Female sexuality has been ignored for much of history, and this is also noticeable in the scientific progress that has been made on the subject. A paradigmatic case is that of sexual enhancers: there is still no version of Viagra for women that can be compared to its male analogue in terms of effectiveness and mildness of side effects.
However, this could be changing now, with the appearance on the scene of an alternative that consists of a type of non-drug-based intervention that acts directly on the brain.
It wasn’t that long ago that the pill that was unofficially called “female Viagra” began to be marketed.
Its real name is Addyi, and although the press spread its properties with enthusiasm, it soon proved to be very ineffective in increasing sexual desire, and it has also been seen that its side effects are too intense to consider this product. a hopeful alternative.
These disappointing results have led many researchers to decide to tackle the problem from scratch, without taking too many things for granted. One of the methods of sexual enhancement for women that is being tested and that offers the most promising results is, for example, a tool that is not even based on the release of an active ingredient through pills. In this case, the key is to stimulate parts of the brain through signals that act through the scalp and skull bones.
This promising tool has two different variants, although Both are based on the use of electric shocks on parts of the brain related to the experience of pleasure and the reward system, all without surgery.
An occasional help to feel more desire
One of these two tools is called Direct Current Stimulation (DCS) and consists of placing a device on the head, which sends a diffuse electrical signal for about 20 minutes over strategically chosen areas of the brain.
This stimulation does not serve in itself to experience greater sexual desire; Its function is to ensure that a greater variety of stimuli collected by the senses are appreciated as sexually suggestive That is, the DCS serves to predispose.
An option to increase libido in women permanently
The second option that is being worked on to intervene in the lack of sexual desire in women is called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). This is a tool that began to be studied basically as a resource to treat therapy-resistant depression (showing to be effective in this type of problem). Basically, TMS consists of creating a magnetic field around the head through which the areas of the brain that are related to the reward system are stimulated. All this, without pain.
Specifically, it enhances the activity of those brain regions that react to pleasure and, in general, what is perceived as a reward (and which we therefore want to repeat). It is precisely these areas that show less activity than normal in women who notice that they perceive a problem in their lack of sexual desire.
In this way, TMS allows those areas of the brain that remain in an unusually low state of activation in women with a lack of sexual desire to become activated just as they do in most people, but without crossing that threshold. That is, there would be no risk of going overboard and generating the opposite problem.
The results obtained by using this technique are very promising. Through an experiment whose results have been published in PLoS ONE and in which 20 men and women participated, it was found that TMS made the activation patterns of the parts of the brain that mediate the appearance of pleasure significantly more intense.
Stimulate the brain, but without drugs
Both methods of brain stimulation have many advantages. Unlike drug treatment, they go to the root of the problem without going through the metabolization of substances that circulate in the blood, and therefore their side effects should be much lower.
Besides, These two options in development pose different approaches TMS is used to introduce long-term changes in brain function after going through a series of sessions in the clinic, while DCS offers an instant solution whose effects only last a few minutes, just like the Conventional Viagra.
Of course, there will always be the debate as to whether lack of sexual desire is in itself a clinical problem or not; It may be that the problem is not with the person. However, that discussion cannot overshadow the fact that developing solutions for women who want to increase their sexual desire is beneficial.
