One thing you won’t hear much about from your friends or the media is the fact that men can have low libido. The good news is that light therapy treatments may help the problem, according to one small study presented recently at the 29th European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) Congress.

If you just read newpapers or magazines or watch TV, you would not think that low libido is a problem for men. This fact just isn’t discussed.

This secrecy is an artifact of gender stereotypes — one of which is the idea that men always want sex. But it’s not true.

Unfortunately, couples who are struggling with a man’s low libido tend to live in the shadows. Because men are supposed to want sex no matter what, people feel that talking about the problem (maybe even to their physicians) is shameful.

A large, web-based study — published in 2014 in the “Journal of Sexual Medicine” — of more than 5,000 men age 18 to 75 years, from Portugal, Croatia, and Norway found rates of low libido in men was around 14 percent. That is far from negligible.

The research light therapy is only in its preliminary stages, looking at a small group of men. Apparently, daily exposure to a light box upon waking significantly increased blood testosterone levels, which may explain the treatment’s impact on sexual satisfaction.

If this treatment works, it would be wonderful, because it has no downside at all. It could be a bit time-consuming to implement, because you have to sit in front of a light box every day. (There’s actually is a gizmo you can wear on your head that does the same thing. But it’s heavy, so it's uncomfortable. )

There could be no ill effects from using the lights, so it would not stir up the kind of anxiety that taking pharmaceuticals might.(Men who have had prostate cancer worry about taking testosterone supplements, even though many prominent researchers think that this is safe.
Are you a man who is troubled by his level of sexual desire? If so, you might want to put a Google News Alert out for “light therapy treatment for low libido.” Stay tuned.