7-day No Fap Challenge

About

The No Fap Challenge is a challenge imposed by users on Reddit as a result of a study conducted and published, describing the relationship between ejaculation and testosterone levels in men. The challenge had, as a result, the creation of content such as comics and image macros and users posting their own progress to the challenge.

Origin

In March/April 2003, Jiang M, Xin J, Zou Q and Shen JW from the Science department of the J Zhejiang University published a paper called A research on the relationship between ejaculation and serum testosterone level in men. The research consisted of 28 volunteers who were tested. The results of the paper suggested that “on the 7th day of abstinence, however, a clear peak of serum testosterone appeared, reaching 145.7% of the baseline”^[1].

Spread

On the 21st of June redditor Ridley posted the research abstract to the todayilearned subreddit^[2]. The post received over 5000 upvotes, which was 58% of all votes as of 29/6/2011. The comment thread had over 2000 comments by users willing to take the challenge.

On the same day, the subreddit NoFap was created^[3]. The purpose of the subreddit was to hold monthly challenges for masturbation abstinence.

Redditors’ Response

Reddit users expressed their willingness (or unwillingness) to take on the 7-day challenge though rage comics and advice animal instances:

Image Examples

Posts on IAmA and AskReddit

Redditors have announced that they were going to take the challenge through posts on IAmA (I am a) and AskReddit subreddits. Here are some notable examples:

More thread related to the challenge can be found in search results^[4].

External References

^[1]PubMed.gov – A research on the relationship between ejaculation and serum testosterone level in men.

^[2]Reddit’s todayilearned subreddit – TIL when men don’t masturbate for 7 days their testosterone levels increase by 45.7%.

^[3]Reddit – NoFap subreddit

^[4]Reddit – Search results for no-fap challenge