Let’s Talk About Sex
On my New Patient Questionnaire I have a question:
"How would you describe your libido:
It's good and I don't want to talk about it
It's not as much as I'd like and I wish that were different
It's not good but I don't care and I don't want to talk about it.'"
I'm not asking out of voyeuristic curiosity. It can tell me a lot about you and your happiness, and it's also part of my diagnosis.
That last choice "It's not good but I don't care," makes me concerned, especially when I see it in married people. While it seems that lewd, in-your-face sex is absolutely everywhere, you might be amazed at how little of it seems to be actually happening face-to-face in real life couples. Sex is important. It's especially important for couples. Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine are a real solution to low libido.
While sex and intimacy are two different things, they intertwine beautifully and each one can result in the other. So why have some people gotten to where they don't care about having it?
Ancient Chinese Medicine texts were full of solutions. Virility of the male certainly pops up often enough in them to make you realize they considered it very important. Now, some of the ancient remedies were a bit bizarre by our standards (pickled seal penis, anyone?), but the use of acupuncture, moxibustion, Chinese Herbal medicine, and qigong are alive and well and still vitally important today.
Libido or sex drive is actually pretty complex. Rather than grossly oversimplifying with blanket terms such as "Low T," Chinese Medicine gets to the root cause and treats it. Testosterone is great and it absolutely can become low, but it is only one of many factors in male and female libido. Factors that can figure into libido are: stress, anger, anxiety, worry, sorrow, past trauma, low hormone production, genital pain, dryness, erectile dysfunction after prostate surgery or otherwise, fibroids, endometriosis, body shame, and more.
If the problem is low hormones, it's interesting to note that sex hormones are often produced in adequate amounts but they keep getting used for other functions besides stimulating sex.
Since the human body is absolutely brilliantly designed, all sex hormones can be turned into cortisol, the body's emergency or 'fight or flight' hormone. That is fantastic! If you're being chased by a bear your body needs plenty of cortisol to speed up your heart rate, sharpen your focus, turn off digestion function, and help you to RUN! It turns whatever hormones are circulating into cortisol to use and off you go. But you don't encounter bears often, you say? Well, your brain reads meetings with your boss about a complaint, bills to be paid, an overbearing mother-in-law, and things like those as if you are in danger and responds the same as if you were running from a bear. That means your sex hormones are constantly being turned into cortisol rather than being used for fertility or sexual functions. Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine make great hormone replacement alternatives because they are helping your body make the hormones itself.
So why do I bring this up? Because while yes, these instances result in you needing more hormones, just adding more hormones won't fix the constant drain on them in the first place-----STRESS. Or as we like to call it, Qi Stagnation or Stuck Qi. Fix the root (Stuck Qi), AND boost the hormones (Yin/Yang imbalance) and you're in business.
Okay, so how do we do this? All of these things can be treated through acupuncture, herbal medicine, qi gong, food therapy, and lifestyle recommendations. Chinese Medicine practitioners may be the oldest form of Life Coaches! Make an appointment to get started moving towards a better sex life. It's definitely more pleasant than getting pellets and rubbing creams all over yourself. Give it a few months of regular treatment and you can transform yourself, your life, and your relationship.
For some WONDERFUL self-help that can be done with or without coming into the clinic, check out this great book (for both men and women!). It's Sex Again: Recharging Your Libido by Jill Blakeway, LAc.