WE live in a highly erotic age. Sex sells clothes, draws cinema audiences and fills the pages of titillating newspapers and blockbuster novels.
Sexual Health
Erotopenia: The Silent Epidemic Part 2
Part two of an article written by Donald Norfolk and published in the International Journal of Alternative and Complimentary Medicine (London) February 1995 – to help address the way holistic health practitioners address sexual health problems in their clients. You can click here to read part 1.
In the days of our grandparents people felt ashamed if they had an exuberant sexual appetite. Now we are made to feel guilty if we fail to experience sexual passion. Today we are as keen to keep up with the Jones’s in the bedroom as in the market place.
Articles in the popular press provide an endless barrage of sexual fact and figures. Even if our patients do not aspire to be sexual athletes, they generally feel obliged to strive to be regarded at least as average performers. This, according to statisticians, may mean copulating 2.7 times a week and having relations with 4.3 extra-marital partners within the first ten years of marriage.
This cultural obsession with sexual behaviour is blighting our lives. Many people are made to feel physically inadequate; others suffer ‘performance anxiety’ when they fail to deliver the erotic goods. We have become sexual overachievers, desperately keen to achieve the national norm. We are encouraged to hope for orgasms which will convulse our bodies like grand mal seizures. These unreasonable expectations are making an onerous duty of what should be an effortless delight.
As a society we have put the quantity of coital events before the quality of our loving exchanges. Sex has become dehumanised. We have become robots, going through the motions but failing to enjoy the emotions. The plethora of sex books has made our patients wiser but not always happier.
Improving Sexual Health
In 1993 the British government published “The Health of The Nation”, a white paper which set out the nation’s health priorities1. The five main target areas for improvement were identified as coronary heart disease, stroke, accident prevention, cancer, mental illness and sexual health. Since that time millions of pounds of public money have been spent, not on promoting sexual health as the White Paper proposed, but on treating venereal disease. What is urgently needed, according to one consultant in genitourinary medicine, is a far broader approach to sexual education which considers morals, relationship problems and psychological factors as well as the nuts and bolts of sexual anatomy.
‘Improving the sexual health of the nation requires more than condoms,’ he commented in an editorial in the British medical Journal2. This is an approach which the majority of doctors are ill-equipped to take. During the course of their training they may spend a few weeks in a VD clinic but apart from that they are given little training in psycho-sexual counselling. This point was emphasised recently by a medical student, who noted that the crowded medical curriculum left little time for ‘considering the fundamental emotional, psychological and sexual issues so important to both illness and health. It is easy to understand why the public criticises doctors for their lack of understanding and compassion,’ he continued, ‘Since the long and arduous training process engenders technical and theoretical competence but ignores the basics of human nature3.’
The Sexual Response
Freud made an enormous mistake when he thought of sexual energy as an impersonal power supply. Human sexuality can’t be viewed in a social vacuum.
According to Dr Dennis Lincoln, of the Medical Research Council’s Reproductive Biology Unit, we are ‘the most sexually active animal ever.’ This prize is often given to the rabbit, but according to Dr Lincoln’s calculations we are some 10,000 times more sexually active than rabbits because, unlike them, we are always on heat.
Our lovemaking, on the other hand, is far slower than that of most other mammals. It passes through four distinct phases: an initial stage of desire merging into a stage of mounting excitement, then into a brief moment of orgasm followed by a longer stage of resolution.
Our focus, as therapists and as educated laymen, tends to be on the more obvious and dramatic central phases of excitement and orgasm. This blinkered viewpoint has been encouraged by the vast majority of sexologists, who have made the climax and its immediate precedents their major preoccupation. Masters and Johnson, for instance, showed no interest whatsoever in desire, the state of enhanced arousal which is the initiator of human sexual behaviour4. This is what differentiates us from the birds and bees.
We have to spend a long while in pre-copulatory foreplay - kissing, cuddling and caressing - before we reach an optimum level of sexual arousal. For a monkey the whole cycle of sexual union is over in seconds.
For them, as for most other animals, the sole purpose of sex is the perpetuation of the species. For man it serves the double function of procreation and pair bonding. The first goal can be achieved in a trice. The second takes far longer.
People who lack libido run the risk of weakening this pair bonding. They are also prone to suffer a loss of self esteem and lack of well-being. Individuals tend to be happier and more relaxed when they possess sexual drive. They suffer fewer tension ailments - chronic fatigue, insomnia, fibrositis, indigestion and tension headaches - for, as psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich observed ‘the setting free of genital energies has great therapeutic effect5.
The first article in this two-part feature looked at several ways of treating erotopenia, which is now reckoned to be the commonest contemporary sexual disorder. Here are three other practical steps which can help patients overcome this distressing complaint. These additional tips are also extracted from “Sex Drive”, a book which offers a comprehensive guide to the treatment of reduced libido.
Herbal Tonics
Scores of herbs have been recommended as love potions, ranging from garlic and orchid tubers to humble foods like potatoes and tomatoes.
Only two of these ancient remedies appear to justify their reputation as aphrodisiacs. The first is ginseng, which has been used by the Chinese for thousands of years because of its remarkable ability to prolong youth and restore lost vigour. This has been confirmed by recent experiments, which are reviewed in Stay Young6 a remarkable book written by Dr Ivan Popov who has spent 30 years studying rejuvenation medicine. He has used ginseng in numerous tests which, he writes, ‘confirms the plant’s wide spectrum ability to act positively on physical as well as mental processes. The activity of ginseng is long-lasting and there are no withdrawal symptoms of any kind when it is interrupted. Side effects and toxicity are apparently nil.’
Damiana is the other herb with a proven track record as an aphrodisiac. This was first used as a sex stimulant by the Aztecs of Mexico over 500 years ago. Years later it became the active ingredient of many Victorian nostrums for sexual debility. The leading contemporary textbooks of herbal medicine support these claims. Damiana, they report, is an aphrodisiac which has a direct effect on the sex organs. This is how it gained its official, botanical name Turnera aphrodisiac. Dr Popov recommends patients in search of rejuvenation to take these herbal pick-me-ups in association with those trace elements ‘that are most likely to be missing from a civilised regime.’
Break the Routine
Boredom encourages some people to experiment outside marriage, whereas a far simpler solution is to experiment inside marriage.
Variety is the spice of conjugal life; boredom the kiss of death. Love grows cold if it isn’t nourished by regular doses of excitement and change. A humdrum routine is a common cause of sexual apathy and marital breakdown. This was recognised by Masters and Johnson, who found that monotony ‘is probably the most common factor in the loss of the aging male’s interest in sexual performance.’
Boredom encourages some people to experiment outside marriage, whereas a far simpler solution is to experiment inside marriage. When Madame de Pompadour wanted to enliven her sex life with Louis XV she asked her doctor for advice. ‘Change,’ he said, ‘is the greatest aphrodisiac.’ If women are bored and looking for outside excitement with a toy boy or romantic Romeo from the office, it’s almost certainly because their partners have become boring company; the stimulus is missing. They are always doing the same things in the same, routine fashion.
‘If a man cannot afford different and distinct pleasures to the woman he has made his wife on two successive nights, he has married too soon,’ said Baizac.
A Loving Relationship
Freud made an enormous mistake when he thought of sexual energy as an impersonal power supply. Human sexuality can’t be viewed in a social vacuum. It takes two to tango and you’ll rarely find a dynamic Romeo without an equally exciting Juliet. A woman may be left totally cold by her unexciting husband and yet she becomes erotically aroused by the merest glimpse of a photograph of her heart-throb screen idol.
Passion grows in a warm, encouraging environment. It responds to caring, affection and admiration but shrinks when exposed to harshness, unkindness and neglect. If a relationship is one of constant criticism and complaint you can’t expect it to be throbbing with passion.
Sexologist Dr Helen Kaplan agrees that this incessant carping is a common cause of lowered sex drive.
‘Anger evoked by silly squabbles, petty annoyances and simple irritations can ‘turn off’ sexual feelings,’ she writes7.
Facilitating Behavioural Change
We are creatures of habit, an oft-repeated adage which overlooks the fact that we are also creators of habits. Faulty patterns of health behaviour are learned and can equally well be unlearned. We can be trained to improve our sex lives, just as we can be educated to breathe better or walk with less postural strain. But it takes time and because if this many therapists shirk the laborious task of facilitating behaviour change.
This is where books and instructional leaflets can act as invaluable training aids. These enable patients to play a key role in their own treatment. Many doctors today are realising the value of the practice library. Consultation time is short but if patients are given appropriate instructional literature they can read this at their leisure and discuss it during their next practice visit. This is an invaluable form of health education as was recognised by the British Medical Journal, which published an editorial calling for a shift from specialist care to self-directed treatment.
‘We can no longer escape the conclusion that the number of patients who can be helped by treatment that depends on technology is limited by constraints on resources,’ the leader observed. ‘A possible way to resolve this dilemma may be for some patients to use self-directed treatment manuals, thereby saving scarce resources for those who need them most. An additional benefit of this approach, in which skill is shared with the users of health care, is that it enables patients to become more actively involved in their own health care8.’
Therapists who want to adopt this approach will not find it difficult to build up an appropriate library. Those who have access to a computer equipped with Desk Top Publishing software can also provide a regular practice newsletter. In many cases free self-help leaflets are available on specific problems. These are simple ways of encouraging the continuing process of health education, which must surely be a prime responsibility of every holistic therapist.
References
1. HMSO. 1992 Improving the Health of the Nation.
2. Bignell C B Med J 17th July 1993
3. Yamey G., B.Med J 21st August1993.
4. Masters W.H. and Johnson V.E. Human Sexual Response 1966 London Churchill.
5. Reich. W. The Function of the Orgasm 1968., London. Panther Books.
6. Popov I. Stay Young 1975 New York: Grosser and Dunlap.
7. Kaplan, H.S. Disorders of Sexual Desire 1979 London: Balliere Tindall.
8. Troop, N. et al B Med. J. 4th September 1993.
© United Health Promotion Ltd. 1994.
Visit Donald Norfolk’s website - Welcome to the world of life enrichment, growth & personal fulfilment. This website blog has been created to meet the universal longing for self development and growth. It’s based on my lifetime experience in the field of health promotion, as an author, journalist and broadcaster on both radio and television. (http://www.donaldnorfolk.co.uk/)
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This information is supplied for educational purposes only and is not intended to offer diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of any disease. Always seek professional medical advice when necessary.