Your gut health can affect many areas of your life, including your sexual life. Digestive issues and sex have a direct link, so it is incredibly important to take care of your digestive health!
Digestive issues include a variety of things, from IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), to gluten allergies, to food sensitivities as a whole. Your guts microbiome may be inflamed or messed up, which means that you may not feel well overall.
So what is a microbiome?
The microbiome is the composition of all of the bacteria, archaea, and fungi in your tummy. There are billions of them! This microbiome can affect so many things that include your mood, digestive health, and even sex and your interest in sex. This includes sexual satisfaction.
Serotonin produced by your body is primarily produced in the gut. So what does this mean? If your microbiome is compromised, you may be unable to produce the optimal amount of serotonin. We’ve learned and written about serotonin before- serotonin contributes to your overall happiness and is affected by sex as well. Low serotonin is linked directly to low sex drive. If you are sad, you probably aren’t interested in sex. But what if the reason you are sad is that you have digestive issues that are causing a lack of serotonin production?
Digestive issues also affect your energy levels. Since the bacteria in your belly helps create B vitamins, the fewer B vitamins you have, the less energy you have! Plus, you may not be regulating your blood sugar properly, which means your blood sugar levels may be erratic, causing you to crash. This can cause long-lasting dips in energy. Who wants to have sex when you are exhausted? So next time you say you are too tired for sex, think again. Maybe this is the case, but maybe your gut is out of whack. Digestive issues are no joke.
Desire and arousal are also affected by digestive issues. If your microbiome is not optimal, you may have inflammation. Inflammation causes lower sex drive as well, and is common with sexual health dysfunction.
What can you do to help solve your digestive issues?
Well, there are a variety of ways to work on your digestive issues. One of those ways is to take pre and probiotics. It’s shocking, but probiotics definitely have the potential to help to improve your sex life – given digestive issues are the effector. There are many kinds of probiotics on the market. Most are focused on helping imbalanced bacteria in your tummy, which is medically termed as dysbiosis. Your health care provider can diagnose you with dysbiosis, and help you to find the best probiotic for you.
There are many things to know about probiotics. For example, there are multiple types. Those that are stored in the fridge are generally thought to be more high quality than those that are shelf-stable. Lactobacillus is the “best” kind of probiotic in many providers’ eyes.
Since digestive issues include bacterial imbalance, and bacterial imbalance is shown to cause increased inflammation, probiotics are thought to help people manage symptoms such as IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), IBD (irritable bowel disease), and other inflammatory conditions that affect the gut. Probiotics can also help things like gas, diarrhea, and constipation. Now let’s be real and remember that you should always see a healthcare provider first before randomly starting probiotics on your own.
Part of the reason for this is because:
- Probiotics alone probably won’t solve your digestive issues
- Sometimes, probiotic intake up page can cause more problems than they solve!
You may actually have bacterial overgrowth in your intestinal bowels, which means probiotics could worsen symptoms instead of alleviating them. Digestive health care professionals are able to help identify your body’s needs and monitor your progress.
Some healthcare professionals may recommend changing your diet to help with digestive issues as well. An elimination diet may be suggested to find what could be causing inflammation in your gut. They may also recommend fermented foods, and certain high in probiotic yogurts to help.
Don’t forget to exercise too! Partaking in regular exercise will help boost your serotonin levels, which can help your sex life as well.
What if your digestive issues are chronic?
Listen, we get it. How easy is it to be in the mood to have sex, when you feel like you constantly have to be in the bathroom?
Conditions like colitis, celiacs disease, Crohn’s disease, IBD, and IBS make leaving the toilet hard. They are also incredibly hard to get under control sometimes. The symptoms of these diseases include but are not limited to nausea, bloating, constant flatulence, pain, and fatigue, and even vomiting.
These conditions have not only physical effects, but can also cause emotional distress. When you do not feel well, everything is affected. This also translates to your sex life. It is crazy to see the incredible problems that digestive issues can wreak upon those dealing with them.
What to do if you think you have a GI problem.
First, make an appointment with your doctor. If you need a referral to a GI (gastroenterologist doctor), they can help with that. Doctors are trained to help you manage and treat the symptoms and side effects of digestive issues.
However, doctors can also determine if this is a mild, microbiome-related problem. The microbiome is complicated, just like your sexual drive and libido! There are so many things that affect other, seemingly unrelated things in your body.
A gastroenterologist is a medical specialist that focuses on your intestinal and digestive health. If you have chronic diarrhea, constipation, sugar cravings, weight fluctuations, and other gut-related issues, we definitely recommend seeing one as soon as possible. They will be able to check for abnormalities in your digestive tract. This can include endoscopy, colonoscopy, stool sample testing, and etc.
Fixing digestive issues is not always a quick fix. It can take time to rebalance your gut and even identify exactly what the problem is. Seeing a licensed healthcare professional is the best way to jump-start this process. Do not self-diagnose!
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