Great Sex, Naturally (21 page)

As you continue with this chapter, you’ll discover how you can keep your cortisol-producing adrenal glands strong and vital, and also support your sexuality and health, with dietary tips, herbs, nutritional supplements, and natural bioidentical hormones.

Thyroid: Your Power Hormone

You may have noticed that thyroid hormone isn’t on the “hormone cascade” diagram. Unlike the other hormones we’ve explored, it doesn’t come from pregnenolone. It’s made in your thyroid gland, a dynamic butterfly-shaped organ just below your Adam’s apple. A powerhouse for energy production in your body, your thyroid gland is essential for your libido, and the hormone it releases is very yang in its ability to generate your sexual energy.

Most people, although not all, naturally tend toward a healthy thyroid-hormone level. By following the lifestyle recommendations previously outlined in this book—and especially by managing stress—you increase your chances of maintaining one. You may not be aware of all the benefits that stem from having your thyroid hormone at a healthy level, but you’re apt to feel them everywhere in your life—including your sex life. Your thyroid hormone helps create the energy you need to forge through challenging situations, overcome barriers, achieve your dreams, maximize your health … and have great sex.

Your level of thyroid hormone is vital to your capacity for pleasure because too much or too little can send your sexuality and your health into a tailspin. If you have too much, a condition known as
hyperthyroidism
, you can have an increased heart rate, anxiety, or weight loss. If you have insufficient thyroid hormone, or
hypothyroidism
—a far more common condition among women—it can slow your entire metabolism and cause a host of symptoms, including decreased interest in sex, difficulty responding to sexual stimulation, and problems achieving orgasm. Restoring your thyroid hormone can be one of the most important steps you take to enhance your sexual responsiveness, orgasmic potential, and quality of life.

In addition to decreased sex drive, your symptoms if you have low thyroid hormone may include irregular or heavy menstrual cycles, PMS, excessive fatigue, sluggishness, depression, easy weight gain, insomnia, headaches, migraines, digestive problems, and constipation. Having low thyroid hormone reduces your body temperature, so the condition can also cause an aversion to cold weather, chronically cold hands and feet, and poor circulation. If you have low thyroid hormone in midlife, you’re prone to severe menopausal symptoms, including vaginal dryness that doesn’t fully respond to topical estrogen.

Since low thyroid hormone reduces the rate of your metabolism, it can cause other symptoms that affect organs and systems throughout your body. If you have the condition, you probably won’t have all of these symptoms, but you may recognize some of them: heart palpitations, an inability to lose weight, high cholesterol, low blood sugar, decreased immunity, difficulty getting up in the morning, puffiness in your face and eyelids when you wake, joint and muscle pain, dry skin and hair, hair loss (including a tendency to lose the outer third of your eyebrows), infertility, recurrent miscarriages, anxiety, hives, and allergies.

If you have low thyroid hormone, it can be difficult for a doctor to diagnose accurately. Laboratory tests aren’t always definitive, borderline cases are often overlooked, and you can have low thyroid hormone even if your test says you’re normal—a condition known as “subclinically low” thyroid. Yet if you have low thyroid hormone, you may suffer needlessly, for years, from many of the above symptoms.

Understanding how your thyroid hormone works can be helpful if you need to restore it to a healthy level. Although we refer to “thyroid hormone” in the singular, you actually have more than one thyroid hormone. One of them, known as
thyroid stimulating hormone
, or TSH, is what’s usually tested to find out whether you have low thyroid hormone. (In the pages ahead, and in
Appendix E
, we’ll look more closely at thyroid-hormone evaluation and testing.) TSH stimulates your thyroid gland to release an inactive thyroid hormone called
T4
, which your liver converts into an active thyroid hormone known as
T3
. You want to have a healthy level of active T3, because it stimulates all of your cells to make energy, both sexual and otherwise.

One cause of low thyroid hormone is stress that won’t go away. If you’re under incessant stress, imbalanced cortisol can impede your ability to convert T4 into active T3; instead, it’s converted into an inactive form called
Reverse T3
. Without enough T3, you may stop ovulating, which in turn can cause many hormone imbalances, including estrogen dominance—too much estrogen compared to progesterone. In a vicious cycle, this can be detrimental to your thyroid-hormone function. (On the other hand, when you have a healthy thyroid-hormone level and you ovulate regularly, you release progesterone on schedule, and, in a virtuous cycle, this supports your thyroid-hormone function.)

As we move forward, you’ll discover natural remedies you can use to treat thyroid imbalances and help keep your thyroid hormone at a healthy, libido-supporting level.

Evaluating Your Hormones: How “Hormonious” Are You?

Now that we’ve delved into the nature of each of the six hormones that make up your Great Sex Sextet, let’s look at the most useful tests you can use to gauge their status in your body. As you’ve seen, you need adequate levels of each of these hormones to experience peak sexual arousal and optimal health.

Evaluating the key players in your hormonal dance can be a revelation—especially if you’ve been suffering from the effects of imbalanced hormones without realizing it. The more you know about your hormones, the more empowered you are to make healthy choices that nurture and support their equilibrium. If you discover that any are low or imbalanced, it may be a breakthrough on your way to maximizing your hormonal health and enhancing your sexuality.

You can evaluate your hormones with a variety of approaches; the first is simply through your own general observation. The preceding descriptions of the roles your hormones play in your body—their benefits when you have healthy levels, and the symptoms if you don’t—can help to give you an overall sense of whether or not you have an imbalance of any of them. If you have symptoms, you can use the following chart to help ascertain which of your hormones may be low. The check marks give you a profile of the typical symptom pattern for deficiencies of each hormone.

Although this chart may help identify whether you have hormone imbalances, some imbalances can be difficult to detect and their symptoms subtle. To more definitively determine if your hormones are imbalanced, you can have a doctor order laboratory tests. These tests aren’t recommended for every woman, but if the preceding chart indicates that you have hormone imbalances, you may benefit from them—especially if you experience exaggerated PMS, abnormal menstrual cycles, or menopausal symptoms. There are a number of ways to test your hormones; see
Appendix E
to learn more about the most comprehensive and accurate methods available.

Enhancing Your Sexuality by Solving Hormone-Related Imbalances

As you’ve explored, your hormones play enormously influential roles in your body, mind, and spirit, and can affect every facet of how you feel. If your hormones aren’t in harmony,
you
won’t be either; imbalances can take a huge toll on your sexuality, health, and quality of life, and in some cases transform your hormones from libido-boosters to libido-busters.

If you continually experience adrenal-gland fatigue, for example, you’re not apt to feel especially sexy or vital. Your body may lack the extra reserves it needs to nourish vibrant health and sexual vigor. Many women live in a perpetual state of hormonal mayhem, and have no idea what’s causing their discomforts. Common hormone-related conditions that can noticeably interfere with your sex life include PMS, heavy menstrual flow, and adrenal and thyroid disorders. Later in the chapter we’ll also consider the special class of hormonal swings associated with midlife.

There’s a lot you can do to prevent or treat all of these conditions. Many can be resolved with simple lifestyle shifts and nutritional, herbal, or hormonal supplementation. Some women need additional support because of their unique situations, but regardless of what condition you may need to solve, you can improve your hormonal harmony and sexual energy by strengthening your foundation of health with the plan laid out in
Chapters 1
and
2
.

This is vividly reflected in the view of traditional Chinese medicine. As touched on earlier in this book, when you have abundant chi, you’re more likely to enjoy balanced hormones and healthy sexuality. Deficient chi leads to diminished libido, lethargy, depression, heavy periods, infertility, postpartum depression, and symptoms of adrenal-gland fatigue and low thyroid hormone. Chi can be restored through a more restful lifestyle and a healthy balance of yin and yang energy.

In
Chapter 3
, we looked at another common chi imbalance known as “stuck chi”—an inefficient flow of chi—which can also reduce the quality of your sex life. In addition, it can cause pain, masses such as cysts and fibroids, heavy menstrual flow (especially with clotting), irritability and frustration associated with PMS, and erratic emotions during menopausal changes. If you have stuck chi, exercise can be a highly effective way to get it flowing again.

In the following pages you’ll discover many ways you can enhance your sexual health and nourish your libido by solving common hormone imbalances, and resolve deficient or stuck chi, with herbs, flower essences, or acupressure. In addition to solutions for PMS, heavy menstrual flow, adrenal issues, and thyroid imbalances, special attention will be given to menopausal hormone changes, since they’re the most likely cause of low libido during many women’s lives. The tools and medicines we’ll explore are both modern and ancient, but all are
natural
solutions designed to
harmonize
, not harm, your hormones and your health.

Transforming PMS: From Premenstrual Syndrome to Premenstrual Sex

Many women think of PMS as the classic libido bane, and have no idea that it can often be prevented or successfully treated. They simply resign themselves to the belief that as long as they menstruate, they’ll have to spend part of every month dealing with unpleasant physical and emotional symptoms.

If you share this view, it’s understandable. Conventional medicine sees PMS largely as unavoidable and unpreventable. This erroneous idea can be especially unfortunate if you’re one of the many women who have sought professional help for symptoms of PMS. You may have been prescribed birth-control pills or an antidepressant like Prozac, with unsatisfactory results—and serious side effects.

If you’re the typical woman who experiences PMS, your symptoms may last for a week—although for some women PMS can last up to two weeks—and subside when your menstrual flow begins. The symptoms can hamper your sex life for good reason: they may include fatigue, headaches, insomnia, acne, food cravings, weight gain, water retention and bloating, breast swelling and tenderness, mood swings, depression, irritability, impatience, frustration, weepiness, and hypersensitivity. You may feel unable to deal with your normal responsibilities and experience increasing anxiety as you approach the end of your menstrual cycle. The emotional symptoms, which can vary in severity, are notorious for making sex unlikely; you may find your partner’s idiosyncrasies not only unattractive but irritating (and he may naturally find you equally exasperating at this time of month).

The libido-limiting potential of PMS makes preventing or treating it all the more important. If you experience PMS for a week each month during your menstruating years, you could spend a combined total of about seven years of your life coping with its symptoms. Solving PMS can open many doors, allowing you to experience the time before you menstruate as positive and pleasurable, rather than condemned to inevitable negativity and pain. You may be surprised to discover that during this part of your cycle you can be not only symptom-free but sexually fulfilled—and find that your partner’s idiosyncrasies are really quite lovable after all.