Never in the Mood? It May Be Time to Try Hormone Replacement Therapy

If you think of sex as merely a feel-good activity, consider these little-known health benefits — sex:

• Boosts your immunity
• Decreases pain
• Helps you sleep better
• Lowers men’s risk of prostate cancer
• Improves bladder function
• Protects your heart health
• Lowers your blood pressure
• Burns calories

If you’re never in the mood for sex, you could be missing out on these perks and pleasures. 

While many factors can contribute to a low libido, one of the main culprits is hormone imbalance. As part of our comprehensive sexual health services at Nova Women’s Health in North Reading, Massachusetts, Dr. Anju Nayar offers a thorough hormone screening to check for deficiencies. 

The good news is that hormone imbalances are easy to fix. 

The role of hormones in sexual desire

Your hormones are like chemical messengers that travel around your body, telling your parts what to do. They control your appetite, sleep patterns, menstrual cycles, hair growth, muscle mass, mood, and fertility, to name just a few. They also dictate your sex life.

Specifically, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone are the three key players in women’s sexual health. The proper levels and ratios of these hormones keep your system humming, enabling arousal, lubricating vaginal tissues, and facilitating orgasms. If you’re having trouble in any of these areas, you may be running low on one or all of the reproductive hormones.

In addition to lowering your sex drive, imbalanced hormones can cause you to:

• Gain weight
• Develop acne
• Grow hair where you normally wouldn’t
• Have irregular periods or abnormal bleeding
• Overheat (hot flashes and night sweats)
• Experience mood swings, depression, and anxiety
• Have trouble sleeping
• Feel tired all the time
• Experience vaginal dryness and painful sex

Dr. Nayar specializes in diagnosing and treating hormonal imbalances and starts by identifying the root cause of the problem.

How to get your libido back

Once Dr. Nayar pinpoints why your hormones are out of whack, she develops a treatment plan to resolve the issue. For example, your imbalanced hormones may stem from stress, medications, steroids, a tumor, or an autoimmune disease, and the treatment starts by addressing the root problem.

In some cases, however, wonky hormones are just a natural part of life. Your hormones surge during puberty and pregnancy and wane during menopause. 

If you’ve got a low libido that’s not related to an underlying health condition, Dr. Nayar can help you get your groove back in the bedroom. 

For some, all it takes is changing things up, trying a different position, or exploring new arousal techniques. For others, prescription medications like Vyleesi® and Addyi® help restore sexual desire by balancing hormones. These medications work quickly (in less than an hour), stimulate arousal, and reduce anxiety about having a low libido. 

How hormone replacement therapy can turn your sex life around

Low sexual desire due to low hormones calls for hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Dr. Nayar determines your hormone levels and develops a treatment that replenishes your deficient hormones and rebalances your supply. 

HRT typically includes estrogen and progesterone that mimic your lost hormones, although some women may need a boost of testosterone, too. These synthetic substitutes stabilize your body, reduce or stop your symptoms, and restore your sexual desire.

We can prescribe HRT in various forms: pills, patches, sprays, gels, pessaries, creams, or vaginal rings. 

Balancing your hormones with HRT is easy and painless. Never in the mood? Don’t live with low libido — book an appointment online at Nova Women’s Health or call us today.