In a subset of women, doctors say, sexual disinterest can cause significant personal distress, clinically classified as "hypoactive sexual desire disorder".
In general, the vital energies of man, nature, or the supernatural, as a consequence of pollution, may become either hypoactive or hyperactive.
LOW SEX DRIVE What it is Hypoactive sexual desire disorder is defined as a deficiency or absence of sexual fantasies, thoughts and desire for sexual activity, which causes distress.
So we conducted multiple clinical trials and the women in our studies who took it for hypoactive sexual desire disorder [low libido] reported significant improvements in sexual desire and satisfactory sexual experiences".
In 2006, Procter and Gamble, makers of a testosterone patch for women, sponsored a survey showing one in 10 postmenopausal women had hypoactive [low] sexual desire disorder (the company sold its drug business in 2009).
And it is neuroplasticity that may help explain why hypoactive sexual desire disorder is a mostly female condition, why it seems that women, more than men, lose interest in having sex with their long-term partners.
There is also debate over how widespread hypoactive sexual desire disorder actually is among women.
The next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a psychiatry reference book, proposes to do away with the old diagnosis of hypoactive sexual desire disorder.
There are three types: hyperactive, as afflicted the patients described above; hypoactive, often overlooked because, like depression, it is characterized by apathy and sluggishness; and a mixed state, with both hyperactive and hypoactive periods.
Lack of lust, when it creates emotional distress, meets the psychiatric profession's clinical criteria for H.S.D.D., or hypoactive sexual-desire disorder.
(Hypoactive sexual desire disorder is diagnosed in people who lack interest in sex).
