Men, be prepared to mount up and ride for a good cause... Down with female stress, up with her libido...!
Little known facts: Call it a catch-69, the cruel irony that a proven cure for stress — a hot sex life — is exactly what stress destroys. Connecting with a partner (and I mean physically) is a balm for the body. “Stress makes you tired, distracted and unmotivated to do anything, much less have sex,” says Laura Berman, Ph.D., director of the Berman Center for women’s sexual health in Chicago. “When a woman is stressed, the hormonal changes in her body trigger a chemical reaction causing sex hormone–binding globulin to bind with testosterone cells, so they’re unavailable for libido and sexual response.”
And, in a pattern familiar to many women, sexlessness due to stress makes you more tense and even less sexual. Furthermore, a study at the University of Gottingen in Germany found that people who do it less often tend to take on more work to compensate for their frustration. And the increased labor results in—you guessed it—even less sex.
Just something as simple as starting out with more kissing, hugging and cuddling. Indeed, simply holding hands can allay stress, which James Coan, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville research shows.
“We asked women to lie in an MRI scanner to measure brain response to an electrical shock — first when holding a stranger’s hand and then holding their husband’s hand,” he says. I contemplate why anyone would even choose to be electrically shocked. “The shocks were mild. Like walking across the carpet and touching a doorknob. We wanted to observe the response to anticipatory stress—a good comparison to everyday anxiety—so we gave them a warning, saying, ‘In 4 to 12 seconds, you might get a shock.’”
The results: When holding her husband’s hand, women showed a significantly reduced stress response in the brain compared with holding a stranger’s hand. And those in happy relationships “showed the least stress response,” Coan says.
Kissing and hugging, too, alleviate daily anxiety. Berman’s research found that unaffectionate couples report more stress and depression than their cuddling counterparts, and pairs who smooch a lot are eight times less likely to be tense or depressed. The best way to stay connected and stress-free, scientists believe, is to keep the touching going, especially during rocky times.
This method would dramatically improve our stress levels, according to Stuart Brody, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of the West of Scotland at Paisley.
In one study, people kept a diary of their sexual activity for two weeks. Brody then monitored their blood pressure when they spoke in public and did verbal arithmetic, classic stress inducers. Those who tried the nooky cure had the lowest blood pressure. Self-pleasuring and other substitutes didn’t offer the blood pressure–leveling punch of actually doing it.
For women, sexual intercourse triggered key nerves in the vagina and cervix, was psychologically satisfying and released calming hormones in the brain, more so than any other sex play did—factors that added up to lowered blood pressure. “Intercourse specifically is linked to better psychological and physical health,” Brody says.
So men, Mount up and mess that stress away! That's an order soldier!
Attachment 6432
Jules
julesmilano.rare-courtesan.com