Life

The Truth About Sex Drive & Birth Control

by Autumn Jones

The most sought after perk of taking birth control is that your chance of getting pregnant plummets to almost zilch. That being said, there could be other things that take a nose dive when you start taking the pill; for instance, your sex drive. If you're one of the women who is less in the mood when using contraceptives, you may be wondering does your libido increase when you stop taking birth control or could there be other factors influencing your lack of desire to get it on? The truth is, it's probably a little bit of both, although the hormones in birth control play a large role.

To have a full force sex drive, you need to have all your hormones firing at top speed, but the use of oral contraceptives can interfere with the way testosterone is functioning in your body. The hormone testosterone is a vital piece of a healthy libido, but taking birth control can cause less testosterone to circulate in your body, according to the findings of a study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Additionally, the use of birth control stops ovulation which halts the testosterone peaks that occur at that point in your cycle. So normalizing hormones after going off the pill could help to rev up your sex drive again.

As Mind Body Green explained, "birth control pills put quite the kibosh on your libido, and it’s up to you to build it back up." This means that your urge to get busy may not snap right back after you say good-bye to birth control. Since using birth control can affect your hormones and other nutrients your body needs, eating a healthy diet and taking supplements can help to get your levels back on track after stopping use, as Natural Fertility Info explained.

Taking a holistic look at your health after going off birth control can be valuable when trying to understand how your sex drive is related to this change. According to a systematic review of studies between 1975 and 2011 to determine the link between oral contraceptives and decreased libido published in the European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Health Care, the results are not conclusive enough to point to ending use of contraceptives as the sole cause for a change in sexual desire.

As Psychology Today pointed out, birth control has been the subject of more than 44,000 research publications. Since results have been vastly contradictory, it's safe to say that each woman has a different experience when using and stopping use of birth control. When you quit taking birth control, the way your body reacts is unique to you and it may take time to discover what your new normal is.