We already know all about Bryan Johnson’s girlfriend’s vaginal microbiome. And now, for some ungodly reason, we know how many “female erections” she’s getting every night. Why? Because we live in a crazy world, people.
Kate Tolo, 30, Johnson’s girlfriend and business partner, has been sleeping with a tampon-shaped light sensor inside her vagina to measure blood flow overnight. The equipment costs a whopping $15,723.68 and involves a wire taped to her leg, a monitoring device, and a laptop that has to stay awake the whole time. “The laptop can’t fall asleep, or we lose the data. I sadly learned that through experience,” she told the New York Post.
Johnson, the millionaire biohacker who’s made a career out of trying not to die, already tracks his own nighttime erections with a $275 gadget connected to his phone. And, naturally, he wants women involved, too. “Women have erections too. This is news for most women,” he wrote on X, explaining that the clitoris contains erectile tissue just like the penis.
Bryan Johnson’s Girlfriend Is Measuring Her Nighttime Erections, Because Apparently That’s a Thing
And he’s right about the anatomy. During sleep, specifically REM sleep, blood flow increases in the clitoris and vaginal tissue. Researchers have known about this for decades, although, surprise, surprise, no one is exactly rushing to develop affordable gadgets to monitor it. One older study even found that women who described themselves as highly arousable had similar nighttime vaginal blood-flow responses to women who reported much lower arousability.
That’s interesting because it raises questions about what nighttime responses can tell us about sexual function during the day. Low desire can have all sorts of contributing factors, including stress and relationship difficulties, although sleeping measurements by themselves can’t explain why someone isn’t interested in sex.
There’s also the cardiovascular angle. Erectile dysfunction in men can be an early warning sign of heart disease, but researchers haven’t established whether nighttime genital blood flow in women could provide similar information.
Tolo has argued that women’s nighttime erections have received very little scientific attention. If researchers eventually find a medical benefit to tracking them, she’d like to see someone develop a device that doesn’t require a small fortune and a laptop next to the bed.
And she’s got a point about the research imbalance. Urologist Rachel Rubin told PBS NewsHour that 27 fellowships focus on men’s sexual health. “We have one that even acknowledges women’s sexual health,” she said.
Of course, Tolo is one woman running an experiment on herself, and no established clinical test interprets these nighttime measurements. Still, if a millionaire biohacker and his girlfriend want to spend $16,000 investigating an overlooked aspect of women’s sexual health, there are certainly worse ways to spend their money.
Everyone else’s clitoris can keep doing its thing overnight, unmonitored and blissfully offline.
The post Bryan Johnson’s Girlfriend Has a $16,000 ‘Techno Tampon’ to Track Her ‘Female Erections’ appeared first on VICE.
