In the Netherlands, a 55-year-old woman
visited her doctor with a very strange complaint.
She was having spontaneous orgasms from her feet.
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Hey, friends.
Laci Green here for D News.
It's not every day that you hear about someone
having orgasms from their feet.
But today, today is a special day.
The woman is known only as Mrs. A.
And according to her case study released this week
by the Journal of Sexual Medicine,
she was having sudden orgasmic sensations five to six times
a day from her feet-- well, actually,
her foot, her left foot, to be exact.
Now, I know some of you all out there are probably feeling
pretty jolly right now.
Like, hey, I want foot orgasms.
But she actually hated it.
It would happen randomly, without any sort
of sexual thoughts or arousal, and who knows what company.
Imagine you're going through your day,
and every other hour it's like, really, another one?
The doctor said she felt really embarrassed,
and she wanted it to stop immediately.
So, what was going on?
Well, about a year before this started, she was in a coma
because she had sepsis.
When she came out, she did have some strange sensations
in that same foot because of nerve damage.
Still, that shouldn't cause orgasms in your feet.
So they did an MRI scan, found nothing, did an EMG,
found nothing, put an electrical current through her foot,
and then came the orgasms.
What they believe happened is that her brain basically
got confused.
Sensory information from the foot and from the genitals
enter the spinal cord at the same time.
So after the nerves in her foot regenerated,
the brain was no longer able to tell them what was vagina
and what was left foot.
Your feet and your genitals may be far apart on your body,
but in your brain, they're like best buds.
Feet and the genitals sit right next to each other
in the somatosensory homunculus, which
is your brain's sensory map.
Add some neural crosstalk, and bam, foot orgasms.
Fortunately, her fix was swift and easy.
An injection of anesthetic into her spinal nerve
cleared the problem up.
Interestingly to me, this sensory map mix-up
also happens to be the predominant explanation
for foot fetishes.
Feet are the single most common non-genital sexual fetish
in the world.
In the same way that someone else might
be aroused by genitals, a foot fetishist is aroused by feet.
There have been lots of other theories put forth
in the past about why feet are a focus of so much sexual energy.
Perhaps it's a forbidden fruit effect.
They're mysterious and sexy because you
don't see feet as much.
Freud said it's because feet look like a penis.
But then again, Freud thinks everything looks like a penis.
Perhaps it's sexy because we associate
with power and respect, what with kissing or washing
someone's feet.
Kind of interesting ideas, but still,
can't go wrong with some solid neurology.
So since the curious case of Mrs. A's foot orgasms,
the doctors believe it's possible there are more people
out there struggling with unwanted orgasms and shame.
So they've set up a website about foot orgasm syndrome
to reach out and conduct further research the matter.
So I'll link to that below.
Thanks for joining me, guys.
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