There is often something lost when writing a sex advice column for people who live in a completely different world. And I really mean it. As a woman living in the United States, I know there are just some cultural things I'm not going to understand in, say, Pakistan or India. Well, this week I called in help from my best-Indian-transplant-friend just to make sure I wasn't missing some cultural superstition.


I am 20 years old from Pakistan and I'm in serious trouble. I am a regular reader of your columns on orkut. I find it very interesting and very much related to my own life. I thought of it as an authentic source but in recent days I have assumed that your most of suggestions were wrong. I will give you my own example & then ask (again) for your advice to help me. I have been masturbating for quite a long time, almost since I first got access to internet in 2000. At first, I had no idea what it was - I thought it was urine, but I had got addicted to it. And for the last four or five, years I'm doing the above on a regular basis. Mostly I look at pictures on the internet, movies, or TV programs. I have never had sex as it's not allowed in our area/religion.

Also I am a good athlete and sportsman and excel in studies as well. I was a brilliant student of my school, but gradually I loosed in my studies. And the basic query is about my body. I am losing it. I hope you understand. The meat and fats on my hands/knees/hips/skull/face is almost gone. I am much too skinny now. I also have done martial arts, but now my muscles are slowly fading away. My tummy has come out proportionally and my chest has moved backwards. I play football, squash, swimming, martial arts etc. Even my back, there are just bones; and I was not like this. And this is all because of masturbation. In your articles I read that this is no supernatural thing but look at me NOW! I need your help... please tell me how can I go back to my original body? And how can I stop doing this?

Also I have another serious problem which is related to the first one. When like for three or four days I don't fanaticize and try avoiding it, then what happens? Like what happened last night; in a dream I was having sex with a girl and then when I was about to cum in the dream, my eyes opened and I came for real! How do I stop it? I had no intentions but still...

In the porn pictures I have seen girls and boys whose hip and chest bones are almost visible with no meat on them. It's all because of that. And you said it won't harm you!


So, first, my Indian friend who is in his late twenties and grew up in Delhi assures me that he has never heard of this particular superstition. From other questions from readers, I've gathered that it must be a common misperception in your culture. Why, I'm not sure. In fact, if you read the article I linked to above, you'll find that that reader didn't even masturbate!

Is it possible that your rigorous masturbation schedule has somehow eaten away your body? Burned the fat from your bones and eaten away your muscles until you're nothing more than a skeleton? No. It's not. It's medically impossible. Here's why: (for the following analysis, I'm going to assume you weigh 170 lbs) Let's say you masturbate three times a day, which I actually doubt because it's a bit excessive. But let's say you do it three times per day, and each time you do it for 15 minutes (which is probably an over-zealous estimate). If, instead, you were running at 5 miles per hour, you would burn about 150 calories for each 15 minute stint. Now, obviously the amount of energy and effort you put into running would be significantly more than the amount you'd put into masturbating� unless you tend to yank it while running on a treadmill. So, running for the same amount of time would burn about 450 calories, and having 45 minutes of moderately vigorous sex with someone else burns about 90 calories. The average man eats a couple thousand calories worth of food a day. So how could, at the highest estimate of three times per day, at the most possible calories burned of 100 calories per day, you possibly lose so much fat and muscle that you've turned into a skeleton? You can't. It's impossible.

So something else is wrong. Are you eating enough protein and vegetables? I have no idea what kind of diet you are eating, but if you are actually expending a lot of energy in sports, etc, you need to eat enough calories to maintain your weight. But no matter what, it's NOT your masturbation habit that has wasted you away. In fact, after talking to my Indian friend, I suggest you go to a doctor soon and discuss the situation. It's possible this is a manifestation of the final push of puberty (are your parents particularly thin?) or you have a medical condition or something like a tapeworm that is taking all the nourishment you're putting into your body and your body isn't getting the food it needs. Please see a doctor and get a check-up.

Two final points:

1. I guess it is true that most people in internet porn (and porn generally) are thin. It's not because they have wasted away due to excessive orgasms, however. It's because that is what people find attractive the world over.

2. What you've described happening to you upon waking up from a dream is called a "wet dream" and it's what happens to all men when they haven't orgasmed for a certain period of time. Basically, the testicles make semen around the clock, and the factory can only hold so much product. If you don't get it out by masturbating, the body takes care of it by giving you a sexy dream, and you have and orgasm either in your sleep or as you're waking up. It's perfectly normal and the only way to stop it is to masturbate every few days.