Each month, Yahoo Health’s Hormone Whisperer Alisa Vitti, HHC, is answering the most common questions about hormones and how they relate to weight, sex, acne, bad moods, low energy, and everything in between.
ALISA’S ANSWER: My favorite things to talk about are science, sex, and power — and how, for women, hormones are the magical key to unlocking all potential. So, dear reader, this question is a great place for me, Yahoo Health’s Hormone Whisperer, to start.
Before I answer the question, I want us to get to know each other really well. I’m a total geek when it comes to hormonal biochemistry, functional nutrition, endocrinology, epigenetics, and neuropsychology. I’ve spent the past 15 years studying, researching, personally applying, and globally teaching how to stop hormonal chaos and get into hormonal flow. I built a cool health company that takes care of women’s hormonal issues online called FLO Living, published a book called WomanCode, and presented on Dr. Oz, Summit, Google, and TEDx. While I’m super science-minded, I’m also totally irreverent, and have been known to drop F-bombs on stage in excitement from looking at the breathtakingly genius design of a kidney. I’m also known to do rituals on the new and full moon, and wear tight, black dresses with colorful aprons in my kitchen — all with my baby girl on my hip and my Italian grandmother’s olive-wood spoon in hand.
But I’m not just a sometimes-potty-mouthed, curvaceous, home-cooking, first-generation sexy mama, functional nutritionist, and hormone super-nerd — I also had a major hormonal breakdown that changed my life while I was a 20-year-old student at Johns Hopkins University. (You can learn more about that by watching my TEDx talk.) In this new column, I’ll answer your questions about why your body and hormones are driving you crazy and what you can do naturally to get them to behave. Armed with science, let’s end the quiet suffering we think we are meant to endure, and get you back into what I like to call hormonal “FLO.” You don’t have to be a victim to these allegedly mysterious hormones — you can leverage them to get everything you want out of life.
OK — now back to the question!
With 50 Shades of Grey about to hit the silver screen, we’ll all be thinking a bit more about sex beyond the usual Valentine’s day swooning. Sadly, with all the hot sex scenes in store, some of us still might be left feeling cold.
Low libido is not just your mother’s problem anymore. With stress and diet disrupting hormonal flow, an increasing number of younger women are finding themselves either uninterested in sex or sub-responsive to stimulation. Either scenario is a big bummer!
Related: Why Women Are Giving Up The Pill
More and more women coming to my virtual center are reporting that their sex drive barely exists whether they are single or coupled, with or without kids. Having no to low libido is a common symptom that sometimes stands on its own, but more often than not is accompanied by other factors: fertility struggles, menstrual difficulties, adrenal fatigue, and/or low energy.
The FLO Science: The Cause Of Your Sluggish Sex Drive
As I see it, there are three reasons your sex drive is stalled:
- Micronutrients: Not eating enough of the right foods with protein, carbohydrates, and fats puts your entire hormonal system in a suboptimal state. If you are chronically on a diet or detox, you may be cutting your sex drive off at the knees. There’s a reason why men associate sex appeal to a woman with curves. The presence of curves means you have enough nutrition left over for your sex drive! Without proper foods, you won’t be making enough testosterone, dopamine, estrogen, and progesterone to put you in prime biochemical position to either be in the mood or to have quality orgasms.
- Medications: If you’re on the Pill, antidepressants, or another medication, these could be important factors when it comes to your sex drive and your hormonal balance — as very often a side effect is the decrease in sexual desire. Talk to your doctor about this, and partner with other practitioners to find the right kind of support and possibly wean off what is not necessary.
- Mindset: Getting turned on is not as simple as pushing a button. The fear- and anxiety-producing part of the brain — the amygdala — needs to be turned off in order for a woman to get turned on. It requires turning off the worrywart circuits in the female brain to have an orgasm. Too much stress and too much demand on your mental and physical energy results in the depletion of your poor little adrenal glands, the powerhouse glands that are responsible for the output of your stress hormones and most of your testosterone, which is where that desire for sex comes from. Increased output of stress hormones means decreased output of juicy sex hormones. You do the math.
Each month, Yahoo Health’s Hormone Whisperer Alisa Vitti, HHC, is answering the most common questions about hormones and how they relate to weight, sex, acne, bad moods, low energy, and everything in between.
ALISA’S ANSWER: My favorite things to talk about are science, sex, and power — and how, for women, hormones are the magical key to unlocking all potential. So, dear reader, this question is a great place for me, Yahoo Health’s Hormone Whisperer, to start.
Before I answer the question, I want us to get to know each other really well. I’m a total geek when it comes to hormonal biochemistry, functional nutrition, endocrinology, epigenetics, and neuropsychology. I’ve spent the past 15 years studying, researching, personally applying, and globally teaching how to stop hormonal chaos and get into hormonal flow. I built a cool health company that takes care of women’s hormonal issues online called FLO Living, published a book called WomanCode, and presented on Dr. Oz, Summit, Google, and TEDx. While I’m super science-minded, I’m also totally irreverent, and have been known to drop F-bombs on stage in excitement from looking at the breathtakingly genius design of a kidney. I’m also known to do rituals on the new and full moon, and wear tight, black dresses with colorful aprons in my kitchen — all with my baby girl on my hip and my Italian grandmother’s olive-wood spoon in hand.
But I’m not just a sometimes-potty-mouthed, curvaceous, home-cooking, first-generation sexy mama, functional nutritionist, and hormone super-nerd — I also had a major hormonal breakdown that changed my life while I was a 20-year-old student at Johns Hopkins University. (You can learn more about that by watching my TEDx talk.) In this new column, I’ll answer your questions about why your body and hormones are driving you crazy and what you can do naturally to get them to behave. Armed with science, let’s end the quiet suffering we think we are meant to endure, and get you back into what I like to call hormonal “FLO.” You don’t have to be a victim to these allegedly mysterious hormones — you can leverage them to get everything you want out of life.
OK — now back to the question!
With 50 Shades of Grey about to hit the silver screen, we’ll all be thinking a bit more about sex beyond the usual Valentine’s day swooning. Sadly, with all the hot sex scenes in store, some of us still might be left feeling cold.
Low libido is not just your mother’s problem anymore. With stress and diet disrupting hormonal flow, an increasing number of younger women are finding themselves either uninterested in sex or sub-responsive to stimulation. Either scenario is a big bummer!
Related: Why Women Are Giving Up The Pill
More and more women coming to my virtual center are reporting that their sex drive barely exists whether they are single or coupled, with or without kids. Having no to low libido is a common symptom that sometimes stands on its own, but more often than not is accompanied by other factors: fertility struggles, menstrual difficulties, adrenal fatigue, and/or low energy.
The FLO Science: The Cause Of Your Sluggish Sex Drive
As I see it, there are three reasons your sex drive is stalled:
- Micronutrients: Not eating enough of the right foods with protein, carbohydrates, and fats puts your entire hormonal system in a suboptimal state. If you are chronically on a diet or detox, you may be cutting your sex drive off at the knees. There’s a reason why men associate sex appeal to a woman with curves. The presence of curves means you have enough nutrition left over for your sex drive! Without proper foods, you won’t be making enough testosterone, dopamine, estrogen, and progesterone to put you in prime biochemical position to either be in the mood or to have quality orgasms.
- Medications: If you’re on the Pill, antidepressants, or another medication, these could be important factors when it comes to your sex drive and your hormonal balance — as very often a side effect is the decrease in sexual desire. Talk to your doctor about this, and partner with other practitioners to find the right kind of support and possibly wean off what is not necessary.
- Mindset: Getting turned on is not as simple as pushing a button. The fear- and anxiety-producing part of the brain — the amygdala — needs to be turned off in order for a woman to get turned on. It requires turning off the worrywart circuits in the female brain to have an orgasm. Too much stress and too much demand on your mental and physical energy results in the depletion of your poor little adrenal glands, the powerhouse glands that are responsible for the output of your stress hormones and most of your testosterone, which is where that desire for sex comes from. Increased output of stress hormones means decreased output of juicy sex hormones. You do the math.
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