Female Sexual Dysfunction
Female sexual dysfunction has many possible symptoms and causes. Fortunately, they're almost all treatable. Communicating your concerns and understanding your anatomy and your body's normal response to sexual activity are important steps toward gaining sexual satisfaction.
Estimates of the percentage of female sexual dysfunction attributable to physical factors have ranged from 30% to 80%. The disorders most likely to result in sexual dysfunction are those that lead to problems in circulatory or neurological function. These factors have been more extensively explored in men than in women. Physical etiologies such as neurological and cardiovascular illnesses have been directly implicated in both premature and retarded ejaculation as well as in erectile disorder (Hawton 1993), but the contribution of physiological factors to female sexual dysfunction is not so clear.
For a lot of women, bad sex is intrinsically linked to what's going on in their lives. They might be stressed about work, feeling depressed, or not able to communicate with their partner about what they want in bed. But when does unsatisfactory sex become an ongoing problem? And what can you do to fix it? Traditionally the answer to that question has been sex and relationship therapy. But recently the pharmaceutical industry has indicated that they have another answer for women: drugs.
Female sexual dysfunction has many possible symptoms and causes. Fortunately, they're almost all treatable. Communicating your concerns and understanding your anatomy and your body's normal response to sexual activity are important steps toward gaining sexual satisfaction. You can develop female sexual dysfunction at any age, but sexual problems are most common when your hormones are in flux — for example, when you've just had a baby or when you're making the transition into menopause.
