Sexual dysfunction in postmenopausal women is music to the ears of the legal drug barons. BigPharm loves nothing more than a new illness, a new health condition. Once a new treatable condition is defined, it becomes a money spinner for the drug companies. From social phobia to pre-hypertension, a dizzying range of new conditions have been identified in recent years and drug companies are pushing drugs at all of them. If you’ve ever felt shy walking into a room full of people, drug marketers would have you know that you’re suffering from a social dysfunction which requires treatment. So hand over your money and start taking the pills.
Once viagra and cyalis were developed for men with erectile dysfunction – impotence – it was only natural that drug companies would get their market research companies to look at sexual dysfunction in women. Male sexuality had provided a huge customer base for drug companies. Women afford potentially another vast market to be exploited.
So, is flagging libido after menopause a natural part of aging? Or is it a sexual dysfunction? If it’s a natural development, should it be treated nevertheless? And if so, for how long? Should women be expected to have active sex lives until they’re 80? Until they die?
Postmenopausal women themselves will want to make informed decisions about their sex lives and libidos. A 50-something friend of mine recently told me that she’d be perfectly happy never to have sex again. “I had a strong sex drive in my 20s and 30s” she said “but it really tailed off once I had kids and I never instigate sex with my husband these days. It’s a bit of a chore to be honest. I know it’s still important to my husband but I simply don’t miss it.”
Another friend, however, told me that she lost her sex drive in her late 40s and misses it terribly. “I still have sex with my partner” she said, “but I don’t have the desire I used to. I feel less womanly and really miss that drive to make love. I would love to feel strong sexual desire again. I also worry that since I’m not passionate during sex, my husband will have an affair with a younger woman. I could actually see my lack of sexual desire eventually leading to divorce.”
Whether a woman wants to regain her lost libido or not is down to her personal feelings and her approach to her relationship/s. However, loss of libido in postmenopausal women shouldn’t be classed as sexual dysfunction any more than greying hair should be classed as dysfunctional hair or death classed as dysfunctional life. Aging is a natural process. It’s not necessarily a bad thing if effective drugs are available to restore lost libido. But women shouldn’t be made to feel, by aggressive marketing, that there’s something dysfunctional about them if they don’t want sex at 70! And any drugs targetted at older women to restore libido need to be entirely safe as well as effective. To date, that hasn’t been the case:
“Pfizer pulled Viagra from the market for female patients because clinical trials showed it worked no better than the placebo. Flibanserin, marketed by Beohringer Ingelheim, was turned down by the US Food and Drug Administration which found it created risk of serious side effects without delivering any worthwhile benefit. Procter and Gamble’s testosterone patch foundered because of worries that it increased cancer risk and risk of heart disease.” [See source, below.]
In other words, in their hurry to sell drugs and restored libido to postmenopausal women, the drug companies have developed drugs which are ineffective and/or health risks. There’s nothing sexy about that.
Source: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5854032/sex_lies_and_pharmaceuticals_australian.html?cat=5
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