The next time your wife wants to pass on sex because she has a headache, take note: a headache to her may have more of an impact on her sex drive than it would on yours.
The Research on pain and sexual motivation
Canadian researchers looked at how pain and inflammation affected the sexual motivation of female mice and male mice and found something interesting: pain significantly decreased a female mouse’s desire for sex, but had no effect on male mice.
When the female mice were given a painkiller or a drug that boosted sexual desire, their motivation to have sex was restored.
Implications of the study
Because the study was done on mice instead of humans, the researchers theorize that sexual desire may be as much or more tied to biological factors than to social/cultural.
“We know from other studies that women’s sexual desire is more dependent on context than men’s,” says one of the study’s co-authors, Jeffrey Mogil. “But whether this is due to biological or social/cultural factors, such as upbringing and media influence, isn’t known. Our finding that female mice, too, show pain-inhibited sexual desire suggests there may be an evolutionary biology explanation for these effects in humans and not simply a sociocultural one.”
The biologically based theory echoes that of a Georgia Regents University study, which found that premenopausal women with low sex drives had distinct blood flow patterns in the brain that caused different areas of the brain to activate.
Men’s sexual impulses
Men’s stronger sexual impulses may also be a factor in why men’s sex drive is less affected by pain than women’s.
It may also be a factor in why the sale of erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs like Viagra, Levitra and Cialis are so huge. It’s possible for men to have a strong sex drive hindered by erectile dysfunction. The good news is, the popular ED drugs —Viagra, Levitra and Cialis—can help most men.
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