Being overweight can affect confidence in your appearance. This in turn can prevent sex from being enjoyable. High blood pressure and diabetes (both linked to weight) can affect also your sexual health. Find out how you can manage your weight, and more.
Weight and sexual health
High blood pressure and diabetes (both linked to weight) can affect your sexual health.
Poorly controlled diabetes can cause a loss of sensation in sexual organs, vaginal dryness and higher risk of thrush in women. In men, it can make it harder for men to get an erection. Hypoglycaemic attacks (hypos) can be caused by active sex so having hypo treatment to hand and discussing this with your partner will help.
High blood pressure medication in particular has side effects which may affect sexual health. To check the possible side effects of your medication, type in the name of your medication into the electronic medicines compendium search box. If you’re worried or concerned, speak to your GP or pharmacist.
Weight management
Being overweight can affect confidence in your appearance. This in turn can prevent sex from being enjoyable.
If you would like to lose weight, there are lots of free and paid for support services to help you. We’ve listed a few of the options below:
- Visit NHS Choices to access lots of information on healthy eating
- Calculate your BMI to better understand your current weight vs. your optimal weight range
- Start the NHS weight loss plan and download the week weight loss guide
- Watch the NHS podcast exercise series on Strength and Flex
- Join an online weight loss community on Health Unlocked like NHS Weight Loss
- Track your steps and calorie intake with one of the many great wearable devices and apps out there like MyFitnessPal, which now has a database of more than 2 million food and drink items
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