A good sex is an essential component for the overall well being of one’s life, isn’t it? But what happens when your sex drive dampens or starts losing its spark?

A lot of things in life don’t remain the same. Because, low sex drive starts affecting your relationships and other aspects of life.

That’s why it is crucial to find solutions for restoring your sexual desire and flourishing your sexual life.

Mykare Health is here to talk about some fundamentals and tips for better sex drive.

What Is Sex Drive?

Sex drive is a person’s desire or appetite for engaging in sexual activities. Sex drives can differ for different people according to their psychological, biological and environmental factors.

Biological factors include hormonal changes, neurotransmitters and your overall physical health.

Additionally, psychological factors like anxiety and stress can also influence your desire in sex.

Do you know that sexual desire can vary with certain factors like pregnancy, aging and medical conditions?

It means that your sexual desire can vary at different points in your life.

Low sex drive is a condition in which people get less interested in sex. The scientific name of this condition is called Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSSD).

Hypo active sexual desire disorder majorly affects the relationship you have with your partner. So, finding immediate solutions and recovering from it has paramount importance.

Now, let’s dive into the causes of low sex drive.

Symptoms

Basically, it is healthy for women to have sex drive fluctuations. If the low sexual drive persists for six months or more, it can be considered as a symptom.

Furthermore, you have to closely observe if this condition is affecting your relationship or self esteem.

Causes

1. Physical Factors: People who have medical conditions like hormonal imbalance, obesity, diabetes and severe illness can contribute to low sex drive.

2. Psychological Factors: Mental health issues like anxiety, depression, past trauma, and relationship issues will adversely affect your sexual drive. So, you can understand that psychological factors play a major role in low libido(low sex drive).

3. Medications: If you are taking medications such as antidepressants. birth control pills or antipsychotics, your sex drive can lower. Because, all these medicines have certain side effects for your sexual life.

4. Lifestyle Factors: Your lifestyle plays a major role when it comes to sex. If you lack exercise, excessive alcohol/drug usage and poor sleep, you are very likely to have a low sex drive.

5. Hormonal Changes: When you are pregnant, breastfeeding or in a postmenopausal period, your vagina will undergo certain changes. These changes can be in the form of vagina dryness, thinning of vaginal wall, changes in sex hormones etc.

6. Relationship Issues: Relationship issues are very common in contributing to the low sex desire. Usually, the reasons are the unresolved issues or conflicts and lack of intimacy in a relationship.

Tips To Increase Sex Drive

1.Prioritise Your Overall Health: If you want to have a better sex life, you need to start taking care of your health. It involves both physical and mental health. The basic requirements for better health is to follow a healthy diet, regular exercise and enough sleep.

Exercise will help to increase your blood flow and boosts up your energy. Moreover, you will get a better shaped body that enhances your body confidence.

2.Manage Stress : Severe stress, anxiety and depression significantly contributes to low sex drive. You can engage in stress busting activities like yoga, breathing exercises and meditation.

These activities will help your mind to be calm and relaxed. Thereby, you can have a quality conductive environment with your partner.

3.Communicate Openly: By communicating openly with your partner, both of you will get to know about each other’s fantasies and desires in sex. Furthermore, it will help to understand boundaries and to enhance emotional intimacy.

4.Spice Things Up!: You can explore new sexual experiences to regain the lost spark. Introduce role playing and try new positions with your partner.

Engaging in new experiences will increase the sexual excitement and make your bond deeper.

5.Prioritize Foreplay: Foreplay has a paramount importance in sexual arousal. You can engage in kissing, hugging, massaging and other kinds of sensual activities for building a strong physical as well as emotional connection.

6.Address Relationship Issues: As mentioned before, unresolved relationship issues will create emotional and physical gaps with your partner.

You have to address them before it gets worse. A healthy emotional connection will automatically enhance the physical connection also.

7.Consider Hormonal Balance: Hormonal imbalance issues are often associated with women. You can consider consulting a healthcare provider to examine and boost up your hormonal levels.

8.Limit Alcohol and Avoid Substance Usage: Using excessive amounts of alcohol and drugs will affect your sexual desire and normal sexual functioning. You can either completely avoid its usage or at least moderate the amount of intake.

9.Seek Professional Help: If you have low sex drive even after trying all the possible strategies, you can finally consider consulting a healthcare provider to seek best guidance. He will find the exact cause for this with its solutions.

Treatments

There are different kinds of treatments available for curing low sex drive and reigniting sexual desire. It includes counseling, sex education, hormone therapy and medications.

Among these treatments, medications and hormone therapies are rarely used.

Medications

Some medications you are already taking can cause certain side effects on sex drive. So, your doctor may check what medicines you usually take.

For instance, antidepressants like paroxetine may lower your sex drive.

In addition to the counseling process, your doctor may prescribe you certain medicines to improve sex drive.

There are medications which are food and drug administration(FDA)-approved for post menopausal women. It includes:

Bremelanotide: Bremelanotide is a type of injection you can give yourself just under the skin in the belly or thigh area. It can be injected before you expect to engage in sex.

Some women feel like vomiting after the first injection. But, this feeling will reduce with the second injection. Moreover, it has some side effects including headache, skin reactions and vomiting.

Flibanserin: A pill which you can swallow once a day. It is advised to take just before bed time. But, it results in certain side effects like nausea, dizziness and low blood pressure.

Are you a drug & alcohol user or take fluconazole? That will make these side effects even worse.

Hormone Therapy

In women, dryness and shrinked vagina is a major sign of genitourinary syndrome of menopause (GSM). This will make your sex uncomfortable, which leads to low sex drive.

Your doctor may prescribe some hormone medications to relieve from GSM. It in turn helps to make sex more comfortable, which enhances the sexual desire.

Testosterone: Even if the male sex hormone testosterone occurs in lower amounts in women, it has a significant role in female sexual function.

The FDA hasn’t approved the use of testosterone in women for treating sexual dysfunction. But it is sometimes prescribed without approval. Using testosterone can result in side effects like excess body hair and personality changes.

Ospemifene(Osphena): As you know, painful sex often leads people to be less interested in sexual intercourses. So, we can consider avoiding this sexual pain and thereby reduce the chance of getting uninterested.

Ospemifene is a pill that can be taken on a daily basis for women having moderate to severe GSM.

Estrogen: Estrogen is recommended by doctors for improving low sex drive. It is available in different forms. It can be in the form of pills, sprays, patches or gels.

But, estrogen has no effect in improving sexual dysfunctioning related to hypoactive sexual desire.

Your Doctor May Ask

Do you have trouble getting orgasm?

Are you experiencing vaginal dryness?

Do you feel pain during sex?

Have you undergone any gynecological surgery?

Do you have trouble being aroused?

Are you going through menopause?

If you don’t see any improvement in sex drive with the tips shared in this blog, you may need medical attention. Mykare Health can connect you with the experts.

When you experience the symptoms of low sex drive, you can first open up before someone you trust. That will act as a confidence booster for you to seek genuine support.

Finally, you can meet your healthcare provider and get medical help in improving your sex drive.