“Natural” is in! The pristine forest! Pure uncontaminated water! In many ways people believe that “natural” is best. There is, for example, a strong movement to return to “organic” foods. Also, after years of bottle-feeding for babies, the return to breastfeeding is thriving. I have been writing for fifty years about the reasons why “breast is best” and am heartened to see prime-time commercials by WIC and WHO urging women to nurse their babies for better health. The once strong move toward natural childbirth, however, seems to be flagging. A few women are on that bandwagon, having babies with midwives and doulas, but many more seem to opt for births with injections and medications to relieve pain or strengthen contractions, and often even have Cesareans which are not of medical necessity.
On the other hand, who nowadays goes around saying that natural sex is best? Hardly anyone.* Methods of “having sex” abound. Only one of them can be considered natural. Sex is only natural when the sperm ends up in a woman’s vagina. By analogy, eating would not be considered natural if food were placed in ear or rectum! The mouth is obviously designed for eating, witness the taste buds, teeth, tongue, saliva, swallowing mechanism, and tube to the stomach. Food in inappropriate places only wreaks distress and causes disease. Likewise, only in heterosexual intercourse can sperm achieve their purpose. A vagina is marvelously accommodating and lubricated, resistant to infection, and heterosexual intercourse provides pleasure as a bonus to both parties!
How can it be imagined that natural sex would result in sperm in a baggie? How can it be imagined that natural sex can occur when a woman’s hormones are so deranged by contraceptives that she does not ovulate, that she does not emit the “come hither” pheromones of a “natural woman”? A woman on “the pill” has been rendered biologically sterile and then wonders why she has no desire, and does not arouse desire in men.
Years ago Herbert Ratner, MD, wrote about the two fluids that are produced by human beings which are not for themselves but for “the other.” The first, obviously, is the milk produced by a woman after she has given birth. Common sense decrees that it is for the baby. Science has demonstrated that it contains many chemicals that foster growth, reduce disease, enhance immunity, and so on, as well as providing that wonderful skin-to-skin closeness with its psychological benefits.
The second fluid produced for “the other” is the seminal fluid of a man. No one doubts that those little sperm swimming around with their 23 chromosomes are designed to meet up with an egg, also with 23 chromosomes, to produce a new human, with the proper complement of 46 chromosomes and an entirely different genome.
Less recognized, however, and just recently coming into its own, are the properties of the seminal fluid that carries the sperm. Does it do anything for “the other” — that is, the woman — besides provide a little lubrication?
Research psychologist Jesse Bering in a September 2010 Scientific American opens his article with the following paragraph:
Dear readers: I have come upon a secret treasure, a heretofore-unknown bounty of facts only recently unearthed by a team of evolutionary psychologists. A vital forewarning, though: although the data and information I am about to share oozes with the promise of dramatically improving virtually every aspect of your wellbeing, it can also be abused with tragic—even fatal—consequences. This is so much the case, in fact, that I debated the merits of popularizing this material and do so here only with great circumspection and caution. So please be wise in digesting this semen-related knowledge, and be wiser still in applying it to your own sex lives
Bering explains that only 1-5% of the male ejaculate consists of sperm cells. The fluid bearing the sperm is called the seminal plasma. “In fact, semen has a very complicated chemical profile, containing over 50 different compounds (including hormones, neurotransmitters, endorphins and immunosuppressants) each with a special function and occurring in different concentrations within the seminal plasma. Perhaps the most striking of these compounds is the bundle of mood-enhancing chemicals in semen. There is good in this goo. Such anxiolytic chemicals include, but are by no means limited to, cortisol (known to increase affection), estrone (which elevates mood), prolactin (a natural antidepressant), oxytocin (also elevates mood), thyrotropin-releasing hormone (another antidepressant), melatonin (a sleep-inducing agent) and even serotonin (perhaps the most well-known antidepressant neurotransmitter).”
It is not surprising in our current culture that in googling “beneficial effects of semen” we come up with reputed benefits from ingesting the semen! However, should the semen go to its intended destination, knowing that the vagina readily absorbs chemicals introduced into it, it is only logical to expect that the above mood-enhancing, anxiolytic, antidepressant results would be experienced by the female partner. Recent studies have indeed shown that semen has an antidepressant effect on a woman. Likewise, the female hormones present in the semen (follicle-stimulating hormone – FSH – and luteinizing hormone – LH) are presumed to hasten the ripening and release of eggs from the ovary following intercourse.
As we learn more and more about the constituents of the fluids intended for “the other” it seems a shame to pass up the benefits they offer. While natural breastfeeding is now popular, natural sex is hard to find in our society. Either the men are condom-clad or the women have their hormones synthetically altered, or both. We know pheromones are operative in the lower mammals. A bitch in heat will attract male dogs from miles around. It is believed that similar come-hither scents are operative in humans — there’s good money in selling colognes laced with pheromones – and it is also known that female monkeys cease to be sexually attractive to the males when they are given contraceptive pills. My post THE PHEROMONE CONNECTION goes into this in more detail.
While sex without a condom, with a woman fully hormonized (and harmonized), seems ideal, many would protest that natural sex would result in babies all over the place. Really? We have demographers complaining about a birth dearth. We have nations losing their identity because the natives are not having children but the Muslim immigrants are. It is said that France will be a Muslim nation in a decade or two. Germany cries “Where have all the children gone!”
Mr. Bering is seriously mistaken if he thinks learning about the benefits of semen is like discovering “a secret treasure.” As long ago as the 1980’s the previously mentioned Dr. Herbert Ratner wrote ….
— let us observe that the nursling’s gastrointestinal tract is physiologically, biochemically, and anatomically attuned to the digestion of breast milk, just as the vagina is attuned to coitus and the absorption of semen. Of immediate interest is the immunosuppressive effect of seminal plasma (the carrier of the sperm). This plasma contains very powerful prostaglandins, stronger than those to be found in any other biological tissue fluids…..The sturdy, muscular, multi-layered vaginal wall is so constituted that it absorbs the seminal plasma at a slow, modulated rate in order to produce mild immunosuppression sufficient to protect the sperm and embryo from maternal antibodies.
I dare say that Dr. Ratner, believing that humans are designed by a master designer, knew a priori there where would be “good in that goo” as Bering writes, and the science only confirmed it.
The natural, sensible, healthy alternative to make-believe sex has been slowly gaining ground – NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING. NFP is as effective as contraceptive pills or condoms with none of the expense, side-effects, or overriding of the woman’s hormonal harmony with synthetic hormones to shut her down and turn her off. Truly natural sex uses reason and self-discipline instead of artificial drugs and rubbers which make a mockery of the whole encounter.
Someone named Michael G. posted this comment on someone else’s blog. It says so well what I want to get across.
When we try to do life our own way, according to our own instruction manual, we get so frustrated, because we aren’t being used for the purpose for which we were designed. It’s like using a paintbrush to change a diaper, or a hammer to eat dinner. When something is serving its designer’s intent, effectiveness, impact, peace, and fulfillment are plentiful.
*Here I must add a plug for Patrick Coffin’s recent book, Sex Au Naturel, which is so well recommended by such well-qualified persons that I do not hesitate to second the recommendation. I was sorely tempted to use that title for this blog post because it says exactly what the whole thing is about. In due time I shall read Sex Au Naturel and there shall follow a post with that title.