Female Sexual Dysfunction

The active ingredients appear to be all plant materials. Some if not all are also aphrodisiacs.

But do these substances ever really get to the source of the female problem?

Pardon my ignorance, but what is the definition of female sexual dysfunction?

dable - LOL - great thought

lack of desire or inability to achieve orgasm is the general definition

To answer a few things, in my opinion at least, many women experience this at different ages due to different reasons, and just like viagra there is a need for it in the community, under doctors supervsion I think a woman who is having sexual difficulties should be allowed to try to change that if she so wishes.

As far as avlimil is concerned, sorry i couldnt find any information on it, is it FDA approved? Is it merely in testing? Ill have to check your link later but, Im thinking from your posting that it is yet another OTC herbal substance.

Gotcha,thx Quinn. Didn't know if it was a medical or mental thing.

On another note, many of these drug commercial I see they mention a number of the side effects like nasua, excitability...etc. When they state 'sexual side effect', is this in a positive or negative way?

dable..I would say nasuea combined with sexual side effect in any way...is a negative thing

Seriously though, looked at the product information and it is what I susspected....herbal suppliment....double checking the ingredients Sage, Red Raspberry, kudzu, clover, etc etc etc.

Regarding other medications which state sexual side effects, it is usually lack of desire, etc so, depending on your outlook of sexuality then, positive or negative.

dable:

Good point! This is the term used for the advertisement of this product.

I don't know!

quinn:

No the product is not FDA approved. It looks like a herbal product.

What happens when the sexual dysfunction is really all in the woman's head? Does the product help her then?

New Haven- I think that you brought up an important point. Of course with some women, there are physical reasons that she does not achieve sexual pleasure.

With others, there are many psychological reasons that would prevent her from achieving orgasm. I think that a woman would be very wise, before she fools around with an untested herbal medication, to have a talk with her gyn, just to sort things out.

If a woman is perpetually pissed off at her SO, if she has fears or anxieties about sex, the only people that this medication will help are its manufacturers!

Phoenix:

That's exactly what I thought when I saw the magazine ad.

Avlimil for FSD
I heard about this...only 40 women took part in their "clinical trial" and I heard they changed the ingredients before they put it on the market...fishy. Regardless, I personally don't put any confidence in a study based on 40 people... Interestingly, Warner Health Care is also owned by the owners of Lifekey...who push a product called Enzyte to men...they make comparisons to Viagra, and convince male customers their "members" will get larger...Oops. They are also linked to Mioplex...another male sexual enhancement supplement, AND a group of porn/erotica books called Femos....It all sounds like a scam to me...preying on people's self-esteem and relationship problems. I give them a "thumbs down"...unfortunately for them, so does the Better Business Bureau...with over 100 complaints on their Enzyte product alone!

This is an interesting subject - and has been the topic of discussion in the British Medical Journal (4 January 2003) recently.
Here's the link:http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7379/45?

It talks, amongst other things, of pharmaceutical companies medicalising what may not be a medical problem.

Margo, I agree.

Did you read the article in the Weekly Standard on the same topic about 2 weeks ago?

Margo & New Haven- The Medicalizing of perfectly natural human phenomena has been rapidly increasing over the last few decades. You have bad day, you take a pill. Your kids act up, you hand him some medication.

I am not saying, that in some instances, medicating is not appropriate. What I AM saying is that we have been sold a bill of goods by the pharmaceutical companies that the "magic pill" will cure all ills, even if there is none.

Why do I get a nagging feeling that this "pill popping" craze is yet just another aspect of society's "quick fix", instant gratification mentality?

This reminds me of a line from Victor Borge. He once told of an uncle, who discovered a cure, for which there was no disease. He took the cure, and he died!

Phoenix, I fully agree. I am watching friends and their families doing exactly this. Kid is 'hyper active' - give him some pills. The mother of this kid has troubling coping with her life as house wife - there are pills for that, too, of course. It really worries me.

What I've learned is that, despite all the sexy media, and the unspoken assumption that "healthy' people are having sex and loving it several times a week at least, the reality is that people are all different . I guess it becomes a problem when you want it more than your partner does, or vice-versa. Some people hardly ever want it, some are active all their lives. It's all normal.

Some of these products may cause heart attacks and hypertension.

New Haven

No, I'm sorry - the Weekly Standard doesn't feature big in Sydney, but experience has shown that, if there is an interesting feature article in some of the main medical journals, some of the non-medical media pickup on it. I only read the BMJ and the New England Journal of Medicine, but I often see things mentioned there picked up elsewhere, often without adequate reference to the source.

In my past life, I was in a position to talk about treatment of male sexual dysfunction, and the question of female SD came up a lot. A specialist female sexual dysfunction, who was conducting clinical trials, in women, said that she felt that, realistically, only a small number would be helped by products like Viagra, because thecauses of fsd were so disparate. This, however, wouldn't stop people from trying it.

Physical, social, and psychological factors interact in complex ways. Nothing about women's sexuality is simple.