A Man Injected Himself With Semen As A Back Pain Cure And It Didn’t Turn Out Well

It turns out that injecting yourself with your own semen is not a good cure for anything.

So here's a thing you should never, ever do.

In a case report published in the Irish Medical Journal, researchers described a man who was injecting himself with his own semen in a bid to cure his back pain.

The 33-year-old man took himself to the hospital with severe back pain after lifting something heavy. He'd apparently been experiencing chronic lower back pain for some time.

When doctors examined him, they discovered a red, swollen spot on his right arm. It turns out that's where he'd been injecting his own spunk.

The case report describes his semen therapy as "an innovative method to treat back pain" devised independently "of any medical advice," which is a very nice way to put that.

Perhaps most alarmingly, he'd been giving himself injections for a whole 18 months.

Prior to arriving in hospital, he'd just given himself three "doses" both into his veins and into his muscle, which caused the swelling. So not only was he injecting semen into his own body, he kept missing his veins. Just for the record, injecting random stuff into your veins can cause infections and clots, which can be dangerous, even potentially life-threatening.

And injecting semen with a needle anywhere into your body is a bad idea. But in this case, he was injecting it into his soft tissue where it was just kind of hanging out and causing inflammation.

An X-ray showed exactly where the problem lay. He had an abscess and cellulitis, a serious infection of the tissue under the skin.

The case study's authors, led by Lisa Dunne of the Adelaide and Meath Hospital in Tallaght, Dublin (who declined to be interviewed by BuzzFeed News), did their homework to see if there's any medical literature regarding semen injections for back pain. Their search yielded no known cases of human use.

"A search of more eclectic internet sites and forums found no other documentation of semen injection for back pain treatment or other uses," they wrote.

"This is the first reported case of semen injection for use as a medical treatment."

The man was given an intravenous infusion of antibiotics and he eventually discharged himself from the hospital. He declined to have his abscess drained of the infection and fluid that were caused by his misguided home remedy.

It remains utterly unclear why the man thought semen injections were a good idea. But, on the bright side, his back felt better after his hospital stay.

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