How to Improve Your Sex Life in the New Year
With the new year comes new opportunities for growth and self-improvement, and this can even extend to improving the quality of your sex life. Whether you are in a relationship or single, there are many things you can do to enhance your sexual experiences and bring more excitement and pleasure into the bedroom.
A fulfilling sex life can improve overall intimacy and emotional connection with a partner, boost self-esteem and confidence, reduce stress and anxiety, and increase feelings of happiness and satisfaction in a relationship. Additionally, a healthy and active sex life can also bolster mental and physical health by reducing the risk of heart disease, improving sleep, and increasing longevity. Let’s explore some tips and techniques for improving your sex life in 2023!
Effectively Communicate With Your Partner
One of the most important steps toward a more satisfying and healthier sex life is improving how you communicate with your partner. Good communication is key to any successful relationship, and this is especially true when it comes to sex. Open and honest communication can help you understand each other’s desires, preferences, and boundaries, which will ultimately lead to better and more satisfying sexual experiences.
When communicating with your partner about sexual desires and preferences, try to approach conversations in a non-judgmental and respectful manner. Be sure to listen actively and be open to feedback, and remember that it is okay to have different opinions and preferences when it comes to sex. With the trust it takes to communicate and respect one another’s sexual dispositions and goals, it makes it easier to find areas where desires and preferences overlap.
Experiment & Try Out New Things
One of the ways to bring excitement and novelty into your sex life is to experiment with new sensations, experiences, and mindsets. This can include trying new positions, incorporating sex toys, or exploring different types of foreplay and afterplay. When experimenting with new things, it is important to approach the experience with an open mind and a willingness to learn and grow. Be sure to communicate with your partner about what you are comfortable with, and remember that experimentation is not just about pleasing others, but also about finding what works best for you.
Focus on Foreplay
Foreplay is an often overlooked aspect of sexual encounters, but it is an important part of building sexual tension and enhancing pleasure. Foreplay can take many forms, including kissing, touching, and massaging, and it can be a great way to slow down and savor the sexual experience. When incorporating foreplay into your sexual experiences, prioritize listening to your partner’s cues and pay attention to their body language. Keep in mind that foreplay is not just about physical stimulation, but also about emotional and mental connection.
Practice Self-Care and Self-Exploration
Self-care and self-exploration are essential components of a healthy and fulfilling sex life. This can involve taking care of your physical and mental health, exploring your own desires and preferences, and learning how to pleasure yourself. You could experiment with different types of physical and emotional stimulation privately or with a partner – in general, don’t be afraid to try new things or explore your own body and preferences. When practicing self-care and self-exploration, be sure to prioritize your own needs and desires, and take the time to understand what turns you on and what doesn’t.
Prioritize Getting Enough Sleep
Another lifestyle area that affects one’s libido is getting enough sleep. The release of hormones related to sexual function is regulated by the body’s circadian rhythm, and sleep patterns play a huge role in determining when these hormones are produced. Insufficient sleep can significantly reduce one’s libido. When individuals feel exhausted before even getting into bed, it can diminish any sexual drive they may have had prior. In addition, sufficient sleep can increase testosterone levels in men, and considering that low testosterone levels are often linked to sexual dysfunction, this further emphasizes the importance of being well-rested to engage in healthy and fun sexual activities.
Taking the time to improve your sex life will help you to better understand yourself and your partner by incorporating new techniques and practices that bring excitement and pleasure into the bedroom. Whether you are in a relationship or single, the above tips and techniques can help you enhance your sexual experiences and bring more joy and fulfillment into your life.
Additionally, at Renewed Vitality, we offer bioidentical hormone treatments that can help improve your sexual health. If you are looking to restore your energy levels and revitalize your sex life, supplementing with testosterone or estrogen may be the solution you need. To learn more about this treatment option, please reach out to us. We would be happy to help!
Everything changes when you become a parent. Suddenly your whole entire life revolves around a new little person, and there is so much joy in watching them grow and develop. However, as any veteran parent will tell you, there are drawbacks as well. One of those drawbacks often comes in the form of dramatic changes in how you and your partner experience intimacy together.
Between physical and hormonal changes after the birth of a child and changes in your schedule, energy levels, and relationship as your child grows up, having a fulfilling sex life with your partner can become a challenge. This can put a lot of strain on your relationship and your own personal happiness, but it doesn’t need to be this way! Your sex life can survive parenthood if you are willing to make changes in your approach to intimacy and work together to continue to make it a priority in your lives. The first step is knowing what to expect and creating a plan for how to change things going forward, so here’s what you need to know!
What Changes?
Hormones and Physical Changes
This is very important particularly for anyone who has just given birth, but a parent who did not give birth also experiences a rush of new hormones as they bond with their baby! The human body is biologically hardwired to care for newborns, and during the early stages when you’re adjusting to the new baby and your body might still be healing from delivery, it’s very normal for one or both partners to have a low interest in sex, and it’s important to set your own timeline and get back into things when both partners feel ready.
Time
If you don’t know it yet, you certainly will soon– kids are a lot of work, and time you once had available to spend with your partner will now be dedicated to them. This change in your schedule can lead to the simple logistical problem of having less time for intimacy, and finding a moment to spend with your partner can become a lot more difficult than it ever was before.
Environment
Where sex and intimacy were likely once spontaneous and easy in your life, you now have to worry about upset kids who want to sleep in your bed, toys on the sofa, dishes in the sink, and many other distractions and stressors in your physical environment that are competing for your attention, making it hard to find a time and place to engage with each other.
What to Do?
Have a Conversation
If you and your partner are going to get through this together, it’s crucial that you prioritize open and honest communication around your sex life. Sit down together and talk about what you’re feeling comfortable with, what your needs are, and where your head is at. Many parents who aren’t the primary caregiver can feel neglected by their partner, and many parents who are the primary caregiver can struggle with low libido as their entire life and body becomes dedicated to taking care of kids. Being honest about these feelings with each other will help you to grow understanding for yourself and your partner.
Make Plans
Just like you schedule doctor’s appointments and errands, you can and should schedule sex. Feeling like you’ve lost the spontaneity of your previous sex life can be difficult, but it’s worth it to maintain intimacy with your partner. Additionally, adjusting your mindset to view the entire day as foreplay and an opportunity to tease each other and get in the mood can help make things even more exciting!
Spend Time Together
One of the best ways to enhance intimacy with your partner is to spend time together without having sex at all. Making sure you find time for the physical is important, but it’s also important to just have and enjoy simple moments together, like some time spent cuddling after your children go to bed, a night out while the kids stay home with a babysitter, or a quick, fun conversation in the morning together before the day begins. Prioritizing nonsexual intimacy can make a big difference in your relationship.
While maintaining a healthy romantic and sexual relationship with your partner after you both become parents does take work, forethought, and cooperation, it is possible, and you’ll both be happier for it in the years to come! If you’re interested in learning more about reproductive health and wellness and hormonal imbalances, check out our blog here at Renewed Vitality!
It’s no secret that as you age, sex can start to look different from how it did when you were younger. This is a combination of many different factors, from the shifting mental, emotional, and social influences on your life to physical and chemical changes in your body. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing– it’s natural for your sex drive to change and slow down as you get older, and you can still have a healthy sex life no matter your age. It’s good to know what changes to expect, however, and that if you’re struggling with changes to your sex drive as you age, there are routes you can take to help combat the less-than-enjoyable effects. Here’s a quick breakdown of what the evolution of an adult’s sex drive typically looks like. Remember, everyone is different, so these are not hard and fast milestones so much as generalizations.
20s and 30s
You might assume that both men and women have their highest libidos around the same age, but that’s surprisingly not true! In men, testosterone is high in the 20s, and sex drive is usually high along with it.
For women, libido is a little lower during the 20s but tends to go up in the 30s. Sex drive is a very complicated subject, and scientists haven’t conclusively proven why this happens, but it’s generally assumed that there’s a correlation between the increase of sex drive and the decrease in fertility that happens in the late 20s to 30s. High fertility in your 20s might lead to an evolutionary instinct to be more selective about sex.
Pregnancy
Most women who have children do so sometime in their 20s and 30s, and this has some serious effects of sex drive, not just during the pregnancy, but afterwards as well. It’s common to experience a boost in libido during the second trimester and be disinterested in sex at other times, but this isn’t the case for everyone. Some women experience an unusually high sex drive during pregnancy, or an unusually low one, or they might be anxious about whether it’s safe (the answer is typically yes, but double check with your doctor if you’re nervous). The stress of raising children can also lead to a decrease in sex drive after the baby arrives.
40s
Around the age of 35, testosterone levels in men start to drop, which can cause a decrease in sex drive as well. These changing hormone levels continue into the 40s, and the decrease might be fairly gradual for some men or faster for others.
Women, on the other hand, tend to have fairly high sex drives and active sex lives in their 40s. Some studies indicate that women around this age are more likely to have sex more often and earlier on in a relationship, as well as having more intense fantasies.
50s
For men, sex drive around this age is usually significantly lower than it was earlier in life, although there’s no reason for this to get in the way of a healthy sex life. Erectile dysfunction does become more common in men as they get older, but this actually has less to do with age and more to do with other health problems that become common with age, like obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and high cholesterol. Medications for these conditions and others can also lead to erectile dysfunction, and you should discuss it with your doctor if it’s becoming a problem.
For women, lowered stress levels from environmental factors like the kids moving out or less worry around getting pregnant might lead to an increased interest in sex, but the onset of menopause can throw a bit of a wrench in the works with hormonoal changes leading to things like vaginal dryness, lowered libido, and mood changes or sleep problems. These are also things you should discuss with your doctor.
What Can I Do?
If you’re struggling with the effects of aging on your sex life, hormone replacement therapy might be a great option for you! At Renewed Vitality, our bioidentical hormones are more efficient and have less adverse effects than synthetic hormones, and giving yourself a boost of testosterone or estrogen as needed can help to get you feeling more normal and get your sex life back on track. If you’re interested in this treatment, please contact us here to learn more!
Mental wellness and sex are a lot more closely connected than they might seem at first glance. Although they’re incredibly different from person to person, everyone needs to have balance between these two factors. Whether they engage in intimacy with one person, multiple people, or individually, good mental health is tied to a healthy sex life, and a healthy sex life is tied to good mental health. With age, it can be common for sex drive to decrease, which can have unexpected results on a person’s mental wellbeing, so making an effort to keep your sex life active later in life can be very helpful! Here are some of the benefits of a healthy sex life on your mental wellness.
Relationship Benefits
If you’re in a relationship, keeping up with your sex life can do a lot of good things for you and your partner. Physical intimacy encourages communication and bonding between partners, boosts self esteem and self image, and can help lower relational anxiety, or anxiousness around relating to or bonding with other people. Overall, it helps to bring you closer together and make your relationship stronger and happier, which is never a bad thing!
Lowered Stress
Sex offers all the same benefits of exercise, so it has the added side bonus of lowering your stress levels by releasing your body’s feel-good hormones, endorphins and oxytocin. Overall they help you to feel more relaxed and stave off feelings of anxiety and depression.
Improved Mood
Just like your daily mental health walk helps you to feel happier, so does sex! The same hormones that are associated with lowered stress levels, endorphins and oxytocin, as well as serotonin, can help you to feel happier and put some more pep in your step throughout the day.
Better Sleep
A healthy and active sex life will be a big help to your sleep patterns. The brain chemicals released during sex help you to feel relaxed and sleepy, which can help you get a better night’s shut-eye. Poor sleep can be extremely detrimental to your mental health, even just one night and especially if it becomes a chronic problem, so by helping you to sleep better, sex can also better equip you to handle your mental wellness.
Between changes in your sex drive as you age, increased stress, and a busy lifestyle, keeping your sex life active and healthy can start to feel like an afterthought, but the benefits you can get from making it a priority in your life are worth the effort it takes to make time for it. Whether you’re in a committed or casual relationship or you’re single, you can still enjoy all the mental health benefits, not to mention the physical health benefits!
If you’re struggling with sexual issues like low libido, speaking to a professional can make a huge difference. Renewed Vitality in Berks County is the area’s premier facility for hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which can be exceptionally helpful in terms of improving your sex life, especially as you age. We have both male and female patients, and we offer safe, effective treatments to help with hormone imbalances and restore your quality of life. Contact us to learn more about what this treatment can do for you!
Sex changes over time. The frequency, purpose, feeling, all of it. But when should it stop? The easy answer is it shouldn’t have to! There are no hard and fast rules about when women should stop having sex, because every person is different. As we get older, we experience more stress and need relief more than ever. Well, studies have shown that sex relieves stress! But what happens when your body is making it difficult or impossible to have sex as you get older? We have some ideas.
Why Do Sexual Changes Happen As We Get Older?
Hormone levels shift with age and can lower libido and sexual pleasure. While these changes can be minor, some women experience more significant shifts in what sex means for them as they get older.
Once menopause kicks in, women can go through some pretty drastic changes in their sex lives. Many experience decreased libido, difficulty with lubrication, and obstacles related to reaching climax. These issues can typically be traced back to the lack of hormones being produced by the ovaries, in particular estrogen. However, some issues are related to psychological issues including self-confidence issues, general stress, and anxiety.
The common thought about how to handle these kinds of issues is that women experiencing these kinds of sexual dysfunctions should seek out assistance. By having an honest conversation with your doctor about your concerns you may be able to find ways to alleviate and address those concerns. These fluctuations are natural, and can be countered in a variety of ways.
Mental Strategies
A good chunk of issues that can get in the way of enjoying a sexual relationship can involve the mentality around sex. The way we think about sexual health and relationships has the potential to affect the body’s physical performance. Talking with a sex therapist to get a better idea of how they can improve their mental relationship to sex.
The Sexual Advice Association says that, “Sex therapy is considered highly effective in addresssing the main causes and contributing factors of sexual difficulties.” By working out what exactly your mental blocks are regarding sex, you may be able to shift that thinking or find ways to improve sexual confidence and communication.
This strategy is also effective at helping to identify emotional roadblocks for sexual satisfaction.
Emotional Strategies
When addressing issues related to emotional health, some of the most common causes are depression and anxiety. These problems can arise as the result of hormone imbalances and shifts in the body related to menopause. Because every woman will experience menopause, there are plenty of resources to help identify these issues. You’re not alone!
Discussing these issues with a doctor or hormone specialist can return some solutions that were previously not considered such as hormone therapy. Hormone replacement therapy can help return the balance your body is used to. Sometimes, restoring this balance is exactly what someone’s sex life needs!
Physical Strategies
While the mental and emotional side of sex is always worth exploring and addressing, the other obvious side to addressing sexual issues involves physicality. Sex is a physical act, and if your body faces challenges when it comes to physical activity, those will transfer over to sexual activity.
Blood pressure, diabetes, and similar issues are common obstacles, and medications used to treat these conditions can affect sex in their own ways. Heidi Godman, the executive editor at the Harvard Health Letter, says that some treatments for these issues “can blunt interest in sex or cause difficulty reaching orgasm.” When you have these medications to make life better in some areas, but they interfere with other important factors, life can be complicated. Discussing these issues with your doctor makes it possible to start exploring other options for medications.
There are some strategies that you can embrace every day that can improve physical health, and will likely have a positive effect on your sexual health. By engaging in exercise and eating a healthier diet, you can increase blood flow and improve your heart health. A proper diet can also give you more energy without weighing you down.
Smoking and drinking can also interfere with how the body functions in relation to sex. Cutting out smoking entirely, and moderating how much alcohol you drink are huge when it comes to getting your sex life back on track.
How To Apply
When you have all of this information and are trying to figure out the best way to go about implementing it into your own life, it can become pretty overwhelming. When you find that the prospect of handling your stress is becoming stressful, it can quickly spiral out of control. As previously mentioned, seeking out assistance should always be a part of your strategy.
By talking with a professional either about your medications, or other physical, mental, or emotional issues related to sex, you’re laying the groundwork to start taking steps. By even talking to someone, you’ve already taken the first ones! Working with your doctor is a key factor when constructing future strategies for improving overall sexual health.
Sex is an important part of life, and getting older doesn’t mean it has to stop! There are ways to adapt to your body’s changing needs, and by exploring those possibilities, you can keep your sex life going strong!
It’s Normal But Don’t Settle
As we get older our sex drives do have a tendency to diminish a little. This is nothing to be ashamed of, we’re not the young, energetic, sex driven 20-somethings we used to be.
It’s normal to see some drop in your sex drive, but if it seems like getting in the mood is just impossible now, it could be a sign of something more than just typical aging effects. You could be effected by a number of serious issues including hormone imbalance.
Below are some of the potential causes of lowered libido, and keep in mind a lot of these issues can be fixed or helped!
Interpersonal Issues
While your libido is a very personal thing, it can actually be connected to your interactions with others. If your partner is experiencing performance problems, this could cause your libido to fall. This is no fault of theirs or yours, so you should feel no shame. There are options to help with sexual performance, and it could be something you two could do together to help things out in the bedroom.
Another interpersonal issue could be the birth of a child. Child birth while obviously caused by sexual activity can unfortunately lead to less of it. This can be because of stress and worry, hormonal changes, a lack of sleep, postpartum blues, or body image issues. These are all temporary issues that you have the power to work through, but if you need to don’t ever feel ashamed of seeking help.
It’s important to remember that your libido is linked to so many factors in your life, and that it’s never something you should be ashamed of no matter what’s causing it to fall.
Medical Problems
illnesses both mental and physical can cause problems with your sex dive. Depression can destroy your drive, and anyone suffering knows that fighting depression is a very hard battle. Depression, while caused by a myriad of things, could be caused by a hormone imbalance. Fixing the root cause is the best way to get every aspect of your life back, including your sex life.
Something physical that can cause sexual drive drops are thyroid issues. If your having hormonal issues with your thyroid you could experience weight gain, fatigue, depression, and a lowered sex drive. If your having issues with your libido the first place to look is the thyroid.
Low Testosterone
It may seem odd, but testosterone is actually important to the sex drives in both men and women, and low testosterone could cause a lowered sex drive. Women’s testosterone levels peak around the mid-20s and then steadily decline until menopause where they drop dramatically.
We don’t really think of testosterone as a feminine thing, but a having the right levels of testosterone in your body could make you feel like a 20-year-old all over again. Well, that or just make you feel much more like yourself.
Medications
Our medications are important to our health, but sometimes they can also be detrimental to it. It’s important that we know the interactions that our medications have with every aspect of our bodies, and that we know how we can counteract some of the undesirable effects.
For example, some antidepressants can actually lower your sex drive, which might be completely counter intuitive. And, blood pressure lowering drugs are almost certainly going to lower your libido. It’s important that your consult with your healthcare provider to find the best way to protect everything aspect of your emotional and physical well being.
Getting Back Your Desire
Your sex drive isn’t gone for good. There are number of treatment options available, and hormone treatment might be the best for you. With testosterone and/or estrogen treatment you could see results that will make you feel like you did pre-menopause.
You don’t have to settle for the “inevitable.”
Talk to your healthcare provider about options for getting your libido back!
