Chris Shugart
Why doesn’t anyone have sex?
Hormone levels are dropping, everyone is feeling emotionally turbulent, and sex is becoming less common. Why? There’s one possible answer.
People are having less sex. The number of men and women who identify as asexual is soaring. The number of adults who don’t have sex in a year has jumped from 15% to 26% since 1989. Up to 15% of marriages are sexless and just not enjoyable.
Researchers don’t know why. Maybe it’s video games and distracting streaming entertainment. Maybe it’s social media, stress, lack of sleep, soy protein, porn. Maybe it’s vaccines, antidepressants, hormonal contraceptives, microplastics. Or maybe our alien overlords are thinning the herd with sex-killing laser beams.
As with many social patterns, researchers and sexologists seem to be missing something: underlying health. Maybe people are too fat to have sex. Or, more likely, their physical, hormonal and psychological health is so poor that the underlying mechanisms that make sex pleasurable are all broken.
As the researchers point out, there’s no single cause for the rise in sexlessness, but when we focus on health, we can identify a pretty big one: Vitamin D deficiency.
Desire for seduction
Wanting to have sex and not being able to is one thing, but the real problem is not wanting to have sex at all. Where has your libido gone?
About 42% of Americans are deficient in Vitamin D (probably more than that if you were to step up your blood levels of the vitamin). Vitamin D affects your libido. Vitamin D regulates hormones and affects mood. This isn’t surprising, since Vitamin D isn’t actually a vitamin, it’s a prohormone. Here are some ways Vitamin D affects your libido:
- Vitamin D is involved in the synthesis of testosterone, a hormone essential for sex drive. Studies have shown that men with higher vitamin D levels tend to also have higher testosterone levels. Other studies have shown that men who are deficient in vitamin D can see a significant increase when taking supplements.
- To have a healthy sex drive, you need enough “free” testosterone. Too much Sex Hormone Binding Globulin (SHBG) “traps” some of your testosterone and prevents it from doing its job. Vitamin D3 lowers SHBG, freeing up testosterone.
- Vitamin D helps regulate estrogen, a hormone essential for female sexual health. Clinically, women with adequate levels of Vitamin D have been reported to experience fewer symptoms of estrogen deficiency, such as decreased libido. Women with higher Vitamin D3 levels score higher on factors associated with sexual satisfaction, namely arousal, desire, lubrication, and toe-curling orgasms.
- Feeling anxious or depressed can reduce your libido. Vitamin D is involved in regulating mood by acting on serotonin, a neurotransmitter that influences mood and health. People who are deficient in Vitamin D are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety. Supplementing with Vitamin D can improve mood, reduce depression, and ensure a healthy libido.
- “Being tired” is the most common explanation for not wanting to have sex, and vitamin D deficiency has been linked to fatigue. Research has shown that remedying vitamin D deficiency in both men and women can improve their energy levels.
- Vitamin D supports the immune system, reduces inflammation, aids in cardiovascular health, and promotes blood flow — all of which boosts libido and sexual performance in both men and women.
- Vitamin D deficiency is associated with endothelial (blood vessel) dysfunction, which can impede blood flow and contribute to erectile dysfunction. Vitamin D supplements improve ED by improving endothelial health and nitric oxide production, both of which are essential for erections. Remember that while erection medications can help arouse sexual desire when a man is feeling it, they do nothing to create that initial desire. However, Vitamin D plays a foundational role as it affects mood, hormone levels, and energy.
Which type of Vitamin D is most effective?
Doctors used to say that a blood level of 20 ng/mL of vitamin D was enough. But today, smarter doctors recommend aiming for 50-70 ng/ml. To hit that number and resolve the issues that cause low libido and poor horizontal tango performance, you’d need about 5000 IU of vitamin D3 per day. And yet, that’s hard to achieve with supermarket capsules that don’t use a drug delivery system that guarantees absorption.
What you need is microencapsulated vitamin D3, which is made by encapsulating vitamin D molecules in liposomes (solid lipid nanoparticles), which not only protects the vitamin D from temperature and oxidation, but also makes it more bioavailable for longer.
Each capsule of D Fix High Absorption Vitamin D contains 5000 IU of this microencapsulated form of Vitamin D.
It takes about 8 weeks or more using 2000 IU of standard D3 to correct mild to moderate vitamin D deficiency. Using 5000 IU should shorten that time, and supplement formulators hope that microencapsulated D3 will work much more quickly.
Severe deficiencies can take up to 12 weeks to improve, often requiring weekly doses of 50,000 IU. But that large a dose requires a standard D3 supplement. With microencapsulated D3, such large doses may no longer be necessary.
Sexual desire is healthy
Libido is like the canary in the coal mine: if it dies, something is wrong with your penis. Sexologists are right: There are multifactorial causes for decreased sexual activity. But paying attention to the basic physiology of your libido is a good first step to getting back on track.
