The science

Semen retention benefits: what the evidence actually says

Does daily release drain your testosterone, energy and focus? We checked the semen retention claims against the studies they rest on.

By the WINNR team · 17 October 2026 · 6 min read

You have probably seen the list. "12 side effects of releasing sperm daily, backed by science." Lower testosterone, brain fog, lost motivation, thinning hair. If you masturbate most days and have been feeling flat, the list lands. It offers one cause and one fix: hold it in, and the energy returns.

So, is any of it true? We went looking for the studies these claims cite. Here is what they show, and the question retention content skips.

Where the "7-day testosterone spike" comes from

Almost every semen retention post traces back to one paper: Jiang and colleagues (2003), in the Journal of Zhejiang University Science. It reported serum testosterone in 28 men peaking on day 7 of abstinence at 145.7 percent of baseline. That one number became the "45 percent testosterone boost" that circulates on social media.

Start with the part nobody passes on. That paper was retracted, by a notice the journal issued on 10 December 2021 (DOI 10.1631/jzus.2003.r236). The reason was duplicate publication, because the same work had already appeared in a Chinese-language journal, not fabricated data, so this is not a story about invented numbers. But for anyone citing it the effect is the same: the study has been withdrawn and is no longer part of the literature. A whole market of "backed by science" content rests on a paper taken off the shelf in 2021.

Two problems predate the retraction. First, the peak did not last: the paper's own abstract states that with continued abstinence after day 7, no regular fluctuation was observed. It never showed the sustained elevation a "retention benefit" would require. Second, nobody has reproduced it. Mascherek and colleagues (2021), reviewing ejaculation frequency and health in Frontiers in Psychology, note that the websites making abstinence claims reference exactly this study, that "the results were reported on the basis of a small sample size", and that "to the best of our knowledge, these results were not replicated so far."

So the honest position is not "abstinence raises testosterone by 45 percent." One small, retracted, never-replicated study found a temporary blip. That is the whole foundation.

What happens to hormones when you actually orgasm

The other study that gets cited is Exton and colleagues (2001) in the World Journal of Urology. Ten healthy men were tested twice, once in their normal routine and once after three weeks of abstinence, with blood sampled through arousal and orgasm.

Orgasm raised prolactin, adrenaline and noradrenaline briefly, along with heart rate and blood pressure. It did not change testosterone. Testosterone was somewhat higher in the post-abstinence session, which the authors reported as an abstinence effect, but with ten participants and no follow-up the paper cannot say whether that lasts or matters for how you feel. The prolactin rise is the normal signal that an orgasm happened, not a drain.

Does releasing sperm daily hurt your body?

This is where the "12 side effects" lists are weakest, because the larger studies run the other way.

Testosterone, at population scale. The depletion story makes a testable prediction: men who masturbate more should have less testosterone. Macdowall and colleagues (2021), in the Journal of Sex Research, tested it on 1,599 men in the third British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, measuring salivary testosterone by mass spectrometry. It failed, and ran the other way: men who had last masturbated over a year ago, or never, had lower testosterone than men who had masturbated in the past week, after adjusting for age, season, relationship status, BMI and health. Frequency within that week showed no clear association. A single saliva sample cannot show which way the arrow runs, and the authors call the relationship likely bi-directional, but it rules out a depletion effect big enough to show up in a population.

Prostate. Rider and colleagues (2016), in European Urology, followed 31,925 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study from 1992 to 2010 and recorded 3,839 prostate cancer diagnoses. Men reporting 21 or more ejaculations a month had a lower risk than men reporting four to seven, for frequency in their twenties (hazard ratio 0.81) and their forties (hazard ratio 0.78). The association was strongest for low-risk disease and did not hold clearly for aggressive disease. It is observational, so it cannot prove cause and effect, but it is the opposite of a harm signal.

Sperm. You do not run out. Hanson and colleagues (2018) reviewed ejaculatory abstinence and semen quality: longer abstinence raises volume and sperm count, which is why labs ask for a few days before a sample, but findings on motility and DNA quality were mixed and trended better after shorter gaps. Nothing there suggests frequent release harms fertility.

Performance. The oldest version of retention is the coach saying "no sex before the game." Stefani and colleagues (2016) reviewed nine studies on sexual activity before competition in Frontiers in Physiology. Most found no direct effect on aerobic or strength performance and no evidence of harm, with the caveat that sex within roughly two hours of competing could impair it. Masturbation had not been studied. There is no sports science behind "retention gives you an edge."

So is masturbation bad for you?

On the evidence available, no. It has no established physical harms, and we found no study linking it to hair loss or muscle loss.

If you feel better during a period without masturbating, that experience is real, but the explanation is probably not hormonal. People who take on a retention challenge usually also change sleep, exercise, screen time and, crucially, how much porn they watch. Those are the levers. Semen is not one.

The question the lists skip: is it porn, and is it control?

Most of this content makes one error: it treats "masturbation", "porn" and "release" as one thing. They are not, and the evidence on each is different. Porn use is a separate behaviour, and the question that matters for your wellbeing is not how often you release but whether you can stop when you want.

The World Health Organization's ICD-11 includes compulsive sexual behaviour disorder (code 6C72), described by Kraus and colleagues (2018) in World Psychiatry. Its core features are a persistent failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses, with the behaviour becoming a central focus of life and continuing despite negative consequences, over six months or more, causing marked distress. Two things stand out. It is about loss of control, not frequency. And the ICD-11 text states that distress related entirely to moral judgements is not sufficient for the diagnosis.

That second point matters. Grubbs and colleagues (2019), in a systematic review and meta-analysis in Archives of Sexual Behavior, found that much of what men report as "porn problems" is explained by moral incongruence: using porn while believing you should not. Shame is a real cost, but it is a different problem from compulsive use, and more shame does not fix it, which is what "releasing is draining you" content adds.

The Dual Control Model from Bancroft and Janssen (2000) is a more useful lens than retention. Sexual response runs on an accelerator and a brake, the excitation and inhibition systems, and people differ in how sensitive each is. Modern porn pushes the accelerator hard and often. If you are watching more than you intend, escalating, or finding your brake no longer works, address that. It is a pattern, and patterns can change.

What to do with this

If your concern is energy, focus or mood, the honest advice is boring: sleep, movement, daylight, and a GP if it persists, since low energy has many causes unrelated to sex. No doctor will tell you to stop masturbating to fix your testosterone.

If your concern is that porn has become something you cannot put down, that is worth taking seriously, and you do not need to meet a diagnostic threshold first. A psychologist or sexologist is the right person to talk to if it is causing real distress.

WINNR is a science-based app for young men who want to regain control over their porn use, for €6 a month or €49 a year at winnr.now. It is not a semen retention programme and will not ask you to stop masturbating. It is built for the question that actually predicts how you feel: whether you are in control, or the habit is.

Want a plan for your own pattern? Take the private 4-minute check. Fighting an urge right now? Open the urge page.