Foot Orgasm? Drexel Prof Says Yes, Explains Footgasms

Dr. Marcel Waldinger being interviewed with a female patient. (Photo via mennospiro.blogspot.com)

It wasn’t so long ago that we all had a few chuckles over Drexel University’s virtual butt, a hysterical-looking tool that allows medical students to perform prostrate exams without a real patient. (Seriously, you have to see this thing.) And now, we are learning about a new Drexel professor and his unusual area of expertise: the foot orgasm, also known as a footgasm.

Dr. Marcel Waldinger, seen here in his LinkedIn profile photo, is Drexel’s newly appointed adjunct professor in pharmacology and physiology. Now 60, he’s spent most of his career in the Netherlands, where he was born.

Waldinger’s work has focused on ejaculation, orgasm and libido. But more specifically, he’s done important research into things you’ve probably never heard of with names like post orgasmic illness syndrome, restless genital syndrome, and, yes, foot orgasm syndrome.

So we got him on the phone to talk about the phenomenon of the footgasm.

Why is it important to study foot orgasms? Aren’t they quite rare?

It is important to study because there was a patient who complained about these symptoms. It is a matter of ethics to help this woman. What she has got is rather uncommon, because she had a real orgasm in her left foot. It occurred after she had been hospitalized, and we succeeded in explaining and treating her complaints. She felt a real orgasm in her left foot. It is very difficult to understand because it’s so uncommon.

Were you able to trigger it, or did you just have to wait for the foot orgasm to begin?

We were able to trigger it by manipulating her foot on a certain spot. And we also gave some electrical impulses on her left foot and her vagina on the left side. And we noticed that she got an orgasm that originated in her left foot and went up to the middle of her body. It’s very clear that when a woman has an orgasm, you hear it and you see it, and that is what we noticed.

So how does this happen?

She was referred to me by an academic hospital department of neurology. They didn’t understand it, couldn’t explain it.

We investigated her with various neurophysiological tests, and we found evidence for damage of very small nerves in her left foot. After the damage of the nerves, her brain got mixed up and thought that information that came from the left foot came from the vagina.

Why?

The nerves from the left foot and genitals — the vagina — enter the spinal cord at the same level, and that’s the crux of the whole story. The brain was mixed up, didn’t know which impulses came from the foot. The brain thought the foot impulse was from her vagina, and so it gave her an orgasm in her foot. But of course there’s no genital in the foot.

How did you treat her foot orgasms?

We anesthetized specific nerves in the foot where it enters the spinal cord. We anesthetized the nerve in the spinal cord and since then she has not had these complaints any more. She had these five to six times a day.

Are there others out there?

I have had multiple emails from people from around the world, both women and men, who wrote me to say that they got orgasms from manipulation of one or both feet. They didn’t dare to say it or tell it to other persons, but they had experienced it.

But we’re talking about people who had genital orgasms via foot manipulation, as opposed to what this woman experienced, which was an actual foot orgasm?

Some of them also felt orgasms in their feet, but that’s a real minority. I have a website for foot orgasm syndrome, and it’s my intention to find out more about this phenomenon. A lot of the people I heard from got vaginal or penile orgasms just by manipulation of one of those feet.

Orgasms are typically associated with pleasure. Why was this a bad thing for the woman you treated?

In her case, it was a disaster. She got depressed and felt very embarrassed about it. She was desperate. She didn’t like it at all.

But for other people, this is a good thing, right?

A number of persons told me that they manipulated their feet or let their partner manipulate their feet to get an orgasm, so it exists as part of a, shall we say, sexual repertoire for getting an orgasm.

They understand that it’s not a normal phenomenon. But I think it is a normal one but quite rare. There’s no reason to state that it’s pathological. It’s probably a variation in nature, but let’s say in the good sense.

Can you explain further?

There is, for example, a relationship between feet and the genitals. It’s not so strange, because, for example, in cats, you get neurophysiological activity in the motor neurons — a motor neuron is the place where a nerve originates in the spinal cord — of the nerve that runs down to their hind paws when you manipulate their vagina. In pussycats, if you manipulate the vagina in a certain way, you get motor neurons in the spinal cord that go down to their feet.

It’s my personal view that there might be a very neuronal reflex between the feet and the genitals. It’s physiological. Of course, there is a psychological meaning of feet or a foot and sexuality. But here I mean a physiological one.

It seems that feet and genitals in some ways are connected. But this sort of research is hardly done because it’s an unknown phenomenon. But it’s very interesting to find out more about the neurology.

OK, so what I really want to know is, can people be trained to do this for their own or someone else’s pleasure?

That’s not my advice, but it is one of the possibilities. It may be helpful, perhaps, to caress the feet or the bottom of the foot, to squeeze it or whatever. But let’s say, to pay attention to a foot, as part of making love, to get more sexually aroused or to get an orgasm.

But only when the person is sensitive to it. Probably not every person is sensitive to this region. It might become part of making love, but probably what is not good is when there is a complete focus on it.

But where on the foot?

An area under the toes, let’s say under the toes at the bottom. In the middle on the bottom under the toes. That is the area where the nerve is running, and it splits in separate nerves to each of the toes.

Thank you, and good luck with your continued research.

Thank you.

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