John Cuneo
Posted on 01/09/2006 10:46:45 PM PST by neverdem
It is no secret that some women who take birth control pills lose interest in sex. They have been reporting this side effect to their doctors since oral contraceptives came into wide use 40 years ago.
"Little by little, my boyfriend and I started noticing that I was just never in the mood. Never," said Cody, a 27-year-old San Francisco woman, who asked that her last name not be used for reasons of privacy.
Some studies have also indicated that the pill can decrease the frequency of some women's sexual thoughts, make becoming aroused more difficult, or decrease lubrication, making sex painful.
Yet the possibility that there may be a link between oral contraceptives and desire will surprise many women. Few doctors bring it up when they prescribe the pill, and package inserts do not mention it.
Doctors say this is not necessarily an oversight. Giving any clear warning about sexual side effects is difficult, they say, because birth control pills affect women in different ways.
"Some women will have a decrease in sex drive while they're on the birth control pill, and some will have an increase," said Dr. Paul Stumpf, a reproductive endocrinologist at the Newark Beth Israel Medical Center.
Now a controversial new study suggests that the pill not only suppresses desire, but can also do so for months after a woman stops taking it, by raising levels of a certain protein. According to Dr. Irwin Goldstein, a co-author of the study and the editor in chief of The Journal of Sexual Medicine, which published the report, the findings may explain what he has long observed in women on oral contraceptives.
"When they stopped taking the pill, we fully expected their sexual function to recover," said Dr. Goldstein, a urologist in Boston. "But we weren't seeing that."
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
John Cuneo
Anti-depressents have the same effect.
The Journal of Sexual Medicine. That's a name that inspires confidence.
Never trust any article in a magazine that comes in a brown wrapper.
What makes you write that? I've never recieved any medical journal in a brown wrapper. Have you?
Wellbutrin has the opposite effect.
Yasmin is the evil destroyer of female libido!!!
i always thought it was wedding cake that caused that long term symptom
If they could develop a pill for some womens' illness that had the side effect of lockjaw..........
Wash it down with some coffee
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1555093/posts
... which in turn lends credence to the notion that "women's liberation" -- ostensibly intended to benefit women -- was actually a way to facilitate men's access to consequence-free sex.
It's the progesterone, stupid...the older pills were full of estrogen, and had fewer problems except for dropping dead from blood clots. So they increased the progesterone, and voila, chronic PMS...
I had to take the pill to prevent Ovarian cysts...and never could decide if I preferred the cysts or the pill...duh...
Of course, if I had five kids in five years, I probably would have taken the pill...
I' actually never heard of this side effect, but it makes sense since the pill works by fooling your body into thinking you're pregnant.
I tried the pill at several different times in my life. I found that it absolutely extinguished my desire for sex. I would try a "new" version from time to time, in between the births of my four children, but always would give it up, because my generally healthy enjoyment of sex was completely gone.
I figured it was just me, but when my now grown daughter mentioned having a similar problem to me, early in her marriage, I told her that she better stop taking the pill. She did, thank goodness.
Then, she told her closest friend why she was giving up the pill, and discovered that it had the same effect on her friend, who had thought it was something "wrong" with her marriage...
I think that very few women make the connection between the pill and the loss of sexual desire and response... they probably blame every thing else first...
LOL, I hadn't seen that coffee thread, but it's funny. :)
In this day and age, with courts screwing men left and right, if a guy does not get a vasectomy he is in for trouble.
Heck, yesterday a Broward court said that even though a kid was not from a man, he still had to pay child support.
Another factor that confuses the matter is that nobody really knows the answer to the question "What frequency of sexual activity is considered 'healthy'?"
Reminds me of the old joke (I think from Woody Allen). Man and woman see a marital therapist seperately. The therapist asks the man, "How often do you have sex?"
The man answers, "Almost never. Once a month."
The therapist then asks the woman. She answers: "All the time. Once a month!"
ping
This actually has bearing on the discussion yesterday. Perhaps the West ISN'T having more sex than the Muslim world!
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