New study shows: Choking during sex can lead to brain damage

A new study has shown that choking during sex can cause brain damage.

New research shows that 58 percent of female college students have experienced being strangled during sex, also known as “sexual strangulation.”

Although some consider the act harmless, research has shown that it can have potentially devastating effects.

New study shows that choking during sex can cause brain damage (Getty Stock Image)

The study, conducted by sexual and reproductive health researcher Dr. Debby Herbinick, found that women who had been choked four times in the previous 30 days experienced cognitive changes that affected their memory.

The study states: “While unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases continue to be important public health problems, recent studies have found that choking/strangulation, or strangulation of a partner during sexual intercourse, a form of manual strangulation or strangulation with a strangulator, is highly prevalent among adolescents and young adults and disproportionately affects women.”

The danger of suffocation lies in the risk associated with a lack of oxygen to the brain.

Just 10 seconds without oxygen can lead to fainting, while minutes without oxygen can cause brain damage.

It is believed that people gag during sex because of the “pleasant or euphoric feeling” that occurs when blood and oxygen supply to the brain resumes after gagging.

Women who had been strangled four times in the past 30 days experienced cognitive changes that affected their memory (Getty Stock Photo)

The study, published in Brain Behaviour, compared two groups of women. The first group consisted of women who had experienced choking in the past month, and the second group consisted of women who had no experience of choking at all.

The researchers explain that in the suffocation group there was an increase in the thickness of the cerebral cortex in several brain regions.

“In our choking group, we observed a significant increase in cerebral cortex thickness in areas important for visual processing, working memory, language, object recognition and motor control,” they explained.

“…In the context of sexual choking, hypoxemia/ischemia-induced reactive gliosis or astrocyte activation may be one of the main reasons for increased cerebral cortex thickness.”

The study compared two groups of women (Getty Stock Photo)

The study highlighted the importance of these findings, stating that “sexual choking is the most common form of strangulation and our findings therefore have high public health significance.”

Dr Herbernick said: “There is a huge concern about teenagers and young people doing this who don’t really have the full knowledge and information about this behaviour and may have very little practice or experience in talking about sexuality.”

“Historically, strangulation was taboo for most in the fetish and BDSM community and was viewed as a type of rare or niche behavior that a small group of people were interested in and that required very careful consent, communication and education.”

In 2021, British woman Sophie Moss was killed after her partner Sam Pybus “applied pressure to her neck” during sex.

Pybus was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison.

The judge told Pybus: “This was a case where you were deliberately drunk, unable to assess the situation and perhaps stopped when it was obvious you had overshot the mark.”

“It was obviously dangerous behavior, whether consensual or not.

“Dangerous in the sense that any compression of the neck poses an obvious risk of brain damage or worse, as this case so tragically shows.”

Photo credit: Getty Stock Photos

Topics: Science, Sex and Relationships