April 28, 2010 • 19 mins
Viagra effectively treats male sexual dysfunction, so could a similar drug be developed for women? Molly and Cristen discuss current research on a Viagra-like drug for women -- and whether it would really be beneficial -- in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camry.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom never told you?
From House to works dot Com. Hey there, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Christen, I'm Molly. Molly. Something I
(00:20):
did not realize was that viagra has been around for
almost a decade. Now, Wow, can you believe that that?
That is kind of hard to believe. Yeah, because I
remember when it first came out it was so scandalous,
so ha ha ha. Well, I'm still kind of scandalized
by the commercials. Is that as telling you beforehand? Yeah,
(00:40):
I just don't like viagra commercials. Why don't you like them? Molly? Well,
for a while, they had like a bunch of guys
sitting around a studio singing about viagra, the Beava Viagra song,
and I was just like, I don't know, I just
couldn't believe that guys would do that. I just really
couldn't believe that guys would sit around and play guitar
and sing about that. But they were so happy they
no longer had to deal with They're a rectile dysfunction,
(01:02):
all right, And well the new one, the new one
really gets my goat. I was telling you this earlier.
There's the new one where the guys walking down the
street and then there like a vision of him pops
up in the window and he's like, are you gonna
ask your doctor? And the guy walking down the side
of it goes about what and the mirror image goes
about our reptile dysfunction? And at that point I'm just like,
(01:22):
why don't you ask your doctor about the fact that
you see like visions of yourself in the store windows.
I mean, it's just I can't buy the fact that
that someone's gonna actually I can't buy the fact he's
gonna need viagra after he's walked down the sidewalk talking
to store windows. Well, Molly, if you have a problem
with male viagra commercials, is that redundant? The same mail viagra? Um?
(01:44):
Is it? Christen? That's our topic for today. That is
the topic for today. The question is what's going to
happen when the female viagra comes on the market About
those commercials. I predict right now that if a female
viagra comes on the market, the commercials are going to
be very very similar to tampon commercials. Oh, They're gonna
be awful. They're gonna be like all these perfectly you know,
(02:05):
done up lady singing around talking about problems during certain times,
lots of reds and pinks. They might be sipping on
afternoon tea, yes, definitely afternoon tea or cocktail, yeah, just
eating yogurts. It's gonna be like it's gonna be every
single lady commercial rolled up into one. Yes, and I
might not help be wondering why Molly and I are
going on and on about this female of viagra question.
(02:27):
And it's because last winter, around November, a pharmaceutical firm
called Boeinger Ingleheim did a very large test presented the
results of a large clinical phase three clinical trial on
a medication called flaban serinabanserin. They first tried to develop
(02:48):
this as an indepressant. Didn't work too well, but in
their animals studies, they said they found out that, uh
noticed that, hey, these these mice seem a little excited. Well,
and that's also how by came around. They were testing
for one thing and then they're like, oh, by the way,
this this can cause erections. And so ever, since they
complete those animal traals, they think they have you know
(03:09):
what they're terming the female viagra on their hands, um,
but it's let's start off real quick, which is a
distinction that viagra causes blood flow to head to the
penis to cause an erection. It addresses a physical problem.
These people, the German pharmaceutical company is saying that they
can solve a psychiatric problem known as hypoactive sexual desire
(03:33):
disorder or h s d D. And this is a
stressing lack of sexual desire absent other medical conditions. So
it's not that a woman physically can't have sex or
doesn't enjoy sex, it's that she doesn't even want it
in the first place. Right, So I mean all these
these the tagline in the media of female viagra's kind
of a misnomer um. And this would be a pill
(03:55):
that you would take every day, kind of like birth control.
And they don't exactly know how flab answer and stimulates
a sexual desire, but they do know that it modulates
a set of neurotransmitters, especially serotonin and to a lesser
extent in dopamine and norap enough rin to kind of
adjust those levels and and get everything everything cooking down
there to cause some desire. Well, it might be in
(04:15):
your head too, and that's not see. That's the thing
is this is a very controversial diagnosis in the first place.
So I think that it's rubbed some people the wrong way,
that people are trying to cure something that some doctors
aren't even sure is a problem. Because let's say you
don't want to have sex, you are absent that desire.
What if you just had a baby, what if you're
really stressed at work, what if you have like the
(04:37):
common cold. There are all sorts of reasons why you
might not have the desire to have sex. And some
worry that these doctors are just rushing to give woman
a pill for something that's not actually a problem, right,
because it keeps coming. All these articles that Molly and
I ran across kept coming back to this question of well,
what does constitute a normal sex drive? With viagra, it's
(04:57):
addressing a very obvious problem with a very od use fixed.
You know, the penis is not erect, and now it
is there, you go, problem solved. However, this issue of
sexual desire, like you said, which could it is very
much a mental issue and also compounded by a number
of our environmental factors. Isn't something you know that you
can just say it's going to be the same for
(05:19):
everybody and should be the same for everybody. And there
were a number of women in these articles, such as
Liz Kanner, who is the director of orgasm Ink, which
is a documentary film about the over medicalization of sex.
We have Julie nor Sigian who's the executive director of
Women's Health Advocacy of Our Bodies, Ourselves and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
And we have Lorie Typher who is a PhD psychologist
(05:40):
at the New York University School of Medicine. All these women,
these names just keep popping up in all of these articles,
coming out and saying wait a second, you know why
we're coming out and saying, well, this is this is
a great thing for all these women who don't want
to have sex, but we're not really addressing the root
of the problem, right And there are so many other
they say, options to turn to before this, you know, therapy, um, exercise,
(06:01):
just you know, things that don't involve taking a pill
that we don't know the long term effects of. But
you know what, Kristen, let's see what this pill actually does,
because it might be one thing to say, oh maybe
it's not a real disorder. But if I'm gonna want
to have sex every day, I'm sure there are women
out there who are like what I could deal with that,
I have problems with desire. Let's let's hear what you got,
(06:21):
baringer Ingleheim. Well, Molly um and this information is coming
from a very good blog post about this on Neuroskeptic,
and it breaks down, Uh, the research paper that was
published called the Pharmacology of flab Anserin, and essentially the
research shows that it's sort of a cross between a
(06:43):
an antidepressant and um a dopamine receptor agonist which stimulates
the dopamine in the brain, and also a mild sedative. Now,
it's not gonna be marketed as an antidepressant, right, They're
gonna they will be marketed as something that increases desire.
But yeah, I mean one quote was that it's essentially
like a glass of wine. And they performed three trials
(07:06):
with a total of about four hundred women who were
either taking a hundred milligrams of fla ancer in every
night um or they were on a placebo pill, and
relative to the placebo the women who were taking the
flab ancer in increased the number of quote satisfying sexual
encounters by point seven per month points of an extra
(07:28):
sexual satisfying encounters per month, so not even one a week,
not even in one hire, so not even an entire
satisfying sexual just over half of a satisfying sexual encounter.
You know what I found kind of interesting, maybe this
is just me, is that in the flab anceran group,
the women before they had a baseline paid where they
(07:50):
just took, you know, a regular journal of sexual activity,
they had two point eight sexually satisfying events within the
period already, and during the study period had they had
four point five sexually satisfying events at the same time,
So that is more than a increase in the number
of sexually satisfying events they were having. So they're basically
going from bi weekly sex, let's say, to weekly six.
(08:14):
But we don't know a lot about who these men are.
All we know is that their pre menopausal, we know
their pre menopozle, and they're in long term relationships. So
I mean, we don't know, do we how many kids
they have, what kind of jobs they have. And this
all goes back to, as you said, Kristen, this question
of what is a normal sex drive for a woman
who is in a long term relationship. I mean, what
(08:35):
other factors might be going on where you know, two
point eight sexually satisfying events isn't enough and four point
five represents a really big increase. Now, the big question
is whether or not that point seven extra satisfying sexual
encounters is going to be enough for the Food and
Drug Administration to give flop answer in the go ahead
and for the company to start marketing it. Yeah, it's
(08:57):
gonna be years before you could actually see one of
these dreaded well answer and commercials, right, because there are
and there are also other contenders in this market. Because
of course it's going to be huge, the first quote
female viagra to come out on the market. It's gonna
sell like Gangbusters, I'm sure. Well, it'll be interesting, I think,
to see if it sells more to women or to
men who want women to feel more sexual desire. Right, Um,
(09:18):
But a couple of other contenders are testosterone patch called intrisia,
and in late two thousand and four, the FDA was
on the brink of approving it, but then uh, the
advisory panel saw found a number of problems with the
evidence for its effectiveness and its safety. So they kind
of went back to the drawing board with that, and
then they've got another drug, and I think this drugs
(09:39):
kind of interesting. This is called re lamino tide that's
in development for not only low female sex drive, but
also for male erectile dysfunction. So this one is in
phase two clinical trials and it's a new chemical created
in the laboratory that's going to act on the central
nervous system on your hypothalamus, which is involved in sexual arousal.
(10:00):
I will say they lost me on this one when
they said it was given in the form of a
nasal spray, because I am just really bad with nasal
sprays that might that might not put you in the mood.
I just yeah, I just always ends up wrong allergy
seasons reference I digress um. So yeah, So there's a
lot of effort and money being poured into looking at,
(10:23):
you know, this issue, trying to address this issue of
this hypoactive sexual disorder in women. But then the question
is also um, statistically, how many alley women are we
talking about what portion of the female population. Well, and
this is where things get interesting because I think that
depending on how you asked the question, which we don't
know how these studies did. I mean, everyone's gonna admit
(10:44):
that they don't have sexual desire at some point. I mean,
when I'm at work right now, I'm doing this podcast,
I don't have sexual desire, and I find that comforting. Coolly.
I'm just saying it might depend when they ask, if
they come in ask me in the middle of the podcast. No,
that's a good point. We don't know exactly what what
survey questions they're asking, but we do know that according
to one Surrey question, I got pretty pretty large results
according to the January February two thousand five issue of
(11:07):
the International journal Journal of Impotence Research for pent of
women have low sexual desire. And I wonder if it's
a Journal of Impotence research, if they're really trying to
throw cast as wide e than a as possible, maybe
they've got an angle. Uh. And then we've got um
some lower numbers coming from two thousands three in the
British British Medical Journal showing that about ten percent of
(11:29):
englishwomen reported quote lack of interest in sex lasting at
least six months in the past year. And also the
HSDD diagnosis implies that you are upset that you don't
have sexual desire, and according to you a survey by
John Bancroft, who is the former director of the Kinzie Institute,
he asked women a do you lack interest in sex?
(11:51):
But b are you upset about it? And seven percent
of the women reported having no sexual thoughts in the
past month, but less than three percent said they had
the no sexual thoughts and didn't feel to stress about it.
So I think that that does indicate the alot and
just have other things going on and don't feel the
need to have sex despite what you know culture is
throwing at us what you see on television. You're just
(12:13):
going about your life and if sex happens, it happens,
but you're not dwelling on it. Yeah. And also a
lot of these articles brought up the point that before viagra,
if a guy, for instance, has e D, it was
just all right, well, that's too bad, you're impotent. He
was called impotent. Now that we have a medication that
can address that problem, it's almost sort of normalized, um,
(12:35):
this idea of constantly needing to have sex. Whereas you
know that question that um was that British British medical
journal was asking women if they really hadn't thought much
about sex in the past six months. I'm sure there
are plenty of men and women out there who go
through periods of time when they might choose to be
celibate or they just have a lot of personal things
going on when no, it's not it's not the number
(12:58):
one thing on their on their agenda. However, culturally, I
think because largely in part because of viagra, um, we're
trained to think that there's something wrong with that exactly.
I mean, imagine if you're if you're one of these women,
the seven percent of women who haven't had a sexual
thought in the past month that the Kinsie Institute director found,
(13:18):
and then you see the commercial for something like fla
Banca and you're like, oh, like crap, I haven't thought
about sex in six months. And then you're gonna start
taking a pill and you may not have needed it
in the first place. And one interesting point that was
raised by h a researcher at the Kinsey Institute in
the time article we we've been referencing is let's say
you have low libido and you take the pill, and
(13:42):
you know you're married, and all of a sudden you
do have sexual desire, but it's not for the person
that you are in this long term relationship with, Like
we can't control and doctors will never be able to
control who you feel a desire for. But maybe you've
lost sexual desire and aren't necessarily out of love with
the person that you've married. And you brought up a
good point when we were talking before podcasting Molly about
(14:02):
how with viagrah men have total control. They pop the
pill intending to have sex with a certain person for
you know, so intending to have a certain sexual encounter,
whereas with flabanserin this is something that you're taking every
day to just increase your just baseline sexual desire. There's
not as much of a control factor with it for
(14:23):
women as there is for men. And I don't know
that that's necessarily a bad thing, but especially if you're
in a long term relationship like the women in those
clinical trials. But I don't know, I mean, I guess
it definitely doesn't seem like we're on an even playing
field with this whole thing, No, I mean, you know,
and it's it does They're saying that you could go
off of it once you've addressed the problem, but it
(14:45):
does sound like it's gonna be something you're on every
day for the rest of your life. Um so yeah,
I mean you will be walking around, maybe having more
sexual thoughts, but not necessarily channeling them the way you
would wish to channel them. And I think from our
conversation it sounds like we're really, you know, coming out
against this and against this concept of having a sexual
desire disorder. And I don't want you guys to misinterpret
(15:07):
us saying this is just discrediting the existence of highwactive
sexual desire disorder. It's a very real thing for plenty
of women out there. But I do think with this
flaw answer and possibility, it does raise a very important
question about you know, what constitutes a normal sex drive,
and um, should women be kind of forcing themselves into
(15:30):
into I guess creating chemically creating sexual desire? Right? I mean,
I think it's helpful to think about it as physical
versus psychiatric. They're saying that hsd D is totally psychiatric,
and there went out there who physically can't have sex
and this bill won't help them. It's not like the
bira Wal just cause an erection. It's just gonna give
you the desire to have sex. So I think that's
(15:51):
a very tricky thing to say that you can medicate.
But again, the FDA has got a few years to
figure this out. Well no more as time goes on.
We just want to check in with this potentially life
changing drug. Yeah, and let us hear your thoughts on
the issue. Women, would you love to have a female
viagara out there? Do you think that flip answer in
(16:11):
might be the cure for all ills? Let us know.
Our email is mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com,
and we're going to read a couple of emails you
guys send in. So I've got two emails that covered
the same topic. One is from Michelle, who has lived
in Japan for over four years, and one is from
Wakana who is from Japan originally, and they both kind
(16:34):
of say the same thing. I'm going to start with
Bakana is and just kind of summarize Michelle's um. Well,
Connor writes here, in Japan, especially in public bathrooms, we
Japanese women hate to be heard when we're peeing. So
what do we do? We just keep flushing the toilet
water to muffle the sound. I usually flush water twice
during my time. It's not ecological at all, is it.
So some companies came up with the great idea. It's
(16:56):
called to himmy and I don't know if I'm pronouncing
that right, but the translation, according to her would be
Princess of the sound. And this is a muffling sound
device and restroom stalls it creates music of the brook
along with chirups of birds. Almost every public restroom stall
has this device now, so all you have to do
is close the door, sit down, press the button and
take a leak. No need to turn towards the back
(17:17):
and jiggle the handle. We all know it's obvious to
the people outside the stall that we are peeing. We
don't care. At least the peace sound is disguised. And
Michelle wrote in was sort of the funny anctote that
the first time she kind of realized that she was
the only person she could hear in her bathroom, that
all the other ladies were just flushing toilets and playing
the sound recorders. And then she realized, huh, I can
(17:38):
only hear myself. I kind of wish i'll stuff work sad.
One of those devices really cool. I think that it
would make the office environment for women far less stressful.
Just my two cents, all right, Well, I've got one
here from Angela in response to our podcast on cord blood,
and she said, in your chord blood podcast, you fail
to consider the option of delaying chord clamping, so your
newborn receives the benefits of his or her own cord
(17:59):
blood the time of birth. Studies show infantive experience the
lay core clamping. Delayed chord clamping, that's kind of hard
to say. Have a higher volume of oxygenated blood as
well as higher iron stores. Delayed chord clamping may not
be an option offered to mom's the birth at hospitals,
but it is common in home births. So thank you, Angela.
(18:19):
So let's do one more. Um. This is also about
the poop podcast, and we did that one. It aired
in March, and apparently we were quite timely, Kristen, because
marches colon cancer Awareness month. I know it's not March anymore,
but you can be aware of your colon all year long.
This is from Janelle, who writes that one of the
signs you might have colon cancer is a change in poop.
(18:40):
It's a common misconception that women don't get calon cancer.
But that's just not true. And since I know you
ladies love your stats, I'll throw this at you. In
two thousand six, twenty six thousand, three women died of
colon cancer in your state Georgia six d and seventy
women died of colon cancer in two thousand and six.
Colon cancer is treatable early, so woman's age fifty plus
us it is not a bad idea at all to
(19:01):
get screened. Also, changes in bat habits shouldn't be ignored
if you're under fifty, as calling cancer can also be
found in women under the age. I email because my
mom had a polyp found in her calling after changing
her poop got treated. Earline has had no problem since.
So again, ladies, don't ignore the poop. Pay attention to
you poop, and also email us. Our email is mom
(19:23):
stuff at how stuff works dot com and you can
head over to our weekday home. It is the website
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics because it how stuff works dot Com.
Want more house stuff works, check out our blogs on
(19:43):
the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
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Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camry.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom never told you?
From House to works dot Com. Hey there, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Christen, I'm Molly. Molly. Something I
(00:20):
did not realize was that viagra has been around for
almost a decade. Now, Wow, can you believe that that?
That is kind of hard to believe. Yeah, because I
remember when it first came out it was so scandalous,
so ha ha ha. Well, I'm still kind of scandalized
by the commercials. Is that as telling you beforehand? Yeah,
(00:40):
I just don't like viagra commercials. Why don't you like them? Molly? Well,
for a while, they had like a bunch of guys
sitting around a studio singing about viagra, the Beava Viagra song,
and I was just like, I don't know, I just
couldn't believe that guys would do that. I just really
couldn't believe that guys would sit around and play guitar
and sing about that. But they were so happy they
no longer had to deal with They're a rectile dysfunction,
(01:02):
all right, And well the new one, the new one
really gets my goat. I was telling you this earlier.
There's the new one where the guys walking down the
street and then there like a vision of him pops
up in the window and he's like, are you gonna
ask your doctor? And the guy walking down the side
of it goes about what and the mirror image goes
about our reptile dysfunction? And at that point I'm just like,
(01:22):
why don't you ask your doctor about the fact that
you see like visions of yourself in the store windows.
I mean, it's just I can't buy the fact that
that someone's gonna actually I can't buy the fact he's
gonna need viagra after he's walked down the sidewalk talking
to store windows. Well, Molly, if you have a problem
with male viagra commercials, is that redundant? The same mail viagra? Um?
(01:44):
Is it? Christen? That's our topic for today. That is
the topic for today. The question is what's going to
happen when the female viagra comes on the market About
those commercials. I predict right now that if a female
viagra comes on the market, the commercials are going to
be very very similar to tampon commercials. Oh, They're gonna
be awful. They're gonna be like all these perfectly you know,
(02:05):
done up lady singing around talking about problems during certain times,
lots of reds and pinks. They might be sipping on
afternoon tea, yes, definitely afternoon tea or cocktail, yeah, just
eating yogurts. It's gonna be like it's gonna be every
single lady commercial rolled up into one. Yes, and I
might not help be wondering why Molly and I are
going on and on about this female of viagra question.
(02:27):
And it's because last winter, around November, a pharmaceutical firm
called Boeinger Ingleheim did a very large test presented the
results of a large clinical phase three clinical trial on
a medication called flaban serinabanserin. They first tried to develop
(02:48):
this as an indepressant. Didn't work too well, but in
their animals studies, they said they found out that, uh
noticed that, hey, these these mice seem a little excited. Well,
and that's also how by came around. They were testing
for one thing and then they're like, oh, by the way,
this this can cause erections. And so ever, since they
complete those animal traals, they think they have you know
(03:09):
what they're terming the female viagra on their hands, um,
but it's let's start off real quick, which is a
distinction that viagra causes blood flow to head to the
penis to cause an erection. It addresses a physical problem.
These people, the German pharmaceutical company is saying that they
can solve a psychiatric problem known as hypoactive sexual desire
(03:33):
disorder or h s d D. And this is a
stressing lack of sexual desire absent other medical conditions. So
it's not that a woman physically can't have sex or
doesn't enjoy sex, it's that she doesn't even want it
in the first place. Right, So I mean all these
these the tagline in the media of female viagra's kind
of a misnomer um. And this would be a pill
(03:55):
that you would take every day, kind of like birth control.
And they don't exactly know how flab answer and stimulates
a sexual desire, but they do know that it modulates
a set of neurotransmitters, especially serotonin and to a lesser
extent in dopamine and norap enough rin to kind of
adjust those levels and and get everything everything cooking down
there to cause some desire. Well, it might be in
(04:15):
your head too, and that's not see. That's the thing
is this is a very controversial diagnosis in the first place.
So I think that it's rubbed some people the wrong way,
that people are trying to cure something that some doctors
aren't even sure is a problem. Because let's say you
don't want to have sex, you are absent that desire.
What if you just had a baby, what if you're
really stressed at work, what if you have like the
(04:37):
common cold. There are all sorts of reasons why you
might not have the desire to have sex. And some
worry that these doctors are just rushing to give woman
a pill for something that's not actually a problem, right,
because it keeps coming. All these articles that Molly and
I ran across kept coming back to this question of well,
what does constitute a normal sex drive? With viagra, it's
(04:57):
addressing a very obvious problem with a very od use fixed.
You know, the penis is not erect, and now it
is there, you go, problem solved. However, this issue of
sexual desire, like you said, which could it is very
much a mental issue and also compounded by a number
of our environmental factors. Isn't something you know that you
can just say it's going to be the same for
(05:19):
everybody and should be the same for everybody. And there
were a number of women in these articles, such as
Liz Kanner, who is the director of orgasm Ink, which
is a documentary film about the over medicalization of sex.
We have Julie nor Sigian who's the executive director of
Women's Health Advocacy of Our Bodies, Ourselves and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
And we have Lorie Typher who is a PhD psychologist
(05:40):
at the New York University School of Medicine. All these women,
these names just keep popping up in all of these articles,
coming out and saying wait a second, you know why
we're coming out and saying, well, this is this is
a great thing for all these women who don't want
to have sex, but we're not really addressing the root
of the problem, right And there are so many other
they say, options to turn to before this, you know, therapy, um, exercise,
(06:01):
just you know, things that don't involve taking a pill
that we don't know the long term effects of. But
you know what, Kristen, let's see what this pill actually does,
because it might be one thing to say, oh maybe
it's not a real disorder. But if I'm gonna want
to have sex every day, I'm sure there are women
out there who are like what I could deal with that,
I have problems with desire. Let's let's hear what you got,
(06:21):
baringer Ingleheim. Well, Molly um and this information is coming
from a very good blog post about this on Neuroskeptic,
and it breaks down, Uh, the research paper that was
published called the Pharmacology of flab Anserin, and essentially the
research shows that it's sort of a cross between a
(06:43):
an antidepressant and um a dopamine receptor agonist which stimulates
the dopamine in the brain, and also a mild sedative. Now,
it's not gonna be marketed as an antidepressant, right, They're
gonna they will be marketed as something that increases desire.
But yeah, I mean one quote was that it's essentially
like a glass of wine. And they performed three trials
(07:06):
with a total of about four hundred women who were
either taking a hundred milligrams of fla ancer in every
night um or they were on a placebo pill, and
relative to the placebo the women who were taking the
flab ancer in increased the number of quote satisfying sexual
encounters by point seven per month points of an extra
(07:28):
sexual satisfying encounters per month, so not even one a week,
not even in one hire, so not even an entire
satisfying sexual just over half of a satisfying sexual encounter.
You know what I found kind of interesting, maybe this
is just me, is that in the flab anceran group,
the women before they had a baseline paid where they
(07:50):
just took, you know, a regular journal of sexual activity,
they had two point eight sexually satisfying events within the
period already, and during the study period had they had
four point five sexually satisfying events at the same time,
So that is more than a increase in the number
of sexually satisfying events they were having. So they're basically
going from bi weekly sex, let's say, to weekly six.
(08:14):
But we don't know a lot about who these men are.
All we know is that their pre menopausal, we know
their pre menopozle, and they're in long term relationships. So
I mean, we don't know, do we how many kids
they have, what kind of jobs they have. And this
all goes back to, as you said, Kristen, this question
of what is a normal sex drive for a woman
who is in a long term relationship. I mean, what
(08:35):
other factors might be going on where you know, two
point eight sexually satisfying events isn't enough and four point
five represents a really big increase. Now, the big question
is whether or not that point seven extra satisfying sexual
encounters is going to be enough for the Food and
Drug Administration to give flop answer in the go ahead
and for the company to start marketing it. Yeah, it's
(08:57):
gonna be years before you could actually see one of
these dreaded well answer and commercials, right, because there are
and there are also other contenders in this market. Because
of course it's going to be huge, the first quote
female viagra to come out on the market. It's gonna
sell like Gangbusters, I'm sure. Well, it'll be interesting, I think,
to see if it sells more to women or to
men who want women to feel more sexual desire. Right, Um,
(09:18):
But a couple of other contenders are testosterone patch called intrisia,
and in late two thousand and four, the FDA was
on the brink of approving it, but then uh, the
advisory panel saw found a number of problems with the
evidence for its effectiveness and its safety. So they kind
of went back to the drawing board with that, and
then they've got another drug, and I think this drugs
(09:39):
kind of interesting. This is called re lamino tide that's
in development for not only low female sex drive, but
also for male erectile dysfunction. So this one is in
phase two clinical trials and it's a new chemical created
in the laboratory that's going to act on the central
nervous system on your hypothalamus, which is involved in sexual arousal.
(10:00):
I will say they lost me on this one when
they said it was given in the form of a
nasal spray, because I am just really bad with nasal
sprays that might that might not put you in the mood.
I just yeah, I just always ends up wrong allergy
seasons reference I digress um. So yeah, So there's a
lot of effort and money being poured into looking at,
(10:23):
you know, this issue, trying to address this issue of
this hypoactive sexual disorder in women. But then the question
is also um, statistically, how many alley women are we
talking about what portion of the female population. Well, and
this is where things get interesting because I think that
depending on how you asked the question, which we don't
know how these studies did. I mean, everyone's gonna admit
(10:44):
that they don't have sexual desire at some point. I mean,
when I'm at work right now, I'm doing this podcast,
I don't have sexual desire, and I find that comforting. Coolly.
I'm just saying it might depend when they ask, if
they come in ask me in the middle of the podcast. No,
that's a good point. We don't know exactly what what
survey questions they're asking, but we do know that according
to one Surrey question, I got pretty pretty large results
according to the January February two thousand five issue of
(11:07):
the International journal Journal of Impotence Research for pent of
women have low sexual desire. And I wonder if it's
a Journal of Impotence research, if they're really trying to
throw cast as wide e than a as possible, maybe
they've got an angle. Uh. And then we've got um
some lower numbers coming from two thousands three in the
British British Medical Journal showing that about ten percent of
(11:29):
englishwomen reported quote lack of interest in sex lasting at
least six months in the past year. And also the
HSDD diagnosis implies that you are upset that you don't
have sexual desire, and according to you a survey by
John Bancroft, who is the former director of the Kinzie Institute,
he asked women a do you lack interest in sex?
(11:51):
But b are you upset about it? And seven percent
of the women reported having no sexual thoughts in the
past month, but less than three percent said they had
the no sexual thoughts and didn't feel to stress about it.
So I think that that does indicate the alot and
just have other things going on and don't feel the
need to have sex despite what you know culture is
throwing at us what you see on television. You're just
(12:13):
going about your life and if sex happens, it happens,
but you're not dwelling on it. Yeah. And also a
lot of these articles brought up the point that before viagra,
if a guy, for instance, has e D, it was
just all right, well, that's too bad, you're impotent. He
was called impotent. Now that we have a medication that
can address that problem, it's almost sort of normalized, um,
(12:35):
this idea of constantly needing to have sex. Whereas you
know that question that um was that British British medical
journal was asking women if they really hadn't thought much
about sex in the past six months. I'm sure there
are plenty of men and women out there who go
through periods of time when they might choose to be
celibate or they just have a lot of personal things
going on when no, it's not it's not the number
(12:58):
one thing on their on their agenda. However, culturally, I
think because largely in part because of viagra, um, we're
trained to think that there's something wrong with that exactly.
I mean, imagine if you're if you're one of these women,
the seven percent of women who haven't had a sexual
thought in the past month that the Kinsie Institute director found,
(13:18):
and then you see the commercial for something like fla
Banca and you're like, oh, like crap, I haven't thought
about sex in six months. And then you're gonna start
taking a pill and you may not have needed it
in the first place. And one interesting point that was
raised by h a researcher at the Kinsey Institute in
the time article we we've been referencing is let's say
you have low libido and you take the pill, and
(13:42):
you know you're married, and all of a sudden you
do have sexual desire, but it's not for the person
that you are in this long term relationship with, Like
we can't control and doctors will never be able to
control who you feel a desire for. But maybe you've
lost sexual desire and aren't necessarily out of love with
the person that you've married. And you brought up a
good point when we were talking before podcasting Molly about
(14:02):
how with viagrah men have total control. They pop the
pill intending to have sex with a certain person for
you know, so intending to have a certain sexual encounter,
whereas with flabanserin this is something that you're taking every
day to just increase your just baseline sexual desire. There's
not as much of a control factor with it for
(14:23):
women as there is for men. And I don't know
that that's necessarily a bad thing, but especially if you're
in a long term relationship like the women in those
clinical trials. But I don't know, I mean, I guess
it definitely doesn't seem like we're on an even playing
field with this whole thing, No, I mean, you know,
and it's it does They're saying that you could go
off of it once you've addressed the problem, but it
(14:45):
does sound like it's gonna be something you're on every
day for the rest of your life. Um so yeah,
I mean you will be walking around, maybe having more
sexual thoughts, but not necessarily channeling them the way you
would wish to channel them. And I think from our
conversation it sounds like we're really, you know, coming out
against this and against this concept of having a sexual
desire disorder. And I don't want you guys to misinterpret
(15:07):
us saying this is just discrediting the existence of highwactive
sexual desire disorder. It's a very real thing for plenty
of women out there. But I do think with this
flaw answer and possibility, it does raise a very important
question about you know, what constitutes a normal sex drive,
and um, should women be kind of forcing themselves into
(15:30):
into I guess creating chemically creating sexual desire? Right? I mean,
I think it's helpful to think about it as physical
versus psychiatric. They're saying that hsd D is totally psychiatric,
and there went out there who physically can't have sex
and this bill won't help them. It's not like the
bira Wal just cause an erection. It's just gonna give
you the desire to have sex. So I think that's
(15:51):
a very tricky thing to say that you can medicate.
But again, the FDA has got a few years to
figure this out. Well no more as time goes on.
We just want to check in with this potentially life
changing drug. Yeah, and let us hear your thoughts on
the issue. Women, would you love to have a female
viagara out there? Do you think that flip answer in
(16:11):
might be the cure for all ills? Let us know.
Our email is mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com,
and we're going to read a couple of emails you
guys send in. So I've got two emails that covered
the same topic. One is from Michelle, who has lived
in Japan for over four years, and one is from
Wakana who is from Japan originally, and they both kind
(16:34):
of say the same thing. I'm going to start with
Bakana is and just kind of summarize Michelle's um. Well,
Connor writes here, in Japan, especially in public bathrooms, we
Japanese women hate to be heard when we're peeing. So
what do we do? We just keep flushing the toilet
water to muffle the sound. I usually flush water twice
during my time. It's not ecological at all, is it.
So some companies came up with the great idea. It's
(16:56):
called to himmy and I don't know if I'm pronouncing
that right, but the translation, according to her would be
Princess of the sound. And this is a muffling sound
device and restroom stalls it creates music of the brook
along with chirups of birds. Almost every public restroom stall
has this device now, so all you have to do
is close the door, sit down, press the button and
take a leak. No need to turn towards the back
(17:17):
and jiggle the handle. We all know it's obvious to
the people outside the stall that we are peeing. We
don't care. At least the peace sound is disguised. And
Michelle wrote in was sort of the funny anctote that
the first time she kind of realized that she was
the only person she could hear in her bathroom, that
all the other ladies were just flushing toilets and playing
the sound recorders. And then she realized, huh, I can
(17:38):
only hear myself. I kind of wish i'll stuff work sad.
One of those devices really cool. I think that it
would make the office environment for women far less stressful.
Just my two cents, all right, Well, I've got one
here from Angela in response to our podcast on cord blood,
and she said, in your chord blood podcast, you fail
to consider the option of delaying chord clamping, so your
newborn receives the benefits of his or her own cord
(17:59):
blood the time of birth. Studies show infantive experience the
lay core clamping. Delayed chord clamping, that's kind of hard
to say. Have a higher volume of oxygenated blood as
well as higher iron stores. Delayed chord clamping may not
be an option offered to mom's the birth at hospitals,
but it is common in home births. So thank you, Angela.
(18:19):
So let's do one more. Um. This is also about
the poop podcast, and we did that one. It aired
in March, and apparently we were quite timely, Kristen, because
marches colon cancer Awareness month. I know it's not March anymore,
but you can be aware of your colon all year long.
This is from Janelle, who writes that one of the
signs you might have colon cancer is a change in poop.
(18:40):
It's a common misconception that women don't get calon cancer.
But that's just not true. And since I know you
ladies love your stats, I'll throw this at you. In
two thousand six, twenty six thousand, three women died of
colon cancer in your state Georgia six d and seventy
women died of colon cancer in two thousand and six.
Colon cancer is treatable early, so woman's age fifty plus
us it is not a bad idea at all to
(19:01):
get screened. Also, changes in bat habits shouldn't be ignored
if you're under fifty, as calling cancer can also be
found in women under the age. I email because my
mom had a polyp found in her calling after changing
her poop got treated. Earline has had no problem since.
So again, ladies, don't ignore the poop. Pay attention to
you poop, and also email us. Our email is mom
(19:23):
stuff at how stuff works dot com and you can
head over to our weekday home. It is the website
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics because it how stuff works dot Com.
Want more house stuff works, check out our blogs on
(19:43):
the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
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