Nocturnal emission
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A nocturnal emission is an ejaculation of semen experienced during sleep. It is also called a "wet dream", an involuntary orgasm, or simply an orgasm during sleep.
Nocturnal emissions are most common during teenage and early adult years. However, nocturnal emissions may happen any time after puberty, not just adolescence and early adulthood. They may or may not be accompanied by erotic dreams. Some males will wake during the ejaculation, while others will sleep through the event.
The source of nocturnal emissions is not known. A common theory, tacitly assumed by many researchers, is that they are the direct result of the stimulation caused by either erotic dreams or memories of waking sexual activities.[1] For this reason the term wet dream (but not the others) is also used figuratively for something very pleasurable but often imagined or hoped for. However, there has been little experimental evidence to support this theory, and many men claim to have had nocturnal emissions without accompanying erotic dreams. Another common theory is that wet dreams are the way the body disposes of "built-up" semen, to make room for more. However, the body does not in fact need to do this, as is evident from the many men who ejaculate only on rare occasions.
The frequency of nocturnal emissions is highly variable. Some men have experienced large numbers of nocturnal emissions as teenagers, while some men have never experienced one in their lives. Men who experience wet dreams more (or less) frequently than others usually do not have any sort of disease or problem. Some have them only at a certain age, while others have them throughout their lives following puberty. Contrary to popular belief, the frequency that one has nocturnal emissions has not been conclusively linked to one's frequency of masturbation, although widely-known sex researcher Alfred Kinsey controversially claimed that a correlation exists. At least for women, Kinsey's own results seem to contradict this: "[A]ccording to Kinsey's findings, women who suddenly lost the opportunity for several coital orgasms per week had only a few more orgasms in their sleep per year." [2]
One factor that can affect the number of nocturnal emissions a person has is whether they take testosterone-based drugs. In a 1998 study, the number of boys reporting nocturnal emissions drastically increased as their testosterone doses were increased, from 17% of subjects with no treatment to 90% of subjects at a high dose.[3]
Whereas an ejaculation normally terminates an erection, in the case of nocturnal emission, the subject often still has a functional erection afterward.
Although purported treatments to help prevent or diminish nocturnal emissions are available in abundance, none are known to have undergone any kind of rigorous experimentation or approval process such as that required by the Food and Drug Administration. Like the hiccups, there are a huge variety of "home remedies" with no scientific basis. Moreover, because no physical harm is caused by the act and it is not symptomatic of any underlying problem, it is generally considered unadvisable to undergo any sort of treatment except in cases of severe psychological trauma.
Involuntary orgasms can, more rarely, occur during waking hours and in women as well as men. The German word Pollution (= Samenerguß), which does not have the same meaning as the English word "pollution", describes all these involuntary orgasms collectively.1
Spermatorrhoea
In the 18th and 19th century, if a patient had involuntary orgasms frequently or released more semen than is typical, then he was diagnosed with a disease called spermatorrhoea or seminal weakness. A variety of drugs and other treatments, including circumcision and castration, were advised to treat this "disease", which was in reality completely harmless biologically.2,3 Some modern doctors, especially herb healers, continue to diagnose and advise treatments for cases of spermatorrhoea, but as noted above these treatments are neither validated by thorough experimentation nor even generally necessary.
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In other cultures
A recent study by Moazzam Ali et al showed that many adolescents living in relatively isolated communities in Pakistan had developed strong convictions that nocturnal emission is a dangerous disease:
"[They] considered night emissions a major sex related disease in the adolescent years. A few shared experiences where they had borrowed or even stolen money from home to get prolonged and expensive treatment from traditional healers for night emissions and masturbation”.4
