• Posted January 8, 2026

Laughing, Crying Are Normal But Rare Responses To Orgasm, Women's Study Reveals

Ladies, do you laugh or cry uncontrollably following an orgasm?

How about experiencing headaches, tingling, foot pain, nosebleeds or hallucinations?

These responses to orgasm are a rare — but normal — phenomenon among women, a new study says.

“Women need to know that if they have uncontrollable peals of laughter every time they orgasm (and nothing was funny), they are not alone,” lead researcher Dr. Lauren Streicher said in a news release. She’s a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

For the new study, researchers surveyed more than 3,800 women after they viewed a short video posted on social media that explained these reactions, which are called peri-orgasmic phenomena.

A little more than 2% of the women — 86 total — said they’d experienced such a response, researchers recently reported in the Journal of Women’s Health.

Of those women, 61% said they’d had physical symptoms and 88% emotional responses, the study said.

More than half (52%) had experienced more than one symptom, and 1 in 5 (21%) experienced both physical and emotional symptoms.

Crying and laughing were the two most common responses to an orgasm, researchers found.

Only 17% said they experience these reactions consistently with an orgasm, with 69% saying this only occurs occasionally.

Emotional reactions from orgasm included:

• Crying (63%)

• Sadness or urge to cry with a positive sexual experience (43%)

• Laughing (43%)

• Hallucinations (4%)

Physical symptoms that occurred with orgasm included:

• Headache (33%)

• Muscle weakness (24%)

• Foot pain/tingling (19%)

• Facial pain/itching/tingling (6%)

• Sneezing (4%)

• Yawning (3%)

• Ear pain/other ear sensation (2%)

• Nosebleed (2%)

“While there have been case reports of women laughing, crying or having unusual physical symptoms during orgasm, this is the first study to characterize what these phenomena are, and when they are most likely to occur,” Streicher said.

Most women (51%) experienced these symptoms only when having sex with a partner, while 9% reported them during masturbation and 14% with the use of a vibrator.

The study could not explain why these reactions to orgasm occur, and researchers said more investigation is needed to better understand them.

“Peri-orgasmic phenomena encompass a wide range of physical and emotional symptoms,” the research team concluded in their study. “Although rarely reported, their awareness warrants further study to help reassure women that these phenomena are within the realm of a normal sexual response and to address their sexual health and well-being.”

More information

The University of California-Davis has more on orgasms.

SOURCES: Northwestern University, news release, Jan. 5, 2026; Journal of Women’s Health, Dec. 29, 2025