Q. I read on your website about women desperate to reduce their libido. I used to suffer from the same unwelcome sexual desires. I think my sex drive was due to excess testosterone.
I fixed this problem by drinking spearmint tea in the morning and the evening for several weeks. Spearmint is available in health food stores or Latino groceries, where it is sold as yerba buena.
A. To our surprise we found that in Turkey, mint tea has a reputation for lowering libido. Animal research suggests that it may have an impact on testosterone.
In one study, researchers treated 21 women who had unwanted facial hair (Phytotherapy Research, May, 2007). A cup of spearmint tea twice a day for five days lowered free testosterone.
A British trial randomized 42 women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and high testosterone levels to take either spearmint tea or placebo tea twice a day for a month. At the end of 30 days testosterone levels were lower in the women who had consumed spearmint tea (Phytotherapy Research, Feb. 2010).
Spearmint tea seems much less likely to have undesirable side effects than certain other remedies people have tried, including licorice, saltpeter or chaste tree berry.
