Ifyou watch a lot of porn in order to get sexually aroused, stop doing it ashealth experts on Sunday emphasised that watching excessive sexual content mayaffect your performance in the bedroom.
Accordingto the experts, watching excessive porn is like any other addictive substancesthat lead to unnaturally high levels of dopamine secretion.
"Thiscan damage the dopamine reward system and leave it unresponsive to naturalsources of pleasure. This is why users begin to experience difficulty inachieving arousal with a physical partner," Arti Anand, Consultant --Clinical Psychologist, Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi told.
Theexperts emphasised that porn interferes in your sexual life in other ways, too.It sometimes sets high expectations for people who think sex should be done incertain ways, which they saw in porn videos.
"Pornis similar to movies where we see that the actors are decked up on certainoccasions. So here also they are decked up for the act and that's not theactual thing," said Sanjay Kumavat, Consultant Psychiatrist andSexologist, Fortis Hospital, Mulund, Mumbai.
"Peopletend to feel that this is how sex should be, as porn sets their expectationshigh and they feel these are the methodologies one needs to approach andeventually they end up having an inferiority complex or premature ejaculation.
"Thesepeople may develop a complex feeling about the size of penis or breast or thestamina and may land up not performing well in real sex situation,"Kumavat added.
Astudy presented during the 112th Annual Scientific Meeting of the AmericanUrological Association showed that there was a correlation between pornographyuse and sexual dysfunction in those men who reported a preference formasturbation to pornography rather than sexual intercourse, with or withoutpornography.
"Visualstimulation will often increase sexual arousal in both men and women, but whenthe majority of their time is spent viewing and masturbating to pornography, itis likely they will become less interested in real-world sexualencounters," said researcher Joseph Alukal from New York University.
Pornaddiction is something that is relatively new in the study of addiction ascompared to that of alcohol and other substances.
"Thoughboth addictions affect the body negatively, porn addiction is watchingsomething on screen while in substance abuse you are ingesting a substance likealcohol, which can cause further harm to parts of your body like theliver," said Ashish Kumar Mittal, Sexologist and Psychiatrist in ColumbiaAsia Hospital, Gurgaon.
However,he mentioned few things that may help people with porn addiction to overcomeit.
"Somesimple steps could be discarding all porn-related content you keep and make itharder to access it. Installing anti-porn software could also help,"Mittal added.
"Distractingoneself when the impulse hits is helpful and you can take your time to plan alist of activities that you can indulge in to distract yourself. Keeping ajournal to monitor your emotions and progress will also help. Approach amedical professional for treatment can also help tremendously in your journeyto recovery," he noted.