Sep. 11, 2007 - Issue #621: Sex in The City 07
Well, Well, Well
Keep fit and have ... fun
It’s one of those things—if you’re getting all you want, it recedes into the background along with eating and sleeping and all the other things we take for granted, but if you’re hungry, it becomes all-consuming. I am, of course, like everyone else here this week, talking about sex.They tell us that if we’re healthy and rested and happy we’re still doin’ it into our 70s, and even (I’m sorry) 80s. But healthy, rested and happy can be a hard trio to come by; once we’re past our 20s and immersed in careers and mortgage payments and family and familiarity, the rested and happy part tends to be a little elusive for a couple of decades. And when the crazy-busy years ease up a bit and rested and happy become a little less elusive, healthy can begin its turn at being hard to maintain, though health is, of course, a goal worth chasing.
Visiting with a friend on the weekend, noticing her looking particularly rested after a couple of weeks in the woods with her hubby, I learned from her that, according to Chinese medicine it’s our kidney Qi that plays a key role in keeping our libido healthy. This was news to me, so I had to check it out, learning from Dr Stephen T Chang (who wrote The Complete System of Chinese Self-Healing) some most intriguing recommendations for re-energizing kidney Qi. (If you’re looking for interesting dinner-party conversation material, you need look no further).
Women wanting to re-energize their kidney Qi, he says, should limit themselves almost exclusively to being the recipients of oral sex, permitting intercourse a very rare two to 16 times a year (he’s serious), while healthy men are recommended a regime of making like bunnies twice a day in their 20s, once a day in their 30s, and gradually decreasing to once every five days for those in their 50s. (Here’s the dinner-party question: how will this be resolved when one partner is healthy and the other needs her kidney Qi re-energized?)
But even the young and healthy have their sex woes, birth control being
one of them. The not-uncommon side effects of irritability, weight gain and
not feeling sexy while on the pill can make us wonder about the cost of our
pleasure. And then there’s the irony of choosing the pill (because
we’re told it’s the most effective contraception available), only
to find we’re no longer hugely interested in sex—another fairly
common side effect of messing with our hormones.
Not that the pill is the only potential cause of our libido woes. The staples
of busy-ness and stress and fatigue and caring for little ones aren’t
all that easy to resolve either, as we can’t just quit our jobs, give
the kids away and pretend we’re rabbits. Nor can we always easily
resolve the sticky situation of a partner chronically irritated with us,
which will kill desire as quickly as testosterone or kidney Qi depletion
will.
.
Other culprits include things as basic as the vitamins and minerals
we’re not getting in our agri-business farmed food, or not getting
because the pill is leaching them out of our systems, or not getting because
we’re in chronic-over-drive, high-cortisol, not-enough-rest,
too-tired-to-stay-fit mode.
Then there’s depression and its treatment options, both of which can be
effective at killing desire. Doctors tend to suspect depression when patients
complain of lack of interest in the normal pleasures of life, and once
depression has been diagnosed, they prescribe antidepressants. But half of
those on antidepressants have sexual complaints of one kind or
another—a good reason to search for alternative, no-side-effect ways to
treat depression and keep ourselves laughing.
And, this is no laughing matter, but some on antidepressant meds know nothing
of suppressed sexual desire or function, and experience an entirely opposite
side-effect, a kind of hyper-sexuality that includes (I’m not kidding)
what I’m assuming would be a very pleasant kind of
yawning—yawning accompanied by out-of-the-blue spontaneous orgasm.
V
More stories in front »
New comments for this entry have been turned off and any existing ones are hidden. We apologize for any inconvenience.
