No More Desires, Ladies? It Might Be Your Pill

A concerned boyfriend wonders if a year on birth control medications (or the sudden break from them) could be putting a damper on his partner’s libido.

Case #: 466

Concern：

My girlfriend took birth control pills for about a year. Now, for the first month, she decided to take a break from taking them. Do you think this could influence her sexual arousal? You write that it seems that she doesn't have enough testosterone and dopamine, could something be done about that? Could she take something to increase her sexual arousal level?

Discussion：

It can certainly be said that birth control methods have come a long way over the years. To many women, a simple once-a-day pill with a 99.9 percent effectiveness rate seems the perfect means for the carefree sex life they desire. But every prescription medication comes with a laundry list of side effects. Although oral contraceptives have evolved and changed in an attempt to minimize the list of side effects they come with, one side effect continues to occur: low sex drive.

What’s Going on in There?

So how does one little pill put such a dent in your libido? To answer this question, it is important to understand how these contraceptives work in the body. Essentially, the pill tricks the reproductive system into thinking the body is pregnant. This essentially shuts the ovaries down from producing eggs, but also sparks alterations in the body’s hormones.

To pull off the “fake-pregnancy trick,” the brain is flooded with large amounts of synthetic progesterone and estrogen. The abundance of these hormones in the body, due to the liver’s inability to detoxify them fast enough, can produce additional side-effects, like callusing of the clitoris, vaginal numbness, and an overly wet or dry vagina.

Subsequently, these issues can detract from orgasm intensity, as well as cause fatigue and moodiness.

The influx of estrogen and progesterone also causes a decrease in another vital sex-drive hormone: testosterone. With the ovaries all but shut down, the usual production of testosterone is halted. In addition, upon taking the pill, the liver begins producing a hormone called sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) to bind to sex hormones, including testosterone, to help balance the surge of sex hormones in the body. As more of your body’s testosterone bines to the SHBG, rendering it useless, less of it is free-flowing and useful in your body. Just as men with low testosterone, women with lowered testosterone caused by oral contraception experience low-libido.

What’s a Girl to do?

Yes, oral contraceptives have improved over the years, but many kinks still need resolving. No medication is perfect, and unfortunately it may take some trial and error with different birth control methods to find out which have the slightest side effects for you personally, or at any rate the least bothersome side effects.

The good news is there are ways to create hormonal balance in your body and revamp your sex drive. Herbal remedies contain vital natural herbs that have been known to restore natural balance in the body.

As mentioned previously, the liver cannot keep up with the abundance of estrogen and progesterone produced by birth control medications. Herbs such as Bupleurum, Milk Thistle, Rehmannia and Shilajit improve liver function by boosting its detoxification processes. Other active ingredients such as Curculiogo, Cnidium and Catuaba secrete a proper balance of hormones like dopamine and oxytocin to relax vaginal and uterine muscles...(see how it works)

As an added bonus, these herbal supplements improve blood circulation in the cervix and clitoris, making orgasm more easily achieved and more pleasurable.

With your hormones retaining balance, your sex drive revitalized, and your orgasmic experiences heightened, you will be free from worry about pregnancy OR a fading sex drive!