Why You Should Be Having Sex At This Time Of Day

If your sex routine usually involves going at it at the end of the day, here’s one simple way to change it up that doesn’t involve going out of your comfort zone — try having sex first thing in the morning. As a new study found, exposure to light helps boost men’s levels of testosterone and increases their levels of sexual satisfaction.

Researchers from the University of Siena conducted a study of 38 men who had been diagnosed with having low sex drives. Half the men were told to spend every morning for two weeks in a room with a light box, which emits white light to simulate the effect of more sun. As the study found, men who spent more time in the room with bright light from the light box found significant increase in their testosterone levels. When their testosterone levels increased, so did their levels of sexual satisfaction. Researchers found, the average sexual satisfaction score went from two out of 10 pre-light box treatment to around 6.3 after. The control group, who was exposed to dimmer light, still had an average score of about 2.7 after treatment.

“Light box therapy has been used now for decades to treat things like Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS),” Dawn Maslar MS, author of Men Chase, Women Choose: The Neuroscience of Meeting, Dating, Losing Your Mind, and Finding True Love tells Bustle.

According to Maslar, light box therapy lowers melatonin which is elevated with SAD. Melatonin also has an effect on testosterone and suppresses the luteinizing hormone which stimulates the production of testosterone. “Therefore, it would make sense that if you lowered melatonin you would get more testosterone,” Maslar says. “The combination of lowered melatonin levels and higher testosterone levels would cause a guy to be more alert, happy and sexually desirous.”

According to the researchers, this study could also help explain why reproductive rates peak in June. According to the study, “the body’s testosterone production naturally declines from November through April, and then rises steadily through the spring and summer with a peak in October.”

A Lovehoney study released last year found women prefer to have sex around 11 at night, while men want it around eight in the morning. According to Maslar, men are more likely to want sex in the morning because his testosterone level is highest in the morning and slowly drops as the day goes on. “He would have more sexual aggression, desire and stamina in the morning,” Maslar says.

Whether changing up the time of day will do wonders for your sex life, it’s really hard to say. Everyone’s different. But it couldn’t hurt to give it a try if your partner has a low sex drive.

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