According to this article in New Scientist, it is. But while it is a catchy title (note the judicuous use of catchy titles above – hey I’m trying to drive traffic here so the more times Google picks up on hot naked Lindsey Lohan sex with pictures in my blog, the more traffic I get), as with lots of articles about science, alternate explanations of the statistics are ignored (not that I’m saying sex isn’t better than masturbation, clearly it is, but reinforcing this to all the lonely geeks and nerds who read New Scientist doesn’t seem really right, does it?).
Apparently, levels of dopamine rise during sexual arousal and after orgasm, prolactin is released to counteract the dopamine. The study finds that the levels of prolactin is 400% higher after sexual orgasm than after masturbation orgasm. Of course, the article says nothing about the levels of dopamine in the two activities. Surely it couldn’t be that because sexual arousal is almost always greater (maybe 400% greater? Hmmm) during sex than during masturbation, that you might have way more dopamine during sex than during masturbation that needs countering. By default, I think this would be true because anyone who requires 25 minutes of foreplay during masturbation is probably a little weird.
Anyway, it’s an interesting article but by overanalyzing it, I’ve managed to make it mundane. Mission accomplished.
UPDATE: In related news, sex make stressful events less so. I think we should start a movement to rename New Scientist to “Magazine that writes silly little blurbs about things we all know to be true anyway”. Not sure that will fit in the header though.