Does Birth Control Affect Libido?

Excerpts from: Is the Pill Killing Your Sex Drive?
Published: May 17, 2010
Author: Joyce C. Tang, The Daily Beast

A new study shows the strongest evidence yet for what some women have always suspected—those little tablets have been hijacking their libidos for years.

This month, as women around the world cheered the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill, they also got some unsettling news: Those pills are likely driving some women's sex drives toward extinction.

A few days before the pill reached its golden anniversary, a study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine presented the most convincing evidence so far for what some women have suspected for a while—that the pill, while a miracle drug for some, is a sex-drive neutralizer for others.

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Culling from the largest sample population to date—more than 1,000 women—the study's researchers from the University Hospital Heidelberg in Germany found that some women using hormonal birth control, most often oral contraceptives, experienced lower sexual desire and arousal than those using a nonhormonal method or no birth control at all.

The study isolated the influence of hormones on sexual desire and arousal from factors such as stress or relationship status, which are known to affect sexual functioning. To be sure, birth control affects individual women differently—some women get randier when they're on it. But for those whose sex drive falls off a cliff, it can be a depressing and baffling experience.

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Dr. Bat Sheva Marcus, clinical director for The Medical Center for Female Sexuality, asserts that "all hormones are suspect," and estimates the pill is a contributing factor in 60 percent of the women she treats for sexual dysfunction. "I think there's a very direct link between hormones and sexual dysfunction," she says.

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