Forgetting something..? Photo credit: lenjerie intima http://www.flickr.com/photos/shop-romantic/6172748654/
Sex can be forgettable, regrettable or mind-blowing. But a new study published in The Journal of Emergency Medicine claims that sometimes the excitement of sex can lead to severe temporary amnesia. It told the tale of a woman admitted to the emergency department (ED) with acute memory loss, immediately following a bout of energetic love-making: “The patient was in her usual state of health until approximately 1h before ED arrival, when she experienced the acute onset of short-term memory loss coinciding with sexual climax. Both the patient and her husband stated that after climax she was unable to recall events of the preceding 24 h”, the paper said.
The paper also refers to “a case of a man whose episode began during orgasm when he suddenly exclaimed “Where am I? What’s happened?”
A rush of blood. The cause of the phenomenon, which affects a whopping 3-5 people per 100,000, is unclear. One suggestion is that it’s all in the neck. The blood pressure in the abdomens of the lustful victims rises. This pressure increases resistance to blood flowing down the neck, away from the brain, meaning that deoxygenated blood gets pushed back up to the brain, starving the memory-forming sections of the mind of vital oxygen.
Benign. Neurologist Sebastian Ameriso told LiveScience, “It causes a lot of alarm, but this is not a stroke or an event that causes damage to the brain. It’s almost always very benign.” MRI and CT scans of the patient’s brain showed no abnormalities, and the condition alleviated itself within hours, while repeat cases within an individual are rare. No need to take up a life of celibacy just yet, then.
