There are many fallacies and myths about why men occasionally wake up with an erection , and yet it has nothing to do with either repressed emotions supposedly expressed during dreams or the fact that they had especially sexually stimulating dreams.

Morning erection, known clinically as nocturnal penile tumescence , is a physiological phenomenon that is covered with taboos and shame and yet tells us about the normal functioning of the nervous system in men. Below we will see why it occurs.

Dismantling the myth of nocturnal penile tumescence

Despite the fact that men think on average 30 times a day about sex, and tend to place more importance on how often they have intimate relations, morning erections are not exactly due to sexual desire, nor are they experienced through a wet dream. Its origin has to do with some unconscious and physiological processes that appear while sleeping .

Thus, in the vast majority of cases it is a natural physical mechanism that consists of the relaxation of the muscles of the cavernous bodies and the arteries inside the reproductive member, allowing a greater influx of blood and oxygen.

In this way, the penis grows in size in a voluminous way, going from 7 or 8 centimetres in the normal state to 14 or 15 centimetres in the erect state. This process is a good sign of health and regeneration, as it helps to revitalise the tissues of the genital organ, thus conserving optimum functioning.

When does the erection actually occur?

Contrary to what is usually said, morning erections do not appear at the moment of waking up, but rather they occur during the night, with a variable frequency of between 4 or 5 times and a duration of between 20 and 45 minutes. Erections coincide directly with the REM sleep phase , one of the 5 stages of sleep known as “rapid eye movement sleep”. In it, people may wake up for a few seconds due to high physiological activity, even though these lapses are so short that we almost never remember experiencing them.

In addition, in the REM phase, muscle tone is drastically reduced, which means that most of our muscles are momentarily “disconnected” from the brain and relax completely; parallel to this, physiological activity increases , which explains the increased blood flow to the penis.

On the other hand, during sleep testosterone levels multiply , reaching a maximum during the first hour of the morning. This fact, added to the accumulation of urine in the bladder, slightly stimulates erection.

Should we be worried about a morning erection?

As we have already mentioned, this is another concern that confuses some men very much. Some see it as a problem, but it is actually a good sign.

Anyone in good health will experience erections fairly consistently throughout sleep. The maximum exponent of this phenomenon occurs during adolescence, between 13 and 15 years of age , a stage in which the male sex spends more than 35% of his sleep in an erect state.

The absence of this type of awakening is usually a direct symptom of poor erectile function normally associated with bad daily habits (eating poorly, sedentary life, smoking) or other more serious ailments that will require medical treatment.

Considerations to the problem

We dedicate this last section to individuals who suffer from erection problems or, in other words, do not experience morning erections very often.

Sudden loss of erection can be associated with the age or personal psychology of each man, and is also very common with males over 40.

As some clinical psychologists and sexologists state, as we get older we lose sexual capacity . This implies, among other things, that the cavernous walls are seeing their capacity to sponge decrease, which makes erection less powerful and less frequent.

As an interesting fact, it has been concluded that up to the age of 50 or so, 80% of erection problems have a psychological origin. Depression, stress, low self-esteem or the inexperience and difficulty in maintaining relationships with the opposite sex are within the range of these problems.

For experts the solution is relatively simple. One of them is to accept the erectile limitation, to accept the disability, not to submit to the pressure of oneself or other people. Paradoxically, this can help the problem to disappear.