United Kingdom - The isolation and boredom of life in lockdown has been great for the porn industry, as traffic continues to spike. In response, a TikTok therapist has warned people that watching too much porn can make it harder for people to enjoy sex in real life.

Paul Sheppard is a mindset coach and anxiety specialist, at least according to his website. He has been studying human behavior for twenty years and wants to help people lead more "positive" lives.

On his TikTok account, where he goes as @mindsetchangeuk, Sheppard has seen great success due to the many messages of hope and mindfulness he shares with his nearly 200K followers. His success has especially skyrocketed since the Covid-19 pandemic sent everyone inside.

Now, he has taken to the popular social media platform to tackle the issue of pornography, which has seen record profits during Covid, largely due to social distancing, quarantines, and lockdowns.

As he introduced the video, which dropped in late December 2020 and has seen tens of thousands of views, Paul Sheppard made the startling, unexpected, and sudden claim that "Porn can f*** up your brain and life."

"Too much porn can mean that your brain begins to rewire itself so that you prefer porn to having sex with a real person," he explained.

Turning to the easily available sex content has often been linked to "performance anxiety, erectile dysfunction, sexual inadequacy and also body image negativity," he added.

He then explains that porn becomes extremely addictive for some people because it works as a "super stimulant," which boosts dopamine to "unnaturally high" levels.

The quick dopamine boost brought on by masturbation makes personal interaction and sex less desirable to a porn-addicted person, Sheppard explained. "The only way you can get that really good feeling is to go back to porn."

Paul tells people to look out for symptoms like brain fog, confusion, tiredness, and impatience. His video has since amassed nearly 300,000 views and over 11,300 likes within a week.

He also gave advice on how to reverse the effects of too much porn in a follow-up to his first video: "Reboot and rewire your brain by abstaining completely and do something else instead." He added that exercising and finding ways to relax would also help.

Paul is not the first one to warn about the consequences of too much porn-watching. Over the past decade, studies have linked pornography to sexual dysfunction such as problems with arousal, attraction, and performance.

However, the jury is out on whether porn is inherently detrimental. Some recent studies have contradicted claims that porn negatively impacts sexual satisfaction and mental health, saying that there was no evidence that porn use causes erectile dysfunction.

Others claimed that porn even fosters open-mindedness when it comes to sexuality.