Guys, I’ve got news for you.  Women usually don’t like being on the birth control pill, but they have to be if they really want to safeguard against getting pregnant.  There are other methods of course to birth control that can work well, but the most effective way to safeguard against pregnancy is still the pill and various versions of hormone dosage like injections and the patch that are available, but honestly which have gotten worse press for side effects than just the good old fashioned birth control pill.

The reason I’m writing this is because lots of guys don’t realize that being on the pill, especially some of the higher dose pills, can really wreak havoc on a woman’s sex drive, and this exhibits itself unfortunately in taking its toll on a man and woman’s relationship, when a guy thinks it’s because of him that the woman doesn’t want to have sex. 

Female sexual enhancement products of course may help the situation, but being on the pill may also trump even the best in products for a woman’s sexual enhancement simply because the dosing of hormones is simply too powerful to be overcome. 

The solution may be to move to a lower dose pill or for the woman to discuss options with her doctor and get their opinion on some other options for birth control after she explains that the current one is really making her a loss for a real desire to have sex with her partner.  Besides that, being on the pill can also have additional effects that lead to lack of sex drive, like weight gain. 

Sure, they say the pill doesn’t make you gain weight, but i doubt they asked any of the women on the pill before they said that, because many women claim that the pill has made them gain a few pounds in water weight. 

Yep, that’s right, that stuff that women cannot seem to get enough of, and men are more and more climbing aboard with as well, chocolate, is not only a creamy, sumptuous dessert like treat, but it also serves as somewhat of a known aphrodisiac for women, and also possibly for men as well.

Chocolate has been known to emit endorphin like pleasure in the human body, and even in babies that are still in the womb of mother’s who consume chocolate, for reasons not totally understood, but most likely due to a chemical in the chocolate that raises the pleasure sensors in us.  Many women report feeling a little more in the mood after eating chocolate, while some compare eating chocolate to female sexual pleasure.  Heck, many of them prefer chocolate to sex! 

So, some of the best Valentine’s gifts are boxes of fine chocolates.  You can find a lot of chocolates at the local drug store this time of year, but those often aren’t as tasty as the chocolatiers who specialize in making the sweet treat.  One of the better “drugstore” available brands of chocolate that may make some sort of Valentine package are the Lindt chocolates and truffles, as well as Dove brand chocolates, which offer both dark chocolates and milk chocolates.

Nowadays there are lots of local shops that make home made chocolates, which are often the best, since they may be more likely to be preservative free and contain more of the stuff that makes chocolate taste so good.  Dark chocolates offer the highest chocolate content, and therefore may also offer the most female aphrodisiac and attractant properties, however this is all just my hypothesis! 

I read the most interesting article today about how friends that have kids, while their friend remains childless, many times experience a serious shift in the friendship, and often even hard feelings at first about the life changes that kids almost always bring to the table.  An example is, say your guy friend was always the guy you hung out with after work, went to happy hours with at bars, and golfed with on the weekends.  Mr. Fun suddenly marries, and shortly after has a kid or two.

Now, your fun trips to the bar after work and the weekend golfing trips have disappeared, or been severely limited.  It’s often hard to accept that readily, but apparently women have a much harder time losing their friends to their kids than men do. It’s not really a surprise though, since women many times still seem to be the primary caretakers of the children, and often are the first to ban outside activities in their own life before men do.  It’s just the unfortunate differences between the sexes. 

I remember a friend of mine recently telling me that she has to “ask” her husband if she can let him watch the kids while she goes out with a girlfriend, but he will just go out and do things with his friends or whatever else, and it’s more of an understanding that she’ll be ok with the kids alone, so it is a bit of a double standard I must admit. 

Some of the boundaries that can be set is letting your children know that adult conversations are important too, and while they are also important, they shouldn’t interrupt when adults are mid sentence, or at least politely ask if they can get something or whatever else it is they need.  Also, women should try to be more mindful that it’s up to them to still set aside time for themselves, as being happy is what makes one a good parent. 

Men need to also be mindful that their friends priorities change when they have kids, and they should be open and accepting of that, and if it’s a true, long time friendship, then these shifts shouldn’t matter to the friendship and they should be able to have a long lasting, mutually supportive relationship for life. 

A new product is being tested in Virginia currenlty as a possible female answer to the male enhancement drug Viagra, for women with low libido, or hypoactive sex drive, which is said to affect roughly one third of all women!  That’s an astounding number, and not the best news for men who seem to not have that problem as much, but more so have problems with impotence, premature ejaculation, and sometimes have a low libido problem which they need help for.

The product is a little different from Viagra though, because it is not a pill that is swallowed, but instead is a gel that is applied externally the woman’s upper arm, and the product is supposed to absorb and go to work to within the next 24 hours after application and boost a woman’s desire for sex.  The product, called LibiGel (a play on the word “libido”), is supposed to contain testosterone, which is the hormone often cited as being the primary revver-upper of sexual desire, as well as some other more inactive ingredients that are stilled designed to enhance sensation.

The drug is also being tested by almost 100 other institutions currently as an effective female sexual enhancement product that can compete with Viagra but only in the female market, and it is made by a pharmaceutical company called BioSante that is based in Illinois.  If the drug is tested as effective and reasonably safe, it could get the greenlight from the FDA fairly quickly, especially since it is an externally applied product and is not an actual internal product. 

It’s high time that a pharmaceutical company comes out with a product that addresses women’s lack of sex drive, because we all know that men have a bevy of male sexual enhancement drugs to choose from, not to mention tons more herbal alternatives to sexual enhancement for men than there are currently for women, which is something we hope to be seeing change in this 2008 year.

Yup, that’s right guys.  The time that women seem like they most likely really wouldn’t feel all the sexual, they sure are!  When a woman is pregnant, it pushes certain essential sexual organs to the front of the body more, like the vulva and the clitoris, because they become more swollen and engorged with blood due to the weight she is carrying and hormonal changes that are occurring when she is carrying a baby.

This swollenness actually makes a women much more heightened to touch in these areas, and she is much more able to orgasm when she is pregnant.  Seems a little unfair, as some women would say, because they really aren’t feeling like their sexy selves when they are pregnant, but it’s very true.  I’m not exactly sure why nature planned it this way.  I mean, I know that women are more sexually intuned when they are most fertile, but why while they’re pregnant, because they are already pregnant, so they can’t get any more pregnant? 

Ignore my silly rantings, that’s just the first thought I had about how crazy nature can be sometimes, don’t know why, maybe I need to see a shrink lol.  Anyways, many women report having mind blowing sex during certain months of their pregnancies, and they say that they can become in the mood for sex easier because everything is really sensitive and ready for action at almost any time. 

I’m sure their partners would be happy to oblige too most of the time, but some guys might be squeamish about it, as I know some guys who might be.  What do I have to say to them?  Buck up, man up, and get over it, and please your woman, believe me it’s very attractive to them when you put your silliness aside! 

For men with a dysfunctional sexual response, there is Viagra, that as we all know, has been approved by the FDA  and is commonly used to treat erectile dysfunction.  It has been found to be effective if used when the man is aroused.
For women with a low sexual desire, there are no products that are FDA approved for this problem and there aren’t a slew of female sexual enhancement products on the market - well, yet.  The FDA has been cautious about approving products containing testosterone due to concern about side effects and long term safety.    Side effects for women using products with testosterone include facial hair and an enlarged clitoris.  
Testosterone taken orally can cause liver damage.  Women with a low libido often turn to compounding pharmacies for creams, gels and suppositories that contain testosterone.   Intrinsa, which is a skin patch that contains testosterone, is available in Europe.  Research showed that the high dose patch increased desire and sexual activity in women.
Intrinsa is not approved by the FDA or available here in the U.S.  Zestra is a botanical oil used to increase sexual desire.  It is used topically and applied to the genitals.  Zestra is available as an over the counter product and is nonprescription.  Research sponsored by the company states Zestra is safe and can increase sexual desire in women, and works so far as an acceptable female sexual enhancement external stimulant.

ArginMax is a supplement with vitamins, herbal products and L-argine, an amino acid.   ArginMax is suggested for use in women to increase sexual drive.  Since it is nonprescription, research is company sponsored.  This research, a study done at Stanford University, claims it appeared to enhance sexual desire in women.
Part of the reason that women are lagging in products available for treatment of reduced libido is the difficulty in measuring and assessing a women’s sexual response.  Sexual dysfunction in women is harder to define.  More research is called for in this area of women’s health to enhance the quality and happiness of life for females.

So, this was a rather unusual aphrodisiac for women that I read about the other day, but nonetheless, I suppose it does make sense, figuring as how we humans are still pretty primitive when it comes to sexuality, whether we consciously recognize that or not.  Women were found to get in the mood, in other words, their libido was boosted, when they came into contact with the smells of a woman who was currently breastfeeding a child. 

Call it nature’s way to get women to want to copulate and carry the human race forward, but nature is always a lot trickier than we realize.  That’s why women always want sex more right before their periods, which is typically when they are ovulating and that means they are many times more likely to conceive a child if having unprotected sex with a  fertile guy.  Tricky mother nature!

The study, which must have been performed on the hunch of some scientists that may not have had much better to do, or were doing the study as part of a larger, more comprehensive study, worked like this.  They had women who were currently nursing young infants rub pads on their upper lips so as to collect their sweat (yeah, to absorb their sweat, kind of gross, I know), and when the women who were exposed to this expressed up to 50% more desire to have sex as opposed to the placebo group, they knew they were onto something. 

Scientists think it works, sneakily as usual, to make women more attracted to sex and intimacy at that moment because it triggers a signal to the brain that they are ready to have a baby.  So, see, mother nature has it all in the plans for us.  It’s almost impossible to not want children at some point, as we are all built to eventually get the natural instincts.  Works almost like a pheromone to attract women or something! 

In a study of female strippers, researchers have proven that women are, indeed, sexier to men for reasons that are not outwardly apparent, during certain times of their monthly menstrual cycle.  The findings solidified what was a suspicious of researchers for a while, sort of having to do with the effect that pheromones that attract us to women and other things we can’t actually see might have to do with the “laws of attraction” between men and women, and why there do seem to be certain times of the month when women get more attention.

I’ve often heard women comment that they’re not sure why they start getting more attention from men certainly at indefinite times during a given month.  They say they don’t know what’s different about them but they definitely detect men are giving them more attention, and more than just friendly attention.

It seems according to the research that women do indeed have features that subtly change during certain times during their menstrual cycle, and as that sneaky but ultimately genius mother nature would have it, it happens to be during their peak fertility time.  In other words, the features women exude, or even possibly the pheromones they unknowingly emit, are higher during the times of their menstrual cycle when that are the most fertile, or most likely to conceive a child if they have unprotected sexual intercourse. 

Subtle changes occur, it is said, during a woman’s peak fertility time, in her waist to hip ratio, in her facial features, supposedly her lips may be fuller, the face may be slightly shaped more appealingly, and as stated before there may just be an unspoken additional sexiness to the woman’s body during this time, as well as to the “air” she has about her, without her even knowing it. 

The studies were actually done on strippers and it was found that the strippers got more attention and far larger tips when they were at their highest fertility potentials.  It also concluded that women who are on hormone regulating substances such as the birth control pill, do not get as much attention (tips) as those who were not on hormone regulators.  Interesting! 

Apparently mental health professionals are concerned about the sexualization of young women in our culture, following up the likes of young women such as Paris Hilton and other young, wild teen stars and stars in their early twenties who are setting bad examples for young women and how they behave and present themselves.  Sure, it’s healthy for a woman to want to be an attractive woman and attract men, but it’s gone overboard these days into mass vanity and body image problems. 

It seems that young women who are in the media spotlight present themselves without the same class that women used to, and it’s rubbing off on our youth, especially with the likes of MySpace and other social online meeting places, where girls seem to feel pressure to post sexy pictures of themselves to get attention.

The outward problems that society has shown in young women and the examples that are being set that young girls are sex objects from a younger age, and that sexuality and “being sexy” means everything in the world these days is resulting in lower self esteem and body issues in much of the young women these days and is also resulting in less women doing “smart” things and acting smart, which seems to be another very annoying affect of the Paris Hilton phenomena.  Well, at least she stopped saying that stupid “that’s hot”, but she still has a long way to go in setting examples of what a real women should be.  Like smart and funny, and having more depth than a puddle for starters.

Others issues besides low self esteem that mental health professionals are saying this phenomena of hyper sexualization of young women is increased depression, and eating disorders to try to be like women who are in the spotlight, most of whom unfortunately seem to be taking after Skeletor at the moment. 

Even Angelina Jolie, who was once a beautiful, shapely woman is now promoting this deathly skinny image and sadly many young women are trying to emulate these looks and are torturing themselves to try to be that skinny, which if you ask me doesn’t look good and isn’t attractive at all in a woman.  I think for men, they just want a real woman, one who is smart and funny and keeps it light instead of taking herself too seriously all the time.  Some men do like their women dumb, but that’s all up to them! 

Well, this new little toy that women can use to enhance their sexual pleasure, with or without a partner, certainly capitablized on the popularity of the iPod MP3 player that seems to be in the hands of everyone from teens to old folks these days.  This new little sexual enhancement product for women is a neat little vibrator that has some unique features, and of course, a catchy name that may have women in Japan (that’s where the product was conceived and is being manufactured) thanking the makers for life if it does what it says it can.

Here’s why the name gPod seemed appropriate for this nifty little tool, which retails for approximately $243 and debuted at a huge sex toy show in Tokyo recently.  You can hook the device up to any music device, like an iPod or other MP3 music player, and the darn thing will actually respond to the music, switching things up, so to speak, with each different beat, sound of instrument it hears. I guess there may be something to rhythm and women sexually being fulfilled - at least that’s what I’ve heard before a couple million times!

The suggested use, and reason the product was conceived to work to respond to sounds, is because it can actually be hooked up to one’s cell phone, and a guy can be on the phone, talking to his girlfriend or wife, and having some intimate conversation, while the gPod responds to the inflections in his voice, and therefore responds to the woman’s need for different movements and pressures coming from the gPod down there, so that it can increase their sexual enhancement and pleasure.  Maybe having one of these things could help attract a woman, who knows!