Reason for Dip In Sex Drive

Many women experience at least one dip in their sex drive, often several. It could be short term or longer term, but either way it's an unfortunate occurrence. Don't you want to go back to the level of desire you had when you were in your twenties? There's no need to just accept that you're not interested in sex right now. Lack of sex affects intimacy between a couple, as well as affects mood. Research has been done over the years into improving women's libido, and with a little information you can go back to feeling like how you did, before work, family and age took too much out of you.

Thankfully, there are now multiple treatments available to women with low libidos. Finding out what is causing the dip in sex drive is important to figure out which form of treatment might be most effective. Treatments range from counselling to simple lifestyle changes, to estrogen patches and prescription drugs. The problem could either be physical or emotional. Finding out why you're experiencing a low sex drive is vital to finding out how to fix the problem.

Some physical factors include, but are not limited to: hormone deficiency, stress, childbirth, hyperthyroidism, low levels of testosterone, diabetes, and some forms of medication. Talking to your doctor may help to pinpoint the cause, and they can discuss solutions with you.

Fatigue, stress and health are three big factors that affect not only your libido but every aspect of your life.

Your doctor may suggest an estrogen patch or pill, which is used to treat the symptoms of menopause. Some doctors prescribe taking male virility drugs like Viagra as a means to increase sexual desire. While the drug may indeed increase sexual desire, there have been no official reports released yet on the results for women. There are also a number of side effects that may not be worth it. It's important to discuss options with your doctor. Thankfully, natural treatments such as HerSolution Gel™ offer a safe alternative to drugs or hormones. You can find out more about HerSolution Gel™ at HerSolutionGel.com.

If the problem isn't physical, then you have to ask yourself what is causing the problem. Negative feelings like stress, guilt, and worry may affect your desire to have sex. If the problem is emotional, then counselling or behavioural therapy is an option that works for many women.

Most importantly, don't put too much stress on yourself. If the worry from your day to day life is affecting your sex life, then worry about your sex life is going to affect your sex life even worse.

Smoking can Reduce The Male Sperm Count and Fertility

Men who smoke not only have poorer sperm quality than nonsmokers, but also have lower sex drives and less frequent sex, investigators reported at the joint annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society, held in Toronto.

Dr. Panayiotis Zavos, professor of reproductive physiology and andrology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, and colleagues at other centers recruited 290 couples undergoing evaluation for infertility at the Andrology Institute of America. On their initial visit, couples were asked to complete a questionnaire detailing their smoking habits, and their marital and sexual history, including how often they had sex and their level of sexual satisfaction.

"In all couples that participated in the study, the females were nonsmokers," the investigators note. In contrast, in 158 couples, the male partners smoked at least 30 cigarettes a day and had smoked for more than 7 years.

Results from the questionnaire revealed that where the male partner smoked, the couple had been trying to conceive for 3.1 years compared with 2.6 years for nonsmoking couples, an observation that researchers felt was "biologically significant."

Smokers also reported having sex only 5.7 times per month compared with nonsmokers who had sex 11.6 times per month. "This is a very dramatic effect," Zavos told Reuters Health.

Nonsmoking couples also reported significantly greater satisfaction with their sex life, giving it an 8.7 on a scale of 0 to 10, 10 being "extremely satisfactory." In contrast, smoking couples gave their sex life a 5.2 rating on the same scale, the researchers note.

Results from semen analyses also revealed the quality of spermatozoa from nonsmokers was superior to that of smokers both in terms of sperm viability and longevity.

Investigators do not yet understand how smoking affects both the quality of sperm and the male's sexual habits, but they postulate that smoking might impair spermatogenesis secondary to various hormonal alternations caused by smoking. Alternatively, toxic substances from cigarette smoke may end up in the seminal plasma.

"The irony here is that it costs up to $40,000 in the US for couples seeking infertility treatment and they still smoke," said Zavos. It also does not help if the woman herself is a nonsmoker, he added, because if she co-habits with a smoker, "she's a smoker, too."

"The cheapest and most efficient way of improving infertility difficulties is to quit smoking," affirmed Zavos. "And if (couples) stop smoking immediately, that would probably be the first gesture (they could take) towards treatment for infertility."

Source: Reuters Health, 29 September 1999