Why Good Sex Matters: Understanding the Neuroscience of Pleasure for a Smarter, Happier, and More Purpose-Filled Life

Our technologically driven, constantly connected culture reinforces this disruption of our pleasure system.

Driven by the neurotransmitter dopamine, our SEEKING system is meant to cue us to feel enthusiastic about going into the world to pursue what we need and want through experiences. When this system becomes overstimulated and hijacked by chronic stress and attention overload, a domino effect occurs, disrupting all the systems at once, making us hyper

My studies indicate the brain is so widely and strongly activated by orgasm, infusing nearly all regions with oxygen, that orgasm may serve as the best possible “exercise” for the brain. My research also suggests how the inability to experience this release robs us of a crucial way to destress and keep our bodies, emotions, and brains regulated and

Further exacerbating this connection between pain and pleasure is our difficulty with tolerating any measure of negative feelings. At the first sign of pain, we take an aspirin. At the first sign of emotional discomfort, we may be told to take an antidepressant. In fact, as a culture, we are encouraged to not feel too much of anything. In reality,

The brain is not only the command center for sex, it’s also a generator of pleasure. These two functions—enabling sex to happen and setting us up to actually experience pleasure from sex—are inextricably linked in both the brain and the body.

In fact, our senses have become overwhelmed by this bombardment of easy-to-access, seemingly endless supply of quick-fix pleasures.

This view of pleasure as being momentary and inconsequential is problematic and essentially inaccurate. It’s deeply rooted in Western culture, stemming from religious thought extending back millennia, when pleasure was associated with sin, a life of intemperance, and the body being a source of evil or human weakness. Indeed, abstaining from sex was

When it’s overactive, your FEAR system is so tweaked that you may overreact to threats and end up depleted by chronic stress; this is common with generalized anxiety. Your exaggerated fear no longer serves you and becomes depleting and part of the problem.

Year after year, throughout my practice, hundreds and hundreds of people have showed up in my office, trying to understand why they feel so flat, so angry, so irritable, so anxious, so depressed. Many reports in recent years both highlight and quantify an increase in anxiety, depression, suicide, and acts of violence.