Pollution: Function, Tasks, Role & Diseases

Pollution is the medical term for an ejaculation of semen during sleep that occurs involuntarily and without one’s own doing. Pollution may or may not be accompanied by erotic dreams. Theories of pollution assume a natural breakdown of semen as the cause.

What is pollution?

Pollution is the medical term for ejaculation of semen during sleep, which occurs involuntarily and without any action on your part. The medical term of pollution refers to an involuntary ejaculation during sleep that occurs without the active intervention and often even completely escapes memory. Most men have their first pollution during puberty. The trigger for pollution is an unconscious orgasm. Pollution can occur during a midday sleep as well as during a night sleep, but pollution occurs comparatively more often during the night and is then usually limited to the REM sleep phase (dream sleep). Because of the more frequent occurrence at night, the term nocturnal ejaculation is often used synonymously with pollution. In colloquial language, the phenomenon is usually referred to as a wet dream. However, pollution does not have to be actually accompanied by a dream. The foreign word pollution corresponds to a loanword from Latin and comes from the verb “polluere” for “to stain” or “to pollute”. Presumably, this technical term derives from the traces on the bed cover, by which the ejaculation is first recognized in most cases.

Function and task

Most men report experiencing their first pollution during puberty. Under the influence of the increased gonadotropin concentration and the thus increased testosterone level, the penis, testes, epididymis, vas deferens and gonads grow during puberty. The testicles produce the first sperm. With the first true ejaculation, sexual maturation reaches the goal point. The first ejaculation occurs either consciously in the waking phase or unconsciously as pollution. A pollution does not necessarily have to be associated with an erection of the penis. The circumstance of the pollution also says little about the dreams. The dream content may or may not be erotic in nature. Some dreamers awaken during pollution. Others completely sleep through the ejaculation and then usually do not remember the event. If erotic dreams accompany pollution, they are often sexual fantasies that remain unfulfilled due to inhibitions, compulsions, or norms in the waking state. Consequently, erotic dreams often express unconscious and repressed fantasies. Ejaculation requires muscle contractions in the pelvic floor area and contraction of the accessory sex organs. Since these contractions occur during sleep independently of one’s own intervention and stimulation, the question arises as to the cause or trigger of the pollution. One theory on this is the so-called semen accumulation theory, which assumes that the body’s own degradation function is triggered by involuntary orgasm and the subsequent ejaculation of accumulated semen. Another hypothesis is pursued by the teratozoospermia avoidance theory, which explains the purpose of pollutions as teratozoospermia avoidance and improvement of sperm quality. In fact, pollution appears to occur only when, over a period of time, the secretions and sperm have not been expelled during awake seminal discharges. The occurrence of pollution is subject to indirect control by hormonal gland activity, which exerts high influence on sex organ function. Meanwhile, correlations have been demonstrated between the increase in the level of testosterone and the frequency of pollution. The hormonal system is furthermore related to sexual sensory stimuli with its activity.

Diseases and ailments

Pollution is a common and natural phenomenon that has no disease value. Rather, it indicates natural development and often marks the onset of puberty. Although ejaculations during sleep are a harmless phenomenon with no pathological value, they are rarely addressed even by people of medical practice. Therefore, for the sake of a healthy and emotionally unburdened personality development, a clarification can take place before the first pollution.Without such education, boys are sometimes exposed to inexplicable phenomena with pollution, which they sometimes perceive as a serious insecurity or no longer trust their bodies and their functions in the sexual sphere. For this reason, unenlightened boys may experience their first pollution as a traumatic event, which may be accompanied by massive impairments of their future sexual life. Some unenlightened boys feel shame about pollution, thinking they are bedwetters. Such problems linked to nocturnal ejaculation were especially often observed in boys with intellectual disabilities. Especially with them there is a need for sexual education, so that they do not think of themselves as bedwetters and feel neither shame nor feelings of inferiority about the event of pollution. If pollution already occurs before puberty, this also has no pathological value. Shortly before puberty, the gonadotropin concentration in the blood of a boy increases. With it, testosterone production also increases. This is followed by the release of sex hormones. Testosterone levels can thus be two- to threefold higher even before puberty. Boys can therefore already produce secretions in the accessory sex glands and prostate before puberty following stimulation. Even a year or even several years before their actual sexual maturity, they can thus experience a small release of prostatic secretion in an orgasm or undergo pollutions. The ejaculate in a prepubertal orgasm consists solely of secretion and is marked by the absence of sperm.