The hormonal response experienced by runners after physical exertion is barely different from that of people who practise BDSM, according to doctoral researcher Elise Wuyts of the University of Antwerp.
The continuing stigma attached to BDSM is unjustified and harmful, Wuyts added, as she shared results of her research on Tuesday.
According to the researcher, BDSM is still listed as a disorder in current psychiatric manuals, despite evidence that it is far more common than many assume.
The acronym BDSM covers a broad range of practices, including bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism.
A 2017 University of Antwerp study of more than 1,000 people in Flanders found that nearly half of the respondents had tried a BDSM-related activity at least once.
Although BDSM is often associated with sex, Wuyts said that is not always the case. Despite its strong link with pain, practitioners often experience it as pleasurable or arousing.
For her research, Wuyts studied two groups: submissive BDSM participants and dominant practitioners.
Among the submissive participants, both stress hormones and pleasure hormones increased in the blood. She said the pleasure response was clearly linked to the stress response.
This group also showed a higher pain threshold than the dominant participants. Wuyts said hormones play a part, but so does context, as BDSM practitioners approach pain differently during role play and tend to reframe the sensation.
Even so, non-normative behaviour such as BDSM is still often pushed into the realm of taboo, she said.
In psychiatric settings, some patients who practise BDSM remain reluctant to speak openly about it because they fear being labelled as sick.
Wuyts said that if the taboo around BDSM is to be broken, both society and the medical world need to change how they view it.
