MEN'S CURE

If you’re having sex drive problems, check your medicine cabinet. Several varieties of prescription medication can drove away your desire.

1. Birth Control

Some hormonal birth control medicine such as pills and patches can increase women’s levels of sex-hormone-binding globulin (SHBG), which drops the amount of testosterone that’s floating around freely in the bloodstream.

2. Antidepressants

Selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) such as Prozac are supposed to cheer you up, but they can interfere with one potential source of happiness: sexual pleasure. Some doctors will keep the SSRI but add Wellbutrin, which increases dopamine and acts as an “antidote to the SSRIs,”. For others, a doctor might switch the patient to Wellbutrin and cut the SSRI.

Everyone’s body reacts differently to drugs, however, and for some, depression itself is more of a sex drive dampener than the SSRIs are.

3. Diabetes Drugs

Both diabetes and the medicine used to treat it can diminish desire, arousal, and orgasm. And those changes, in turn, can affect sexual interest.

What if you need the medicine?

Sometimes simply switching to another type of medicine, or even a different formulation of the same medicine, can solve the sex drive side effect. But if it does not, and you need the medication, and your regular provider isn’t coming up with any new ideas, don’t despair. Go see a sexual medicine expert who can work with the physician prescribing the medicine to figure out other strategies.