For 47 years, the Pill has given women the freedom to knock boots without getting knocked up. And while popping hormones does have its cons (like a slightly higher risk for blood clots), you can't deny the perks: the convenience, the protection against uterine and ovarian cancers, the 99.7 percent effectiveness rate. But it turns out your trusty little OC can come with a caveat that might make you think twice about swallowing those little pills every day.
In the past decade, researchers have found that hormonal contraceptives -- including the Pill, the Patch, and the vaginal ring -- can dampen how often women want, think about, and even respond to sexual stimulation. And an online Women's Health poll backs that up: We found that 36 percent of you firmly believe the Pill muffles your mojo.
Unfortunately, no official stats are available on how prevalent this problem really is. When asked to estimate how many of their patients on the Pill have suffered a blow to their sex lives, doctors' answers range from 10 percent to 40 percent -- though some sexual-health specialists argue that 40 percent is a lot closer to reality. The phenomenon may be underestimated because many docs simply aren't clued in to the, well, ins and outs of their patients' sex lives. "Sex drive is not a subject most doctors are comfortable discussing, because it's not something they learn about in detail in medical school," says Irwin Goldstein, M.D., director of sexual medicine at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego. And while some European countries, including Germany, list decreased desire as a side effect on birth-control packages, there are no printed warnings about it in the United States.
There Are Reasons We Bonk?
So, what drives your love machine? A key component is testosterone. As a woman, you don't have enough juice to grow a goatee or develop a burning desire for an Xbox 360; but the amount you do have plays a role in your randiness, especially just before ovulation (when you're most likely to get pregnant). Every month at midcycle, women's brains signal their ovaries, which create 50 percent of the body's testosterone, to produce a surge of the lust-?stimulating stuff. That makes perfect sense, given that our main biological goal is to propagate the species.
Testosterone also initiates blood flow that causes your girly parts to become plump and sensitive. This leads to lubrication and, with any luck, one hell of an orgasm. According to the April issue of Hormones and Behavior, Canadian researchers report that women with higher levels of testosterone climax more often than those with lower hormone levels.
The problem is that daily contraceptives alter the body's testosterone production -- and not in a good way. This occurs for two reasons. First, the hormones in the Pill put the ovaries to sleep, halting ovulation. Conked-out ovaries can't produce testosterone.
And what about the other 50 percent of your body's testosterone, which is produced by the adrenal glands? The Pill renders it useless, thanks to the super-potent synthetic estrogen it contains. After you take each pill, your liver -- convinced that you've consumed a potentially toxic amount of estrogen -- starts pumping out a protein called sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG). It works by glomming onto sex hormones (including estrogen, but also testosterone) like a mosquito to fly paper. As more of your testosterone glues itself to SHBG, less of it is available for your body to use. This "free" testosterone -- whatever's produced that SHBG doesn't swallow up -- partially determines your sex drive. In fact, a 2004 Boston University study found that subjects who reported the ?greatest sexual desire had higher levels of free testosterone. (Maybe that's A-Rod's problem.)
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