is protein in semen and semen is released from the body during ejaculation, the amount of protein in the semen is so small that it will have no effect on the protein available for your hair follicles.

Each ejaculation contains between 3.3 – 3.7 mL of semen and there is approximately 5.0 g of protein per 100 mL of semen. That means you would have to ejaculate about 27 times just to release 5 g of protein from your body. The food you eat throughout the day replenishes the protein needed for your body to function even if you were to masturbate that many times.

Masturbation is not going to cause your body to lose enough protein to have any effect on your hair, or the protein that your hair uses to grow.

Another thought is that masturbation can increase your testosterone levels, which in turn causes your body to produce more DHT and DHT is a hormone commonly linked to male pattern baldness. But in fact, one study showed that abstinence from sexual activity, (or avoiding sex) can actually increase testosterone levels, not the other way around.

Scientific studies have found that masturbation, or any sexual activity, has no bearing on the levels of testosterone or DHT in the body.

You can rest easy knowing that increased levels of sexual activity, including masturbation, are not going to cause your hair to fall out prematurely. In most cases, as we’ve discussed regularly, permanent hair loss is genetic and is unlikely to be caused by an outside source.

If you have other questions regarding hair loss, please contact us at The Limmer Hair Transplant Center in San Antonio, TX. We will be happy to talk about hair loss causes and treatments, and help you figure out the best solution to your hair loss.