TL;DR: The MYHIXEL is better than most ‘last longer’ devices out there. It’s an enhanced edging program that will help you learn relaxed arousal. But if you struggle with PE, edging is only part of the solution.
So a client of mine bought a Myhixel device to help with his premature ejaculation. I’d never heard of it, but the training app looked intriguing so I decided to find out more.
This isn’t a user review or promotion, and I have no affiliation with Myhixel (or any other product). I’ll summarise the device, the app and the science behind it. Then I’ll give my take on the effectiveness of the Myhixel.
What is a MYHIXEL?
It’s a fleshlight that vibrates and heats itself up. So no more microwaving/boiling your fleshlight for that alive-and-kicking feel.
It’s a fine looking gadget too, in shades of forest-green and copper. It wouldn’t look out of place on your bookshelf with a fragrant candle sticking out of the top, or dangling from your backpack on a hiking weekend.
The device is accompanied by the MYHIXEL Play app, which you activate on your phone using a serial number. The app has various exercises to help you identify your pelvic muscles and learn how to stay relaxed while masturbating.
The app is slick and presents the exercises as different planets in a space-age exploration game. There’s educational content too, with videos to explain the anatomy of your genitals. Then you’re off, jacking away with your Myhixel as the app times how long you are lasting.
Note that the device and the app don’t talk to each other. You could use the app with your fleshlight or your hand and it wouldn’t know. But you can’t activate the app without buying the package, which is fair enough.
Update November 2022: The successor to the original device has been announced, the MYHIXEL CONTROL. This will feature bluetooth communication with the app, along with movement and speed sensors and other enhancements.
So we’re talking about a gamified edging device here. But unlike many of the gadgets and apps out there, the Myhixel team have recruited medical professionals and put their research out there. This makes a refreshing change.
The website claims that the app uses Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to help guys last longer. As a psychotherapist, this piqued my interest.
The MYHIXEL science
A bit of backstory: the Myhixel brand was created by Spanish entrepreneur Patricia López Trabajo. She previously worked at Fleshlight and spotted a gap in the market.
PE treatments and solutions want men to feel less, to numb themselves, or lessen the physical sensation of intercourse.
Patricia López Trabajo
Patricia set out to offer an alternative: a solution that enables men to get used to heightened pleasure. This makes sense to me. Overcoming premature ejaculation is all about being able to soak up sensation, not block it.
Through a successful Kickstarter campaign, Patricia was able to fund research in partnership with sexologists from the Miguel Hernández University of Elche and get FDA approval for Myhixel as a medical device.
Again, this is completely laudable and makes a change from the unscientific snake oil and quackery that plagues the sexual self-help market.
Their research concludes that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) “has a limited role in the contemporary management of premature ejaculation”.
CBT is a therapy for treating anxiety, depression and a bunch of other issues. If you get talk therapy through your doctor or the NHS, it’ll probably be CBT.
When we are stuck in a cycle of negative thoughts, feelings and behaviours, the CBT approach helps us to tackle each of these aspects. There are techniques for challenging unhelpful thoughts and finding better ways of responding to them.
Crucially, a CBT therapist breaks this down into small, manageable steps and closely measures progress.
I’m not a CBT therapist, but I can see how this relates to premature ejaculation. From their very first sexual experience, guys can find themselves stuck in a loop of performance anxiety, self-doubt and eventually despair.
A behavioural approach to PE can help change the pattern over time, and edging is private and convenient. We can do it alone and use a timer to measure our progress. When we witness ourselves chill out and last longer, we start to feel more positive and confident in our abilities.
There’s nothing particularly ground-breaking here. But Myhixel introduces a fun, incremental strategy rather than simply trying to masturbate for longer. And the coolness of their brand helps break down taboo and feelings of embarrassment.
Peloton did something similar for making the exercise bike in the living room feel sexy and aspirational.
Other bits of Myhixel research suggested that awareness of pelvic muscles and the external urethral sphincter can help guys relax down there.
They also found that masturbating using a Flip Hole device can be useful for building confidence. My Flip Hole knowledge is limited, but it seems to be another kind of device that you can stick your penis into.
I can see how investing in a device or toy can help a guy feel like he’s actively training rather than plain old wanking. Using any kind of equipment has a placebo effect too.
It’s proven that the more expensive the placebo, the stronger the effect. If the placebo looks good and feels luxurious, even more so. The Myhixel device ticks these boxes.
Some studies (not conducted by Myhixel) have suggested that masturbating using a device can desensitise penile nerves and have a numbing effect. Guys have reported problems getting hard with their partners.
But I guess this very much depends on the device. Some Fleshlight-clones look like potato peelers. Don’t go too cheap is the takeaway here.
Big MYHIXEL promises
Following on from this research, Myhixel say that men who follow their program are able to last seven times longer with their partners (on average). Completing the program typically takes 8 to 10 weeks for maximum benefit.
This is a bold claim. From my experience of working with men who struggle with premature ejaculation, edging can help build stamina. Especially if we don’t get completely distracted by porn when we are doing it.
But guys who train themselves to be able to masturbate for longer often find that this doesn’t carry over to sex with their partners. There’s something about the sensation of a real body with a real vagina that triggers the ejaculation reflex. Therapists work to find ways to bridge that reality gap.
Myhixel set out to address this by making their device as realistic as possible. A squirt of lube is recommended. They claim that most men are able to transition from the Myhixel device to real sexual intercourse with their learnings and confidence intact.
What else might make the Myhixel effective? Well, the app comes in two modes: TR and MED. Myhixel TR is for men who don’t really struggle with PE but want to enhance their abilities. It’s also recommended as a workout for men who are receiving treatment for erectile dysfunction.
Myhixel MED is the program for men who are clinically diagnosed with PE or have always struggled to make sex last. It begins with a questionnaire to determine your starting point and identify which exercises you should do.
The PE exercises themselves are a closely guarded secret in the Myhixel marketing, and I’ll be careful not to infringe it here. But I’ve seen the app and suffice to say that they are comprehensive.
Users are guided through explanations of how to identify, flex and relax the pelvic muscles and how to implement this while aroused. If you have followed a program that involves progressively relaxing different areas of the body (such as abs, hips, glutes and legs) while masturbating, this will all be very familiar.
This is solid stuff and I recommend similar exercises to my clients. Physical relaxation is one of the keys to overcoming premature ejaculation, but it’s only one part. There are essential elements of mindset, expectation and movement too, so I’m curious about what else Myhixel can offer.
Additional MYHIXEL products
This is pure speculation on my part, but I can imagine the Myhixel team sitting down to figure out how to make their device a more effective treatment for PE.
We’ve got a funky masturbation device. We’ve got a slick training app with some educational videos. But what about guys with lifelong PE who need a bit more? PE can feel like an extremely lonely and frustrating place.
Now the Myhixel MED product includes a free consultation with their team of sexual health experts. It’s an online chat limited to 15-minutes. If customers need extra advice, they can buy additional sessions through the online platform.
My client hasn’t tried this service, so we don’t know the cost or how therapeutic the advice is. We do know that it’s online chat only, so there will be some limitations. But this is an interesting addition to the Myhixel offering.
Introducing the MYHIXEL MAX supplement
My cynical, old brain imagines further discussion in the Myhixel boardroom.
Isn’t there some research about guys with PE being low on serotonin, the hormone that stabilises the nervous system and helps them to stay relaxed?
Indeed there is, and this is where psychotherapy can really help men with PE. But it’s difficult to provide that through a masturbation device and an app. Hmmm.
Myhixel have recently launched their own supplement, branding it as the MYHIXEL MAX.
This combination helps to regulate the secretion of serotonin, establishing harmony between body and mind, making it possible to control anxiety and stress that can influence the lack of ejaculatory control.
100% Natural supplement without secondary effects, the perfect complement to take with MYHIXEL MED and MYHIXEL TR, and optimize the results.
MYHIXEL website
Call me sceptical, but the lasting longer market is flooded with natural supplements and vitamins. From cinnamon to zinc pills, to concoctions with silly names like Bombyx and G-Max Power Capsules. I’m not convinced of the benefits of any of them, beyond the placebo effect.
The two main ingredients of MYHIXEL MAX are quercetin and hypericum. Quercetin is an antioxidant that occurs in red wine, green tea, apples, berries and a bunch of other vegetables. Hypericum is commonly known as St John’s wort, a traditional remedy for easing symptoms of anxiety.
At £45 for a bottle of MYHIXEL MAX pills, this isn’t a cheap supplement.
Update: In May 2022, the Daily Mirror ran an article with an eye-catching headline for most British men:
Red wine pill could hold the secret to lasting longer in bed, study claims
Daily Mirror, 21 May 2022
According to the recent study, men who struggled with PE were able to last 77 seconds longer after taking a daily supplement for 3 months. And what was in the supplement? Quercetin and St John’s wort.
But after raising the hopes of wine-drinking men across the UK, the Mirror article mentioned a few potential flaws in the study.
Firstly, it was funded by New Wellness Concept SL, owners of the Myhixel brand.
And the researchers were unable to produce hard evidence of effectiveness. It was not possible to rule out other factors, such as the placebo effect and innacurate self-measurement by the participants.
In fairness to Myhixel, it’s not uncommon for academic research into the effectiveness or benefits of a product to be funded by the industry that produces or sells said product.
And again, at least Myhixel are promoting research. So OK, I’m not big on food supplements for treating sexual difficulties, or any difficulties come to that. But I think the Daily Mirror are scraping the headline barrel on this occasion.
Conclusion: does MYHIXEL work?
My client Tom likes his Myhixel device. It feels like a premium product and customer service is good. His actually arrived with a broken cap, and Myhixel sent out a replacement no problem.
He enjoys using it too – it feels good and the app keeps him motivated. He’s tried edging before to improve his PE, but using Myhixel makes him feel more focused.
He’s a new client, so Myhixel is the only PE therapy Tom has tried so far. After 8 weeks of usage, has Tom been able to last longer with his partner?
I’d say yes. I feel a bit more confident about my ability to take things slowly. I’m more aware of my PC muscle and relaxing it feels more natural now. I’m better at knowing when I’m getting close to cumming and when I’m ready to start thrusting again.
I’ve always been nervous about intimacy and it still bothers me, hence getting therapy for anxiety. But I’m happy that the Myhixel is helping with the physical side of the problem.
Tom
So there we have it. Of course, this is the experience of just one user (plus the opinions of his cynical therapist). But it’s a positive experience, if not the complete solution.
If you have £239 to spend on a masturbation device (plus £12 for the official cleaning solution, £13 for the hands free accessory), you could do a lot worse. The app can help you get in touch with your own arousal and ejaculation reflex, and learn how to relax your pelvic muscles.
Just remember that for most guys, overcoming PE is a mixed art. Lowering anxiety, developing sexual skills and partner communication are all key elements in building a new template for sexual pleasure.
But with the Myhixel approach, you will feel like you’re doing something positive, and that’s a big part of therapy.
Thanks to Tom for all his brilliant feedback. And credit to Patricia López Trabajo and the Myhixel brand for pushing sex-positive messaging to the next level.
If you’ve experienced a Myhixel, please feel welcome to share your views in the comments.