Is Stress Sabotaging Your Sex Life?

     If you’re going to cook up a satisfying sex life, you need the right high quality ingredients, in the right amounts... and hold the stress. Likewise, when our body produces our main sex hormones, testosterone, estrogen and progesterone, we need some basic ingredients available in the kitchen, which in this case is our liver, ovaries (testes in men) and adrenal glands.

​We need enough of all of these in order to have a healthy libido and enjoy sex. And sex is a great way to relieve stress.

Cholesterol is the main building block of many hormones, including our sex hormones and the stress hormone, cortisol.  When we restrict fat, our body will upregulate the production of cholesterol by the liver to ensure that you have the raw materials available. During production, cholesterol is modified several times. Eventually, the raw materials come to a fork in the road, where the body can either continue on to manufacture our sex hormones, or switch over to making cortisol. Both of these directions are essential to a healthily functioning body and ideally, a balanced ratio is maintained.

In our fast-paced, over-booked lives many of us produce excess cortisol in order to keep up. Cortisol, taking one path, competes for the same binding sites in the body as progesterone which is the precursor to our other sex hormones. Symptoms of excess cortisol include weight gain around the middle, feeling tired and wired, poor sleep, irregular menses, blood sugar dysfunction, muscle fatigue, poor stress response long term... and low sex drive (because who has the time to get it on with that huge to-do list?). Furthermore, we are likely to experience abnormal production of progesterone, estrogen and testosterone because the raw ingredients are not available in the right quantities. Just like trying to make a recipe when you are short on groceries, the end result can get interesting. Often, we will experience a combination of excess and deficient hormone levels which will typically affect our resistance to stress, metabolism, thyroid function, digestion and sexual function. Again, our libido can suffer. And just like learning to cook requires time spent cooking, when we are stressed, our libido tends to suffer yet having sex can be one of the best things you can do to relieve that stress!

In order to balance these complex hormones, stress management is essential as is eating well and exercising. The goal is to have enough ingredients to produce these hormones in the right amounts, so that we have enough energy, healthy libidos and can age well. In other words, we need to have a clean, organized and well stocked kitchen, a good recipe and enough time to cook.

Here's what you can do:

1. Make sure you get enough healthy fat in your diet, such as salmon, free range eggs, unsalted raw nuts, avocados, coconut oil or ghee. Fat is one of the main building blocks for cholesterol, thus all sex hormones.​
2. ​Get enough sleep. You're probably not getting enough - and your body needs rest to heal and have the energy to produce these hormones. If you're exhausted, your libido is going to suffer.
3. Test your hormones. It's easy to Google yourself into a disease and spend a lot of money on unnecessary supplements. Test, don't guess. And then treat accordingly under the supervision of a licensed and qualified health professional.

If you're suffering from low libido, a Naturopathic Doctor trained in the use of bioidentical hormones can help you to test your hormones and create an individualized treatment plan to ensure that you live a healthy, happy balanced life… and a great sex life.

​You can also check your hormone score to see if you might have some imbalances.

Want to go further?

Book your free 15 minute health strategy session to learn more about balancing your hormones (and improving your sex life).. naturally.

In health,
Dr. Keila

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