Dopamine Sexuality
The dopamine discourse: Foreword to the ladies’ Viagra
Dopamine: A monoamine neurotransmitter found in the brain and essential for the normal functioning of the central nervous system. Our libido and drives are controlled by the CNS; if that’s the engine, the dopamine, its fuel.
Dopamine influences our desires. From eating to having sex, it is influenced by most of the addictive drugs and stimulates the brain’s pleasure or reward centers. This is why people get hooked to gambling, become shopaholics, overeat and even go out for a smoke.
Dopamine secretion depends upon eating high-calorie and high-fat foods, which again explains why people tend to munch down double cheeseburgers than lean ham. It is a love for the blast of dopamine that compels people head the Mcdonald’s; it is the same reason why people like sex more than anything. Dopamine is nature’s driving force that makes people engage and create greater genetic varieties. Higher the level of dopamine, higher is a person’s sexual desire (and also a reckless behavior if the high level gets consistent). So there is Prolactin, which controls the intensity of dopamine’s effects.
Dopamine drops (and rise in prolactin levels; the two are inversely proportional) cause emotional separations that may stretch to days, even weeks following a passionate encounter. Low levels of dopamine bring in an inability to love, so a healthy sex life plummets suddenly. A good mental health is absolutely necessary for sexual desires, which can be achieved by raising again the dopamine levels. This is the secret between a women’s Viagra; in fact, it applies for any aphrodisiac meant for women. Only that most aphrodisiacs are not engineered as efficiently to maintain stably an ideal dopamine level. In that case, the lack shows up through a varied range of symptoms and a loss of libido, mood swings and consistent depression, menopausal symptoms (it occurs even when estrogen is optimum) and painful intercourses are just a few among them.
Worst happens when dopamine levels in one partner is high while the other has a surging prolactin levels. This causes emotional frictions, which is actually nothing more than a brain-chemistry shift; a distress with a hidden, biological cause. In other words, that’s HSDD, a new term that elaborates as Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder, with the drug Flibanserin being a highly effective form of treatment.
