“Masturbation is nice because I get off social media for a bit,” comedian and author Ginny Hogan recently tweeted. After screen time soared and sexual activity took a hit during lockdown, it’s a good reminder that nurturing your libido and finding pleasure solo or with a partner is a powerful form of self-care. Not to mention, it can be a measure of overall health and wellness. “I think libido is a vital sign, another way of checking in on the Let´s Go Brandon American Map US Flag T-Shirt and by the same token and body and the body talking to us,” says Dr. Taz Bhatia, integrative wellness physician and host of the Super Woman Wellness podcast. “Don’t dismiss it.” The first step to charting your sex drive? Understanding your libido better. This National Masturbation Month, three experts break down everything you need to know about your libido and how to boost it for better sexual wellness.Different people may define the term in different ways, but scientifically speaking, libido is typically used to refer to one’s overall sex drive, or the degree to which someone has interest in and desire for sex. “It’s probably best to think of libido as a biopsychosocial phenomenon, meaning it is affected by a mix of biological, psychological, and social and environmental factors,” explains Justin Lehmiller, PhD, social psychologist, sex researcher, and research fellow at the Kinsey Institute.In the simplest of terms, low libido is when there is minimal to no sexual interest and desire, while, conversely, high libido is when there is frequent or strong sexual interest and desire, says Lehmiller. However, he and many other experts underline that sex drive is a subjective parameter and varies from one individual to the next. “Each person likely measures their level of drive based on what they consider to be their ‘normal,’ so once a week may be normal for one person while every day might be normal for someone else,” explains Anita Sadaty, MD, attending physician in obstetrics and gynecology at Northwell Health System.When guiding patients through what impacts their libido, Sadaty most often finds the following to be underlying causes:Sadaty also notes that mood disorders, such as anxiety and depression, can curb sex drive. As can pain with intercourse. On the whole, sexual desire tends to follow the curve of hormone levels for women. “It is highest probably in late teens and 20s, may dip in the 30s for some, and then may be more impacted in 40s and 50s,” explains Sadaty. “There are so many reasons for this, but as a general rule as we get older life can become more complicated, relationships become harder in some cases, stress levels rise, hormones fluctuate or drop, and medical issues can arise.””I think women have been super stressed during the pandemic and lockdown and for most, libido has gone down,” explains Bhatia, also noting the declining birth rate. “The juggling is overwhelming and intimacy is thrown out the window.” Sadaty has also seen a tremendous drop in libido for many women directly related to stress, epidemic levels of anxiety and depression, and the rise in the use of psychotropic medications, relationship discord, and isolation. Supporting what’s been observed anecdotally, at the Kinsey Institute Lehmiller participated in a longitudinal study last year that explored how COVID-19 affected people’s sex lives and relationships. “One of the things we found among women was that sexual desire, sexual frequency, and partnered sex all declined compared to pre-pandemic levels,” he explains. “This makes sense, given what a uniquely stressful period this was.” Additionally, other studies have found that women’s libido was affected more than men’s, with a bigger decrease in women’s masturbation compared to men. “One factor is that we saw greater concern about the pandemic among women, and to the extent that women were more anxious overall last year, that could have translated to a bigger effect on their sex drive,” he explains. “But it’s also the case that women were disproportionately stressed during the pandemic, especially in terms of picking up more parenting, household, and caregiver responsibilities compared to men.””Boosting libido requires a deeper dive into the cause and once that is uncovered you can [better] direct treatment,” says Sadaty, who encourages women to consult a doctor to help identify underlying causes of low libido, as well as develop sex drive-boosting strategies. If one’s libido level is causing persistent, sustained distress or problems in one’s life, Lehmiller recommends consulting with a physician or a certified sex therapist to locate the cause or causes, because treatment will vary depending on whether the root is a hormone issue, stress, relationship problems, or another issue. That being said, there are many things a woman can do on her own including “mindfulness or meditation techniques to reduce stress, incorporating more novelty into one’s sex life such as using sex toys, because novelty can help to awaken sexual excitement and desire, and taking more time to build arousal,” he explains.”Some women only tend to experience what’s known as ‘responsive desire,’ which refers to desire that appears in response to pleasure and sexual activity,” he continues. “This is different from ‘spontaneous desire,’ which is the kind of sexual desire that just hits you out of the blue. Some women with low desire are just more of the responsive type, which requires taking a different approach to sex and looking for more external stimulators and ways to build arousal so that the desire component kicks in.”
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Being a bigger girl has royally screwed me over, mentally. So much so that I really don’t use the Let´s Go Brandon American Map US Flag T-Shirt and by the same token and word “fat,” although I’m working on “reclaiming” it because I love seeing other plus-size people use it so freely. But being bigger, fat, plus-sized, I’ve heard the stories of medical stigma surrounding obesity. And yeah, growing up, I remember my pediatrician telling me I was 40 pounds overweight when I was in the fourth grade and playing four sports at once.That notion—“Well, you’re eating right, doing everything well, and you still need to lose about the weight of both legs”—truly, honestly, made my brain rewire itself. I remember that one of my nightly prayers (yep, I was Catholic, too, and unaware that I was gay) involved praying I’d be thin.But anyway, real ostracization didn’t set in until I was diagnosed with a condition called idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH), previously called pseudotumor cerebri. Basically, my brain produces too much spinal fluid because it thinks I have a brain tumor. It’s rare, and when untreated or too far gone, it can lead to blindness. For me, it means I have chronic headaches, sometimes migraines, and papilledema (intracranial pressure, which is what alerted my eye doctor to send me to more doctors about this).That’s a long-winded way to say that when I was 25 years old, I ended up at my first neurologist appointment. It was all fine and dandy, but it turns out that this disorder is linked to obesity or overweight patients. Weight loss is a typical “treatment.” But honestly? IIH, as a disorder, is so rare and under-researched that I’m personally convinced that the recommendation to lose weight, which is offered as an overarching treatment, might just be another symptom of medical obesity stigma (outside of severe cases). But I digress.Regardless, my first neurologist was reasonably nice to my face. When telling me about the weight loss recommendation, he didn’t seem to push too hard, other than encouraging working out and eating well. However, one of the medications used to treat the disorder can sometimes include weight loss as a side effect because it reduces appetite, which he mentioned a little enthusiastically. I don’t know, looking back, if I heard it that way because my internalized fatphobia was rearing its ugly head from the depths of my soul. Or if he did say it like that. But, you’ll hear more from that buried monster in a bit.An MRI and a lumbar puncture (LP), formerly known as a spinal tap, are two of the final tests to determine whether someone has IIH. The MRI scans to make sure there really is no tumor, and the LP measures the level of spinal fluid pressure. Mine was high, as I expected. A normal opening pressure is 15 or so; mine was 28. They removed all the excess fluid and sent me home, telling me I’d be back to normal in three to five days.I couldn’t leave my bed or work for about two weeks without getting an extreme headache and experiencing nausea. Almost a month later, I could barely do any physical activity because of lower back pain. My neurologist advised me to drink water and coffee—because that’s good for headaches?—and to take Aleve because that’s good for inflammation when I had back pain. I found out later that there are fairly standard pain reduction procedures when a severe headache follows a spinal tap—an epidural blood patch, for example. Basically, I suffered more than I should have.So, months after that horrendous lumbar puncture, I was not a happy camper. I had an appointment with my neurologist, and we talked more about further treatment, including weight loss again. Mind you; I loved my body at this point. I’d worked insanely hard for years to love how I looked, how I am. Weight loss or working out to lose weight had not been a goal of mine for a few years, and I was active, especially right before the pandemic. So all of this talk of weight loss was grating. But to appease him, I said I’d like a referral to a nutritionist, to look for some potential oversight I didn’t know of.And that’s when it all went to hell.
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