MAININI BEATRICE: Help, can’t find my libido!

14 Sep, 2014 - 06:09 0 Views
MAININI BEATRICE: Help, can’t find my libido! Mainini Beatrice

The Sunday Mail

Mainini Beatrice

Mainini Beatrice

LOVE & beauty with Mainini Beatrice

“Help me shaa! I urgently need assistance. I have lost my sexual appetite!” an urgent Whatsapp message I recently received from a dear male friend screamed. My colleague, hovering around 45 years, wondered if his situation constituted what is usually referred to as ‘midlife crisis’. To be honest I had no response for this. What I, however, had an answer to was how he could have possibly lost his sexual appetite, commonly referred to as libido loco.

Medical experts call it hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) and describe it as a loss of interest in sex. Loss of libido is common in men with at least one in five men experiencing it. It is also a challenge to women although they are perceived to be able to absorb the debilitating effects with grace.

There are lots of reasons why a person, male or female, could lose their sexual appetite.

Common among the reasons are age, medication and anxiety. Many people lose some interest in sex as they get older, mainly due to falling levels of sex hormones and age-related health problems.

Older men especially can develop low testosterone levels, which can cause fatigue, depression, and a reduced sex drive.

“Libido loss does not usually happen suddenly — it’s not like catching a cold where you wake up one morning and whoops, there it is,” says a sex therapist that declined to be identified for professional reasons. “It can be a gradual process. Although difficult to define precisely, it is a lack of interest in sex for several months of the past year.”

Medical experts list the following medical conditions and the drugs used to treat them as culprits when it comes to a low sex drive.

Medication for high blood pressure, including diuretics

medications for depression, including SSRI anti-depressants

medications for seizures (fits)

medications, such as haloperidol, commonly used to treat psychosis (a mental condition where a person cannot distinguish between reality and their imagination), as well as other conditions

medicines such as cimetidine, finasteride and cyproterone, which block the effects or reduce the production of testosterone

combined hormonal contraception (pill, ring or patch) also lead to a low sex drive although this is rare

I am sure older male readers can testify that there is a difference in the frequency at which they used to have sex or think about it when they were in their early 20s and now that they have hit 40.

It’s even worse for the ailing ones especially those ones suffering from diabetes, seizures or fits and hypertension. “When men lose interest in sex it scares them more than women — their masculinity is so linked to their sexuality that it is very threatening,” says Esther Perel, a couples’ therapist and author of Mating in Captivity.

So true! My friend’s panic was vivid when we later tried to discuss his condition … I could feel how challenged and hurt his masculinity was.

He just could not believe that the very thing that made him who he was could fail to function.

Men do not like to talk about it, neither do their partners, medical experts say.

But loss of libido in men or inhibited sexual desire stresses a marriage more than any other sexual dysfunction, according to Barry McCarthy, co-author of Rekindling Desire: A Step by Step Programme to Help Low-Sex and No-Sex Marriage.

No matter how embarrassing one may find it, seeking help from qualified sex therapists as soon as you realise the problem is highly recommended.

A local sex therapist said to a lesser extent, men and women must avoid using dubious sex-enhancing drugs that line the streets of most urban centres in the country.

The dubious and harmful sex-enhancing drugs available at Mupedzanhamo, on the streets or in public toilets has become a million-dollar industry in the country, but that’s another subject for another time. According to online sources most sexual stimulants and sex-enhancing drugs available on the illicit market negatively affect the body.

These drugs may increase testosterone levels in your body and could be effective should your problem be due to hormonal deficiency.

Your body could be exposed to harmful contaminants that some of these drugs contain. Some of the substances you could be exposing yourself to include mould, yeast, dangerous bacteria, pesticides, and lead.

You risk consuming some unappealing substances such as faecal matter that contaminate some of the herbal pills, possibly from animals grazing near the plants harvested for herbal ingredients.

Some of these drugs do not have any real effect on your body and you may only be experiencing a placebo effect when using them, i.e. psychological effect making you think you can perform better thereby increasing your confidence, when there is no actual physical or physiological change.

The consequences become dire should one abuse sexual stimulants and sexual-enhancing drugs as you risk suffering adverse and serious side-effects such as severe hypertension or stroke.

For men the penis may remain erect and fail to return to its flaccid state which can be a very painful experience.

Let’s keep the machine flaccid and roll them to [email protected]. Till next week!

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