What libido means and how to boost it, according to experts

In our “maxxing” culture of optimization, no aspect of life is safe from attempts to make it as enhanced as possible. This includes our sex lives: We have to want more sex, have more sex, and have better sex. 

And there are always products to help you do just that. In 2026, there are a ton of libido products on the market, especially for women and people with vulvas. Mashable checked with experts which ones are actually worth trying, with the knowledge that there’s no end-all, be-all solution.

What is libido?

“Libido” is difficult to define. In general, though, it’s about desire, interest in intimacy and sex, and thoughts about it, OBGYN and co-director of the University of Chicago Medicine Center for Women’s Integrated Health, Dr. Melinda Lukens, told Mashable.

Libido is also incredibly personal and changes throughout a woman’s lifespan, Lukens said. This is due to relationship changes, outside stressors, trauma, pregnancy and postpartum, as well as perimenopause and menopause.

And there are different types of desire: spontaneous desire and responsive desire, sexpert for sex toy brand LELO, licensed psychologist, and certified sex therapist Dr. Laurie Mintz told Mashable. Spontaneous desire is a male model and youth-oriented model — and it’s unfortunately the one we see in the movies when someone is overcome with passion and wants sex immediately. People experiencing spontaneous desire might also feel the beginning stages of arousal, like tingling in the genitals, warmth, and lubrication, Mintz noted.

Responsive desire is wanting sex without feeling those physical feelings, she explains. Sexual activity comes first, then desire comes. And people want to have sex for a variety of reasons. In a 2007 paper titled “Why humans have sex,” participants identified 237 individual ones. The top wasn’t being horny, but being attracted to the person they had sex with. Next on the list was wanting to experience physical pleasure, and because sex feels good. (Being horny was reason #7.)

Most women — as they get older and/or are in long-term relationships — lose spontaneous desire. Mintz tells those women to have sex to get horny rather than waiting to be horny to have sex.

How to increase libido, really

Both Lukens and Mintz said that desire is multifaceted and that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. The best place to start is a doctor’s office.

With patients who come in who want to increase their desire for sex, Lukens first asks a number of questions: What exactly is bothering them? How long has this been going on, and why do they want to fix this now?

Then, she asks about the patient’s relationship with their partner and what conversations they’re having. She also asks if the patient has been able to orgasm during sex. Lukens utilizes the Female Sexual Function Index, which asks questions about desire, arousal, and satisfaction. She wants a deep history of what’s been going on, and that can illuminate which direction to take this. 

She recommends Mintz’s book, A Tired Woman’s Guide to Passionate Sex, to patients. Sometimes, the process of getting desire back also involves a therapist, a sexual health professional, or another mental health professional. 

If a patient tells her she has a safe relationship with her partner, and she’s able to enjoy sex and intimacy but needs a little bit more oomph to get things started, Lukens will talk about medication therapy. Her current go-to is testosterone therapy. (More on that below.)

If someone lost their desire because they hate their husband, they probably shouldn’t take medication to get it back, Mintz said. But if someone lost their desire because of normative age-related changes, the first course of action would be to teach about responsive desire, scheduling sex, and the like. 

“But there are some women who learn about responsive desire, they use it effectively, but they grieve. They grieve the feeling of being horny, because it’s a glorious feeling, right?” Mintz said. “And for those women, I think these medicines can be extremely useful.” She used to be against desire meds, but she’s since changed her tune. 

So what products do the experts actually recommend?

Libido treatments

Mindfulness

“If I had a woman coming to me with desire issues, my first thing would be the psychological stuff,” Mintz said, such as being mindful during sex. 

“Mindfulness, responsive desire, all that,” she said. “If she says, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I really miss feeling horny,’ I’d send her to a sexual medicine physician for something FDA-approved or testosterone, Addyi, Vyleesi, and I would also tell her about vibrators and marijuana because the evidence is strong there.”

Testosterone

Testosterone isn’t yet FDA-approved for women, but both Lukens and Mintz mentioned it as an option for post-menopausal women. Like any of these medications, it’s not a cure-all. Lukens pointed out that 40 percent of women see improvement over placebo, but she said it’s a nice option for someone who’s already exhausted other avenues.

Vyleesi

Vyleesi is the brand name for a medication called bremelanotide, an FDA-approved injection for premenopausal women. Patients inject Vyleesi around 45 minutes before sexual activity, and it can’t be used more than once in a 24-hour period or 8 times in one month. There’s no safety data for pregnant people using Vyleesi, so it’s advised to use reliable contraception. 

Lukens doesn’t prescribe Vyleesi, but found that the treatment effect was modest in absolute terms. In one study, around 24 percent of bremelanotide patients achieved a more than 1.2-point increase in their desire score versus 18 percent with placebo, as measured by the Female Sexual Function Index. The change in the number of satisfying sexual events wasn’t significantly different from placebo, though a post-study analysis showed a higher percentage of these events with the drug, Lukens said. 

Patients with high blood pressure should avoid using Vyleesi. It’s also advised to avoid if you’re taking naltrexone (used to treat alcohol use disorder and opiate use disorder). Side effects include nausea, transient increase in blood pressure and decrease in heart rate, and hyperpigmentation (patients with darker skin have a higher risk of this).

But, positively, it doesn’t interact with alcohol the way Addyi does.

Addyi

Addyi (the drug flibanserin) is a daily oral pill that’s also FDA-approved. Lukens said it also has a modest benefit to increase the number of satisfying sexual experiences by around 0.5 per month. Common side effects include dizziness and fatigue. This also has interactions with alcohol that cause low blood pressure, so you shouldn’t drink while taking this. 

Cannabis

Mintz pointed out that studies have shown a link between cannabis and higher sexual desire and performance, in small doses. In higher doses, though, it’s associated with the opposite (which makes sense — you might fall asleep before anything sexy happens). 

Vibrators

Vibrators aren’t just linked to greater sexual satisfaction. Studies have shown that vibrators can also increase sexual desire. So if you’ve been wanting an excuse to buy a new sex toy, here it is — and Mashable has lots of suggestions on which vibrators to buy.

Erotica

No need to shun your Heated Rivalry fan fiction habit. Erotic literature has also been shown to increase desire and satisfaction compared to a placebo. 

What about libido gummies?

There are many supplements and pills out there that claim to boost libido. Just one example is Lemme Play Gummies, from the Kourtney Kardashian-owned brand Lemme. On its website, it claims these gummies are for “daily intimacy.” They have ingredients like ashwagandha, maca root, nitric oxide, and horny goat weed.

Only one of those ingredients, ashwagandha, has clinical trials, said Mintz, who recommends only FDA-approved drugs or products with clinical trials published in scientific journals. Maca root has suggested evidence, and nitric oxide has nothing to do with desire, just blood flow to tissues. Horny goat weed has nothing studied, she said.

“So what do I think of those products? Not much,” she said. “They’re taking things that have evidence or not, making them go together and saying this is a desire pill. And my thinking is, first of all, we have FDA-approved medicines, and if you want to take something with evidence, then take the one ingredient that has evidence, ashwagandha.” But you need to talk to your doctor about whether to take certain ingredients. People with thyroid issues, for instance, shouldn’t take ashwagandha. 

Lukens said, “The truth is that so many of these supplements do not have actual evidence behind them. They really aren’t held to the same premarket efficacy and safety standards as something that’s FDA approved,” but companies can market them however they’d like.

“Women deserve to know what evidence is really behind what they’re putting in their bodies,” she continued.

People might experience a change because they believe a product they’re using works — that’s the placebo effect. “Our mind and body — everyone says they’re connected. They’re not connected. They are one,” Mintz said. “They’re more than connected. They’re the same thing.”

But the problem with the placebo effect is the cost, Lukens said, monetary and potentially otherwise (such as taking an ingredient that has a negative impact on your body).

Don’t believe the social media hype

Lukens has noticed an increase in the last three to five years of women coming to her to talk about their libidos. Historically, she said, women were shamed for being sexual, but now it seems that we’re swinging in the opposite direction and women can feel like they’re supposed to want more sex.

“I’m glad we’re talking more openly about women’s sexual health, but I do worry that with…all this talk online, that we’re starting to replace one kind of pressure with another,” she said.

Research fellow at the Kinsey Institute, Dr. Jaclyn Siegel, told Mashable over email that she believes the push to sell women things to “fix” their “broken” sex drive instead of understanding the circumstances to affect their desire to have sex — such as working multiple jobs, childcare, uneven domestic labor, and pain during sex — is a money grab. 

“Supplements also aren’t regulated. I empathize with women who feel broken in some way, but this does not seem like the way,” Siegel said. 

Similarly, Lukens said, “Some of these companies online and these social media influencers are really pathologizing libido,” she said. Despite what you see on Reels, you won’t feel like your 20-year-old self again if you just take one supplement or medication.

But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be done. There are a host of ways, medicinal or not, to try to increase your desire. Taking the pressure off yourself might be the first step.