Menopause often cuts sex drive

Jan. 22--Later, honey.

Uttered those words to your sweetheart lately? Join the pack.

Among women who have finished menopause -- brought on by surgery or by age -- 24% to 36% have low sex drive, says a new study.

The study, published this month in Menopause: The Journal of the North American Menopause Society, showed that women aged 20 to 49 who had a hysterectomy that included their ovaries reported the biggest problems, a fact recognized in medicine that has prompted minimally invasive, ovary-sparing procedures.

Removing ovaries in a hysterectomy can cause an abrupt cessation of hormones that trigger sex drive, explains Dr. Jonathan Zaidan, a Lake Orion obstetrician-gynecologist.

The study also looked at hypoactive sexual desire disorder, the psychiatric term for a more chronic disorder that affects men or women, who stop fantasizing about sex or who no longer desire it.

In the study, 9% to 26% of women had that condition. They reported relationship problems, low self-esteem and depression.

The question, experts say, is which came first: the loss of sex drive, the low self-esteem, the relationship problems or the depression?

Sex therapists and psychiatrists increasingly recognize that women's sexuality is different than men's, says Dennis Sugrue, a Bloomfield Hills sexual therapist and clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Men's desire typically progresses in a linear path, starting with feeling desire, acting on it and orgasm, a three-step progression, Sugrue says, perhaps followed by a fourth step, "turning on Leno or Letterman," he jokes.

Women may not fit that pattern, he says. They may not feel desire initially, for example, though they may once they are engaged in lovemaking, he says.

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