In a season three episode of Sex and the City, Charlotte attempts to get to the bottom of her husband’s impotence by placing a ring of postage stamps around his penis while he sleeps. The idea is that if the ring is broken in the morning, it means he is getting hard in his sleep, suggesting the root of his erectile dysfunction is mental or emotional, not physical. As it turns out, the now infamous postage-stamp test was more than just a SATC gag, and twenty years later, a new device hopes to update this DIY dick-monitoring system with modern technology.
Enter the Adam Sensor, reportedly the first-ever wearable erection tracker that allows men to monitor their sexual health. Made by Adam Health, the ring-shaped device worn around the base of the penis counts how many erections a man experiences in his sleep, essentially relying on the same general premise as the OG stamp test: if night-time erections are still occurring during sleep, then the body’s erection mechanism is in working order, at least physically.
According to the NHS, healthy men experience an average of three to five erections per night, and while experts aren’t entirely sure why night wood is a thing, “most doctors agree that night-time erections are a sign that everything is in working order.”
Like the stamp test, the Adam Sensor can help a man dealing with erectile dysfunction determine the underlying cause of the problem — or at least rule out some more serious causes. If a man struggling to get it up in the bedroom is still experiencing night-time erections, that suggests his erectile dysfunction is rooted in mental or emotional issues. If, on the other hand, the Adam Sensor doesn’t detect any signs of night-time activity, it may be a sign something is wrong biologically.
Of course, the “problem” could just be aging, which, as Adam Health founder Christos Vasilakos told the Sun, is the “most common” reason night-time erections may be affected. Still, a lack of nocturnal wood could be a sign of other, more serious conditions, including nerve damage due to diabetes, low testosterone or cardiovascular problems. Thus, the Adam Sensor can function as a useful diagnostic tool for men to monitor both their sexual health and any broader health concerns sexual performance issues may signal.
In other words, it’s basically a Fitbit for your dick, which is pretty much how Vasilakos hopes men will approach the device. “People count their steps, monitor the glucose, their sleep or fitness — it might be part of the quantitative health men are interested in,” he said.
The Adam Sensor is currently only available at a clinic in London, and only for men who have come for specialist erectile dysfunction investigations with a doctor. However, the team behind the device hopes it will be available for home use by mid-2022.
“For the healthy population, you might want to monitor how things are going down there,” said Vasilakos. “As we age, things deteriorate.”
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