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Morning erections, or why getting up in the morning should be hard

Morning erections happen during REM sleep when your nervous system and blood flow are fully engaged. This makes them a comprehensive snapshot of your physical systems:

So how is that all relevant in your daily dailes? The presence—or absence—of morning erections acts as a clear signal to pay attention to your health. So…pay attention.

🌲 Measuring Your Morning Wood

Want better wood? First step: measure it.

Logging your morning timber might feel silly, but trust me — it’s the easiest health hack you’ll ever do. Forget step counter and ‘closing rings.’ Just writing it down reveals patterns your body’s been trying to tell you for years.

Why? Because it’s powered by:

  • 🫀 Blood flow (heart & arteries)

  • 💪 Hormones (hello, testosterone)

  • 😴 Deep sleep (the good kind that makes you dream)

  • 🧘 Stress levels (cortisol, you bastard)

When all that’s firing, you wake up with solidity. When something’s off, it disappears faster than your motivation on leg day.

🛠️ How to Track It

  1. Wake up. Take inventory.

  2. Rate it on a 1–10 stiffness scale. (Pro tip: “fine” is a 6. Don’t settle for 6.)

  3. Note the extras: size, staying power, how long before it taps out.

  4. Add context: jot down what you did yesterday — sleep quality, workouts, stress, booze, late-night burrito runs.

Think of it like this:

  • 10 = You could literally put a hole in drywall.

  • 5 = Groundhog Day. Pops out for a second, sees its shadow, disappears.

  • 1 = “Hello darkness, my old friend.”

Do this for a week. You’ll quickly see what helps (good sleep, workouts, less booze) and what wrecks you (stress, sugar, doomscrolling).

The more brutally honest you are, the more opportunities you’ll uncover to level up from “meh” to “monster.”

Your instagram feed is probably already inundated with ads for TRT labs. How dare they assume. But it’s not just for the bro dads. Tracking weight, steps, or blood pressure is popular—but there's another metric that’s more revealing: erections—specifically, morning ones.

It’s easy to make a spreadsheet or just write in a notebook to do this on your own, or use the free fancy-schmancy morning tracker GPT we made for you. Get it here.

😴 Sleep: The Better First Step Than TRT

A lot of guys hit their late 30s, feel sluggish, and run straight to a clinic asking for TRT (testosterone replacement therapy).

But if you’re not sleeping enough, you’re leaving natural testosterone on the table.

  • Men who sleep only 5 hours/night have testosterone levels like guys 10 years older.

  • Testosterone peaks overnight. No deep sleep = no hormone surge.

  • Fixing sleep often gives you a natural boost big enough to change your energy, mood, and (yep) erections — without needles.

Read the science.

So maybe before dropping cash (and commitment) on TRT, try committing to 7–8 hours of quality sleep.

How to win for tonight:

  • Kill the screens an hour before bed.

  • Aim for lights out before 11 PM.

  • Keep your room cool and dark (your caveman ancestors weren’t under LEDs).

Do that for a week. Track your wood. Watch it rise.

TL;DR

Your guy is a "canary in the coal mine" because it often signals heart and vascular issues before other symptoms arise. Tracking it gives you an early readout on your health — and the chance to fix things before they break.

Stay straight up,
Mr. Cornelius

1 Cardiovascular disease and erections

2 Source