Chapter 1: What is Sad Nipple Syndrome and how does it affect people?
Hi. Hello. Tell me about your nipples. Well, where to start? Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus.
Chapter 2: Why is nipple play considered arousing for some individuals?
Today on the show, a curious medical mystery. Let's just jump right in. So when my friend Scarlett was really little, four or five, she noticed something really strange. Whenever any kind of touch to the nipples occurred, like putting on a singlet or something, I would get a really terrible feeling.
Chapter 3: What is Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex (D-MER)?
Whenever a shirt happened to brush past her nipples, this overwhelming feeling came over her. And now, years later, Scarlett says that while her nipples aren't as sensitive as they used to be, she still told me that whenever anyone touches her nipples, she gets this very specific feeling. I think of it as being, like, feeling homesick or even a bit hungover.
Like, you know when you wake up in the wrong place and you kind of... feeling a bit lost or a bit depressed, almost a bit of a sense of anguish or despair even. Just feels so uncomfortable in my body, like if you were feeling the worst sadness you were ever feeling, so I just want to not touch them anymore.
Chapter 4: How does milk eject from a breast and what role do hormones play?
Once her nipples are in the clear, not being touched anymore, Scarlett feels like herself again. She said it's just this weird thing that happens to her.
Chapter 5: Is oxytocin responsible for the feelings associated with nipple stimulation?
The kind of thing that you think is normal at first until you start talking to other folks about it. It's kind of like this thing she remembers a friend saying at a party.
Chapter 6: How does dopamine influence feelings during breastfeeding?
Yeah, you know when you, like, fart into your hand and you catch it and you sniff it?
Chapter 7: What strategies might help alleviate the discomfort of Sad Nipple Syndrome?
And everyone went, no. And they said, oh, yeah, me neither. LAUGHTER It's a bit like one of those. I think, yeah, if you put it out there that, oh, yeah, you know when you're having a lovely, sexy time and someone really cool touches your nipples and you just feel like crying and you feel really homesick and sad and despairing and everyone goes, what? What on earth is that about? Oh, damn it.
Yeah, and you go, oh, yeah, me neither. Scarlett started wondering why this was happening. Why was she different?
Chapter 8: What insights do experts provide about the emotional responses to nipple stimulation?
And eventually she goes online and Googles, it feels bad when I touch my nipple. And there it was. Loads of other people saying, it happens to me. And now, years later, there's been viral videos on social media. The condition even has a name. It's called sad nipple syndrome. And all over the world, it seems like... People are talking about it.
Whenever my nipples get touched, it is just this like sinking, weird feeling of like sadness, homesickness. They get nostalgic or sad. And I feel this dread. And then I got on the internet and a lot of women were talking about it. That is a thing. And the name is sad nipple syndrome. And not just women, some men too. Scarlett couldn't believe it.
They described the feeling in the exact same way that she felt it. I was just amazed that people used the same words like homesick, hungover, yeah, dread, guilt. Even some people say it feels like guilt. Some folks online thought they were going crazy, that something was really wrong with them. And over at Science Versus, we were like, I mean, what is going on? Is this what you want to know?
Yeah, I want to know what's going on. How can just touching a nipple elicit all of these really complicated feelings? And so to get to the bottom of this booby baffler, we're going to go deep into the mysteries of anatomy through a world of hormones and nipple erections. And who knows, by the end of this episode, you may never look at your nipples the same way again.
When it comes to sad nipple syndrome, there's a lot of, what on earth is that about? But then there's science. Science versus sad nipple syndrome is coming up just after the break. Welcome back. Today on the show, the puzzling and peculiar phenomenon of sad nipple syndrome, where people can get this strange, perhaps intense homesick feeling when their nipples are touched.
Now, whenever Scarlett would ask doctors or therapists about what might be going on here, she told me that they would suggest that perhaps something terrible had happened to her in her childhood. You know, is it some repressed memory or something? But it doesn't seem to be. Yeah, it didn't feel like that. She didn't know about a trauma that she'd experienced that would make sense here.
And other folks online say the same thing. So what else we got? Well, as I started cracking open this medical mystery, I thought, let's first find out why it can feel nice and erotic even to have your nipples touched. Because I guess nipple play is kind of weird in itself, right? I mean, nipples, they're a bit weird looking. Your mother has them. She might have even suckled you with them.
And yet, most folks do enjoy a bit of nipple play. That's according to a survey of more than 200 undergrads who'd had sex. 81% of women and about half the men that they surveyed were into it. Another survey asked almost 800 folks to rank how erogenous certain parts of their bodies were from zero to 10. And nipples did pretty well in the ranking, particularly for women. scoring a 7.35 on average.
If you're curious, by the way, the elbows and shins ranked down at the bottom. So, to see why nips can turn so many of us on, I called out Barry Komisorak, a distinguished professor of psychology at Rutgers University in New Jersey. And he did this study to find out where the brain gets titillated when you touch sexy parts of your body.
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