sexual health

Sexual healing

Posted by Liz on Nov 23, 2008 in sexual desire, sexual health | 1 comment

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-bvgv3g__Y]

I’ve written several posts about the use of testosterone for sexual dysfunction in menopausal women and its less than pleasant side effects, such as unwanted hair growth and development of the metabolic syndrome.

Fortunately, Dr. Christiane Northrup has a different and much healthier perspective about sexual dysfunction during the transition.

One of the first things she writes, in her newly published “The Secret Pleasures of Menopause,” is that an important key to achieving health and healthy sex during and after the menopause is to boost one’s nitric oxide levels. Nitric oxide, she explains, is a free radical produced in the lining of blood vessels, by lung and white blood cells, and nerve cells in the brain, that “resets your power grid and reboots your body, a secret weapon for optimal health.”

In order to produce more nitric oxide, you need to engage your mind, body an spirit in positive activities, such as:

• associating with positive people
• eating healthily and exercising
• being kind/taking pride in yourself
• realizing you are what you believe
• letting go of the past and embracing the present
• understanding that health and sex go hand-in-hand

Dr. Northrup suggests that we become “ardent explorers” of our own pleasure, in essence, become our own partners in sex. Turn ourselves on and tell ourselves often that a turned on woman is irresistible. Recognize and release anger as much as we can. Commit to regularly exploring our pleasure potential and live our lives in ways that “excite, motivate, and turns on” other people in our lives.

A few additional tidbits:

• Think heartwarming, sexy, uplifting, kind, loving and positive thoughts about yourself and others EVERY DAY
• Strive for commitment, trust and vulnerability with your partner
• Do things that keep you in touch with your life force…cultivate your inner pleasure and exchange it for stress, and decide that this half of your life is really the best
• Get out of your head and into your body….regularly

Desire pleasure, know that you deserve it, believe you can bring it into your life, overcome your resistance to accepting it, and embrace it.

Honestly, I’m not usually into this touchy feely stuff. But I encourage you to read Dr. Northup’s book and start to practice some of these positive, life affirming, love affirming steps. Pleasure truly starts within by changing our mindsets about our limitations, we can  fine tune our bodies in ways that make us and others feel great.

As Dr. Northrup says, our bodies were made to experience unlimited pleasure.

And of course, pleasure begets pleasure….

Wednesday Bubble: Why?

Posted by Liz on Nov 19, 2008 in sexual desire, sexual health | 3 comments

Would you prefer to have a better sex drive and a beard? Or the opposite?

Can’t decide?

About a week and a half ago, news hit the headlines about a new FDA-approved testosterone patch for women to restore declining libidos. The patch, called Intrinsa, was tested in a study of 841postmenopausal not currently on hormone replacement therapy who received either one of two doses of the patch or a dummy placebo patch over 52 weeks. The patch’s effectiveness (namely, restoring sexual satisfaction) was measured up to week 24, or for roughly half the study.

The results, which were published in the esteemed New England Journal of Medicine, showed that compared to a dummy patch, using Intrinsa was associated with significant increases in sexual desire and a decline in sexual distress. Overall, the higher dose patch led to modest improvements in sexual function.

In other words, wearing a patch was significantly better than using nothing at all but not life-shattering in terms of improving sexual function.

The caveat? Unwanted hair growth, which occurred in about a third of women using the higher dose patch and in about 23% of women using the lower dose.

Results of this study undoubtedly leave hope for women in menopause experiencing declines in sexual function. In fact, I’ve written previously about the positive effects of taking testosterone to improve sexual desire. However, I’ve also found some evidence that testosterone increases the risk of metabolic syndrome and heart disease in women.

The other rub? You have to use the patch all the time, which means that you are subjecting yourself to testosterone and negative side effects, such as hair growth,  24/7. Researchers don’t have any answers about the safety of long-term use.

Fortunately, there are some very positive steps you can take to improve menopausal declines in sexual desire and function, which Dr. Christine Northrup says, are often misnomers. So, I leave you with this:

Why would you risk unwanted hair growth and other yet to be defined side effects when you can solve the problem in a positive, affirming, healthy way?

More to come!

Sex on the beach

Posted by Liz on Nov 14, 2008 in sexual health | 1 comment

Okay. I’m not really going to write about having sex on a beach or that tropical drink. But now that I have your attention, I want to bring attention to a new study that I stumbled across recently.

This particular topic is of interest to me and clearly, I’ve written about sex and the transition numerous times. And since I’m in the middle of Dr. Christine Northrup’s ‘The Secret Pleasures of Menopause’ I do have sex on the brain at the moment. More on the book at a later date.

Although sexual concerns are reportedly very common among menopausal women, low sexual function can be attributed to many factors, including attitudes and beliefs about the transition, changes in body image, health, stress, fatigue, partner’s sexual function, and the role of intimacy in the relationship.  Importantly, up to 47% of women may experience depression during menopause and in fact, findings from the Massachusetts Women’s Health Study suggest that aging and menopause affect sexual function less than general and mental health.

In this particular study, published in the online edition of the journal Maturitas, Turkish researchers evaluated association between depression and change in sexual function in 300 women in menopause.

Among the participants, 65% had low sexual function. This included low desire (40%), low arousal (82.7%), low lubrication (63%), low orgasm (75%), low satisfaction (82.7%), and pain during sexual activity (54.3%).

Although only a third (29.3%) of women were identified as having depression, the researchers found a significant association between desire and depression scores throughout the menopausal transition.  As depression increased, so did sexual dysfunction.

These findings imply that sexual dysfunction during menoapuse may be as much a result of atttitude and emotional health as hormones if not more so.

Dr. Christine Northrup explores some interesting solution to these problems. Stay tuned!

HSDD

Posted by Liz on Oct 11, 2008 in sexual health | 0 comments

Bet you didn’t know that they actually named the lack of sexual desire that often accompanies menopause.

I certainly didn’t. But, HSDD, or hypoactive sexual desire disorder, (which is defined in DMV IV as “diminished feelings of sexual interest of desire, absent sexual thoughts/fantasies, or a lack of responsive desire that causes marked distress or interpersonal difficulties, and is not caused by a medical condition or drugs, reportedly affects 1 in 10 women.)

On the other hand, about 70% of women report some decline in sexual desire after menopause. So is HSDD different than the natural decline of sexual “health?”  I don’t see researchers making a distinction.

I’ve written about sex numerous times since starting this blog. In fact, I did examine the role of testosterone in sex drive in an earlier post. (You may recall that testosterone, while primarily a male hormone, also plays a role in driving sexual desire in women.)

Researchers are actively studying the safety and effectiveness of a testosterone gel called LibiGel, which when rubbed on the upper arm once a day, evidently raises blood testosterone levels and improves sex drive without causing any serious side effects. What’s more, testosterone gel reportedly does not cause the hair growth and acne often associated with testosterone pills.

I’ve got no argument with the use of testosterone gel; heck, if it’s going to restore sexual desire regardless of declining hormones, I’m all for it. But do we need to call it HSDD, which for all intents and purposes, classify it as problem and not as a natural part of the transition that we call menopause?

I dunno; it feels a bit clinical to me. What do you think?

Orgasmatron

Posted by Liz on Aug 18, 2008 in sexual health | 2 comments

[Woody Allen, Sleeper 1973]

Remember the Orgasmatron from Woody Allen’s Classic, “Sleeper?” Seems that there’s a new device that’s going to give Woody a run for his money (no pun intended!).

An ad for Slightest Touch, an orgasm electronic enhancement agent, arrived in my inbox this morning. Hey, when over 11,000 women say that ‘sex has never been better,’ well, ya gotta wonder right? But I am especially intrigued by the idea that your orgasm will be so powerful that you should take electrolytes beforehand.

A painless electrical pulse travels up the leg’s nerve pathways to the pelvis, creating peak arousal. (Note the electrode patches around the ankles).

This device started as a foot massager (pretty kinky, eh?).  While it failed miserably at its orginal intention, subjects tended to get all hot and bothered during the experiment!

Hmm. Is this the answer for sexual desire and dysfunction issues in menopause?!

[Crossposted on Blogher]

Domino Effect

Posted by Liz on Aug 15, 2008 in sexual health | 1 comment

I’ve been writing about sex alot lately. Sexual dysfunction, sexual desire, sexsexsexsexsex. If you were Freud, you’d have a field day!

Seriously though, a new research study in an advanced publication of the journal Menopause suggests a strong link between symptoms of vaginal atrophy (thinning of the vaginal and vulvovaginal tissues due to declining estrogen levels) and sexual dysfunction. Sort of a domino effect, if you will.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina examined 1,480 sexually active postmenopausal women, 57% of whom had symptoms of vaginal atrophy. They then asked the women about their sexual experiences; more than half (55%) also had symptoms of sexual dysfunction. In fact, the study findings revealed that women with sexual complaints had almost 4 times the risk for vaginal atrophy.

These study findings suggest a strong overlap in these conditions. This implies that if you treat symptoms of one condition, you may be able to relieve symptoms of the other. The challenge will be to find a natural and effective treatment rather than rely on the old standby – estrogen or the novel standby – SERMS.

I am going to continue to explore this topic until I find a reasonable non-pharmaceutical or estrogen-based alternative for this problem. So far, I’ve not stumbled across anything that has some good research behind it. If you know of an alternative, do drop me a line.