There's agreement in the medical community that regular strength training and aerobic exercise can enhance your libido.
The side effects aren't so bad either. They include lifting your mood, enhancing your body image and fortifying your stamina.
Aerobic Exercises
Aerobic, or cardiovascular, exercise is anything that increases your heart rate, like walking and running. It improves the blood flow and vitality of your body, chases away the blues and releases endorphins to create feelings of well being.
"Any regular cardiovascular exercise and deep stretching that increases blood flow specifically to the buttocks, pelvis and groin area--such as yoga, power walking, jogging or cycling--is going to increase circulation to the genitals, and as a result, rekindle sexual arousal and orgasmic function," Naina Marballi, founder and head practitioner of Bioticare Holistic and Yoga Center in New York City, told Fox News.
Reduced blood flow can decrease sex drive more in men, but also in women. Aerobic exercise helps the heart pump blood throughout the body, including the genital areas, and can lead to sexual arousal.
Several yoga postures increase blood flow to areas that help with that arousal, such as the hips, groin and pelvis. They include full wheel, upward facing dog, butterfly, locust, fierce pose and both warrior postures.
Strengthening Exercises
Strengthening, or weight-bearing, exercises are repetitious ones meant to cause your muscles to erode and repair themselves for optimum tone, like shedding skin. If muscle doesn't rebuild itself properly, it will deteriorate and be replaced by fat.
Fat decreases your body image, a poor body image hinders your libido and the vicious cycle could go on and on.
Strengthening exercises build your stamina and endurance.
Libido Responses
According to Jonathan Wright, M.D., a health care newsletter publisher, exercise helps your body produce more testosterone. That's the hormone that powers up the libido in both genders.
Stress and fatigue are possibly the worst enemies of libido, especially in women. Both stress and fatigue melt away during exercise.
Try It and See
You don't have to go overboard on exercise. Ten to 30 minutes daily--strenuous but also moderate--can help. Add to that some strengthening exercises and deep breathing and pay attention to your libido. It's bound to fire up.
Talk to Your Doc
Talk with your health care professional before setting out on a new or more taxing exercise program. He may suggest what level to begin at and perhaps provide supplemental medications or treatments.
Member Comments