… or, if God can “do over” the 10 commandments, Dr. Liz can give you her “3 Laws of Libido”!
Last week at the Golden Gate Theater, I saw “An Act of God” with Sean Hayes. It was awesome and hilarious. If you are in the Bay area, I highly recommend you try to see it this weekend before it heads back to Broadway.
In the show, God does a “2.0” version of updating the 10 commandments. It inspired me to come up with this bottom line distillation of what I share with women in my office about libido.
“Libido”
Don’t forget that libido does not only refer to sex. It’s also about drive in general – motivation, passion, enthusiasm for life.
If your “get up and go “has “gotten up and went”, see how well you are following these “laws”:
Law #1. Thou shalt get enough sleep.
What does “enough sleep” mean? It means you consistently get the number of hours of QUALITY sleep where you feel rested when you get up in the morning. Although I do not like telling you what number that is for you, if pressed, I will say that 7 hours is a rock bottom minimum amount of hours of sleep that most people need for their body to function at its best.
BUT: you really have to determine for yourself what is your number of hours of sleep, and GET that amount of sleep! I don’t care if Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates only need 4 hours of sleep a night (according to urban legend). You need what you need, and you can only be yourself (everyone else is taken).
Law #2. Though shalt have enough hormones.
Most of you already know I have written a book about hormones (Dr. Liz’s Easy Guide to Menopause). I have another entire book in the pipeline called “Why Women Shouldn’t Be Afraid of Hormones.” For right now, I simply want to let you know 2 things:
First, the amount of estrogen that women need to keep good sexual function (i.e. for vaginal tissue elasticity and comfort with sex) is a very small amount. In fact, it’s not even enough estrogen to help with other menopause symptoms, such as hot flashes or night sweats.
Even many specialists are now acknowledging that it’s even OK for women to use this tiny bit of vaginal estrogen after breast cancer in order to not have pain with sex or bladder problems (like infections or urine leakage).
Second, the “Big 4” of women’s hormones do the following:
- Estrogen helps with bonding (and alleviates depression)
- Progesterone calms our brain (helps anxiety and sleep)
- Testosterone helps boost confidence (main ingredient of feeling sexy)
- DHEA helps mood and drive and libido in general
Law #3. Thou shalt feel enough attraction.
What attracts you? What lights you up? Spend some time thinking about this. Then spend some time figuring out how to bring more of this into your life. Maybe you can’t quit your day job to pursue this, but we can always make changes that take us in the direction of making our dreams come true.
With another person, there is initially some (or a lot of) chemistry that fuels the initial attraction. Just like maintaining a healthy weight after you’ve done the work of achieving it, maintaining sexual attraction is a different set of skills and priorities than what came into play initially.
It takes thought and effort to care for yourself enough to keep passionate chemistry-type of attraction alive and well in a relationship. How to do this will be another discussion.
What is “enough”?
Let me wrap up by saying a word about “enough”. Women are particularly susceptible to pursuing perfection. In the pursuit of perfection, we often fall way down on our own to-do lists. We give up sleep, we don’t give our bodies what they need, and we neglect doing things that feed our souls.
Even if you can’t spend as much time as you would like on an activity you’re passionate about, you can figure out what is “enough” for now.
If you want your libido – your experience of passion and motivation – to be at its best, see which “law” above you can improve in following.
As always, I welcome your comments below!