Covid-19: why loss of smell can disrupt your sex life: Femme Actuelle Le MAG

Cough, fever, body aches … Covid-19 can be the cause of many manifestations, which can themselves have an impact on the morale and daily life of patients. Another more astonishing symptom would also have consequences on the life of the patients, and more precisely on… their sex life. It's about the loss of smell.

This is what an American study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. If she was not specifically interested in the consequences of anosmia in the context of Covid-19, but in the context of a natural decline of this sense due to age, she nevertheless reveals that the loss of smell is associated with a loss of "sexual motivation".

Loss of smell is associated with decreased sexual desire

To find out, the researchers followed 2,084 people in the United States, all aged 65 or older. Participants were recruited through the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, a longitudinal study on health and social factors.

The scientists measured the olfactory sensitivity of the volunteers using scent sticks. They were then subjected to a questionnaire about their sex life and had to say how often they thought about sex, how often they had sex, but also how satisfied they were with their last intimate relationship. .

The researchers were thus able to observe that "Decreased olfactory function in the elderly in the United States is associated with decreased sexual motivation and emotional satisfaction with sex, but not with decreased frequency of sexual activity or of pleasure physical", can we read in the study. The results suggest that a decrease in smell is linked to a 7% drop in "sexual motivation" and an 11% drop in "emotional satisfaction".

Links between smell and emotional processing

How to explain this link between smell and sexuality? "Olfaction has a strong and evolving connection with the limbic system, which plays a vital role in processing emotions and sexual motivation. Neurons in the olfactory bulb also travel directly to the hypothalamus, another key mediator of sexual motivation ", explain the researchers.

Another study by German researchers at the University of Dresden and published in 2018 in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior had already looked into the matter. The olfactory sensitivity of men and women aged 18 to 36 had been tested, and participants were asked about their sexual desire. As a result, the volunteers who had the best sense of smell were also those who claimed the greatest sexual satisfaction. "The perception of certain body odors can contribute to the concept of sexual pleasure by better recruitment of reward zones", in particular suggested the authors of the study.

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