6 things nobody told me about libido and hormones

1. It took another woman saying it out loud

I wasn't looking for this. Someone I follow mentioned it in passing — not as a complaint, just as something that had changed for her — and I recognised myself immediately. That's the whole reason I'm writing it down. Nobody in my actual life had said the word.

2. I'd filed it under stress, tiredness, or my age

All three were true, and none of them was the whole answer. It's the easiest thing in the world to explain away, because every explanation works on its own. What I couldn't explain was why it had a pattern.

3. The ingredient is called shatavari

Asparagus racemosus — a root used in Ayurvedic practice for centuries, specifically for women. The name is usually translated from Sanskrit as "she who has a hundred husbands," which tells you what it was traditionally used for rather more bluntly than a label ever would.

4. The research is on the extract, and it runs eight weeks

Not on the drink — on the ingredient. SRI-81, the shatavari extract, has been studied at 300mg in a placebo-controlled trial measuring overall sexual function and satisfaction, which reported a 34.2% improvement from baseline over eight weeks. Eight weeks is the honest number. Nothing here happens in a fortnight.

Ademola et al., 2026. Clinical research relates to the SRI-81 shatavari extract at 300mg, not to Nello or to this product.

5. It was already in the drink I was taking

That was the part that annoyed me. I'd bought Superbalance for the mood-and-energy side and never read further down the panel. The shatavari had been in there the whole time, at the amount the research used.

6. Check the dose, not just the ingredient

Plenty of formulas list shatavari. Fewer print how much. Superbalance has SRI-81 at 300mg — the same dose as the research — alongside myo-inositol and rhodiola rosea, every amount on the panel and third-party tested. An ingredient at an unstated amount tells you nothing.