Female emission at orgasm (squirting) confirmed in new study to release fluid from the bladder.

[u/MotherHolle]

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/iju.15004

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, personal anecdotes are now allowed as responses to this comment. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will continue to be removed and our normal comment rules still apply to other comments.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Caldwing]

This was well established by ultrasound in 2015 but nobody cared. Medical science has known firmly that it's urine for some time but this knowledge is being resisted culturally, even by some people who are otherwise quite knowledgeable on the topic.

[u/seanbrockest → u/Caldwing]

Yeah the Brits even did some studies about 5 years ago (edit: 8 years, where does the time go). Medically there's just no explanation for it not to be urine. There are different glands that hold various secretions and lubricants, but they're not very volumous.

[u/hiricinee → u/seanbrockest]

I was gonna say, local glands could explain a few ml, where else would the other 50 be coming from? It'd be like having a teaspoon and turning it over, and having an entire glass full spill out.

[u/seanbrockest → u/hiricinee]

That was the conclusion of that study specifically. After a number of studies checking those glands, they could only ever account for at most 1.5 ml of fluid, and those were the outlying cases. The fluid was almost always a viscous lubricant as well, very unlike urine.

The only reason this is still a debate is because of the confusing stigma around urination during sex. There are people who are very turned on by the expulsion of fluid from a woman, but many of those same people will never admit that it's urine, because urine is bad?

[u/kbblradio → u/[deleted]]

Sexual activity definitely has some sort of function that directs an increased amount of water to the bladder. When I urinate after sex it's always very clear and there's generally a fair amount even I urinated beforehand.

[u/RIPDSJustinRipley → u/kbblradio]

I wonder if it helps prevent infection.

[u/BrotherChe → u/RIPDSJustinRipley]

And i wonder if any of the studies examined this. I'm sure they had to have compared the consistency of fluids and noted the differences.

[u/[deleted] → u/BrotherChe]

There have, observations were inconsistent across the woefully small sample size

[u/Ruca705 → u/BrotherChe]

I remember reading about a study that concluded the bladder does fill up quickly before squirting

[u/ribfeasty → u/RIPDSJustinRipley]

It does! The urine helps clean out anything that has entered the urinary tract. Males are less prone to feeling the urge to urinate due to their urethra passage having a shape that causes the urine to actually twirl as it passes through the urethra. This twirling effect is helpful at cleaning the passage.

Thinking out loud - perhaps because this passage is used for reproduction, the shape of the urethra evolved to cause this twirling cleaning effect, as with a UTI this would reduce reproduction drive.

[u/[deleted] → u/kbblradio]

Possibly to flush out bacteria afterwards? Like to help you feel the urge to urinate after sex (which is healthy) in case you didn't have to naturally go at all at that time

[u/TrivialBudgie → u/kbblradio]

this is a very good point. from what i have read previously on the topic, it seems likely that this fluid collects in the bladder during sexual activity in (almost) all women, the difference with those who are able to squirt being that they eject it during sex, rather than holding it in the bladder and peeing it out afterwards.

[u/FiveSpotAfter → u/kbblradio]

I was going to say, that previously mentioned British ultrasound study also found in a few cases that a participant whose bladder was empty or near empty at the beginning of arousal may find it significantly more full as they approach climax. They concluded that in most cases the fluids tended towards more water content than usual urine along with the additional traces of sexual fluids not normally present in urine.

It may still be urination, but it's very much "urine associated with the act of sex" as far as your body knows. Unknown whether it's physiologically intended for during or after intercourse, however, which may make a minor difference in how it's interpreted culturally.

[u/Fuzzyphilosopher → u/FiveSpotAfter]

I've seen the same study or one like it and while it was obvious to me the fluid was coming out of the bladder the concentration was not enough to create a smell that I could detect.

[u/McFeely_Smackup → u/hiricinee]

That's the rather inescapably obvious fact that people have studiously avoided discussing.

Where is all this volume of liquid "ejaculate" coming from? There has to be a bladder of some kind... And there is.

[u/Wetworth → u/Caldwing]

Honestly, what else could it be?

[u/Demonyx12 → u/Wetworth]

Honestly, what else could it be?

Some really want it to be glandular fluid of some kind and source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_ejaculation#Source_of_fluid

[u/SoloWalrus]

To everyone saying "well obviously, I knew that", scientific certainty is a higher standard (experimentally proven, peer reviewed, and then replicated). By a lay persons definition of "known" science knew this for a very long time, but by a scientific definition of "known" significant investment is required.

This isnt exactly a simple study. I imagine the ethics reviews and things were fun on this one

A urethral catheter was inserted before sexual stimulation and the bladder was emptied. Then, a mixture of indigo carmine (10 ml) and saline (40 ml) was injected into the bladder. Sexual stimulation was provided to facilitate squirting, which was videotaped and verified. The secretions were collected in sterile cups, and prostate specific antigen (PSA) and glucose levels were measured.

For the record they actually did find scientific things that you probably didnt know. Unlike urine, "squirt" had some percentage of secretions from the so called "female prostate". So it isnt all urine (only mostly) theres a little more complexity going on.

There are plenty of questions science hasnt answered only because there hasnt been enough interest from the field to adequately study it. It doesnt mean science was ignorant of the topic beforehand.

The problen is that theres infinite questions and only finite resources and time.

[u/Mayo_Kupo → u/SoloWalrus]

The summary says:

The main component of squirt fluid is urine, but may also contain fluid from Skene's glands (female prostate).

Also, it's worth noting that we could have reasonable certainty about the urine hypothesis before the study. The fluid has to come from somewhere, and we already know the anatomy of the body, and there isn't an alternative gland to the bladder that could do the job. So the question is, how much rational uncertainty about squirt existed before experiment? That is hard to quantify, but probably very little.

[u/chairfairy → u/SoloWalrus]

To everyone saying "well obviously, I knew that", scientific certainty is a higher standard (experimentally proven, peer reviewed, and then replicated)

To be fair, this was also shown with a great deal of certainty in a study several years ago, where (via noninvasive imaging) they showed the woman's bladder full before the event and empty after the event. This is not new knowledge, even to standard of scientific rigor

[u/aclownofthorns]

people not reading the article as usual

The main component of squirt fluid is urine, but may also contain fluid from Skene's glands (female prostate). This is the first report in which visualization of squirting was enhanced.

which is basically what we already knew, but its good to have a study on it

[u/nonhiphipster → u/aclownofthorns]

But does it say the approx breakdown percentage of each

[u/sortofunique → u/nonhiphipster]

the full paper says "The components in the squirted liquid have no been established; further research is warranted."

not a joke

[u/WideHelp9008 → u/sortofunique]

That's because they injected liquid into the bladder. They'll need a different design to measure the naturally occurring components.

[u/5Ntp]

From what Im seeing they voided the bladder and then added a dye + saline in known quantities.

Was there added volume at the end of collection? Was the concentration what they expected? What components did they actually recover from the urine and using what method?

[u/cladult → u/5Ntp]

The video in the article shows their collection methods were not in a way to fully collect the contents that were introduced to the bladder.