PMS & Sex Drive

With all of this talk about science’s latest attempts to bottle up some sort of female Viagra, I have to wonder, have these lab geeks not spoken to their wives and girlfriends?

Not to get too personal with ya here, but when it’s just about that time of the month, I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for action.

I always assumed that the reason for the heightened desire is because, well, I’m fertile and it’s my body’s way of capitalizing on the situation – the whole “propagation of the species” and whatnot.

Well, that’s the overarching reason for the compulsion, but there’s even more science behind it.

So, whether you’re trying to develop the next great pharmaceutical discovery or simply want to know why you’re quite literally “in heat” one week in every four, read on…

Simply put, as the hormones fluctuate and culminate in you getting your period, your sex drive follows suit.

Most women find their sex drive peaks during the week and especially during the days and even hours leading up to the arrival of their monthly friend – then, poof! It falls right off the cliff and they don’t even want to be touched.

Other women feel amorous right on through their cycles. Why is this?

Science’s best guess is that it has something to do with how quickly or slowly a woman’s body can recover from a hormone imbalance.

I seem to have a quick recovery time, seeing as I want nothing to do with my man when my period arrives.

Energy levels also peak during this time for a lot of women. That’s true for me!

In fact, every month in the week leading up to my period, I find myself wanting to work out more rigorously than usual. I also seem to have more energy for chores, which means my bathroom is guaranteed to get a heavy cleaning once a month, so long as I don’t get pregnant.

But back to the topic of sex: The added energy and heightened emotions could be the reason why many women report that sex during this time feels more urgent, and even primal.

What’s more, their capacity for achieving orgasm seems to be greater. (Like I said, this is all very important information for the female Viagra R&D team.)

As for the biology behind all of this, not surprisingly, you can blame a lot of it on hormones. And it’s not just the fault of estrogen, either!

Women’s levels of estrogen and testosterone (the predominantly male hormone) both surge to their highest levels in the female body during PMS.

The testosterone makes us more aggressive and tactile while the estrogen heightens our other senses, like sight and smell – two very important senses for triggering lust and desire.

I’m not a scientist, but it stands to reason that our sudden sex drive is thanks in large part to this!

Wow, I think I get it now: Maybe the difficulty in developing female Viagra is not so much about enhancing our libidos as it is the danger of creating a whole society of women with perpetual PMS symptoms!