Even Happier

A stronger sexual drive can improve your overall experience of sex, and in turn benefit all aspects of your daily life.

Performance anxiety will become a thing of the past, and you'll be able to fully enjoy every lovemaking session.

The list below is packed with powerful tips: if one of them is not applicable to you, simply skip it and move to the next one.

1. Know what you need, and make sure you get it. “The fantasy model of sex dictates that men should be able to function and presumably enjoy sex without any special requirements. The fact is that we all have requirements and conditions.” says Dr Bernie Zilbergeld in "The New Male Sexuality". In short, the idea that an adult man is always instantly ready for sex is plain wrong.

So what could be your “requirement and conditions”? Well, you might need to be rested, not too stressed, and maybe even emotionally close to your woman, before you can thoroughly enjoy sex. You could also have more specific requirements such as having the light off or not using a condom. In many cases you will need to find a compromise with your partner, so that everyone’s need can be met.

When you have what you need, the experience of making love can be a very fulfilling one, and the best part is that such positive experience can in turn stimulate your sexual drive, creative a virtuous cycle of constantly increasing pleasure.

2. Relax. Imagine for a moment that an intruder is breaking into your house while you are making love to your partner. The arousal disappear immediately: there are more urgent things to attend… In a similar way, it is difficult to feel sexual when you're stressed about paying bills and meeting a deadline at work. Part of that is because stress is a distraction — it's hard to focus or enjoy sex when part of you is thinking of something else. In addition, when stress strikes, the hormone cortisol goes up, temporarily altering your hormonal equilibrium, hence affecting your sexual drive.

There are many ways to relax – such as yoga, physical activity, hot bath, reading,... – and you probably know already what’s the best one for you. Make such activity your daily ritual, an important and enjoyable tasks which you never forget.

Sex can also be a great way to relax, and yet you don't have to be too stressed to fully enjoy it...

3. Rest. There are times in which all you need is a good night's sleep. So don’t be lured into doing something else...

4. Improve your relationship. Resentment is the number one relationship issue that affects arousal and orgasm. All of the buried anger toward your partner can throw a wet blanket on passion. A common cliché would have men as sexual animals completely unaffected by emotions. It might be true for some man, but certainly not for everyone.

5. Kill routine in the bedroom. An extremely well known advice, and yet one which is worth repeating here: in a long term relationship, if you let sex become boring, your libido for it is certainly going down.

6. Change you medications. Antidepressants such as Prozac or Paxil are one of the best-known offenders for low sexual drive. Other culprits include prescription blood-pressure-lowering drugs, which can interfere with nerve signals, and antihistamines.

7. Look after your health. Health problems such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, thyroid disorders and autoimmune disorders like lupus can all change a man’s sexual desire by affecting blood flow, nerve signals and hormone levels. Finally, depression is well known for dramatically affecting your sexual drive.

8. Improve your body image. If you don’t really like the way you look when naked, enjoying sex becomes more difficult. You can learn to like the way you look with counselling and psychotherapy or you could partly change the way you look with an exercise program. Alternatively, you could do both things, achieving even greater results.

9. Aphrodisiac and supplements. L-arginine is a particularly important amino acid for overall circulatory health and is sold as natural supplement for sexual health. L-arginine has been proven to help increase blood flow to the penis, much like Viagra does, and the difference is it does it naturally. Two other great products for male libido are Ginseng, used in China as a sexual tonic for over 7000 years, and Gingko Bilbao, which is used to improve blood flow around the body including to the genitals. You can also find a comprehensive lists of "aphrodisiacs" here

The following three advices must be always evaluated with the assistance of a doctor

10. Testosterone cream. If a blood analysis tells you that your testosterone level is low, then a topical testosterone cream could increase your sexual drive. On the other hand, if you testosterone level is normal, a cream would not gives you any benefit, and would still leave you with unpleasant side affects.

11. Levitra, Cialis and Viagra. Levitra, Cialis, and Viagra can assist you in achieving and maintaining an erection during sexual activity via facilitating the blood flow to the penis. An advantage of Cialis if the relatively long effectiveness period (36 hours), but specialized medical advice is always needed to ascertain if any of such drugs could be useful for you. Furthermore, when evaluating the use of such drugs, remember that you run the risk of becoming psychological dependent to something which you don't really need.

12. Prostaglandin Injections. A shot of Prostaglandin in the penis can produce an immediate and lasting erection, even when Levitra, Cialis, and Viagra have failed to do so. I know, the idea of an penis injection is rather scary, but they really are quite painless, and your andrologist can teach you how to do them on your own.