Is there a quick fix for a dipping libido?

Q:

After 30 years of marriage, I’m bored in the bedroom. I love my husband but I don’t look forward to sex. How can I turn things around?

A:

It’s understandable that routine sex can feel dull, but switching things up can bring passion into the bedroom and help you feel desire again. My favorite quick fix: kissing! It may sound obvious, but kissing can go by the wayside when couples have been together for a long time—and one study found that 40% of couples who kiss don’t kiss longer than 5 seconds. When researchers looked at the amount of kissing women reported during their most recent sexual encounter, more kissing was associated with ability to orgasm, sexual frequency and sexual satisfaction.

Kissing triggers your brain to release chemicals that help you feel bonded, increases heart rate and dilates blood vessels, which helps you feel excited, increasing blood flow to the genitals. Saliva also contains the sex hormone testosterone, which may also help with arousal.

These sound like seborrheic keratoses, benign skin growths that most commonly appear after age 50 and can look raised and waxy, often resembling warts or melted brown candle wax on the skin. And it’s common for several to appear rather than just one.

Rest assured, seborrheic keratoses are harmless and are not related to a higher risk of breast or skin cancer. But to ensure the accuracy of your mammograms, it’s important to point them out to the tech so she can mark the spots before taking images of your breasts. At most mammogram facilities the tech will apply a circular marker, similar to a donutshaped sticker, around the lesion. This will prevent any confusion if the lesion shows up on the mammogram images and mimics or masks an abnormality.

Last week, I noticed raised brown spots around my nipple. I have a mammogram soon, but I can’t stop thinking about them. Could this be cancer?

I’m 53.