Yet another article from the NYT, this time on testosterone and female sexual desire. Apparently there are about a million testosterone treatment creams being researched by such altruistic angles as Proctor & Gamble (also currently marketing a tampon for girls who haven't gotten their periods yet). Once I had the opportunity to see such a testosterone cream at a Cake Party long ago. Would you believe that the instructions said to rub it in, around your clit, for like 5 minutes? This struck me as completely hillarious.
Anyway, I've been speaking with some girlfriends with babies these days about loss of desire and apparently its so widespread for like a year after birth. You don't even start ovulating again after giving birth until you're breast feeding less than 6 times a day (i.e. when your baby is on solids). So I feel like there's this MASSIVE pink elephant that no one talks about surrounding pregnancy and sexual desire. I am here, doing my part for the ladies.
Interesting factoids:
In a study from 1992 by Edward O. Laumann, a University of Chicago sociology professor, and others, 43 percent of women reported some sexual dysfunction, the most prevalent being loss of libido.
Until menopause, women produce, on average, a tenth of the amount of testosterone that men do.
Although the neuroanatomical path of testosterone can be mapped, its underlying behavioral mechanism is not known.
German researchers, writing in The Journal of Endocrinology in 2001, posited the following: "Testosterone might have direct effects on cognitive behavior, e.g., influence the awareness of sexual cues, but it is also suggested that testosterone may act peripherally to enhance sexual pleasure and thereby increase sexual desire and even sexual activity, circumstances and partner permitting."
Professor Laumann's study indicates that by age 30, three-quarters of Americans are either married or living with someone, but they are starting to have "partnered sex" less often than people in their 20's. In their 30's, more people are having sex with a partner a few times a month, and fewer are having sex a few times a week. By their 40's, this disparity more than doubles for both men and women.
Sexual incompatibility is cited as a top reason for divorce in the United States.
Helen Fishcher, our favorite oxitocin researcher, devided up human feelings about these matters into three groups:
LUST: the craving for sexual gratification; Lust is associated primarily with testosterone in both men and women
ROMANTIC LOVE:a focused attention on another, often compared to an opiate-like state; Romantic love is linked with the natural stimulant dopamine and perhaps norepinephrine and serotonin
ATTACHMENT: the feelings of calm, security and union with a long-term partner. Feelings of attachment are produced primarily by the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin, which at elevated levels can actually suppress the circuits for lust.
very interesting.
Posted by bluprnt at January 14, 2006 12:04 AM