Who’s talking
2 speakersTranscript
979 turns · 1 hr 18 minFirst and foremost, sexual health is health. In the same way that we prioritize other facets of physical, emotional, spiritual wellbeing, we also want to nurture sexual health. It's desire that emerges in response to arousal. Can be normal, healthy, common to go into an encounter totally neutral and have desire be the last thing to emerge at the end. In my clinical practice, I will hear people say, "My body is having sex, my mind is not." When we look in, at females with menopause, when estrogen and progesterone start to decline, it doesn't directly affect desire. What it does directly affect is feelings of sexual pleasure and pain. 43% of females in this cross-national study had clinically significant sexual dysfunction. About 80% of men with sexual concerns that are prolonged will seek treatment. Less than 10% of women will seek treatment. There's also ongoing shame, stigma, stereotypes that continue to this day around women's sexuality. And as a result, a lot of women just never talk to anyone. They suffer in silence.
[instrumental music] For decades, we've treated having low sexual desire with stigma. Either we have it or something is broken and we just live with it. But what if desire isn't something that we wait for, but something that we can actually train? Today's guest has spent her entire career proving exactly that, using mindfulness to help women rebuild desire, reclaim pleasure, and heal from sexual pain and distress. Today, we welcome Dr. Lori Brotto, Canada Research Chair in Women's Sexual Health, and professor at the University of British Columbia, where she spent the last two decades studying mindfulness and women's sexual health. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Lori Brotto. Lori, you've spent your entire career studying, you know, one of the most probably misunderstood but sort of intimate parts of human health. How did you end up dedicating your life to human intimacy?
Yeah. So the honest answer is totally by accident. So I started volunteering in a research lab. I knew I loved science and loved discovery. Um, and at the time, the only research lab I could find that was willing to take me on, someone with no experience whatsoever, turned out it was someone who was studying animal models of sexual dysfunction.
Hmm. Nice.
So I would go into the rat lab-
Right
... rodent lab. I would inject male rats with different medications, corticosteroids, expose them to stressful environments, and then measure their capacity for sexual behavior, and specifically how long did it take them to recover after an ejaculation-
Hmm
... before they mounted another female rat.
Hmm.
Um, and I learned a lot about the science of sexual behavior, the impact of stress, um, and how antidepressants and, uh, other agents could potentially block some of the effects of stress. Um, and continued to do that for about six years. And then the year that Viagra was approved in the United-
When, when was that?
That was 1998-
Ah
... in the United States. Um, e- a landmark study was published, and it was called Sexual Dysfunction in the Human Population: Predictors and Prevalence. And the study found that 43% of females in this cross-national study
Episode notes
What if the real reason millions of women struggle with desire isn't hormones, and the solution isn't a pill?
For decades, the conversation around women's sexual health has been shaped by the male model: desire first, then arousal. But what if that model is fundamentally wrong for most women?
Dr. Lori Brotto, PhD, a UBC professor, Canada Research Chair in Women's Sexual Health, and registered psychologist joins The LIVING Room Podcast to share why female sexual desire remains one of the most misunderstood, underfunded, and undertreated areas in modern medicine.
In this conversation, Dr. Brotto explains why 43% of women experience clinically significant sexual dysfunction, yet less than 10% seek help compared to 80% of men. She unpacks the mind-body disconnect that makes female physiological arousal rarely match subjective arousal, why the two FDA-approved drugs for women deliver mediocre results at best, and how mindfulness — present-moment, non-judgmental awareness — directly addresses both the inhibitory and excitatory sides of desire in ways medication cannot.
She challenges the myth that desire must be spontaneous, introduces the concept of responsive desire, and explains why separating sexual health from overall health is a mistake with real consequences for research funding, clinical care, and how women understand their own bodies.
In this episode you'll learn: