Fitness Libido

Posted: Mon 19 Jul, 2010

What do the gym & the bedroom have in common? Quite a lot, as you’ll see.

For best results during exercise and bedroom activities, your body has a hormonal priority which, if not respected, can lead to decreased performance in both areas. Our hormones are made from raw building materials broken down from our food. This fact alone reinforces the importance of choosing to eat the highest quality food you can.

Our hormones are produced from these raw materials in a specific order or priority - from the most important to the least important.

Our most important hormones are our stress hormones, followed by our growth and repair hormones, followed finally by our sex hormones.

Our stress hormones are the most important because they give us the ability to respond to anything that is causing us stress. This can be seen in nature from the simple fact that living organisms desire survival above all else. It’s no good if you successfully have sex and get killed.

Next most important are our sleep/growth & repair hormones - allowing our body to recover from stress. Sleep/growth & repair hormones are important if you want a full recovery from exercise, which ultimately leads to better overall performance. It’s common for people to work around poor repair hormone production and the symptoms of poor sleep with supplements that aid growth and recovery.

Finally, we dedicate energy to producing our sex hormones. Once we’re safe & have no threats to our continued survival - and have calmed down, we can now continue the process of passing on our genetics. Sex hormones obviously regulate our libido, giving us the performance we desire while practicing for a new or expanding family. Humans however have very cleverly worked around low libidos through high volume sales of a magic little blue pill (viagra).

In life threatening situations (high stress), it is possible for our libido to increase, as one last-ditch effort to spread our genes before our mortal body takes it’s last breath.

The human body priorities hormone production starting with stress hormones, followed by growth / repair hormones and finally with sex hormones. There are plenty of ways to cheat the system but your body will always balance the scales in the end.

By taking care of yourself and reducing the stress that exists within your life, you won’t have your body continually focusing on the manufacture of stress hormones, with little left over to produce sleep/growth & repair and sex hormones. You’ll save money by not masking the symptoms of stress, and most importantly - you’ll increase your performance!

About the Author

Peter Lacoste is the Personal Training co-ordinator and works in specialised musculo-skeletal therapy at Levity. He also works in Psychosomatic (mind/body) therapy which aims at bridging the gap between emotions and physical symptoms to help resolve pain or discomfort in either. For more information on this article or to make an appointment contact Levity Health (02) 9389 0278 or email Peter directly at peterv@levityhealth.com.au.