We often live a carefree life where we consume anything and everything we like without thinking much about what we are eating and how it affects us. How are the food we eat and the way we live important? Have you ever wondered how the sugar in your body even impacts your sexual life?
In this article, we will be focusing on how an increase in sugar levels affects your sex life. If you want to have a healthy sexual life, it is important that you understand the dynamics of diabetes and sexual health and, in turn, how weight gain can affect your sexual health. So let’s begin the journey of understanding how excessive sugar can be harmful for you.
How Does Sugar Accumulate In Your Body?
To know the relation between diabetes and sexual health, knowing about how sugar is processed is important. The process of conversion of sugar is simple: when you consume something, the enzymes in your body break down the food and convert it into glucose and fructose. Furthermore, the absorption takes place, and sugars are absorbed by your bloodstream, which are transported to your liver by the blood vessels. The liver then processes your sugar and stores the excess sugar as fat while releasing some to meet the energy demands of the body. This is how normally the food is converted into sugar, which is used by the body, but accumulation is a little different.
The accumulation occurs when you consume excessive sugar via different food items, your body becomes insulin resistant, or you follow a sedentary lifestyle, which reduces the consumption of glucose. All these factors lead to the accumulation of sugar in your body, causing various issues, one of which includes sexual issues. If you are someone with diabetes, then you can follow the sex tips for diabetic patients, but along with that, you must also know how an increase in sugar levels affects your sex life. So, let’s move on to understand how an increase in sugar levels affects your sexual life.
How An Increase In Sugar Levels Affects Your Sex Life?
We already saw above how sugar accumulates in the body, but do you know how diabetes affects sex? One of the major impacts diabetes has on your life apart from physical health is on your sexual health and here is how an increase in the blood sugar level can drastically affect your sexual life. Let’s begin:
1. It Disrupts The Blood Flow In The Body
Want to know how an increase in sugar levels affects your sex life? One of the major impacts that the body suffers when you have increased sugar levels is that it leads to irregular blood flow in the body. Slowly, your blood vessels start accumulating fat and get blocked. Also, it causes damage to the blood vessels, which creates a problem in the blood flow. It not only affects sexual life but also causes other major problems like stroke or heart attack. It becomes essential to understand the relation between sex and diabetes so that proper measures can be taken in time and your sexual life is not hampered much.
2. Leads To Poor Erections
Poor erection is also one of the issues which is caused by increased sugar levels. Diabetes, or say, excessive increase in blood sugar level, leads to damaged blood vessels not just in your body but also near your genitals, which disrupts the flow of blood. Since there is irregular blood flow to the genital it leads to poor erections. If there are other issues or you’re unable to find a solution you can go for sex counseling. However, if there is an increase in blood sugar, you must try to reduce it by engaging in physical activities and consulting a doctor. Now, this is how diabetes affects sex by causing various issues in the body.
3. Makes Your Body Weak By Increasing Fat
Do you know how to manage sex and diabetes? If you want to have a stress-free, pleasurable and healthy sexual life, then there are several factors that you must look into. One of them is checking your blood sugar levels. An increase in blood sugar levels can make your body weak by increasing impact and leading to improper nutrient absorption. Ever wondered how gut health impacts your sex life? Poor gut health leads to an increase in blood sugar, which causes the accumulation of fat and a decrease in energy or stamina, which decreases your sexual performance because you may not have the strength to perform it.
4. Cause Obesity Or Weight Gain
Ever wondered can obesity cause sex problems? One of the effects of high blood sugar is it leads to obesity or weight gain which are the determining factors for your sexual life. An increase in weight causes your blood vessels to get damaged and even leads to the accumulation of fat in them, because of which there is irregular blood flow to the genitals, leading to poor sexual life and performance. This is one of the ways how diabetes affects sex. It has both a direct and indirect effect on your sexual life. Further, an increase in weight also leads to cardiovascular diseases, which indirectly affect your sexual life as well as can be life-threatening.
5. Disrupts Your Mood And Libido
The relationship between sex and diabetes can be said to be reciprocal. The increase in sugar levels or diabetes leads to decreased sexual performance. One of the ways diabetes increases sugar levels affects your sexual life is that it disrupts your mood and libido. It leads to hormonal disbalance in the body, which can cause a decrease in serotonin and dopamine levels, leading to poor mood and sexual desires. The happy hormones, which are also present in your genitals, are not released in the proper amount, and you don’t find that urge to have sex. This is how an increase in sugar levels affects your sex life by disrupting your mood.
6. It Can Cause Other Infections
One of the ways diabetes affects sex life is by affecting your sexual performance by leading to certain infections. Do you think you will be able to perform sex when you are suffering from infections? The increase in blood sugar levels can cause yeast infection, fungal infections and even urinary tract infections which leads to poor performance in bed and even leads to other issues or infections in your penile area. Just knowing about how diabetes affects sex is not enough but also working on reducing your sugar levels is important so that you don’t have to face these issues and you can easily enjoy your sexual life having enough pleasure.
7. Can Cause Erectile Dysfunction
There are many ways of how to manage sex and diabetes and not let diabetes affect your sexual performance, but for that, you must know how it affects your sexual life. Diabetes and an increase in sugar level may affect your erection and cause erectile dysfunction, that is, poor erection, premature ejaculation or retrograde ejaculation. Do you know what is retrograde ejaculation? It is a condition where your semen enters the bladder instead of injectulating through the penis and comes out via urine. One of the major reasons behind erection problems in males is high sugar levels; therefore, it is essential to maintain your sugar levels.
8. It Can Lead To Vaginal Dryness
Before knowing how to manage sex and diabetes, it is important to know how diabetes increases in sugar levels can affect your sexual life and one of the ways it does it is by leading to vaginal dryness. Females who are suffering from diabetes or have increased sugar levels go through vaginal dryness, which causes issues in self-lubrication of the body. This is one of the reasons for vaginal dryness. The increase in sugar level leads to damage to blood vessels in the vagina which is one of the reasons for vaginal dryness. It causes the issue of lubrication, as mentioned above, which makes sex difficult for couples by causing friction, and it may hurt as well.
9. Imbalance In The Hormonal Levels In The Body
Last but not least, one of the ways how an increase in sugar levels affects your sex life is that it causes an imbalance in your hormone levels. An increase in sugar levels may cause a disturbance in the hormone balance of serotonin, dopamine and even testosterone, which impact your sexual life by affecting your libido and sexual urges; serotonin and dopamine are happy hormones that give you pleasure when you have sex. Disturbance in their balance may disrupt your mood. Further, sex and diabetes are also related because they affect your testosterone, which is an important factor for a healthy sexual life since it determines everything.
How To Reduce Blood Sugar Levels?
Now that we know how increased blood sugar affects your sexual life it becomes essential that you know about the tips to lower blood sugar levels. Managing your blood sugar levels will not only improve your sexual life but will also improve your physical health and reduce the chances of cardiovascular diseases. So, here’s how you can do it.
1. Increase The Amount Of Physical Activity You Do
So, what’s the first step in how to reduce blood sugar levels? It is how much you make your body work. It is essential that you increase the amount of physical activity you do. The more you engage in physical activities, the more you will burn excessive fat, and that will help you reduce your sugar levels as well. There are many ways diabetes affects sex life, as it makes you obese, which in turn damages your blood vessels, causing issues in your sex life. Therefore, it is necessary that you engage in physical activities like exercises, workouts, walking and yoga to burn the excessive calories and keep the sugar levels in balance.
2. Keep A Check On Your Stress Level
One of the tips to lower blood sugar levels is to keep a check on stress levels. Do you know that even high blood pressure and stress can shoot up your sugar levels? Yes, it can. People who are on the edge of diabetes or have diabetes should work on their stress levels as it can rise a lot in an instant which creates various issues. Following the ways to reduce stress like doing breathing exercises, meditation or going for anxiety counseling can help you a lot to reduce your stress levels and work on managing it. Excessive stress is also not good for your sex life as it impacts your performance and libido and also causes issues in your erection.
3. Maintain A Healthy And Balanced Diet
Maintaining a healthy diet is also one of the tips to lower blood sugar levels as it is one of the reasons why your sugar levels rise. Sugar is not just affected by the sweets you eat but also by other food items. Many food items add a lot of sugar to your body. Therefore, it is important to keep in check on what you avoid. Avoid oily, greased, packed, junk food items and alcohol; instead, go for food items that reduce your weight. Add fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds which will not only help you have a healthy diet but will also not contribute to your weight, balance your sugar level and benefit you in your sexual life.
4. Improve Your Lifestyle Habits
When it comes to how to reduce blood sugar levels, one of the ways to do so is by improving your lifestyle. As we are advancing all we do today is sit and do our work. Be it an office where you have to continuously sit for hours or be it your home where everything works with a remote, all these habits make you sit all day which leads to a poor lifestyle with no physical activity and thereby contributing towards our weight. This is also one of the reasons why many people have diabetes these days, which affects your sex life. As we already saw above, there are many ways diabetes affects sex life by disturbing erections and performance.
5. Go For Regular Sugar Check-ups
Lastly, one of the ways how to reduce blood sugar levels is by going for regular sugar checkups. Apart from taking various measures that will help you to decrease your sugar level, it is essential that you keep track of what your sugar levels are. Keeping track of your sugar levels will help you know whether you need to restrict your diet more or whether the measures are sufficient since all you need to do is keep your sugar level in balance under the recommended level. Erectile dysfunction, poor libido, and UTI are some of the ways diabetes affects sex life, and hence, it is important to make sure you keep the sugar levels in balance and go for regular check-ups.
Conclusion
As we reach the conclusion of the article entitled, how an increase in sugar levels affects your sex life, we have come to understand how our eating habits and lifestyle affect our sexual life. Poor lifestyle habits like no physical activities, eating junk foods and an increase in weight can impact our sexual life by lowering the sex drive, causing an imbalance in hormones, leading to poor erections and, at times, even infertility. Following the tips to lower blood sugar levels, such as doing more physical activities, going for regular check-ups, having a healthy diet, and reducing stress, can help you a lot to improve your sexual and physical health.
FAQ’S
1. What Are The Other Issues That Affect Sexual Health?
Apart from the reciprocal relationship between sex and diabetes, various other issues impact your sexual health, like high blood pressure, excessive stress and anxiety, poor lifestyle habits, certain genital issues and infections, cardiovascular diseases, high cholesterol and many others. It is essential to live a healthy life to have healthy sex.
2. What Leads To Increase In Blood Sugar Levels?
There are many factors which lead to the increase in blood sugar. Some of them are eating excessive sweets, some others are eating carbohydrates, not being physically active or exercising, dehydration, taking excessive stress, and certain medications, which also leads to an increase in blood sugar levels. At times it is also genetic and can be passed on.
3. How To Increase Stamina For Sex?
There are many ways to increase stamina for sex some of which are to engage in pelvic floor exercises or normal exercise regularly, having a healthy diet, reducing your sugar levels and weight, going for strength training or endurance training, and many others. It is important that you remain physically fit if you want to increase your stamina for sex.
4. What Are The Ways Weight Affects Sexual Life?
Just like diabetes and sexual health have a reciprocal relationship similarly, weight has a reciprocal relationship with sex. An increase in weight can cause a decrease in your sexual performance as it leads to fatigue, consciousness about the body, damaged blood vessels, lower confidence and many other psychological and physical issues.
5. Does Diabetes Cause Problems In Genitals?
Diabetes can cause problems in the genital area as it can lead to various infections, which include fungal infections, yeast infections and even urinary tract infections. These infections in a genital area can cause problems while having sex, and therefore, it is important to know how to manage sex and diabetes to avoid it.
People Also Read:
How Gut Health Impacts Your Sex Life ?
Sexual Benefits Of Ashwagandha
