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One of the greatest paradoxes about birth control is that, while it may make sex seem more available to women, many women taking the drugs feel less in the mood. The connections between hormonal contraceptives and symptoms of low libido are long established. But research reveals further reasons women may be experiencing less sexual pleasure while on the Pill, ring, patch, implant, or IUD. Not only have hormonal contraceptives been shown to significantly decrease women’s testosterone levels, and lead to severe depression and suicide attempts . . .

Only an hour ago we had been lamenting yet another incredibly bad road. Here in the Ugandan outback, it is as pointless to complain about the roads as it is to complain about politicians in America, but railing against the unchangeable can lighten the mood. But on the way out of a small village in the Bukedea region of Uganda, we didn’t feel the bumps. That was when our team’s defenses failed, and when the gravity of the assault on women—perpetrated by the champions of “women’s health” and “empowerment”—really hit home. It may have been just me, but my guess...

She hasn’t even announced, but the question has already resurfaced: Will Bill Clinton’s baggage derail Hillary Clinton’s presidential hopes? Just a few weeks ago, reports broke that Bill Clinton had flown at least 11 times on “The Lolita Express” — a private plane owned by the mysterious financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. According to Virginia Roberts, who claims to have been one of Epstein’s many teenaged sex slaves, Clinton also visited Epstein’s private Caribbean retreat, known as “Orgy Island.”

This year there was a predictable amount of hoopla surrounding the 50th anniversary of “the pill.” Many pundits told us that the pill had delivered as promised: Women had become liberated. Sex in the City! Sex in dorm rooms! Sex behind bleachers! Women have it all. But wait. Now comes word that women aren’t all that interested in sex any more. Their libidos are waning to the point that pharmaceutical companies are racing to find a Pink Viagra: a new pill; a pill that will restore the desire to have the sex that the pill made possible. Why don’t...

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Sen. John McCain is laughing off daughter Meghan’s claim that his presidential campaign has taken a toll on her love life. "I have to say I have a beautiful daughter and I have bright prospects for her professionally and socially," he said on Fox News Sunday. "I'm proud of all my children. Sometimes they say things that I would not do or say — that's what young people are all about."

(CNN) — Meghan McCain says that "nothing kills my libido quite like discussing politics" — and that the presidential election "killed my personal life." "OK, maybe killed is a bit of an exaggeration," she wrote in a blog post for The Daily Beast published Monday. "But it does seem to be on life support. Of all the things people warned would happen post-election, no one ever said anything about how complicated dating would become. Especially if your dad loses the election. There are things that have been difficult, but nothing quite as tough as dating. I fear the election has...

...by Mary Eberstadt,  a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, is a great article in the August/September issue of First Things and is available online. I'll get you started: That Humanae Vitae and related Catholic teachings about sexual morality are laughingstocks in all the best places is not exactly news. Even in the benighted precincts of believers, where information from the outside world is known to travel exceedingly slowly, everybody grasps that this is one doctrine the world loves to hate. During Benedict XVI’s April visit to the United States, hardly a story in the secular press failed to mention...

Watermelon May Have Viagra-effectDr. Bhimu Patil, director of Texas A&M's Fruit and Vegetable Improvement Center, says watermelon may have Viagra-like effects. (Credit: Image courtesy of Texas A&M University ScienceDaily (July 1, 2008) — A cold slice of watermelon has long been a Fourth of July holiday staple. But according to recent studies, the juicy fruit may be better suited for Valentine’s Day. That’s because scientists say watermelon has ingredients that deliver Viagra-like effects to the body’s blood vessels and may even increase libido. “The more we study watermelons, the more we realize just how amazing a fruit it is in...

LONDON, May 5, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In the May 2 installment of his regular health feature in The Times, Dr. Thomas Stuttaford responded to a reader who complained of a loss of interest in sex following an abortion. "Though my boyfriend and I agreed it was the right thing to do, I feel guilty and I've gone off sex," wrote the questioner. Dr. Stuttaford responded by saying that loss of libido after an abortion is "so common that it can almost be said to be expected". Asked if the feelings would pass, Stuttaford wrote, "It is possible, but by no...

Seat of female libido revealed 22:00 26 June 2006 NewScientist.com news service Andy Coghlan The precise part of the brain likely to be the seat of heterosexual desire in women has been revealed by experiments on mice. The study confirms that the hormone oestrogen is vital for arousal, but only in the specific area of the brain called the ventromedial nucleus (VMN) in the hypothalamus. Sonoko Ogawa of the University of Tsukuba in Japan and her collaborators in the US discovered this by blocking the effects of oestrogen exclusively in that part of the brain in mice. They did this...

ABC News Sexless and Proud Asexuals Say They're Misunderstood in a Sex-Obsessed World March 23, 2006 — - David Jay has had plenty of girlfriends. But despite the 23-year-old Californian's success in dating, he's a virgin -- and he plans to stay that way. He's not joining the priesthood or taking any vow of celibacy; he said he simply has no interest in having sex -- ever. "I'm sure that life is really, really great when it's all about sex. But life is also really, really great when it's not about sex," he told "20/20's" JuJu Chang. Keith Walker of...

Libido Problems Linked to the Pill May Be Long-Term By Kathleen DohenyHealthDay Reporter TUESDAY, Jan. 3 (HealthDay News) -- Women who take birth control pills might be at increased risk for a long-term loss of sexual desire, according to new research from a team at the Lahey Clinic in Boston. "We have known for a long time that 30 to 40 percent of women on birth control pills have decreased libido," said study co-author Dr. Andre Guay, director of the Center for Sexual Function/Endocrinology at the clinic. But his findings, published in the January issue of The Journal of Sexual...

Something is going wrong in Christian communities. ... many Christians, even in churches that teach sex is only for marriage, have premarital sex. • Three surveys of single Christian adults [showed that]one third were virgins—meaning, of course, that two thirds were not. • In 2003, researchers at Northern Kentucky University showed that 61 percent of students who signed sexual-abstinence commitment cards broke their pledges. • Of the remaining 49 percent who kept their pledges, 55 percent said they'd had oral sex, and did not consider oral sex to be sex. So what is going on? In combating [unchaste behavior], we...

Contraceptive may kill libido By Julie Wheldon May 27, 2005 From: TAKING the Pill for as little as six months could destroy a woman's sex drive for ever, say scientists. The oral contraceptive dramatically reduces the levels of a hormone responsible for desire and simply stopping taking it fails to reverse the effect, it is feared. A survey produced such dramatic results that lead researcher Dr Irwin Goldstein advised any woman on the Pill who has sexual problems to stop taking it and try another method of birth control. "There is a possibility it is imprinting a woman for the...

Taking birth control pills could permanently reduce libido, according to a study. Oral contraceptives have been shown to increase the amount of sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) - a protein produced in the liver that lowers testosterone levels, thereby reducing sexual drive. It is well known that taking the Pill can reduce levels of sex hormones that drive libido. However, most doctors advise that this effect is reversed when a woman stops taking the contraceptive. Researchers at Boston University found that women still had double the normal level of SHBG in their blood a year after stopping the Pill. Dr...

WASHINGTON -- The President is out on the hustings. Yes, he remains on the campaign trail. He is supposed to be taking a break in Crawford, Texas, but his schedule shows him flying out across the country almost daily, campaigning. What is he campaigning for? The answer is Social Security reform. Here in Washington the press has if anything understated how much George W. Bush cares about this issue. One might well ask why he cares so ardently about it. Surely it is not as glamorous as defeating tyrants abroad, a task he has well in hand. Yet only the...

IMPROVED sexual satisfaction for women may be just a spray on the skin away, Australian clinical trials have shown. The testosterone spray, developed by Monash University in Melbourne, was shown to significantly improve younger women's sexual enjoyment and satisfaction. The spray was tested on 261 premenopausal women aged 35-45 across Australia who had a low libido and testosterone levels. Each woman kept a diary throughout the 16-week study, in which they were also given dummy doses, to record all sexual events along with the level of satisfaction. Initial results show that women who used the spray recorded, on average, two...

WOMEN have compared chocolate to sex for decades. Now doctors have discovered a scientific link between the two. According to Italian researchers, women who eat chocolate regularly had the highest levels of desire, arousal and satisfaction from sex. But for men, the findings of a British study were not so good. In the chocolate/sex study, urologists from Milan's San Raffaele hospital questioned 163 women about their consumption of chocolate and their sexual fulfilment. "Women who have a daily intake of chocolate showed higher levels of desire than women who did not have this habit," the study found. "Chocolate can have...

For most people taking antidepressants, the risk of a diminished sex drive may seem like a worthwhile sacrifice for the benefits from the drugs. Up to 70 percent of patients on antidepressants report sexual side effects, yet the number of Americans who take the drugs has ballooned since Prozac was introduced in the late 1980's. Last year, studies show, doctors in the United States wrote 213 million prescriptions for antidepressants. But what if the sexual side effects of the drugs, often considered little more than a nuisance, had more serious consequences, impairing not only sexual desire in some people, but...

Swimsuit issue under wraps Pilferers in spotlight as magazine hits libraries' shelves By Joe Kovac Jr. Telegraph Staff Writer This time each year, when the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue comes out, librarians everywhere go on alert, on the lookout for visitors - guys mostly - who wouldn't know a Dewey decimal from a Mountain Dew. It's not that libraries don't welcome newcomers, it's just that the reason they're there is obvious: The SI swimsuit models and their barely covered, um, reference sections. So measures must be taken - along with library cards - to make sure the already leggy magazines...