How Does my Diabetes Affect My Sex Life?

Physical and medical conditions can impact someone’s sex life in a range of mildly to heavily. Not enough people talk about how people with various medical conditions maintain a healthy and satisfying sex life. So, let’s talk about it, specifically, how diabetes can affect a sex life!

Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes: 

 

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition where the immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys insulin-making cells in the pancreas. This results in insulin deficiency, making it necessary to manually regulate glucose in the bloodstream. It typically appears suddenly in youth, with symptoms like intense thirst, frequent urination, rapid weight loss, fatigue, and blurred vision. Management requires regular insulin injections or pump use, blood sugar monitoring, and careful coordination of insulin with diet and exercise. Constant vigilance for blood sugar fluctuations is essential to avoid complications.

Type 2 diabetes is a long-term metabolic disorder where the body struggles to use insulin properly, causing high blood sugar. It can affect anyone but is more typical in adults and can develop slowly, making early detection difficult. Key symptoms include increased thirst, hunger, frequent urination, tiredness, and sometimes blurred vision or slow-healing wounds. Managing the condition involves lifestyle adjustments such as a high-fiber, low-sugar diet, regular exercise, and weight control, alongside blood sugar monitoring and possibly medication or insulin. With consistent management, individuals can maintain a good quality of life.

How Can Diabetes Affect your Sex Life?

Looking at the listed symptoms of Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes, it isn’t unreasonable for someone to experience higher rates of fatigue during more physically strenuous sex, feeling dehydrated during or right after sex, having difficulty obtaining and maintaining an erection or vaginal lubrication. 

If improperly managed, chronic high blood sugar can result in damage to blood vessels and nerves, also known as neuropathy. More commonly occurring with Type 2 Diabetes, neuropathy can make sustaining an erection during penetrative intimacy, masturbation, oral sex and more, increasingly difficult. Similarly for people with vulvas, experiencing arousal and achieving orgasm can become increasingly difficult due to damage to the clitoral nerves or those within the vaginal canal. 

 

People with diabetes can experience anxiety, depression, and their self-esteem can be impacted in varying degrees due to life with diabetes. All of which is known to impact one’s intimate life in a variety of ways, including a decrease or complete loss of spontaneous libido. When having sex, because sex is exercise, people with diabetes can experience a severe drop in blood sugar, hypoglycemia, that can result in shaking, fainting, severe sweating and more.

How Can a Sex Therapist Help?

With all the different symptoms and experiences one can have that range from mild to incredibly impactful, a sex therapist can help you explore all the ways your diabetes can affect your sex life and accomplish many goals in diabetes management so you can still have that thriving sex life you once had or have always wanted. Learning things like meal timing, scheduled intimacy, how to navigate your insulin pump if you have one, how to explore your response arousal. You may need to change how you view sex and intimacy if there is nerve damage or restricted blood flow to your genitals more often than not. Maybe having hydrating drinks on the nightstand, or emergency candy.

Why Your Medical Status Should be Talked about in Therapy

 

It’s not often you find a therapy space taking a proactive approach to discussing medical status with client that go outside of mental health. When was the last time your therapist asked you how your diabetes, your blood pressure, osteoarthritis, respiratory complications? Probably not that often. There are many reasons why talking about your medical status is important in a therapy setting. 

It helps your therapist take on a holistic approach, being able to explore how your physical health impacts your mental and emotional health. Your therapist can work to prevent a misdiagnosis in your therapy space as physical health, and any accompanying obstacles, can result in symptoms seen in mental diagnoses like anxiety, depression and so on. Fully informed therapist are better able to tailor their treatment plans accordingly, avoiding interventions that may be contradictory. Last on our non-exhaustive list, lifestyle adjustment. Certain physical conditions require adjustments in the clients day-to-day life, sex life, work structure and so on. Your therapist can help you with all of these and more if medical status is made known.

 

Meet the Author

Hi! My name is Hunter, I am an LMFT-C and Certified Sex Therapist with an emphasis on sexual education, kink/BDSM, trauma, ethical nonmonogamy, and more! As a therapist at Respark, we work very hard to bring sex-positive care both in and out of session. Happy reading!

 

References:

“Erectile Dysfunction and Diabetes: Take Control Today.” Mayo Clinic, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and  Research, 16 Feb. 2023, www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/erectile-dysfunction/in-depth/erectile-dysfunction/art-20043927#:~:text=Erection%20problems%2C%20also%20called%20erectile,erection%20firm%20enough%20for%20sex. 

“Hypoglycaemia (Low Blood Sugar).” NHS Inform, 9 Nov. 2023, www.nhsinform.scot/illnesses-and-conditions/blood-and-lymph/hypoglycaemia-low-blood-sugar/#:~:text=Preventing%20hypoglycaemia-,Introduction,to%20carry%20out%20its%20activities. 

“Sex and Diabetes.” Diabetes UK, Diabetes UK, www.diabetes.org.uk/guide-to-diabetes/life-with-diabetes/sex-and-diabetes#:~:text=High%20blood%20sugar%20levels%20can,some%20feeling%20to%20your%20genitals. Accessed 24 Jan. 2024. 

“Type 1 Diabetes.” Mayo Clinic, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 15 Sept. 2023, www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/type-1-diabetes/symptoms-causes/syc-20353011. 

“What Is Type 1 Diabetes?” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 5 Sept. 2023, www.cdc.gov/diabetes/basics/what-is-type-1-diabetes.html.