Just like men, women can suffer from a low or nonexistent sex drive. Although the condition tends to affect mostly menopausal women in their 50s and 60s, there is a growing trend of low libido among women as young as 20. The potential issues with self esteem and romantic relationships that can stem from low libido can be devastating, so it requires serious attention.
Many things can cause or exacerbate a low libido including hormonal imbalance, thyroid problems, stress, poor diet, a lack of exercise, drug and alcohol use, psychiatric problems and many medications. Most of these things are easily remedied without having to go to the doctor and receive potentially harmful and side effect-heavy hormone replacement drugs.
Become More Active
A sedentary lifestyle is one of the biggest contributors to most health and psychological problems. The human body requires regular exercise in order to function properly, and this is especially true for its ability to produce sex hormones responsible for female libido. Exercise, particularly of the weight-bearing variety, responds to the body’s use of its muscles by releasing testosterone, even in women. To maintain a healthy sex drive, it’s recommended to spend 30 minutes exercising every day for at least five days per week.
Eat Less Soy
Because of aggressive marketing and poorly-designed studies, most people are under the impression that soy is good for them, so they cram their diets as full of it as possible. However, it’s slowly becoming obvious that soy is actually a very unhealthy food for most people due to its estrogen-rich properties. Eating a diet high in this legume floods your body with estrogen, causing a severe imbalance of hormones and directly suppressing the action of sex hormones like testosterone. This is part of the reason why vegan and vegetarian diets are so strongly associated with a reduced sex drive.
Eat a Better Diet
A staggering number of people live almost solely on processed and pre-packaged foods low in nutrition and high soy and other harmful additives. When the body doesn’t receive the nutrients that it needs, its ability to produce adequate amounts of hormones diminishes greatly. Over time, this will inevitably manifest as a low libido and the only way to remedy the problem is to adopt a healthier, more nutrient-rich diet.
Reduce Stress
Studies have shown that, on average, women are more stressed than men and are also more vulnerable to its negative effects. Naturally, this means that female libido is more likely to dwindle when things get tough. This fact means that it’s important to make time to get away from stress, even if it’s just for a little while. Spend a night in a hotel, get a massage or take a day off to eat chocolate and watch your favorite movies.
Don’t Avoid Fat
People are often told that eating a low-fat diet is the way to go for good health, but nothing could be further from the truth, especially regarding sexual health. The body uses dietary fat, particularly the saturated kind, to manufacture sex hormones. These fats are also used to produce thyroid hormones, which control the production and distribution of other hormones throughout the body.
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