POIS NORD RESEARCH STUDY

[Investigator]

I had the chance to talk briefly one on one with a neuroscience professor and find it important to share here one of the things he said. I explained him about POIS and about the upcoming study. Here is an extraction of what he said:

1) A lot of his research is funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH), even though it is not directly related to health - it is really "basic science". It could have potential implications to health at some point in the future, but these are not direct or immediate. To put it differently, NIH can be very generous.

2) NIH is pretty conservative, though, and would most likely not fund POIS studies at the current stage. He says that what is known about POIS as of now would not be sufficient at the moment to make a good proposal for NIH funding. Basically, he said that a crowdfunded study is by far the best bet for us, given the current stage of POIS research. So yes, we are doing the (only) right thing.

3) HOWEVER, and this is most important, ***IF*** the upcoming POIS study finds some marker (could be autonomic, immune, or endocrine - whatever marker) that is different in us than it is in the control group, then NIH, he believes (based on his experience) would be interested to fund further studies. It is sufficient for the research team to be able to "sniff" something that could be wrong in us, and then it would be possible to make a case for further NIH funding.

To put 2 and 3 differently: NIH would not pay just on the basis of us saying they have brain fog after orgasm; however, if the LA study finds, say, that we all have low/high [...something...] or some weird physiological neurological response to orgasm, then his guess is that it would be much easier to obtain further funding from NIH. And he said that on our own, everyone just doing lab tests that he finds appropriate, it is quite unlikely that we hit such a marker. He was also impressed that a study has been designed on such a small budget, this is really remarkable and we all appreciate it.

His words sounded pretty encouraging to me. 

[demografx]

Investigator, you are a mind reader!

This is *exactly* where we are headed! NIH is spending $41.46 billion in 2020 on medical research. And once we’ve published the current study, our hope is to get funded by NIH!

And the current researchers are totally committed to help us get as far along as possible on this path TO A CURE.

Thank you greatly for your post!!
Demo

[demografx]

I'm not able to participate in the study, but I'd like to thank everyone who's able to attend! Good luck everyone.

Many thanks, Clues!!
Demo

[hurray]

I had the chance to talk briefly one on one with a neuroscience professor and find it important to share here one of the things he said. I explained him about POIS and about the upcoming study. Here is an extraction of what he said:

1) A lot of his research is funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH), even though it is not directly related to health - it is really "basic science". It could have potential implications to health at some point in the future, but these are not direct or immediate. To put it differently, NIH can be very generous.

2) NIH is pretty conservative, though, and would most likely not fund POIS studies at the current stage. He says that what is known about POIS as of now would not be sufficient at the moment to make a good proposal for NIH funding. Basically, he said that a crowdfunded study is by far the best bet for us, given the current stage of POIS research. So yes, we are doing the (only) right thing.

3) HOWEVER, and this is most important, ***IF*** the upcoming POIS study finds some marker (could be autonomic, immune, or endocrine - whatever marker) that is different in us than it is in the control group, then NIH, he believes (based on his experience) would be interested to fund further studies. It is sufficient for the research team to be able to "sniff" something that could be wrong in us, and then it would be possible to make a case for further NIH funding.

To put 2 and 3 differently: NIH would not pay just on the basis of us saying they have brain fog after orgasm; however, if the LA study finds, say, that we all have low/high [...something...] or some weird physiological neurological response to orgasm, then his guess is that it would be much easier to obtain further funding from NIH. And he said that on our own, everyone just doing lab tests that he finds appropriate, it is quite unlikely that we hit such a marker. He was also impressed that a study has been designed on such a small budget, this is really remarkable and we all appreciate it.

His words sounded pretty encouraging to me.

Very interesting, thank you for sharing the professor's insights into funding.

His comment on us needing to find a marker is very insightful. The fact that we cannot "prove" we are in POIS other than by describing our symptoms has been holding us back for many years. A test for POIS would be a huge breakthrough.

[demografx]

Very interesting, [Investigator],  thank you for sharing the professor's insights into funding.

His comment on us needing to find a marker is very insightful. The fact that we cannot "prove" we are in POIS other than by describing our symptoms has been holding us back for many years.

A test for POIS would be a huge breakthrough.

emphasis mine - - Demo

Good morning to you, hurray, and thank you very much for that truly insightful remark. I think we are finally on the verge of:

TRUE SCIENCE for POIS!

Best regards,
Demo

[demografx]

TO EVERYONE CONSIDERING VOLUNTEERING FOR THE POIS STUDY, 
please take the survey

https://tinyurl.com/ttffxz4   

and, if you are eligible, sign up for a follow up call - it is very brief, just 10 minutes, and the purpose is to check your medications (which would be hard to do in an online survey) and schedule your actual lab session. The only time you would see the number (and not have a time you book for a phone appointment) would be if you tried to sign up for a spot that day - so just look for an appointment the next day.

If for whatever reason you can’t sign up for that call right away, you can take down the
number (724) 638-7661 and leave a message with a time you can be reached - but the best thing is to sign up for a call at the time you go through the survey.

[demografx]

The opening message to the survey link:
( https://tinyurl.com/ttffxz4 )

Thank you for your interest in our study. This study is focused on understanding what causes post-orgasmic illness syndrome (POIS). POIS is thought to affect men.

We are mainly seeking volunteers who are experiencing POIS, but we also need some men who are not experiencing POIS.
 
If you qualify, the study would require you attending one private session at the laboratory in west Los Angeles at a time convenient for you. The session will start with reviewing the study so you can provide Informed Consent to participate. During that session, we will ask you to answer surveys, including questions about your personal mental health and sexual experiences. Then, we will ask you to provide saliva ("spit") and blood (finger prick) samples. Next, we will ask you to complete short computer tests while we record your brain responses. These tests involve looking at emotional pictures, including images that show sexual intercourse, as well as tests of your memory. Then, we will ask you to masturbate to orgasm. You will masturbate in private in a room with no audio or visual recording. During this time, we also will record your genital and other physical responses from a separate room. Responses include butt movement that happens at orgasm using this small instrument. After, we will ask you to complete the same computer tasks again and answer some questions about your experience. Finally, we will pay you in cash. Each day for one week after your laboratory visit, we will ask you to complete a survey on the Internet, for which we also will pay you. Your participation will be confidential.
 
The investigators for this study are Tierney Lorenz, PhD and Nicole Prause, PhD. The study is sponsored by the National Organization of Rare Diseases. The study has been reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. If you have any questions about your rights as a research participant, we encourage you to contact the IRB at 402-472-6965 or irb@unl.edu.

Please answer the questions below to see if you qualify for the study. The purpose of these questions is only to test if you are able to volunteer for the laboratory study in Los Angeles. You do not have to answer these questions. Your answers to these questions will be confidential and anonymous. If you choose not to answer these questions, it will not affect your relationship with Liberos LLC or the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We do not expect that you will receive any direct benefit from answering these questions.

If you qualify for the study based on your answers, we will ask you to schedule a time for a short phone call at a time that is convenient for you.

https://tinyurl.com/ttffxz4

[drop247]

Is there the possibility of future follow up testing in the period post-orgasm? I'm concerned that saliva and blood samples are being taken before orgasm and then never again.

[demografx]

Is there the possibility of future follow up testing in the period post-orgasm? I'm concerned that saliva and blood samples are being taken before orgasm and then never again.

drop247, of course.

We’re just at “Step 1”.

Scientific baby step.

[Muon]

Articles from Tierney Lorenz

Articles from Nicole Prause

[demografx]

Articles from Dr Tierney Lorenz

Articles from Dr Nicole Prause

Thanks, Muon, very helpful

[demografx]

POIS Study volunteers - -

The opening message to the survey link:
( https://tinyurl.com/ttffxz4 )

Thank you for your interest in our study. This study is focused on understanding what causes post-orgasmic illness syndrome (POIS). POIS is thought to affect men.

We are mainly seeking volunteers who are experiencing POIS, but we also need some men who are not experiencing POIS.
 
If you qualify, the study would require you attending one private session at the laboratory in west Los Angeles at a time convenient for you. The session will start with reviewing the study so you can provide Informed Consent to participate. During that session, we will ask you to answer surveys, including questions about your personal mental health and sexual experiences. Then, we will ask you to provide saliva ("spit") and blood (finger prick) samples. Next, we will ask you to complete short computer tests while we record your brain responses. These tests involve looking at emotional pictures, including images that show sexual intercourse, as well as tests of your memory. Then, we will ask you to masturbate to orgasm. You will masturbate in private in a room with no audio or visual recording. During this time, we also will record your genital and other physical responses from a separate room. Responses include butt movement that happens at orgasm using this small instrument. After, we will ask you to complete the same computer tasks again and answer some questions about your experience. Finally, we will pay you in cash. Each day for one week after your laboratory visit, we will ask you to complete a survey on the Internet, for which we also will pay you. Your participation will be confidential.
 
The investigators for this study are Tierney Lorenz, PhD and Nicole Prause, PhD. The study is sponsored by the National Organization of Rare Diseases. The study has been reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. If you have any questions about your rights as a research participant, we encourage you to contact the IRB at 402-472-6965 or irb@unl.edu.

Please answer the questions below to see if you qualify for the study. The purpose of these questions is only to test if you are able to volunteer for the laboratory study in Los Angeles. You do not have to answer these questions. Your answers to these questions will be confidential and anonymous. If you choose not to answer these questions, it will not affect your relationship with Liberos LLC or the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We do not expect that you will receive any direct benefit from answering these questions.

If you qualify for the study based on your answers, we will ask you to schedule a time for a short phone call at a time that is convenient for you.

https://tinyurl.com/ttffxz4

[demografx]

Interview with our POIS co-investigator/NeuroScientist
Dr Nicole Prause:

5 Myths About Orgasm
https://youtu.be/5oUdoicdz8Y

[demografx]

I had the chance to talk briefly one on one with a neuroscience professor and find it important to share here one of the things he said. I explained him about POIS and about the upcoming study. Here is an extraction of what he said:

1) A lot of his research is funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH), even though it is not directly related to health - it is really "basic science". It could have potential implications to health at some point in the future, but these are not direct or immediate. To put it differently, NIH can be very generous.

2) NIH is pretty conservative, though, and would most likely not fund POIS studies at the current stage. He says that what is known about POIS as of now would not be sufficient at the moment to make a good proposal for NIH funding. Basically, he said that a crowdfunded study is by far the best bet for us, given the current stage of POIS research. So yes, we are doing the (only) right thing.

3) HOWEVER, and this is most important, ***IF*** the upcoming POIS study finds some marker (could be autonomic, immune, or endocrine - whatever marker) that is different in us than it is in the control group, then NIH, he believes (based on his experience) would be interested to fund further studies. It is sufficient for the research team to be able to "sniff" something that could be wrong in us, and then it would be possible to make a case for further NIH funding.

To put 2 and 3 differently: NIH would not pay just on the basis of us saying they have brain fog after orgasm; however, if the LA study finds, say, that we all have low/high [...something...] or some weird physiological neurological response to orgasm, then his guess is that it would be much easier to obtain further funding from NIH. And he said that on our own, everyone just doing lab tests that he finds appropriate, it is quite unlikely that we hit such a marker. He was also impressed that a study has been designed on such a small budget, this is really remarkable and we all appreciate it.

His words sounded pretty encouraging to me.

Investigator, you are a mind reader!

This is *exactly* where we are headed! NIH is spending $41.46 billion in 2020 on medical research. And once we’ve published the current study, our hope is to get funded by NIH!

And our current POIS researchers are totally committed to help us get as far along as possible on this path TO A CURE.

Thank you greatly for your post!!
Best,
Demo

[demografx]

PAID POIS STUDY VOLUNTEERS:
See if you qualify! https://tinyurl.com/ttffxz4   

 More about the POIS Scientific Grant that we (POISCenter.com) funded...







“Crowdfunded grant will help
UNL researcher study
sex-related condition [POIS]”

By Chris Dunker  Jun 26, 2019



Hundreds of millions of dollars slated for research flow into the University of Nebraska-Lincoln each year from federal agencies like the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Multimillion-dollar research projects that center on creating new materials that will make computers even faster or to study drug addiction in rural areas are a large part of UNL's $308 million in research expenditures this year.

But there are also research grants that fly under the radar while also advancing understanding of the human condition.

Take a recent grant awarded to UNL researcher and assistant professor of psychology Tierney Lorenz from the National Organization of Rare Disorders to study a little-known condition affecting men following ejaculation.

Through a crowdfunded grant totaling $31,000, Lorenz and California-based neuroscientist and sex researcher Nicole Prause will study post-orgasmic illness syndrome, or POIS, the rapid onset of flu-like symptoms in men at the conclusion of sex.

"It's a fairly rare condition, and it hasn't gotten much clinical attention," Lorenz said of the disease, which is commonly marked by coughing and sneezing, sore throats and stuffy noses as well as other physical symptoms.

Some men have reported cognitive difficulties such as a loss of attention span or memory loss. Symptoms can last for a few hours or as long as a week, Lorenz added.

"It's not life-threatening in any way, but these guys can get pretty sick, and the flu can take a big chunk out of their life," she said.


An online community for men who suffer from the disorder raised the funds and worked with the nonprofit National Organization for Rare Disorders in asking for research proposals. Lorenz and Prause's study of the "Autonomic, endocrine, and immune mediators of post-orgasmic illness syndrome" was accepted earlier this year.

The researchers believe a better understanding of the disorder could further larger insight into the physiology of the human orgasm, which could improve sexual health for all, even those without the condition.

It also signals a new track of research at UNL. Lorenz, who just completed her first year on faculty, is the director of the Women, Immunity and Sexual Health lab, which studies how sexual behavior in women affects their immune and endocrine functions, while also providing help to survivors of sexual trauma through basic science and clinical research.


Lorenz, as well as Prause, previously conducted research at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University Bloomington, where she studied the suppression of women's immune systems during ovulation -- an evolutionary change to prevent the immune system from attacking sperm cells or a zygote -- and whether sexual activity modulates that suppression.

She said the forthcoming POIS study, which will largely take place in Prause's lab in California, is a continuation of her work understanding the larger immune effects of the sexual response cycle.

"It's a really rare condition in which the whole system kind of goes haywire," Lorenz said, "but when we understand how something breaks down, it also helps us understand how it works."

 Tierney Lorenz


POISCenter-funded NORD PI (Principal Investigator)
and researcher Dr. Tierney Lorenz
Dr Lorenz was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute:
https://tinyurl.com/y2c6ryod





POISCenter-funded NORD researcher/co-Investigator
Dr. Nicole Prause’s TedX talk on orgasm:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aK-zBBSqFV4

[demografx]

Email from Dr Nicole Prause:

POIS is mentioned on the Adam Conover podcast show around 1:03:00 - including POIS study recruiting:
https://tinyurl.com/tf34l7f

Adam Conover
Today on @Factually podcast, sex scientist @NicoleRPrause [our POIS research co-Investigator] reveals the truth about sex "addiction", debunks common misconceptions about the science of sex, and explains how difficult it is to measure whether or not a test subject has *really* had an orgasm.

Twitter · 1 hour ago





Adam Conover is an American comedian, writer, voice actor, and television host. He is the creator and host of the half-hour truTV show Adam Ruins Everything, which is based on the CollegeHumor series of the same name. He is also the host of the American version of The Crystal Maze on Nickelodeon.

Wikipedia

[demografx]

IMPORTANT NOTICE FROM THE POIS STUDY RESEARCHERS
 
“We have just received instructions from the UNL IRB that all in-person research is to be temporarily paused until further notice. Additionally, there is increasing guidance from state governments and CDC authorities to reduce personal contact and delay any non-essential travel. In order to protect both our participants and research staff - and reduce possible interference with our measurements of people’s stress and immune responses – we will be pausing all in-person study sessions for the time being. In the meantime, we will keep the online study screener open and will continue to conduct phone screenings to collect contact information from folks who qualify, in order to schedule later on when we are cleared to resume in-person research. We will keep the POIS community updated as soon as we have any new information. Thanks for your patience – and stay safe out there!”

[demografx]

By Mallory Pickett

You won’t find the true address for Dr. Nicole Prause’s [current POIS Study co-Investigator] enterprise, Liberos, on the company website. She has carefully shielded it from the Internet, hoping to protect herself from the barrage of harassment and hate mail that tends to come her way. Some of it comes from anti-porn activists and sex-addiction therapists who are upset with Prause’s research that cast doubt on whether sex and porn addiction are real disorders.

Prause is a neuroscientist by training, but she’s chosen an unpopular specialty in her field. And it’s easy to see why so many scientists and doctors avoid research into sex. Prause recently gave up a research position in the psychiatry department at UCLA—in part because the experiments she proposed seemed to be too titillating for the university. She says that administrators didn’t want any orgasms in the lab, never mind the fact that her research has funding from, among other sources, the National Institutes of Health.

[Limejuice]

We should be thankful that Dr Prause has made the unpopular and career defining decision to help sufferers like us!  She is a revolutionary in the neuroscience field...

[demografx]

Yes!