‘‘Throughout the nineteenth century, the vice of ‘self abuse’ or ‘self pollution’ propelled learned men, and some learned women into postures of perspiring alarm; they flooded the literatures of medical advice and moral uplift with macabre case histories and desperate, repetitive pleas for action before it was too late.’’

 

— Peter Gay in The Bourgeois Experience: Education of the Senses

 

MUMBAI: Enlightened opinion today has persuaded itself that the act is harmless. But the fear of masturbation is nevertheless rampant. It generates feelings of guilt and shame in the vast majority of its uninformed ‘victims’. The latest research should assuage or even banish such feelings.

 

A Melbourne study has found that frequent ejaculation during masturbation may actually protect men against the most common form of cancer, by preventing the build-up of cancer-causing chemicals in the prostate. Sexual intercourse may not have the same protective effect due to the possibility of contracting sexually transmitted infections, which could increase risk of cancer.

 

Says Dr Graham Giles of The Cancer Council in Victoria, Australia, who led the research, ‘‘Semen is a very potent and strong brew of chemicals including potassium, zinc, fructose and citric acid, which, because of their biological reactivity, could be carcinogenic if left to lie around. What we found was men who ejaculated most in their 20s, 30s, and 40s had about a third less prostate cancer risk than men in the lowest category of ejaculation.

 

The research was inspired by studies linking breast cancer with the frequency of lactation. The Australian researchers reasoned that just as breastfeeding lowered a woman’s risk of breast cancer, maybe liberal ejaculation could have similar benefits for men. Alternately, ejaculation may also induce prostate cells to mature fully, making them less susceptible to cancer-causing compounds.

 

The researchers questioned over 1,000 men who had developed prostate cancer about their sexual habits, along with 1,250 healthy men. Their results contradicted those of previous studies, which have suggested that having had many sexual partners, or a high frequency of sexual activity, increases the risk of prostate cancer by as much as 40 per cent. The difference between the two approaches was the definition of sexual activity. The latest study focused on the number of ejaculations, whether or not intercourse was involved.

 

Dr Giles conceded that the men who completed the questionnaire could have lied about their habits. But he wasn’t sure whether this skewed the results or not, since questions about masturbation were unlikely to evoke the same kind of braggadocio as questions about, say, sexual ‘conquests’, he said.