Sex Before Bed Can Improve Sleep, Except When It Does Not

Intimacy that does not end in orgasm can apparently help improve sleep too, as it helps relieve the stress accumulated during the day.

The feeling of drowsiness people may experience after having sex, which is essentially a product of the release of hormones during orgasm, can be used as a sort of natural sleeping aid, InStyle magazine suggests.

As the media outlet points out, previous research suggested that sex and masturbation can potentially serve as a "helpful intervention for insomniacs".

The combination of hormones released during orgasm – such as oxytocin, prolactin, serotonin, and dopamine – leads to "a sense of calm and drowsiness", traditional Chinese medicine practitioner Anna Hsieh Gold explains.

Also, it seems that even intimacy that does not culminate in orgasm may help improve sleep, as it helps relieve the stress accumulated during the day.

"Stress is one of the biggest impediments to a good night's sleep," says Chris Winter, M.D., medical director of Martha Jefferson Hospital's Sleep Medicine Center. "And anything you do to lower your cortisol levels before bed can benefit sleep."

However, in some instances orgasm may produce the opposite effect, as the euphoric sensation produced by serotonin and dopamine may lead some people to "feel awake or stimulated following sex", Gold notes.

Finally, sex probably should not be the only solution in a quest for better sleep, with Winter observing that "it puts a lot of stress on your partner to become a kind of human sleeping pill if partnered sex is the only thing you're doing to improve your sleep."

Therefore, he suggests, it may be a good idea to consider other methods not related to sex, such as "exercising in the morning and going to bed and waking at the same time every single day", that may led to "more restful sleep".