If you’ve ever wondered how to last longer during sex, you’ve probably come up with myriad different tricks for keeping the flood from drowning your chances at another date. On the more-involved-than-thinking-about-baseball side, there’s the old masturbating before you have sex trick; the start-stop method; and more recently, there are studies that suggest antidepressants could keep you from erupting before she can even say, “Is it in yet?”
But per a study from Erciyes University in Turkey, you could forgo all this and simply stuff your face until you go up a few waist sizes. “Their study found that overweight men with obvious bellies and a higher BMI lasted 7.3 minutes on average in bed,” reports The Huffington Post U.K. In other words, if you’re willing to risk your overall physical health in the name of being a shaplier Casanova, this could be the trick you’ve been searching for.
According to study author Ahmet Gokce, the reason men with bigger bellies last longer has to do with the fact that chubbier men have more estrogen — the lady hormone that actually all men have, too. “The aromatase enzyme converts testosterone to estrogen,” says Gokce. “Fat tissue contains more aromatase and thus converts more testosterone to estrogen in obese men. Fat also serves as a reservoir for storing estradiol [a type of estrogen].”
Gokce tells me that, based on his findings, it could be that these lower levels of testosterone contribute to obese men lasting longer during sex. “But this situation is related to decreased testosterone levels in obese men, not an increase in the female sex hormones,” explains Gokce. It’s not clear whether higher levels of estrogen automatically means you’ll have lower levels of testosterone, though. Either way, studies on low testosterone levels in rats have shown significantly decreased serotonin in the brain, he continues, adding that serotonin is the most important neurotransmitter involved in the control of ejaculation.
While this may seem like a “win” for men with bigger bellies, it’s anything but. Gokce says that increased levels of estradiol is a bad situation for men considering the number of side effects which include increased abdominal fat; Type 2 diabetes; enlarged breasts; feeling tired; loss of muscle; depression; and low libido.
So yes, in theory, the bigger the belly, the longer you’ll last, but that assumes you’ll even be in the mood for — or capable of — having sex in the first place.
Andrew Fiouzi
Andrew Fiouzi is a staff writer at MEL.
