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Can Stress Be a Plus For Some in Bed?

Stress seems to be a regular part of our lives these days. Even before the economic collapse, which certainly didn’t help any, money (or the lack of it) seemed to be at the top of the list of major stressors. Instead of lying back and thinking of your upcoming weekend, we are worried about how to pay down our maxed out credit cards, or pay our next mortgage payment, or sometimes even how to pay for your next bag of groceries. Now bring on the economic collapse and our stress levels have increased dramatically.

In most cases the first thing that is affected by high stress is the libido. However, that’s MOST cases. In a few men out there, this high stress seems to trigger the opposite; they become more aroused by a greater variety of women. Actually, the Kinsey Institute found that 21% of men are affected in this opposite way. Sex has in fact been scientifically proven to decrease stress which may reflect these results.

This unfortunately is not so for the libido in women. Stress definitely has a detrimental affect on women and their desires. Stress tends to be more of a mental state for women, but this 21% of men seems to react in a physical way.

The Kinsey report is actually backed up by a new study by the University of Trier in Germany. They suggest that some men react to this “cocktail of hormones” in a similar way that the Kinsey study found. They also note that stress hormones give men a blast response to threat, which is meant to help them get out of trouble. It would seem this short blast also affects the libido in some.

The director of the Berman Center for Women’s Health in Chicago, Laura Berman, has carried out research that shows couples that are more affectionate and cuddly tend to respond less harshly to the vigor’s of stress, up to 8 times less likely in fact. That is a lot less tension and depression.

Back in 2008, researchers in Switzerland did a six day study on over 50 couples. They supplied these couples with pocket computers to help analyze the data they were asked to record. They recorded their emotional state and even took saliva samples every three hours (not while sleeping) to test for cortisol levels. Cortisol is the principal steroid hormone produced by the adrenal cortex. It regulates carbohydrate metabolism and the immune system and maintains blood pressure. The results showed decreased cortisol levels in couples that had more sexual intimacy, which decreased cortisol responses when faced with stressful dilemmas.

In a simpler explanation, it’s easier to deal with stress when you are in a healthy sexual relationship than when you are not. Stress will have a greater affect on those people or couples with out the healthy sexual relationship.

How Does the affect your performance in the bedroom? With men, stress tends to affect their impotence temporarily. When affected with a stressful situation, the body actually prepares itself for fight or flight. This physical response will concentrate blood flow to the heart and muscles and actually restrict blow flow to the arteries that supply blood to the penis. This obviously will result in a man not being able to obtain an erection.

This also effects the production of testosterone therefore impeding sexual desire. Since men have an abundance of testosterone compared to women, once the stressor is removed, all these adverse affects tend to work themselves out quickly.

For many women, this has a completely different affect. It affects them more emotionally then physically. When the stress affects hormone levels in women, there is no abundance of testosterone. So their desires drop dramatically more than men, her erotic focus drops and then is less likely to lubricate, and is then less likely to orgasm.

Then it can trigger a performance anxiety, which creates fear, which creates more anxiety. It becomes a somewhat vicious circle that is harder to recover from, even when the stressor is removed.