When Sex Pales, Women May Need More Than Viagra
The problem was simple, says Hendy Lund, a 30-year-old from Mountain View, Calif. "I had no interest in sex." Married in 1997, Lund was working what she called "obscene" hours as a training manager for Redback Networks, a small Internet company. She competed in triathlons. And she was an avid belly dancer. By last year, "I was tired all the time," Lund says. "Sex just seemed like too much effort." She felt this way for months, causing tension in an otherwise happy marriage. So when she read an ad for a clinical trial to test a nutritional supplement made of the amino acid L-arginine, herbs, and vitamins in women whose libido had flagged, she decided to try it. "One month into the trial, I could feel my interest begin to return," she says, even though she kept her hectic schedule.
Millions of other women are looking to reignite their sexual desire or improve their satisfaction. Some are trying dietary supplements like ArginMax, the compound Lund took, which is meant to stimulate blood flow and appeared to be effective in this small clinical trial. Others are testing Viagra, the little blue pill that has helped many men overcome impotence. Still others are trying to correct hormone imbalances by applying testosterone creams or patches. More drugs are in the works. Behind all this activity in the lab--and the bedroom--is a broader change: Women and doctors are coming to view sexual dysfunction as a condition that can be treated. "If Viagra has done anything for women," says Mary Lake Polan, head of gynecology and obstetrics at Stanford University School of Medicine, "it was that it allowed them to talk about the problems they were having."
Not tonight, dear. Viagra also underscores the limits of the medical approach to women's sexuality, because the results in women have so far been disappointing. "I don't think it's time yet to pull the plug on Viagra for women," says Steven Kaplan, vice chairman of urology at Columbia University. "But I also don't think it will have the wide appeal people were hoping for." Many researchers think that will be the case for other drug treatments too, as sexuality, especially in women, is a complex mix of the physical and the emotional. Stress, anger, or a cooling relationship can kill desire as surely as a disturbance in hormones or blood flow, and "no pill is going to fix that," says Aline Zoldbrod, a sex therapist in Peabody, Mass.
For women who lose interest in sex, "the stakes are fairly substantial," says Edward Laumann, a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago. "Women who report sexual dysfunction also say they are less happy and satisfied in general." And the numbers are large: More than 40 percent of women report a sexual complaint, according to a survey of nearly 2,000 women that Laumann published last year.
Sometimes a broader medical problem, such as depression or heart disease, is to blame. Antidepressants and other drugs can also lead to a loss of sex drive. But perfectly healthy women can lose interest in sex when hormone levels plummet. Testosterone, which fuels libido in both men and women, diminishes with menopause and may also take a dive after the birth of a child. During menopause, estrogen levels also drop, a change that can make sex more difficult by causing vaginal dryness. But it's the drop in testosterone that saps a woman's desire. "I see hordes of women in their early 60s who have never had a problem with sex and suddenly have lost interest," says Philip Sarrel, codirector of Yale University's Sex Counseling Service. "Often it is the result of low testosterone."
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