Regular yoga can boost female sex drive

It's official -- 45 minutes of yoga a day can help women improve their sex life. A team of eminent Indian sexologists from New Delhi, Mumbai and Pune conducted an experiment involving 40 women, aged between 22 and 55 years, at a yoga institute in Thane over three months that confirms this premise.

Major recognition
The results of the experiment were submitted in November last year to the prestigious Journal of Sexual Medicine in New York, which has accepted the findings as original research. The report of the experiment will appear in a subsequent issue of the journal in the US.

Dr Girish Karmarkar, a Mumbai-based sexologist, said the affects of yoga were measured on the basis of a questionnaire known as Female Sexual Function Index. "The index, which had 20 questions with five pointers each, was put in place by doctors from All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi. The subjects were made to respond to the questions that measured factors like desire, arousal, lubrication, pain, orgasm and mental satisfaction." At the end of 12 weeks, the questionnaire was repeated and the scores -- depending on the indicators ticked -- were compared.

'Better orgasms'
"Eighty-five per cent of subjects reported substantially reduced pain during intercourse and also improved lubrication. They had better orgasms and their arousal improved. Yoga had helped improve the subjects' pelvic floor muscles that guide sexual responses," explained Dr Vikas Dhikav, a pharmacologist from Delhi's Maulana Azad Medical College.

Dr Dhikav is also the lead author of the research report. "The older the women, the better the results. We found the result to have improved substantially in women 45 years of age and above," said Dr Dhikav.u00a0