Just as hormonal balance is important for your sex drive, you also need to have the right balance of neurotransmitters in order to have a healthy sex drive. Unfortunately, conditions such as stress, anxiety, and depression negatively affect your neurotransmitter levels.
Depression is typically characterized by an imbalance of important neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. In addition, depression also increases your stress levels. This causes your cortisol levels to shoot up, resulting in hormonal imbalance. All these factors contribute to a decrease in libido.
Depression and Your Brain Chemistry
A chemical imbalance in the brain can affect your mood, your sex drive, and your overall health. When your levels of serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine are out of balance, it will most likely result in depression.
Serotonin is a very important neurotransmitter because it helps regulate your sleeping pattern. It’s also important for regulating your mood and your emotions. With regard to your sexual function, serotonin has an inhibitory effect. This means that when your serotonin levels are high, it will result in inhibited sexual behavior.
Dopamine, on the one hand, plays an important role in regulating feelings of pleasure. It also affects your muscular movements, and your level of attention and alertness.
Dopamine is also important for your sexual function. Because it regulates feelings of pleasure, dopamine can affect your sexual motivation. This means that the more you find sex pleasurable, the more motivated you get to engage in sexual activities.
In addition, dopamine is also crucial for your erection. Dopamine is needed to trigger certain neurons that are involved in the signaling pathway between your brain and your penile nerves. In short, high levels of dopamine are good for your sexual function.
Just like dopamine, norepinephrine is also important for your sexual function since this neurotransmitter is necessary for regulating not only your sleep, mood, and attention, but also your sexual arousal. Hence, when it comes to your sex drive, you really need to have the right amount of norepinephrine in your brain.
What Happens to Your Sex Drive When You’re Depressed?
Major depressive disorder, or depression as we usually call it, is characterized by various negative emotions. When you’re depressed, you feel hopeless, anxious, and empty.
Overwhelming guilt, feelings of worthlessness, loss of interest in activities that previously caused you pleasure, increased fatigue, and low energy are also common symptoms of depression.
When you have to deal with all these negative emotions that seem to weigh you down, it can turn your attention away from sex. In fact, loss of libido is another common symptom among people with major depressive disorder.
If you’re having difficulty sleeping or concentrating, and you’re feeling restless and irritable, you certainly won’t be in any mood for sex. These are also common depression symptoms, and they can contribute to your reduced sex drive.
Unfortunately, depression can also cause other types of sexual dysfunction and not just low sex drive. Men who are depressed often find themselves unable to get a hard-on at all. Orgasm disorders are also common in people who are suffering from depression.
It is, of course, very important that you get yourself treated when you have depression. Sadly, though, many antidepressant medications cause adverse sexual effects, which is why a lot of depressed people stop taking their antidepressant medications.
Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors and Your Sex Drive
For people with major depressive disorder, SSRIs or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are the most commonly prescribed medications. What SSRIs do is that they help prevent serotonin from being reabsorbed into the presynaptic cells in the brain.
This means that you get to have a higher concentration of available serotonin in your brain. High levels of serotonin can help elevate your mood and relieve some of your depressive symptoms.
Unfortunately, precisely because serotonin inhibits sexual behaviors, the higher your serotonin levels rise, the lower your sex drive becomes. On top of that, your erectile function is also negatively affected since your brain, through your serotonin neurotransmitters, is basically telling your body not to engage in sexual activities.
In fact, sexual dysfunction is one of the most widely recognized adverse effects of SSRIs. Numerous scientific studies have verified that treatment with SSRIs often result in erectile dysfunction, orgasm problems, as well as reduced sex drive.
Of the various types of SSRIs, paroxetine, fluoxetine, citalopram, sertraline, and fluvoxamine are all known to have adverse effects on libido. These antidepressant medications are also known to cause delayed ejaculation, anorgasmia, and even erectile dysfunction.
Imipramine and phenelzine have also been reported to cause a reduction in sexual desire, as well as erectile dysfunction. In cases wherein SSRI medications are used in combination with antipsychotic drugs like risperidone or haloperidol, these antipsychotics can also contribute to the decline in sex drive.
Managing Your Libido When You’re Taking Antidepressants
There are several ways to manage your sex drive when you’re taking medications for depression. For one, you can discuss your sexual concerns with your doctor, and you can request for a switch in medications.
Not all doctors actually inquire about your sex life when they’re treating you for depression. However, you shouldn’t be embarrassed to discuss your sexual concerns with your doctor, otherwise they wouldn’t know that you’re having problems with your libido and your sex life.
There are also instances when doctors allow for the medication dosage to be lowered in order to reduce the adverse sexual effects that the patient is suffering. This is another option for you to manage your libido while you’re being treated for depression, but you should definitely discuss it with your doctor first.
As an alternative, you can also try herb-based supplements for depression. Tongkat Ali, for instance, is known to help lower cortisol levels, reduce stress, and improve mood.
More importantly, Tongkat Ali can greatly increase your testosterone levels and improve your sex drive. Plus, it’s also an excellent herbal remedy for impotence. For men who are suffering from depression-related sexual dysfunction, Tongkat Ali definitely offers amazing benefits.
