6 Mundane (or Terrifying) Side-Effects of Sex

SEX. Sex. Sexy sexsexsex. Do I have your attention? Good. Now stop being childish about it as we explore both the ordinary-but-seldom-discussed and rare-and-horrifying things can happen when consenting adults make mattress music. (The article below frankly discusses sex, anatomy, uses inappropriate language, and is not intended for minor children or my Mom. You have been warned.)

If you’ve ever been forced to sit through an eighth grade Sex Ed class you know that pregnancy and horrific sexual diseases are the expected side effects, at least according to a prudish school system that wants you to keep it in your pants. But neither the teachings of school nor the advice of friends prepare you for the strange occurrences that sometimes happen when you find an agreeable lab partner in humpology.

1. Blinding Headaches

Rather than the overplayed “not tonight” scenario, we are referring to a sudden headache that occurs during or after sex that’s less welcome in the bedroom than Sharon Stone’s favorite ice pick. Things seem to be going well, and at an extremely inconvenient moment it feels like that ice pick has been jammed into your skull. Funhappytime is often suspended as one deals with the equivalent of an ice cream headache without any of the Rocky Road.

Apirin - Take these ... but don't call in the morning.

Take these … but don’t call in the morning.

The good news is that most of these headaches are harmless (though inconvenient and painful), while the bad is that science really doesn’t understand them yet. “The cause of headaches related to sexual activity range from the benign to the life-threatening. Due to the dynamics of cerebral blood flow during sexual intercourse, basilar artery dissections and aneurysms should be considered in patients with sudden-onset headaches during orgasm.”

Good news, ladies! Men generally get sex-related headaches much more frequently than their partners.

2. Random Crying

Sometimes an evening began with enthusiasm and the best intentions only ends in tears. While we won’t rule out soul-crushing shame at one’s poor life choices as a cause, most instances of crying after sex are the result of irresistible neurochemistry. “When you orgasm, your brain releases a hormone called oxytocin, which can unleash an intense rush of feelings … Oxytocin causes different women to feel different things — a sense of calm, a glowing feeling, or a deep closeness to their partner — and for women who are more sensitive to hormones, this welling up of emotion can take the form of tears.”

It appears that this is a case of a hormone trying to multitask, as the same hormone released during nipple-play also causes a new mother’s milk to come in at the sound of a baby’s cry. “After breast-feeding is established, your body may release oxytocin when you hear a baby cry, think of your baby, or have sexual intercourse. When this occurs, your breasts may leak milk whether or not you are actively breast-feeding or pumping.”

Baby Crying

No one’s sleeping tonight!

3. Allergic Reactions

Nature plays cruel tricks, and human evolution has left many of us suffering horrible symptoms from otherwise harmless substances as our immune system malfunctions. While this is most often hayfever in the presence of the family Rottweiler or when consuming sexy, sexy peanut butter, it seems especially wrong when half the recipe for human life triggers an awful reaction. Yep, some people are allergic to baby gravy. “Women with semen allergies usually develop vaginal burning, itching, and swelling within a few minutes (but up to an hour or two) after sexual intercourse. They may also experience generalized hives (welts), itching, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, fainting or dizziness. These symptoms are prevented by condom usage.

Some poor bastards develop an allergy to their own semen, making them possibly wonder if God really does hate them for spilling their seed.

But that’s rare semen allergy, not a common food allergy like Brazil nuts (the #2 most-reported nut allergy in the United Kingdom). Those who suffer such allergies have to be very careful about what they eat and even what foods are prepared in the same kitchen as anything they’re about to chow down on. The nut-allergy terror alert has been raised at least in regards to the Brazil Nut, whose allergens can be transmitted via male semen. (Cue the “busting a nut” jokes in the comments section.) Says science: “We can only speculate whether the patient’s reaction was aggravated by the exertion of the intercourse. To our knowledge this is the first case of a severe food allergic reaction transferred by normal vaginal intercourse.

Walnut Heart ... Ladies ...

… Ladies …

4. Urinary Tract Infections

Women are beautiful and amazing creatures. And the female reproductive system is a wonderful, remarkable piece of evolutionary engineering. Unlike men, the ladies separate the business of boning and peeing into separate systems. But all this comes at a price: the shortened urethra sits right next to the vagina, which sometimes invites in a dirty penis for playtime, leading to possible infection. “Nearly 80% of all urinary tract infections in premenopausal women occur within 24 hours of intercourse. UTIs are very rare in celibate women. However, UTIs are NOT sexually transmitted infections.

There are ways to mitigate this, of course. “Urinate before sex, and promptly after.” Because nothing sets the mood like the pre-coital pee-session, and nothing brings a couple closer together than dashing to the bathroom right after to flush out the filthy dick-germs.

Tannuki Peeing - Don't ask what he's been doing.

Don’t ask what he’s been doing.

5. Broken Boners

Half of you are already cringing at the above header, and we’re sorry, it’s not going to get better. The term penile fracture involves two words that should never, ever go together. And while it might happen when attempting “The Emperor’s Hanging Gardens” or any number of epic sexual escapades …

The classic scenario involves a couple having sexual relations with the female on top. The penis accidentally comes out of the vagina and the female exerts her body weight downwards onto the penis. Other mechanisms that have been described include aggressive masturbation and rolling over onto an erect penis during sleep.”

What Happened?!

You see kids, despite our use of the awesome word “boner,” the human male traded in the baculum (penis bone) for a system of blood-based hydraulics in the evolutionary market millions of years ago. “Humans are the only primate species besides the spider monkey to be lacking in this department.” One might logically conclude that a boner can’t break without an actual bone involved, but logic be damned. The unstoppable force of the humping hits at a bad angle and the tunica albuginea (spongy tissue that allows for erections) experiences a life-altering tear. The erection ends at that point, and without medical treatment the party might be over forever—because the “tunica must be able to elongate symmetrically and increase in girth with tumescence, assuring a straight erection.

What To Do?!

Surrender your pride to the horror of the words “penile fracture” and get emergency medical treatment immediately. Waiting will only leave you with a swollen, bruised wang possibly damaged beyond the point of repair. Surgery is often the treatment of choice, and you know something’s gone horribly wrong when “proper dissection must be carried down until the hematoma within Buck’s fascia is exposed and evacuated” is a procedure performed on your wedding tackle. With luck the surgery will successfully drain the pooled blood and repair any tears—though getting lucky is what got you into this mess in the first place.

Skydiving - Apparently less dangerous than sex.

Apparently less dangerous than sex.

6. Death

Here we take a dark turn. Orgasm, sometimes called la petite mort (“the little death”) by the hilarious French, sometimes triggers le grand mort as well. The good news is that the often-portrayed sexual heart attack (or stroke) is a fairly rare phenomenon.

The differential relation between frequency of sexual intercourse, stroke and coronary heart disease suggests that confounding is an unlikely explanation for the observed association with fatal coronary heart disease events. Middle aged men should be heartened to know that frequent sexual intercourse is not likely to result in a substantial increase in risk of strokes, and that some protection from fatal coronary events may be an added bonus.”

An important safety tip, fellas: Men who cheat on their wives are more likely to experience the above-mentioned rare heart attack. They are also more likely to experience having all their stuff set on fire. Says science: “Of the subjects who died during coitus, 82% to 93% were men, and the majority (75%) were having extramarital sexual activity, in most cases with a younger partner in an unfamiliar setting and/or after excessive food and alcohol consumption.

Skeleton - "I regret nothing."

“I regret nothing.”

It appears that one is much more likely to die having sex in unsafe places or with industrial hardware than of more traditional causes. “…Pathologists Riazul Imami and Miftah Kemal estimated that, based on record-keeping of such deaths stretching back to 1791, each year, anywhere from 250 to over 500 randy people—across cultures and in every station of society—lose their lives as the result of an episode of autoeroticism gone bad.

The happy ending (get it?!) to our story is that—over all—the more sex we work into our schedules the longer we’re able to keep the Black Camel at bay. “Mortality risk was 50% lower in the group with high orgasmic frequency than in the group with low orgasmic frequency, with evidence of a dose-response relation across the groups. So don’t let this article scare you away. Just play responsibly!


Shameless Self-Advertising Below

I’m using sex to sell. This is the part below the actual content where I hypocritically and shamelessly plug my own stuff!

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Image Attribution: Turtle Threesome image by Allie_Caulfield used under Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution license (image cropped from original). Crying baby image by  WilliamMarlow used under Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution license. Walnut Heart image by marfis75 used under Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license. Tannuki Peeing image by rumpleteaser used under Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution license. Skydiving image by John Pozadzides under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license. Skeleton image by  jrmyst used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

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