This test determines if a man has erections when asleep. Remember, it’s normal for a man to have several erections during a good night’s sleep. NPT tests can be done in a sleep laboratory or at home. The lab version is more accurate than the home test, but both types give important information. The laboratory version, of course, is a lot more expensive, but some health insurance plans cover this cost,

Some experts consider the laboratory NPT the best test to measure a man’s physical ability to get an erection, because if you don’t get good erections at night and you’re sleeping normally, chances are that you have a physical problem.

A laboratory NPT means you’ll probably spend two or three consecutive nights sleeping in the lab. Your only companions will be the machinery you’re hooked up to and the technician. Your wife or lover stays home. Sleep erections are a product of dreams, not the result of lying next to a woman.

Before you go to bed, you’ll be hooked up to electrodes that tell the researchers when, and if, you go into the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep. It’s during the REM stage that erections occur. Tubes that look a little like rubber bands are placed around your penis to measure the erections. If you do have an erection in the night, the technician will measure its rigidity. Although it can feel strange to be hooked up to all this gear, you’ll feel no pain.

Not everyone needs to sleep in the lab for several nights. But often patients have trouble going to sleep in such unfamiliar and unusual circumstances, so more nights are necessary to get an accurate reading. If you have a good sleep and normal erections the first test night, you probably won’t need to repeat the experience.

The NPT test is very reliable, but it is not 100 percent foolproof. Even in a well-equipped sleep laboratory operated by trained personnel, the NPT test can give misleading results on occasion. For example, a man with the pelvic steal syndrome or damaged nerves may register normal on the NPT test but still have a physical cause for his potency problem.

And it’s important to recognize that when doctors use the NPT test, they’re assuming that a sleeping man isn’t affected by psychological factors. Well, that’ s generally true, but not always. Researchers at Columbia University studied two severely depressed men who had abnormal NPTs. After they were successfully treated for their depression, the NPTs were normal— and both men were able to have intercourse with their partners. This finding isn’t surprising, since depression can cause sleep disturbances, which can affect sleep erections.

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