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Milo and Philip, I have looked into the issue of sexuality and Parkinson's because of my own intermittant problems. There is not much published about it. My reading points to some of the problem as resulting from the instability of the autonomic nervous system that many of us have with PD. The physiology of sexual response is not well understood but change in symathetic and parasympathetic balance can clearly screw things up (no pun intended). We take multiple medications- which is usually the first thing a physician considers in the evaluation of sexual dysfunction but interestingly l-dopa and dopamine agonists seem to rarely be associated with sexual dysfunction and in fact at times are the cause of hypersexuality or at least greatly increased libido with or without improvement of actual function. Some medications can cause sexual dysfunction (such as blood preesure medications, and other non PD medications) and the problem of absent or delayed orgasm in both sexes and failure to ejaculate in males is a common problem with the SSRI antidepressants such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft which many of us take. Other antidepressants are also at times associated with sexual dysfunction of various kinds but at a lower frequency. I am interested in knowing what sexual difficulties PD patients are having. I suspect that the lack of data has to do with the crazy notion that older people are not supposed to be sexual and since PD is supposed to be a disease of the elderly why research it? Also many of us are embarassed to bring the subject up with our doctors and most physicians are notoriously bad at dealing with sexual issues. At the same time as important as the issue may be to many of us, it is not something likely to get a large response on the list. How many of us are willing to share our most personal feelings of failure or inadequacy with an "intimate group" of at least 850 strangers- I'm not. Barb Patterson and others- Is there a way to post to the list annonomously? I would be willing to develop a survey if there was significant interest in getting data on the subject. Obviously it would not be statisically valid but might give some general indication of the scope of the problem that some graduate student somewhere might pick up as a research project and if as I suspect the problem is widespread it might senitize our physicians to the issue- if it is indeed significant. The only way that most of us would be willing to be honest would be if the answers were not identifiable to others who migt read the list. Does anybody have any idea how we could do this maintaining annonimity? Charlie PS - As you can see- I'm back after a great trip. Thanks to all who wished me well and gave advice. Probably over the weekend I'll try to put together some of the problems and the way my wife and I coped- to post on the list for others traveling long distances. **************************************************************************** ************************************* Charles T. Meyer Madison, WI [log in to unmask] **************************************************************************** ************************************