My studies indicate the brain is so widely and strongly activated by orgasm, infusing nearly all regions with oxygen, that orgasm may serve as the best possible “exercise” for the brain. My research also suggests how the inability to experience this release robs us of a crucial way to destress and keep our bodies, emotions, and brains regulated and

It is evidenced directly in the enormous increase in the use of prescribed medications including antidepressants (up 400 percent since 1998) and opioid painkillers.

What this distinction actually misses is the important role that pleasures of mind and body play in our emotional lives—moving us toward what will be good for us and moving us away from painful or toxic experiences that will harm. Pleasure as an emotion is meant on some level to help us live more effectively.

Since sex embodies pleasure, it affords us a particularly powerful lens through which to understand pleasure more broadly. It captures the complicated interplay between emotion, neural pathways, and personal experience—indeed all the factors that go into being able to have—and appreciate—true pleasure.

But most of us who experience anhedonia do so without this outward cry of rage and despair; indeed, the majority of people suffering from anhedonia do so in relative silence, living lives tangled up in a stew of negative emotions, unable to experience the pleasure that would break them free. Though this silent majority may be leading otherwise

It is my experience that people are literally afraid to “indulge” in the release of pleasure—as they have been conditioned by culture or bad experiences to associate having pleasure with the threat of danger or punishment. It is as if having “too much fun” evokes the sense that feeling good is bad or shameful. This connection may be even more

Why did I want to understand how the brain and sex relate? Really, it all started with a hunch that was formed during my clinical practice as a psychotherapist (this was before I specialized in sex therapy). The more I observed and tried to figure out the roots of unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and unease in the lives of my patients, the more I

By looking through the lens of how our brains are wired for pleasure, we will learn how to reclaim our innate, biologically wired capacity and need for joy, fun, exuberance, curiosity, and humor in all aspects of our lives.

The brain is not only the command center for sex, it’s also a generator of pleasure. These two functions—enabling sex to happen and setting us up to actually experience pleasure from sex—are inextricably linked in both the brain and the body.