How to Actually Last Longer in Bed: Real Solutions for Premature Ejaculation

Posted by David Carreras on November 5, 2021

How to Actually Last Longer in Bed

Premature ejaculation is often the punchline of a joke in TV shows and movies. When men can’t last long in bed, or last less time than expected, it becomes shorthand for not being as manly as someone who can. Our culture has taught men to believe that premature ejaculation leads to women not feeling satisfied and men feeling frustrated and emasculated. Unfortunately, many times this is the outcome.

There are a few things to keep in mind: premature ejaculation happens to everyone at some point, and pretty much any case of premature ejaculation can be fixed (ideally naturally / mentally, but if needed with medication). Happened to me for several years actually, until I got the problem under control.

In this article, I’ll explain some of the main causes of premature ejaculation, and some real solutions that actually work for those who suffer from PE.

The Stats on Premature Ejaculation

It’s tough in many instances to know what makes ejaculation “premature” because every situation and every man is different. This also makes it difficult to figure out how prevalent PE is.

For example, some men, due to the tightness of their muscles, their arousal levels, their partner’s stimulation tactics, and more, may never last more than a minute or two during sex, despite having nothing actually wrong with them, and feel like everything is okay! For other men, an expectation to last a half hour in bed with full stimulation causes them to think they have a PE problem even if they last longer than average.

As a basic rule, the NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) defines the average time between the beginning of stimulation and ejaculation as 5-7 minutes, even though there are many perfectly healthy outliers that are shorter and longer than that. That’s just the average. A study in The Journal of Sexual Medicine surveyed men whose partners used a stopwatch during sex and found that non-PE men lasted just over 7 minutes while men who reported suffering from PE lasted less than 2 minutes. 

Many men may be unaware of the average when they report having premature ejaculation, which they might be defining based only on their expectations (or their partner’s). According to IJIR: Your Sexual Medicine Journal, approximately 30% of men report experiencing premature ejaculation, no matter how long they actually last in bed. This makes it the most common sexual dysfunction experienced by men.

To make it simple, I believe you have premature ejaculation if you ejaculate before providing a woman with an orgasm… whether it’s two minutes or half an hour.

Causes of Premature Ejaculation

Regardless of how you define it, anyone who suffers from premature ejaculation reports it because it has caused them distress and they want to solve it. Some men have almost no control over their ejaculation at all. An estimated 4% have zero control over their ejaculation, which disrupts both their own pleasure and their partner’s.

Despite its prevalence, premature ejaculation does not have one single known cause. Some doctors believe that the nerve endings in the penis can be too sensitive, causing premature climax. Others suggest that hormone changes can affect the ability to last. Emotional and psychological factors of premature ejaculation have become much more common knowledge over the last few decades as well. Performance anxiety can cause muscles and nerves to tense up, leading to PE. This causes a vicious cycle where the fear of premature ejaculation can actually cause it to happen!

A few instances of PE throughout a man’s life are common and unavoidable. But when it happens often, many men seek help for this embarrassing condition. Hope to help provide some direction in those case.

Solving Premature Ejaculation: A Natural, Personal Approach

Real solutions to premature ejaculation

Real solutions for premature ejaculation involve first figuring out what could be causing the problem for you. In some cases there will be more than one cause, so trying different things and adding to them to create a regimen will help you see results.

The solutions to PE can be separated into several broad groups, which we will define as: desensitization, medicine, PC muscles, and the mind.

Desensitization

The quickest and least invasive way to try to prevent premature ejaculation is to desensitize yourself before or during sex.

Condoms can be a good place to start if you don’t already use them. The layer between you and your partner can reduce sensitivity and prevent PE. Certain condoms in the Trojan and Durex Performax brands include numbing agents inside. These anesthetics, including lidocaine and benzocaine, can numb you long enough to have satisfying sex. And combined with proper penetrative techniques, contrary to popular belief, condoms can actually improve a woman’s chances of having an orgasm!

Alternatively, these anesthetics can be bought in creams or sprays from a drug store and used to safely delay ejaculation. Some are available with a prescription as well. Using them 15 minutes before sex can be one way to reduce sensitivity and last longer artificially.

Be warned however that anesthetic sprays can have negative effects, such as loss of sensitivity for some time after sex, inability to know when you’re erect and less enjoyable sex. You are spraying yourself with sensation-reducing chemicals after all, during an activity that’s pretty much all about sensation. Your partner may experience loss of sensation as well should they come in contact with any of the chemicals.

Medicine

In addition to sprays, oral medications can be prescribed to delay orgasm. The FDA has not officially approved any medication for PE, but studies have shown that antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). SSRI’s delay ejaculation, even with on-demand use.

Additionally, medications traditionally used to treat erectile dysfunction like Viagra and Cialis may have applications for treating PE as well.

Correcting a B12 deficiency, if present, has been shown to correct PE as well in many cases.

PC Muscles

When men Google how to fix premature ejaculation, many sites offer them advice in the form of “kegel exercises.” The directions for these exercises (from the Mayo Clinic) read as follows:

  1. Find your pelvic floor muscles by stopping a stream of urine. These muscles are your pelvic floor.
  2. Tighten these muscles for 3 seconds then relax for 3-5 seconds by breathing into your belly. Do a few in a row when standing, lying down, walking, at your desk, or just before bed.
  3. Focus on flexing the pelvic floor and not the abdomen or buttocks. Be sure to breathe regularly.
  4. Repeat throughout the day – anywhere from 30 to 100 repetitions or more if you feel comfortable.

The theory behind using kegels to prevent PE is sound – by making these muscles stronger, men can achieve more control over ejaculation. And it works. However, it’s important to keep in mind not to kegel during sex, as this tightness and contraction can actually lead to premature ejaculation.

The reverse kegel is a much better option for men who want to regain ejaculatory control. It involves breathing deeply into your belly so that your stomach expands, and gently pushing the pelvic floor muscles out, rather than tightening them up, keeping you further from ejaculation.

Mind

Lastly, your mind is one of the strongest “control centers” in charge of your ability to delay ejaculation during sex (or finish too soon, if filled with anxiety, concern, or over-excitement).

Keeping your mind at ease, all throughout the sexual performance, and not allowing your arousal thoughts to skyrocket unattended helps. Meditation helps you gain better control over your thoughts. 

Learning to control your mind during sex, while applying mental techniques, is one of your best bets.

How to Last Longer in Bed – More Advanced Techniques

This should be a good enough guide to get you started, at least adding on some time to your performance. Remember, you didn’t ejaculate prematurely, if she had an orgasm. Stimulate her clitoris, before and during sex… that’s key.

Have a good one!

-David Carreras aka Mr. Manpower
Mr. Manpower’s Guide to
Overall Manhood Enhancement
[email protected]

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The Link Between Performance Anxiety and Erectile Dysfunction (and How to Break It)

Posted by David Carreras on May 5, 2021

performance anxiety and ED

“Performance anxiety” is a term that a lot of web journals use to tell men that their erectile dysfunction is mental rather than physical. The idea of it being “all in your head” doesn’t really help though, since mental issues are often just as hard to treat as physical ones (or harder). By obsessing over it being your fault, your brain’s failure, or your inability to accept your “sexual duty” as a man, your erectile function will not get better. Worry will make it worse.

This is why you need a clean slate. No more “all in your head.” No more “just relax.” By explaining the exact link between what we call anxiety, where that anxiety comes from, and the difficulties men have with erectile dysfunction, we want to help you break the cycle of stress that’s causing the mental (and physical) reactions that are preventing you from having the best sex you can.

Why is Sex a “Performance?”

Performing is stressful. If you’ve ever been through a recital, band audition, a big game, a speech, etc., you know that. You know that your tailbone tucks, your fingers sweat, your heart beats faster, or you just feel agitated and nervous. It’s all perfectly normal. When we care about something, like our music or sport, we get anxiety when it’s time to put that care to the test.

While both men and women can experience feelings of performance during sex, men shoulder the burden of the anxiety differently. And this anxiety leads to erectile dysfunction.

Sexual dysfunction can happen to anyone, but it’s more likely to occur due to “a man’s attitude towards sex, conflict in [his] relationship, and performance anxiety,” according to a study conducted for the International Journal of Stress Management. This means not only that there’s a clear link between performance anxiety and ED, but also that how men think about sex and their relationship is the key to dysfunction caused by anxiety.

When considering how men, even young men, can become anxious before or during sex, look at how our culture shapes their attitude towards it. Think of all the movies where a woman jokes about sex not being long enough, or that the man sleeps afterward, that she didn’t get enough orgasms, or that it wasn’t satisfying. This reduced, Hollywoodized version of relationships shows a very small aspect of the real experience of people who love each other, who can often satisfy each other without needing a “better performance.”

Yet, the media portrayal of how the man needs to “perform” ironically may be partly causing the attitude shift that makes him least likely to be able to do so. By making men feel like something is expected of them, their nerves make it more difficult to get (and give) the pleasure they should.

It’s well-known in the 21st century that advertising unattainable standards of beauty in movies, TV, and magazines can make women feel insecure about their looks. The media surrounding male sexual performance, its own kind of “unattainable standard,” may have a comparable effect on men’s insecurities when it’s time to “perform” in bed.

Since we know that how men view themselves and their relationship is the lynchpin of performance anxiety, it’s important to ask why sex is even considered a “performance” in the first place.

The Effects of Performance Anxiety

Whether influenced by cultural standards, our upbringing, or the challenges in our current relationships, performance anxiety comes with a host of nasty effects related to erectile dysfunction. Men can lose the ability to orgasm, their libido can tank in response to not enjoying sex, and they can even develop premature ejaculation due to their anxiety.

These effects come in cycles and it’s important to realize that if you’ve been evaluated for physical issues, or you have no reason to believe there’s anything else wrong, then the effects of anxiety are not permanent. There’s nothing wrong with you, your penis, or your manliness.

This article won’t obsess over the symptoms because you shouldn’t either. If you’re having trouble with erections, you know it, and obsessing over symptoms by using Dr. Google as a replacement for real help is part of the problem.

What you need is a step-by-step plan of how to break this cycle. Now that you know that it’s not your fault and that you can get your mojo back, follow these tips to overcome your anxiety and bring your erections back (with a vengeance).

Breaking the Cycle of Anxiety: A Three-Step Guide

Performance Anxiety Sex

Before we get into the steps, understand that you can’t fix hard-wired anxiety instantly. If you’ve been having this trouble for years, it may take a lot of work to get back in the saddle, so to speak. And if it’s only happened once and you’re worried that it could become a pattern, you can still use this advice. Just realize that everyone has bad sexual experiences sometimes. Both men and women experience anxiety, lose the mood, can’t orgasm, or can’t satisfy their partner all the time.

In either case, the culprit is likely our obsession with self-monitoring our performance and being critical of ourselves. This leads to anxiety, which leads to ED. Instead of monitoring yourself, you should be focused on the moment. Instead of being locked in the thoughts in your head, you should be feeling the sensations of your body. This is what you have to do to break the cycle.

Step 1: Change your attitude

It’s hard to break a mental cycle without realizing that you need to shift the way you think about the problem first. Cognitive-behavioral therapy offers pretty good advice on how to do this. Here’s a simplified version of it.

First, tell yourself the belief that is causing your problem. Maybe it’s something like, “I’m worried that she’ll leave me if I can’t have better sex.” Or, “I’m worried I’ll ejaculate too soon and we won’t enjoy sex.” Then, write down an alternative that’s way better. It could be something like, “We can enjoy being sexual together no matter what happens with my penis.” Or, “I know she loves me, no matter what happens in bed.”

Do this often: identify your anxiety and write down alternatives. What you’re doing is reinforcing the alternative and making the anxiety seem less inevitable. This will give you more mental room to accept the possibility that everything’s okay.

Step 2: Masturbate better

For many men that experience performance anxiety, masturbation is the only time they enjoy their erections and have orgasms. Masturbating better can actually help you defeat the anxiety.

First, you need to be mindful. This means that you should focus on the sensations of your body, the relaxation and movement of muscles, and imagine being sexual with a partner without obsessing over any other thoughts. Spend a lot of time pleasuring yourself without rushing or thinking that you “have” to climax. Enjoy the affection you can have for yourself when you don’t care what happens.

If you do this regularly, you can improve your performance anxiety. You can demystify your pleasure, making it easier to attain, and easier to give.

Step 3: Involve your partner

Many men feel that performance anxiety is a solo problem. However, if you have a partner, the chances are that they want to help you and to know what’s going on in your head. Voicing your concerns can help you dispel them. More than that, if they know what’s going on, they’ll know to support you, be uncritical, and help you focus on your pleasure.

Most people want their partners to be happy. Communication can help you recruit the person you love most to your team. Anxiety is way easier to fight together.

The Takeaway for Men

Performance anxiety can feel like a male-only problem and it can also feel very lonely. Neither of these things is true. However, the way our media treats men, often portraying them as responsible for the quality of sex while women stoically judge the results, encourages the culture of performance that leads a lot of men down the cycle of anxiety that, eventually, can cause ED.

The good news is that by acknowledging where anxiety comes from, it becomes way easier to dispel. Being mindful of your pleasure, masturbating with plenty of time and self-attention, and communicating with your partner all make the problem much easier to solve. Performance anxiety is not unsolvable. Like any cycle, it just has to be broken.

For more on how to overcome sexual performance anxiety and achieve harder erections on command, see here: Guide to Overcoming Psychological ED

Have a good one!

-David Carreras aka Mr. Manpower
Mr. Manpower’s Guide to
Overall Manhood Enhancement
the ultimate sex guide for men… “male potency without drugs”

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Beyond Kegels: How the Pelvic Floor Leads to Better Sexual Health

Posted by David Carreras on March 20, 2021

Pelvic Floor Muscles and Sexual Health

Sexual health preoccupies all of us, especially as we get older. A quick internet search will tell you all about kegels and how men should do them to get stronger “down below.” Muscles commonly known as the PC (pubococcygeus) and BC (bulbocavernosus) can get a workout using kegels to make erections stronger, help you last longer during sex, and have more pleasurable orgasms. Sounds amazing!

However, many men aren’t doing their kegels right. They and their pelvic floors could be in for a rude awakening.

Do NOT do kegels without reading this guide first. This is your walkthrough of the pelvic floor, kegeling, and how to improve your sexual health. Kegels aren’t just for women anymore. But you still have to do them correctly.

A Pelvic Floor Crash Course

Your pelvic floor is like a “hammock” of soft muscles slung under your seat. There are a lot of them (we’re not going through them all here). Just know that like any muscle, the pelvic floor can be strengthened through a “workout.”

However, unlike your biceps, quads, or pecs, the pelvic floor is never “off.” If it ever totally relaxed, we’d wet every pair of pants we own; sex would last .01 seconds and we’d have no orgasm. We wouldn’t be able to control anything down there.

This means that since the muscles are never truly relaxed, they also never recover from a workout like other muscles do.

Imagine doing a bicep curl. You can feel the burn in your muscle, the arousing tingle of muscle fibers breaking down so that they can be rebuilt beefier and more beautiful. When you give your bicep a day to rest, you know that you’ll have a stronger bicep as a result.

Now imagine doing a bicep curl and holding it for 45 years. You can’t expect your bicep to get bigger and stronger if it never rests. It will just tire out, hurt, and probably stop working. What does this have to do with the pelvic floor? When men get it in their heads to start kegeling for strength, it has everything to do with it.

Kegels: The Infinite Pelvic Floor Curl

How to Strengthen the Pelvic Floor Muscles

Kegels are a common prescription for postpartum women to strengthen their pelvic floors after the trauma of childbirth. Today, however, both men and women can easily find advice on why they should do kegels regularly for sexual health. The online kegeling guides all say the same thing. Here’s an excerpt from the Mayo Clinic:

“Tighten your pelvic floor muscles, hold the contraction for three seconds, and then relax for three seconds. Try it a few times in a row. When your muscles get stronger, try doing Kegel exercises while sitting, standing or walking … Repeat 3 times a day. Aim for at least three sets of 10 repetitions a day.”

This is sound advice for how to perform kegels, but only for people with very specific conditions, such as those who have had their prostate removed. For most normal men who just want to improve their sexual health, this advice can lead to disaster without some essential extra information.

For most men, a kegel routine includes squeezing to find the muscles and then repeatedly flexing and contracting them until they feel tired. Like the Mayo Clinic says, you can hold it for three seconds, ten times a day. That’s thirty seconds a day that your pelvic floor is held in a screaming corkscrew of sustained contraction. Here’s the problem with that (there are two).

The first problem is that you have to give muscles time to relax. But again, the pelvic floor doesn’t relax like normal muscles do – it has to remain contracted to protect our pant seats and orgasms. Without consciously relaxing the pelvic floor, kegels can increase tension down there without building any strength. This is where the second problem comes in.

Many sites like the Mayo Clinic and even many doctors don’t understand the difference between a tight pelvic floor and a strong one. Pelvic anatomy and health is relatively new because humans didn’t have nearly as many problems with it in the past. Why not?

The pelvic floor muscles are all connected to the muscles in your back and legs like your hamstrings and adductors and hip flexors (oh my). The more civilized we are, the more we sit. And the more we sit, the more those muscles shorten and become restricted. This creates more tension that gets loaded onto our pelvic floors.

So what do we do? We kegel, kegel, kegel. Three seconds, ten times a day, maybe even more because we want results. A results-driven mindset makes kegels dangerous. Lacking the knowledge of how to relax those muscles can cause kegels to do more harm to many men (and women) than good. They achieve the opposite of the results they wanted.

Beyond Kegels: How to REALLY Work Out Your Sex Muscles

If all you do is contract muscles that are already contracted by nature, you can cause them to develop tension, to become shorter, or even to go into spasm. This will lead to more difficulty maintaining erections, less pleasure, and less control. In the pursuit of sexual health, many men give themselves sexual hindrances. And they may not even know they’re doing it.

The truth about kegels is that most of us don’t have pelvic floors that are too relaxed or weak unless we’re very old, have continence issues, or have had our prostate removed. Most men need a pelvic floor that’s stronger, but all they’re doing is making it tighter. Which leads to weakness, dysfunction, and even pain.

Here’s what to do instead.

After you’ve figured out which muscles are the pelvic floor, deeply breathe into your belly. This will make the muscles “push” out and down, sort of like passing gas. Don’t push too hard. Especially if you do a few kegels during the day, which is okay if you don’t overdo them, this is how you can help those muscles relax. 

Perform this breath in a squat as well. Proper squats reinforce the muscles that give your pelvic floor its strength, especially the glutes. They’re your best friend if you want to work out your sex muscles for better performance in bed.

Realize that the pelvic floor is connected directly to nervous system functions, which is a fancy way of saying that it tightens automatically when you’re stressed and can be consciously controlled when you’re relaxed. You know how a dog pulls its tail between its legs? That’s what you’re doing for most of the day and it makes you weaker down there.

To undo this pattern, seek help for your stress issues, especially related to sex. Talk with your partner about your misgivings and give yourself some slack. Many men have the world on their shoulders when it comes to their partner’s pleasure. But the odds are that your partner is much more understanding about it than you are with yourself.

The Takeaway for Men Looking to Improve Their Overall Sexual Health

For many men, sexual health is a problem they want to “fix.” Results-driven thinking leads them to research blogs and even reputable medical sites with a goal in mind. With incomplete information, they begin squeezing the living hell from their pelvic floors, praying that it will make their erections stronger. They may achieve the opposite.

For these muscles, tight means weak and relaxed means strong. Imagine a hinge that’s screwed in so tight it looks like it’s about to break and approaching the problem by finding new ways to make it even tighter. All the sitting, stressing, and clenching you do literally holds these muscles back from their true potential.

Letting go of that tension, breathing deeply, and doing squats can give you the strength you need. Resisting the urge to power through spasms of delicate muscles in the hopes of more stamina in bed will be the best “kegel” you’ve ever done.

For more information on directly strengthening the PC muscles for sexual health, see here:

Have a good one!

-David Carreras aka Mr. Manpower
Mr. Manpower’s Guide to
Overall Manhood Enhancement
the ultimate sex guide for men… “male potency without drugs”

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How Masturbation Increases Sex Drive

Posted by David Carreras on February 15, 2021

masturbation increase sex drive

Men of all ages often wonder if masturbation increases sex drive, or does it actually harm it? We’ve done some research here in order to get to the bottom of the age-old question, and we’ve found that masturbation helps — rather than hurts — your sex drive, and for all the following reasons.

What Masturbation Actually Does To Our Body, and How That Affects Our Sex Drive

Since our early adolescence, we’ve all learned that masturbating makes us feel good, eliminates the “horniness”, and usually leaves us tired.

Masturbating actually has several effects on your body. One of the biggest is the release of a several hormones from your endocrine system, including oxytocin, the “love hormone” that is also released during cuddling or sex. Yes, oxytocin relaxes you—it lowers your heart rate and blood pressure, but it also lowers cortisol, the stress hormone… and cortisol has an inverse relationship with testosterone… meaning the lower cortisol, the higher the testosterone… and testosterone improves sex drive, so in this way masturbation boosts sex drive in the long run.

Masturbating also release endorphins, the same hormones released after exercise. You may not get runner’s high after masturbating, but you’ll likely have an improved mood, just like after a good workout. These endorphins are also conducive to increased focus and concentration, which is why many people opt to work out, or get it on, in the morning before the workday.

How Does Masturbation Affect Testosterone?

One study analyzed the concentrations of hormones, including testosterone, before and after masturbation. They found that masturbating significantly boosted testosterone, along with several other hormones important to the male sex drive. To be fair, masturbation is not the only thing that does this: certain foods, Vitamin D, and exercise can all raise your testosterone levels. However, knowledge is power, and the combination of masturbation along with exercising and Vitamin D supplementation can only improve your sex drive further.

As to further proof that testosterone increases sex drive, in this 2016 study, researchers looked at about 715 guys who were producing lower-than-normal levels of testosterone. They injected them with a solution of testosterone, and then examined their energy levels and sex drive. The results showed that testosterone significantly increased their sex drive.

Note: Too much of anything is a bad thing, though! Before considering anything like testosterone replacement therapy to increase testosterone production, know that having higher than average testosterone production has been shown to correlate with excessive aggression and risk-taking behavior. Some studies have shown that higher levels of testosterone may be linked to higher rates of criminal behavior, infidelity and divorce, and reckless financial decisions. 

Masturbation Helps You Exercise Your “Freaky Side”, and Keeps You “Ready”

All of us have a sex muscle that we can work out (not talking about our penis, mean more the mental aspect of our sex drive). The more we accustom ourselves to becoming aroused and ejaculating, the more our mind craves that state and satisfaction. Masturbating increases sex drive by keeping us both mentally and physically ready for sexual stimulation.

Masturbation Increases Sex Drive – So Don’t Hold Back!

masturbation increases sex drive

Taking all of these studies and observations into consideration, you can see that while there may be an initial satiety and fatigue following masturbation, the longer term affects of increasing your testosterone production and exploring more about what turns you on is how masturbation increases sex drive. 

Unless you have severe guilt towards masturbating and self-pleasure — which can occur in more religiously-raised men (and if it is the case, you should examine this false guilt and attempt to move past it) — you should not feel about about exercising this option for increasing sex drive.

All in all, masturbation has been found to be quite healthy, and there’s no harm in seeing for yourself how masturbation affects your sex drive over time…

…As if we needed another excuse to masturbate 😉 

For more ways to naturally increase your sex drive, as well as achieve stronger erections, last-longer during sex and more, see here! Mr. Manpower’s Guide to Overall Manhood Enhancement

Have a good one!

-David Carreras aka Mr. Manpower
Mr. Manpower’s Guide to
Overall Manhood Enhancement
[email protected]

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