Thursday 17 May 2012

Sex as medicine?

Yoga? Yawn. Research shows a great way to ward off anxiety is by connecting in bed. Grab your partner and feel tension slip away.
Stress affects me just as much as the next woman. I break out. I become short-tempered. And, of course, I reach for the nearest chocolate. But worry never seems to rock my sex life.
Or it didn’t, until a few months ago, when an unusually large number of looming deadlines began to curb my once unshakable libido. My husband, and I were under constant pressure, and at bedtime, I was so not in the mood. After two weeks without action (a long time for us), I began to worry.
“The grind” used to be what we did every night. Now it had become the definition of our days. They say stress kills, and I would argue that it’s true, especially when it comes to sex drive.
“Stress makes you tired, distracted and unmotivated to do anything, much less have sex,” says Laura Berman, Ph.D., director of the Berman Center for women’s sexual health in Chicago. “When a woman is stressed, the hormonal changes in her body trigger a chemical reaction causing sex hormone–binding globulin to bind with testosterone cells, so they’re unavailable for libido and sexual response.”
And, in a pattern familiar to many women, sexlessness due to stress makes you more tense and even less sexual. Furthermore, a study at the University of Gottingen in Germany found that people who do it less often tend to take on more work to compensate for their frustration. And the increased labor results in—you guessed it—even less sex.

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