Health and Beauty Articles for Women

To help find a sensation that suits you, we tested nearly 25 varieties and picked six that felt, tasted, smelled, and looked best every thrust of the way

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Ever notice how even the nicest guy can act like an insensitive dolt when you’re trying to convey something important—your fear of being fired, that you’re drifting apart from your best friend, even how bummed you are that the two of you have hit a sexual dry spell? It’s not that he doesn’t care—really it isn’t—it’s just that men process information much differently than women, and as a result, your words often get lost in translation. But don’t stress, the solution is simple: Learn how to talk to your man. We’ve got great communicating tips.

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Raise your body’s natural defenses with this eating plan and stop almost any sickness before it starts

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Disengage from life’s to-do list and reclaim the carefree attitude you had as a kid with these 8 tips.

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The not-so-sexy truth:
In the past decade, researchers have found that hormonal contraceptives–including the Pill, the Patch, and the vaginal ring–can dampen how often women want, think about, and even respond to sexual stimulation. And an online Women’s Health poll backs that up: We found that 36 percent of you firmly believe the Pill muffles your mojo.

Unfortunately, no official stats are available on how prevalent this problem really is. When asked to estimate how many of their patients on the Pill have suffered a blow to their sex lives, doctors’ answers range from 10 percent to 40 percent–though some sexual-health specialists argue that 40 percent is a lot closer to reality.

The phenomenon may be underestimated because many docs simply aren’t clued in to the, well, ins and outs of their patients’ sex lives. “Sex drive is not a subject most doctors are comfortable discussing, because it’s not something they learn about in detail in medical school,” says Irwin Goldstein, M.D., director of sexual medicine at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego. And while some European countries, including Germany, list decreased desire as a side effect on birth-control packages, there are no printed warnings about it in the United States.

Why so horny?

So, what drives your love machine? A key component is testosterone. As a woman, you don’t have enough juice to grow a goatee or develop a burning desire for an Xbox 360; but the amount you do have plays a role in your randiness, especially just before ovulation (when you’re most likely to get pregnant). Every month at midcycle, women’s brains signal their ovaries, which create 50 percent of the body’s testosterone, to produce a surge of the lust-stimulating stuff.

Testosterone also initiates blood flow that causes your girly parts to become plump and sensitive. This leads to lubrication and, with any luck, one hell of an orgasm (according to Hormones and Behavior, Canadian researchers report that women with higher levels of testosterone climax more often than those with lower hormone levels.)

What’s the holdup?
The problem is that some contraceptives alter the body’s testosterone production–and not in a good way. This occurs for two reasons. First, the hormones in the Pill put the ovaries to sleep, halting ovulation. Conked-out ovaries can’t produce testosterone.

Then your birth control renders the other 50 percent of your testosterone useless, thanks to the super-potent synthetic estrogen it contains. After you take each pill, your liver–convinced that you’ve consumed a potentially toxic amount of estrogen–starts pumping out a protein called sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG). It works by glomming onto sex hormones (including estrogen, but also testosterone) like a mosquito to fly paper. As more of your testosterone glues itself to SHBG, less of it is available for your body to use. This “free” testosterone–whatever’s produced that SHBG doesn’t swallow up–partially determines your sex drive. In fact, a 2004 Boston University study found that subjects who reported the greatest sexual desire had higher levels of free testosterone. (Maybe that’s A-Rod’s problem.)

Exceptions to the rule:
Now, even if you’ve been popping BC pills since puberty, the artificial flux might never affect your sex drive. That’s because the Pill lowers testosterone in all women, but it only lowers libido in some. To demo the discrepancy, experts cite a 1995 study in which British scientists gave 150 women either an oral contraceptive or a placebo for 4 months. (All subjects were unable to conceive, either because they’d had their tubes tied or they had partners with vasectomies.) For nearly half the women taking the Pill, sexual interest and intercourse frequency took a nosedive. However, sex drive did not stall for the others who took the drug.

“Unfortunately, we really don’t know what the discriminating factor is,” says Claudia Panzer, M.D., a female-sexual-dysfunction specialist and endocrinologist at the Canterbury Wellness Center in Denver. But theories exist. The most popular is that nonhormonal factors help keep your sex drive in high gear. For instance, not having to worry about getting pregnant may increase your arousal and, in effect, cancel out the Pill’s libido-squashing potential, says Cynthia Graham, Ph.D., a researcher at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. The adrenaline rush of a budding relationship can also override the effects of low testosterone.

Get your mojo back:

Forget everything you’ve heard about stress-eating being a bad thing. If you put the right foods in your pie hole (i.e., not pie), noshing when your nerves are jangling can actually calm you down. And that’s great news, because the last thing you need is more stress, which over time can increase your risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, and obesity — and the odds that you’ll go ballistic on Mom when she asks, for the third time, what your unemployed fiancé does for a living. These yummy, easy-to-find foods soothe stress and can counteract the damage that chronic pressure does to your bod. Stock up on the lot of them so that when the tension rises you can eat instead of freak.

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Quell your craving by reaching for one of these low calorie cookies

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Slumping your shoulders doesn’t just make you resemble one of our long-extinct ancestors—if you don’t stand up straight, no amount of exercise will give you the hot bod you’re after. Here’s why: Over time, poor posture takes a serious toll on your spine, shoulders, hips, and knees. In fact, it can cause a cascade of structural flaws that lead to back and joint pain, reduced flexibility, and compromised muscles, all of which limit your ability to burn fat and build strength. But you can head off all these problems by using the exercises at left to fix your form, soothe your pain, and get your curves moving in the right direction.

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We asked you what you do to unwind, and you responded with everything from retail therapy to hand massages. Here are the top 12 ways WH readers de-stress.

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