Great Sex, Naturally (24 page)

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Iodine.
A mineral critical to your body’s ability to produce thyroid hormones, iodine is plentiful in many seafoods, seaweeds, and iodized salt. (If you don’t have sufficient iodine, you’re prone to developing a benign thyroid tumor known as a goiter.) As a supplement, the recommended daily dose is 150 mcg for females age 11 or older, 175 mcg for pregnant women, and 200 mcg for breast-feeding mothers. (Note: People with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis or Graves’ disease should refrain from taking iodine.)

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Selenium.
An important mineral for your thyroid health, selenium supports the conversion of the inactive thyroid hormone (T4) into the active thyroid hormone (T3). The recommended daily dose is 200 mcg.

Supporting your thyroid health with these supplements may be enough to remedy a low thyroid-hormone level (they can all be taken at the same time), and you may not need additional treatment. But if your symptoms persist, you should find professional guidance to further gauge your thyroid-hormone status. You can gather useful information by having a physician order the tests described earlier in this chapter and delineated in
Appendix E
—although, as we mentioned, you may have low thyroid hormone even if testing indicates you’re normal. If test results are normal but your symptoms continue, see a naturopathic physician for a more complete assessment and to help ascertain if you have subclinically low thyroid hormone. Either way—whether your low thyroid level is revealed by testing, or you’re subclinically low—taking thyroid-hormone medication can give your body the ideal thyroid support it may need. Let’s look at the keys to using thyroid-hormone medication to elevate your thyroid level and your libido:

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Thyroid-hormone medication … what you need to know.
If a doctor diagnoses you as having low thyroid hormone (hypothyroidism), there’s a good chance that you’ll benefit from taking thyroid hormones. They’re available by prescription only, but conventionally trained medical doctors are unlikely to tell you about all of your options.

There are two types of thyroid-hormone replacement: natural and synthetic. Patients diagnosed by medical doctors as being low-thyroid are typically prescribed only synthetic thyroid hormone, such as Synthroid or Levothyroxine. Some people respond well to these products, but others continue to experience fatigue and other symptoms of low thyroid hormone.

In addition to the philosophical issue—you probably prefer a natural to a synthetic treatment—there’s a real practical difference between natural and synthetic thyroid-hormone medication. The natural option contains both the inactive form of thyroid hormone (T4) and the active form (T3), but the synthetic option contains only T4. So if you take natural instead of synthetic thyroid hormone, it can make a huge difference in how you feel and the results you get. As previously mentioned, T3 stimulates your cells to produce energy, so the natural option may more effectively help restore your energy level and libido, especially if you don’t convert your T4 to T3 very well.

A licensed naturopathic physician or other qualified holistically oriented practitioner can thoroughly evaluate your thyroid-hormone needs and help you determine if you should be on natural thyroid-hormone medication. If you’ve been prescribed synthetic thyroid medication by a conventional practitioner, but you still often feel tired or experience other symptoms of low thyroid hormone that we outlined earlier in this chapter, you may benefit from natural thyroid-hormone medication such as Armour Thyroid or Naturthroid. It could be just what you’ve been waiting for to revitalize your energy level and sex drive.

The amount of natural thyroid medication you take, and how long you take it, will be determined by your doctor to suit your unique needs. With any type of thyroid-hormone medication, the lowest dose needed is generally best. Armour Thyroid and Naturthroid are typically taken daily in pill form, about 20 minutes before breakfast.

If your thyroid-hormone level is too high, you should be guided in your treatment options by a licensed naturopathic doctor or other holistic practitioner. High-thyroid conditions, which include Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and Graves’ disease, can be complex and are beyond the scope of this book.

Hormones and Infertility: The Sex Connection

If you’ve been diagnosed with infertility, you may be surprised to discover that many of the steps you can take to address infertility also enhance your sexuality. For conception to happen, you need the healthy, harmonious hormones that promote a strong libido. If you have any of the hormone-related imbalances we’ve explored in this chapter—including estrogen dominance (which may be associated with abnormal or absent ovulation), adrenal fatigue, or a low thyroid-hormone level—solving them can be crucial to successful conception. For example, if your progesterone or DHEA levels are low, taking natural progesterone or DHEA may help you conceive.

About 20 percent of couples unable to conceive are diagnosed with “unexplained infertility.” In some of these cases, it may be because the woman has a subclinically low thyroid-hormone level (low thyroid hormone that doesn’t show up on tests), and she may conceive when her thyroid imbalance has been addressed.

All of the lifestyle factors you explored earlier in this book for enhancing your sexuality also help to address infertility by supporting balanced hormones. Your Great Sex Detox, as spelled out in
Chapter 2
, could be particularly relevant here. The hormone-mimicking chemicals ubiquitous in the environment, also known as
hormone-disrupters
, may play an especially important role for many would-be parents. (They affect some couples more than others because each person can react differently to them—depending in part on genetic makeup—but decreasing exposure to these chemicals can help create hormonal balance and enhance fertility.)

Intrauterine insemination and in vitro fertilization can help increase the likelihood of conception, but any couple seeking help for unexplained infertility should first restore great health and vitality in their bodies. This echoes ancient Chinese medicine, which teaches that infertility can be caused by chi imbalances; a lifestyle that supports chi, and allows sexual chi to flourish, is essential for conception to happen. No amount of hormonal manipulation with fertility drugs can correct underlying chi imbalances.

Mastering Menopause: Sex in Your Second Spring

The transition you experience in midlife marks the beginning of a period of great potential creativity and rebirth. Your changing hormones not only affect you physically, but also influence your thoughts and feelings, so your menopausal metamorphosis can be a time of renewal for your body, mind, and spirit—and a time of sexual discovery.

You don’t have to accept the negative connotations that the word
menopause
may have for some people—as if it’s only a time of uncontrollable hormone shifts, difficult symptoms, and loss of libido. You can embrace midlife as an opportunity to fulfill new expectations about your body, your sexuality, and your well-being. One postmenopausal patient described her midlife experience as “giving birth to my older, wiser self, and being set free from the old me … along with some of the most gratifying sexual experiences of my lifetime, and sensations of sexual ‘newness’ and well-being that I haven’t felt since my teenage years.”

The notion that menopause is a time of regeneration and spiritual rebirth may seem unfathomable to some practitioners of conventional Western medicine, but it has been widely held for thousands of years in Chinese medicine. In fact, in the traditional Chinese view, your midlife transition is known as your “Second Spring.” According to this outlook, every month between puberty and menopause your chi flows downward toward the earth, from your heart to your uterus, to produce menstrual blood (your Heavenly Water) and give you the potential to bear and nourish children. If this downward flow of chi and blood continued past midlife, your chi would become depleted and you would age prematurely. Instead, at midlife your body conserves your chi by reversing the flow; it begins flowing upward, from your uterus to your heart, away from the earth and toward your spirit. No longer devoted to the possibility of bearing and nourishing children, your chi can be used to bear and nourish your spirit. Menopause is seen as a time of liberated energy and joy, when your upward-flowing chi lifts your spirit to new heights, giving you vast opportunities for self-development and expanding your spiritual potential. One Chinese medical authority describes it as the time when you become a wellspring of wisdom and a mother figure in your community. Your Second Spring is the passage of your energy from Heavenly Water to heavenly wisdom.

By challenging the conventional Western view of menopause, you can not only experience it as a time of heightened consciousness and spiritual awakening, but you can also open up an entire phase of your life—which some medical “experts” may have written off as destined for discomfort and diminished libido—to new possibilities for sexual pleasure instead. And like many women, you may find that menopause brings a newfound sense of sexual freedom, not only because you no longer have to be concerned about birth control, but because without the hormonal ups and downs of menstrual cycles, you may have more sustained, steady sexual energy.

Menopause can also provide you with opportunities for profound psychological and spiritual growth because it’s the other end of the menstrual spectrum that began in adolescence with your first period. Like adolescence, menopause is a dramatic hormonal transition that enables you to become more aware of your inner rhythms—another window of time that opens up to allow your consciousness to expand.

You may have been living on “autopilot” for much of your adult life, not fully aware of what you really want, or who you actually are. Perhaps your nervous system has been operating within a framework laid down decades ago during your formative years—a framework you once needed to deal with family and social dynamics, but which no longer serves you well. Your menopausal transition gives you the chance to examine this framework and make conscious changes in order to live more in accord with your authentic self—vital for a healthy sex life because it boosts your self-esteem and allows you to claim your own natural sexual needs and make better choices. You can expedite your personal midlife renaissance by keeping a journal, reading self-empowering books, or working with a therapist.

It’s important to realize that your experience of menopause is unique; the physical and spiritual changes you go through leading up to and through midlife may be accompanied by a variety of symptoms—or by none at all. If you experience symptoms, they tend to begin in your mid-40s, well before you reach menopause, although some women experience them earlier or later. Menopausal symptoms stem from hormonal imbalances, and not all women are created equally when it comes to midlife hormonal harmony. Some have a tumultuous transition, filled with physical challenges that require much time and attention, while others seem to sail through midlife effortlessly, with little or no difficulty, hardly needing to
pause
for menopause.

If you experience sexual challenges at menopause, it may be due to decreases in your levels of the hormones that nourish the tissues of your pelvis and sex organs; some tissues once well hydrated by your hormones may become drier, and your connective tissues and musculature may become softer. Menopausal symptoms can also compromise your sexuality because, in addition to well-known symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats, and insomnia, they may resemble exaggerated PMS symptoms—fatigue; headaches; breast tenderness; bloating; mood swings; irritability; depression; and heightened feelings of sensitivity, weepiness, and insecurity. Your periods are apt to become less frequent as you approach menopause, and they may become either much lighter or much heavier. If your hormones fluctuate erratically, you may sometimes feel as if your emotions are riding a crazy roller coaster, and your exaggerated mood swings may be disruptive to your personal relationships, sex life, or career.

The hormone shifts that women experience at midlife can also cause another common symptom—reduced libido. It’s not unusual for a menopausal woman to experience little or no interest in sex or intimacy, even though she still loves her partner, and for some couples this can be a source of conflict in their sexual relationship.

If menopausal symptoms pose challenges to your sexuality and health, overcoming them can transform your sex life. There’s a tremendous amount that you can do, without synthetic hormones or pharmaceutical drugs, to effectively treat your symptoms, correct hormone imbalances, keep your sex organs healthy, and strengthen your capacity for midlife passion. Let’s explore your many options for making your journey through menopause smooth and pleasurable:

Herbs, Nutrition, and Foods to Mitigate Midlife Symptoms and Support Libido