How to improve libido & what is the meaning of libido

[00:00:00] If you've ever experienced high stress and found that you have absolutely no libido, you have no interest in anything sexual, you are normal. Now, as we talk about sexual desire, there's seven phases. in a woman's life where we can see low libido. Now, some of these can apply to men as well. However, men are not going through perimenopause or menopause.

We want to develop stress reduction practices, but we don't want to blame everything on stress. And so we're looking at lifestyle. We have to do a medication evaluation. So here's a list of the top offenders, medications that can take your libido. People report less pain when they're having regular sexual activity and when they're orgasming.

So what do you think is the number one concern that women have when they go to their [00:01:00] provider about their sexual health? The number one concern when we ask women, what are your concerns about your sexual health? They bring up is welcome back to the Dr. Brighten show. I'm your host, Dr. Jolene Brighten. I'm board certified in naturopathic endocrinology, a nutrition scientist, a certified sex counselor, and a certified menopause specialist.

As always, I'm bringing you the latest, most up to date information to help you take charge of your health and take back your hormones. If you enjoy this kind of information, I invite you to visit my website, DrBrighten. com, where I have a ton of free resources for you, including a newsletter that brings you some of the best information, including updates on this podcast.

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Welcome back to the Dr. Brayton show. Now, today's episode is not for children. I'll give you a little time with that said to turn it off and find a different time to listen to this because today, we're going to talk all about libido. And I'm going to need your help sharing this because I'm definitely going to get censored as we talk about what affects sexual desire, what's going on with our hormones, and just how complex it can be for women.

I'm Dr. Brayton. As always, I have to thank my sponsors for making this podcast available to you and giving me the opportunity to share all of this information with you. If [00:03:00] you are already a subscriber, thank you. If not, please hit that subscribe button, share this everywhere, and leave me some feedback, because again, you drive the conversations here.

And in fact, this has been a highly requested video. episode. I get questions all the time about what is going on with my desire for sex, my sex drive, my libido, my mojo. Is it my hormones? Is it something else? Is it just normal for my age? And we're going to get into all of that. All of that. Now, I often give lectures all over the world on this topic to healthcare practitioners, and I always ask them, what do you think is the number one concern that women have when they go to their provider about their sexual health?

I get all kinds of answers. Sometimes they're fun, sometimes they're silly, and sometimes they're spot on. The number one concern when we ask women. [00:04:00] What are your concerns about your sexual health? They bring up is lack of libido. Number two is inability to orgasm or difficulty achieving an orgasm. Now I would submit to you that if number two is difficult or you're not achieving an orgasm, that's going to influence number one.

So we've got to kind of talk about both today. I could do an entire episode just about orgasms and if you want that, you can let me know. But today I really want to focus on desire for. Okay. So I wanted to find some terms for you today because I want us all on the same page. So when it comes to sexual desire, that has a lot of names.

I already alluded to them. Libido, sexual drive, mojo, uh, your stirrings down under. If you've got a fun one, go ahead and share it with me. But I've heard a lot. Sexual desire is a That's exactly what it sounds like. It is your desire for sex, your interest in sex, and there's a [00:05:00] couple different types of sexual desire that we've seen come about through the research.

Now, if you've ever watched a movie or a TV show and you've seen like this couple, they just look at each other and it's, it's instant sparks are flying and the clothes are coming off and everybody is like into it and they orgasm at the same time kind of business. That's really a depiction of spontaneous sexual desire.

It's actually a depiction of not what a lot of people experience. It's if. If you do, that's totally normal. But if you don't, that's also likely normal. So spontaneous sexual desire is when you've got sex on the brain. You're thinking about sex. It doesn't take much to get you in the mood. Whereas there's a different kind of sexual desire known as responsive desire.

I map all of this in the libido chapter of my book, Is This Normal? So if you want a deeper dive on that, I take you through all the science with the [00:06:00] citations. You can take a look at that. But we've got spontaneous desire, about half the population experiences, and responsive desire. Which, what is that?

Responsive desire is when you're really not in the mood until things get going. Maybe you're like aloof, you're walking around, you're not totally thinking about sex all the time. Uh, it takes a lot more stimuli to get the brain activated and thinking about sex. That's normal, but that's what a lot of people will classify as low sexual desire or low libido.

They're like, I'm not the one to initiate. I'm not the one seeking it out. Therefore, something must be wrong with me. And that's not true. You just may have. So, um, I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in just a second. And [00:07:00] responsive desire is that when couples have conflict about like, you know, maybe, and we often, you know, classify these things in a heterosexual relationship and society says like, Oh, men are all about that spontaneous desire and women might be more responsive.

I'm going to use this analogy, but I want you to understand that it doesn't matter when it comes to gender. Anything I'm talking about today, it really doesn't matter when it comes to gender. Except for when we start talking about like how influence, how hormones may influence us and how we feel. And that's more about your sex than your gender.

But why I bring this up is because I think it's harmful when we say men should always be in the mood because they're men and women that like, if you have a libido, there was an actress who's like, I have a libido like a teenage boy. And that was all the headlines. It was Megan Fox and everybody's like, Oh, she's like a man.

And No, she just has spontaneous desire and that is totally normal. Now back to the couple [00:08:00] scenario, when there's conflict, what we'll often see portrayed in the media is that the husband, the male partner, they just want sex all the time, but their wife is not initiating. She's not initiating. She's not interested.

Like it takes a lot more to stoke the fire and it's portrayed as if it's problematic. But what we understand actually is that. Most couples, their desire is going to be a little bit different, a little bit opposite. That makes sense, right? Because if you both had spontaneous desire, when would you get anything done?

You probably wouldn't because you've just got sex on the brain all the time. Okay. So we've got the sexual desire, the libido. Then we have arousal. Arousal is what your tissues do in response. So you have sexual stimuli and the clitoris becomes engorged. The, uh, vaginal tissue starts producing secretions.

So self lubricating, by the way. [00:09:00] tangy here. You're probably used to that from me by now. Uh, you will not always self lubricate depending on where you're at in your cycle. So in the luteal phase. You're going to be less apt to self lubricate as easily, as readily, thanks to progesterone. And if you are in perimenopause, menopause, your estrogen is down.

If you're on the birth control pill, your estrogen is down. You may have difficulty self lubricating, and these are situations where it is normal, but that doesn't mean that you don't need support. You don't need help. There's no shame in needing lubrication of any kind, at any point. in your life. So I just want to make that really clear.

There's also a phenomenon known as arousal non concordance. That is where the brain is like, sex, yes. Nervous system, sex, yes. Uh, genitals, say what? Now we've normalized this for men in, in the experience of having erectile dysfunction. I would say that it's often [00:10:00] something that is, you know, It's, you know, made fun of, that they are made to feel humiliated for, and I don't like that in particular.

But we understand it from that place. In fact, a lot of sexual health, like a lot of research in general, done on men, and some of it does actually apply to women. I'll talk about the nuance today. But, uh, you know, sometimes erectile dysfunction, that's not about blood flow. That's not about insulin resistance and diabetes.

It's just about arousal non concordance. Even though you're into it, the genitals are not responding. And the same can happen with female genitalia as well. And that is also normal to experience. And scrolling social media and you're like, This is sus, this is weird, like, I'm scrolling this, I'm not into this, like, but down there is stirring.

But what is that happening? And it's just because the brain just is like, you know, where you're at in your cycle in particular. So [00:11:00] maybe it's, you know, around ovulation or just where you're at in your, in terms of life. Your brain can be surveying the environment and picking up on the sexual cues, the innuendos, if you will, and that can cause the nervous system to respond.

So it can be like really tricky, but the biggest thing to understand is that you're not broken. You're not problematic. If we have other symptoms, certainly like Vaginal dryness all the time, UTIs, uh, urinary incontinence, finding that we have yeast vaginitis or yeast infections, uh, bacterial vaginosis, BV, those kinds of things coming up, then sure we've got a problem, we need to check that out.

But there's a lot of things that our society has really given us subtle messages and sometimes overt messages to say you're broken, that you, you, there's something wrong with you and that's just simply not true. So we've defined sexual desire, arousal, and now orgasm. Crazy thing about [00:12:00] orgasm is if you take the like most prominent sexual health experts who have like the most experience and you blind them to people's identified genders in their reporting of an orgasm.

They can't tell. They couldn't tell you, is that male, is that female, like who is reporting this orgasm. And that's because universally what people report as an orgasm is pretty simplistic. It's just like buildup of tension and a release. It's like way funner than what it sounds like when you describe it.

But in, you know, just the, the, the terminology that people use, that's how it comes across in the research and the surveys. Now, as we talk about sexual desire, libido, I'm using those interchangeably, there's seven phases in a woman's life where we can see low libido. Now, some of these can apply to men as well.

However, men are not going through peribenopause or menopause and 100 [00:13:00] percent of us as ovary owners We'll go through menopause if we live long enough, my goal with this podcast is for you to live long and healthy and get to menopause. That's a goal. That's a, that's a good thing. So I want to talk about these seven phases that you should be aware of because I lecture to providers and they aren't often aware of this.

It's funny to me because as I bring these up. Sometimes, I've had doctors say to me after my talk, like, you know, but like, libido isn't the most important thing. Uh, it's just like a metric of your health. Like, sexual health, sexual desire, that should be up there with our period and blood pressure and with our menstrual cycle.

Like, all of these parameters that we can gauge someone's health. Okay, so what are these seven? If you You've ever had a baby. You definitely know postpartum can absolutely be a time when you have low [00:14:00] desire. Why is that? One, your hormones hit the floor. You are getting a preview of what is to come in menopause.

Once you deliver that placenta, Estrogen and progesterone drop, and at that point your hormones are on par with that of a postmenopausal woman. This is why some women postpartum, they're going to have vaginal dryness. They're going to have mood symptoms as well from this. But when it comes to your sexual desire, let me say that not sleeping from a baby, having gone through a potentially traumatic event.

Childbirth is literally an athletic event. Um, we give so much space to people who have like run a marathon and we're like, Oh, they've run a marathon. They need to recover. Of course. Rest. And for new moms were like, okay, yeah, it's been three days. Why are you not up? Take care of those dishes. Chop, chop. Uh, you know, six weeks you should be able to have sex, but you're like, no, things are still sore down there.

I'm not interested in this. So this is a common and normal [00:15:00] time to have low sexual desire. Perimenopause and menopause. I already mentioned this. This is a time where hormones are changing. You definitely want to go back and listen to my perimenopause episode on this. I'll link it in the show notes so it's easy to find.

But with perimenopause and menopause, we have the shift in hormones. Some women, their testosterone goes down. Some, it stays the same. But estrogen is definitely going to be lower and that affects how the genital tissue responds and it also affects our sexual desire. We're going to talk a little bit more about that.

Certain medications and in a bit, I'm going to give you a list of medications. These are things that prescribers don't often say to patients when they're prescribing it. They don't talk about like, you know, you might have a loss of sexual desire. You might not be into your partner anymore. And to be fair to providers, often these medications are ones that are life saving.

They're, they, they have a very crucial need, and [00:16:00] so I just want to be like, super clear. It's not that your provider's doing you dirty, it's just often the last thing that's in their mind when You've got a cardiovascular issue going on, for example. If you've ever experienced high stress and found that you have absolutely no libido, you have no interest in anything sexual, uh, you are normal.

Okay? The majority of the population, we find, will actually have diminished libido when they are under high periods of stress. Now on the flip side, there are some people who will seek out sex when they are stressed. They're also normal. Why are they normal? Well, because when you have sex, you are mindful.

To have an orgasm, you have to be mindful. You are feeling connected. You are very present. You are deep breathing. All these things that like everybody tells you to do, right? Maybe even doctor tells you to do and [00:17:00] sex is checking the box. But it also releases endorphins, oxytocin, prolactin. There are a myriad of hormones released with sex.

that can help combat the effects of cortisol and make you feel more calm, less anxious, and less at the mercy of stress. If your relationship changes in any way, it may affect your desire for sex. And this is normal. So after relationship changes is one of the top reasons that someone will report like I'm not interested in sex.

It could be extreme, like your partner cheated on you, or it could go back to like, you know, my partner is having to work at, you know, night shifts now and I'm getting less help around the house. We're seeing less of the connection. There's a lot of ways that relationship changes can show up that I just want you to be mindful as I outline all of this.

I hope you're seeing a theme here because there can be body image issues, so like I talked about with postpartum, with [00:18:00] perimenopause, those, those being times where you might have low sexual desire, your body's also changing during those times, so we can have body image issues. That's a, one of the top reasons that someone might report they're not interested in sex because they're feeling insecure or they have an inability to orgasm.

And because As I talk about, and is this normal, there is a phenomenon known as spectatoring where you're literally on the sidelines. While you're having sex, you like step out of your body and you're like, you're like, Oh, am I making weird noises? Do I look weird? How's my body? Do they see my rolls? Oh, did like, are they noticing my cellulite?

Um, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Literally no one having sex with you is paying attention to that. If they are lucky enough to have sex with you, they're not paying attention to that. But we pay attention to that because like, I mean, name a women's magazine that hasn't, like, really tried to make us insecure about all of this.

It's like, the way society has been structured to really like sell cosmetics, which I'm wearing right now, and, and treatments and all of these kinds of [00:19:00] things. And to tell us our value is only in how our body appears. So, it's like, If you're somebody who resonates with that, you are normal. I think this is the hardest thing to overcome.

I can give you tips today all about your hormones. It's so much easier than overcoming the negative stereotypes, the negative messages we've received about our body, about sex, about just ourselves as a whole. So, so much for tuning in. The other themes that are coming up, so I've got, I've got two more of these phases to share with you, but the other themes that are coming up is, you know, chronic stress, if there's grief going on.

So mental, emotional components, hormonal components, lifestyle components, that's why it's really complex. And we're going to go through a lot of this today. Now, the other two times that we will see that, so this is in our list of seven, that we will see Low sexual desire after medical procedures. If you have, you know, let's say you have a [00:20:00] mastectomy that I think is an easy one for people to be like, Oh yeah, of course, after that kind of medical procedure, but they, people might not understand that even having a surgery, like your appendix removed, that could take your desire.

There's not only the recovery and healing, but somebody was in your body. Like there's, there's so many more layers. to this. Even if you are somebody that, and I'm just going to give a trigger warming right now because in this conversation, sexual assault is going to come up and I regret not putting that in the beginning.

So I apologize to you. Uh, I kind of didn't expect to go into that straight away with everything I had in my head, but you know, if you have a history of sexual assault, And you go in and you need to have a pap smear, you need to have a transvaginal ultrasound, um, you know, there's a situation going on, you know, with your gastrointestinal health, you need to see a gastroenterologist, there's an exam involved in that.

These things can re trigger and really, you know, [00:21:00] uncover, Um, areas that still need to be processed and worked on. If you are somebody who is a survivor of sexual assault, I really want to encourage you to make getting support like a lifelong effort. It is not something, and I will say as somebody who comes from an abusive background, I would love to say that there's this moment you heal and you completely turn the corner and you never have to deal with it again, and that's just not true.

Uh, it's, the truth is, is that life is going to rehash these things and so I just want to encourage you to continue to get support. Now, the other time that we will see low libido is with infertility or somebody just trying to get pregnant and they've been unsuccessful for several months. His sex is becoming a chore to try to get pregnant.

Or people going through IVF treatments. Really, anytime that reproductive health becomes just about reproducing, right? Anytime sex is just about making a baby, [00:22:00] no matter where you're at on that spectrum of fertility, it could totally tank your libido. Especially because, like, most people are not wanting to plan sex and be hypervigilant about, like, because what some people do is they're like, I have to be in this certain position.

I have to put my legs up afterwards. I have to do all of these, like, certain things. And um, that can be a real turn off. And so if that's true for you, I just, you know. I just want to honor that because I don't think we talk enough about the negative impact of infertility, fertility treatments on relationships, on our sexual health.

And it's not necessarily that these treatments are necessarily aimed at like sabotaging your love life. It's just more of the process. It's, and it's more than just baby making. It's also your relationship with your body. Now does it matter if women are even interested in sex? I'm going to bring up this whole conversation and I told you that sometimes [00:23:00] providers will actually Ask me that, right?

Because like, her heart is breathing, beating, her lungs are breathing, her baby's healthy, she doesn't have osteoporosis, right? We're checking all these boxes of like, you're healthy, but it does in fact matter. In fact, I want to read this statement from the World Health Organization because it really, it made my eyes pop open, to be frank.

Good sexual health is fundamental to overall health and well being of individuals. Couples and families. Sure, sure. We get that. And to the social and economic development of communities and countries. What? Like, good sexual health is important for our communities. It goes beyond ourselves. It absolutely does, because we know that sexual health, if you are somebody who has a desire for sex, you have a healthy sex life, you have healthy hormones, you have healthy blood flow, you have healthy insulin levels, you [00:24:00] have a healthy mood, like there's so many ways that it impacts our health.

In fact, I want to go, I made a list here. The benefits of orgasms and regular sex. If you read my book, Beyond the Pill, you know I like did the top 10 like David Letterman style. And if you are young, I apologize because you don't know who that is. Anyhow, I went through a top 10 David Letterman style in Beyond the Pill of like here's the top benefits of orgasms.

But there's more than that. How exciting. Okay, so there's increased circulation, cardiovascular function, oxytocin levels, I already told you those, and endorphins increase. People report being happier when they're having regular sex and orgasms. Immune function improved, enhanced memory and cognitive abilities.

We're Possibility for neurogenesis, that means making new neurons, um, so great for brain health. I have an episode with Dr. Austin Perlmutter where we talk all about brain health. We did not talk about sex though, so I'm doing it here, but if you want more brain health, that's, that's gonna be the place to go.

So pelvic muscle [00:25:00] function, that totally makes sense, right? We actually can improve our body image with regular sexual activity. Improved sleep quality, testosterone, and estrogen levels optimized, life satisfaction, people report better life satisfaction, improved skin health, yes, your skin glows, but it also, you may experience clearer skin as well, uh, anti aging hormone, DHEA increases, so that's a hormone That's made in the adrenal glands.

It declines starting at age 25. Super lame because it is an anti aging hormone. It is helping you at the cellular level, stay youthful in your function. People report relationship satisfaction, more self esteem and better fertility. Things that go down. Okay. So that's all the stuff that like improves goes up.

What goes down when you're having regular sex and orgasms? By the way, what is regular sex? Okay, sometimes the studies are like regular sex [00:26:00] is once a week, several times a week, or a cadence of how many times you do it within a month. The most important factor though of what is the optimal amount of sex you should be having is the amount of sex that leaves you and your partner satisfied.

That's it. Doesn't matter what the research says. Doesn't matter what your neighbor's doing. Doesn't matter what your best friend's doing. Does not matter. What is most important is that you are satisfied. Okay, so what goes down? Period pain goes down. Migraines go down. Regular old headaches go down. There are some people whose migraines and headaches get worse with sex when they have an orgasm specifically, but most people an orgasm can relieve that.

Blood pressure goes down, stress goes down, heart attack risk goes down. Risk for mortality goes down and ovulation. So there have been studies showing so lack of ovulation or irregular cycles. We see this a lot with PCOS. [00:27:00] Regular sex can help start optimizing those hormones that influence ovulation.

Depression goes down. Loneliness goes down. Mortality. Wait, I already said that. I'm really harping on that one. Uh, autoimmune symptoms. People report those going down that may be because there's an optimization of the immune system going on with the hormones. And pain overall. People report less pain when they're having regular sexual activity and when they're orgasming.

So what are the hormones that are behind Your libido. Okay, when I ask this of providers whenever I'm on stage and I say like which hormones do you think are the most important? I just like take a minute. Take a guess what hormone they say is the most important. If you said testosterone, you would be correct.

And the truth is testosterone does play a role in our sexual desire. However, it [00:28:00] really comes back to this idea that men are sexual creatures. By design, they need sex all the time. And so they have this high testosterone. And like, so testosterone is obviously what drives sex. And that's like part of the story.

It's not the full story. The truth is, is that all hormones are important when it comes to sexual health. If you saw in Is This Normal?, and I will put a graphic up here, the pyramid of hormones that I explained in there. So we've got at the base Okay. A little triangle here. At the base, we've got cortisol and insulin.

Above that, we have thyroid, and at the tippy top, we have estrogen and progesterone. Now, we always talk about if you want to optimize your estrogen and progesterone, because like we all do, especially if we're having PMS and cyclical problems, you've got to work on the foundation. The same is true for your libido and I want to spend quite a bit of time talking about optimizing insulin and cortisol today because those can help everything else stack into place, but we've got [00:29:00] to talk about the other hormones as well.

And of course, like we do have to talk about testosterone and estrogen because if we don't, um, well, we would not be having a full conversation now, would we? Okay. So testosterone. This may be low postpartum, it may be low perimenopause, menopause, and when you're on an oral contraceptive pill. So the pill specifically decreases testosterone production in the ovaries.

It decreases all hormone production in the ovaries. That's how it works. It's a big enough dose of hormones, it stops your brain from talking to your ovaries. If the brain does not command the ovaries, the ovaries don't do their job. No ovulation. Great. We don't get pregnant. No libido. Great. We don't want to have sex.

Like what? That's the lamest thing ever, right? So we don't make enough testosterone. Then because you're taking a large dose of oral estrogen, large compared to like what we would use for topical hormone replacement therapy in someone who's menopause, that raises a protein called sex hormone binding globulin.

That's going to grab onto your free testosterone. [00:30:00] So what we see is that there is low sexual desire and there is sometimes an inability to orgasm, which can also be related to estrogen. While I'm talking about the pill, I'll just bring up that with the pill, people being on estrogen, you feel like, okay, you're taking estrogen, it should help the tissues down there, but in fact, uh, it doesn't for everybody.

That's why we can see, Uh, in some studies they've shown that in some people, this doesn't happen in everybody, but there can be shrinking of the clitoris, there can be vaginal atrophy, so shrinking of the tissues because it's not getting enough estrogen, the lactobacillus species aren't getting their glycogen, their sugar to be fed.

Now we're at risk for yeast infection. So there's a lot of ways that the pill can actually mess with your love life. If that's true for you, I recommend finding an alternative form of contraceptives. Um, in my book, Beyond the Pill, chapter 13, that's All it's about. It's all the different types and forms of [00:31:00] contraceptives out there that you can talk to your doctor about and find something different.

Because if you're taking the pill to prevent pregnancy so that you can have sex, uh, because unintended pregnancy is a big thing that will shut down your libido, that fear is real. If that's true for you, but then you don't want to have sex, we need to find a different option here. Because that is an important aspect of your health.

So testosterone can be involved in sexual desire and in how our tissues are responding with estrogen, friend. If you've ever found yourself in the grocery, and you look at a magazine, and you're like, oh, I like, I feel a little fantasy starting in my brain, you're probably about to ovulate. So that's when estrogen is highest in our cycle.

Um, or maybe you just started on some HRT, and you have some topical hormones going. So estrogen is It is a hormone that is responsible for thinking about sex, for fantasizing about sex, and that is the primary hormone that helps with self lubrication. So it is highly involved in our [00:32:00] sexual health. So from desire, to arousal, to orgasm.

Estrogen is a key player, which is why I go back to that like whole, um, stereotyping of men and testosterone. It's not the full story. Estrogen is so, so critical. And I would also say, again, that it's just, I think, unfair to have that expectation that men should only operate one way, right? It wouldn't be fair to think that we should operate just one way.

Now cortisol and insulin, as I told you, cortisol is going to be a big blocker for a lot of people. It's involved in our stress response and when we are in that fight, flight, freeze, that sympathetic overdrive, when we are feeling like the world is coming to get us and we have to survive, your body will choose to survive.

And in doing that, It is going to say, any attempts at baby making, shut it down, okay? We don't want to risk getting pregnant if there's not enough food in the environment. If we are totally stressed [00:33:00] out, the body doesn't know. Is that a tiger? I don't know. I just know we should not have sex. So I want you to understand, cortisol can be really important in that.

And I'm going to illustrate some ways coming up in which stress can really impact your nervous system. Now, insulin. Insulin is such a crucial hormone to our sexual health and I think that most people Um, do not think about insulin and link it to sex. So elevated blood sugar is going to impact your nervous system and that can have a negative impact on your sexual desire.

We're going to talk more about that, but I do want to just talk a little bit about thyroid because I just went from the very top of the pyramid to talk about those two. And then I went to the bottom of the pyramid, but in the center of that pyramid is thyroid. When you think about thyroid. You don't normally think about sex.

So let me explain, like, what is the thyroid? Thyroid is a little butterfly shaped [00:34:00] gland. It sits at the front of your neck. It produces hormones, T form mainly, that is gonna get converted in the periphery, so in other tissues, like your gut, your liver, your kidneys, into T3. D3 is responsible for your mood, your metabolism, your menses, motility in the gut, every single cell in your body has a receptor for thyroid hormone.

I did a deep dive on thyroid hormone with Dr. Isabella Wentz, so you want to check out that episode. If you want to understand all the aspects of thyroid health and like best things to eat for thyroid health, but what I want to talk about in the context of sex is that If you are somebody who is hypothyroid and you find that you've lost your desire for sex, that is normal until we get your hormones optimized.

So one of the top symptoms with hypothyroidism is fatigue and depression. Those symptoms are on their own enough to hijack your libido, right? If you're tired, like who's got time for sex? Like you [00:35:00] need to take a nap, you need to sleep 15 hours and like still wake up and not feel like you got enough sleep.

So hypothyroidism causing that fatigue. Causing, uh, depression, that can play a role in your sexual desire, but waking is another symptom that we see. And as I told you, body image issues can certainly be problematic. When it comes to hypothyroidism, which is too little thyroid hormone, or hyperthyroidism, which is too much, both of those can impact your blood flow.

If your blood is not flowing, you cannot get blood flow to the tissues down there, so any stimulation, you're not going to feel it so much. Thyroid is also involved. with testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone regulation. This is why it's in the middle of the pyramid and it's between what the gonads make, um, your ovaries.

By the way, other tissues can make a little bit of these hormones, but, uh, it can influence those. So we actually need thyroid hormone as part of the follicular development, so egg maturation [00:36:00] before ovulation. The only way to get progesterone is to ovulate. The only way to get those higher levels of estrogen that make you feel good around ovulation is to develop those follicles to be able to ovulate.

So thyroid is going to be really crucial in that. Now, the other thing that we see is that you can have menstrual cycle irregularities. So you might be feeling more TMS. Uh, you will also see that sexual arousal, orgasm can be more difficult. And this comes all down to what is happening in our main sexual organ.

Can you guess what that is? So your main sexual organ is the brain. And sometimes people are surprised to hear that, but, you know, interestingly enough as I talk about in Is This Normal? This is how important pleasure is, okay. People who lose feeling below the belt, so they are paraplegic, they will actually reroute nerves so they can have orgasms in different ways.

Like sometimes it's just like [00:37:00] stroking their ribs and they can have an orgasm. Like if you know anything about the nervous system, it is expensive. It is expensive and it is difficult to regrow nerves and yet the body prioritizes this. Why? Why would the body do that if pleasure wasn't important? It does it because pleasure is absolutely important.

And your brain and your nervous system are absolutely at the center of what is going on with your libido and really your sexual health overall. So I'm going to put up this diagram for you that shows what happens when stress hits your brain. So when stress hits the brain, we are going to see that the brain sends out signals like we need cortisol.

We need to recruit hormones that help us in this survival mode. And as that happens, we can shift away from reproductive hormones and really any sexy time hormones. This is all to say that stress is a major, major factor. Stress can be problematic at any time. at any stage of life [00:38:00] when it comes to your desire for sex.

But I want to be really clear, because I'm always really clear with clinicians when I lecture about this, we don't just use stress as an excuse for what's going on in somebody. So, if somebody comes in and they're like, Oh, I'm a new mom and, uh, you know, or maybe they even have like a three year old and they're like, I just like have no interest in sex.

We don't say, Oh, it's your stress. It's because you're a mom. That's lame. Because maybe it's that, but what is that doing to your physiology? Like, we have to investigate further. We need to ask more questions. I want to give you this example of a patient, Jill, and it illustrates a model called the dual control bottle.

First, let me explain what the dual control model is. So Bancroft and Janssen came up with this dual control model and it uses gas pedals and brakes, which is a car analogy. Whenever I talk about this, I get somebody coming in being like, why are you comparing women to cars? I'm not. [00:39:00] They were, uh, but actually they didn't start with women.

So interestingly enough, this research started trying to understand men. So this goes back to where I said, like, it doesn't matter what your gender is. Like this effect of stress on your nervous system is going to apply. So we've got the gas pedal in the brake, the gas pedal. Is all the things that we are told will turn us on or that we know will turn us on.

Why I say told is because like, anytime Valentine's Day rolls around, right? It's like, get the roses, get the card, get the chocolate, get balloons, like, get a teddy bear. Like, that doesn't do it actually for a lot of people, but we're told that it should. Uh, it's more the act, right, of being thought of, of somebody doing the gesture of things.

But what we tend to focus on is all about the gas pedals, like light the scented candles, get the romantic music on, like the turn ons. The gas pedal are all the things that are gonna keep us from getting sexually excited, interested, being able to like even orgasm, right? Because these are the [00:40:00] blockades to sex.

So, when I go to this patient Jill, I just am curious, you can let me know if you see yourself in this picture. So, Jill has a horrific morning. Her nanny doesn't show up, so she's at home with the two kids, and she has to take a meeting with a baby strapped to the front of her, who spits up all over her while she's in the middle of the meeting doing her PowerPoint presentation, and then she has to counsel the rest of her day.

Immediately, this lays down a stressor, a blockade. Here's what I want you to put in your mind. See a train track as the nervous system, and we just put a block down in front of that. Okay. So Jill's like, all right, I just have to cancel the rest of my day. Let me go downstairs, like, check on, like, you know, what my other kid's doing, and that kid has decided to put everything that he could find in the blender, turn it on without a lid, and now it's [00:41:00] exploded all over the kitchen, and he is just covered in some kind of chocolatey, yogurty, orange, what is this kind of stuff, goo all over the front of him.

She's like, I got to get him changed. I got to get him in the bath. Like we got to take care of all this. Oh, blockades laid down. She's heading now to the laundry room, throw all the stuff in the laundry and get that going because God knows if she can even get that stain out. And on the way there she slips on a pair of her husband's underwear because once again he could not be bothered to make it into the laundry hamper.

And she's got to pick those up too. Oh, just like one more thing in the day, blockade laying down. Now, she is in the room, she's like, I gotta get dressed because like, you know, this stuff got all over me. And she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and she's like, when did I get those dimples on my thighs?

Like, when did that happen? Lays down another blockade on that train track. Body image issues. Now, [00:42:00] this is her day. She's overwhelmed. Her nervous system feels frayed. It is raw. But her husband's on his way home and He's picking up takeout, so she doesn't even got to worry about dinner. Like the light at the end of the tunnel is here, except he comes in and he's in a rush because the game's on and sorry, I was running late, I forgot to pick up, pick up the takeout.

So like, you can just whip something up quick for the kids, right? And she's like, good Lord, I just need to talk to you about my day. I'm having so much stress today. And he's like, not now, talk to me after the game. Boom, blockade. Relationship issues have now come up because all she needed was to be heard in that moment.

And for him, he's got other, other priorities, other things on his mind. Now after the game's over, she's at the kitchen sink and she's doing the dishes and he's like, hmm, she's looking good. Like, I like this messy mom hair thing she's got going on, and he comes over and he's like, I'm gonna do that little thing to her ear and her neck that I know [00:43:00] just drives her wild, and she's unreceptive.

He does the thing, but all of these blocks exist on the train track. So he's trying to send the train down the track, except there's too many blockades on it. She can't receive the signal, and she tries to explain to him, You know, like, I've had this kind of day, all this stuff, you didn't pick up takeout and he says like, well, why are you punishing me?

Like, you don't want to have sex with me because you're punishing me. That's what you're doing here. It's not what she's doing at all. Her nervous system cannot be receptive to the sexual signals he's trying to lay down and no amount of guilting her, shaming her or even, you know, honestly, it's, it's not always that.

It's sometimes he just feels really hurt. Right? That happens too. Where he feels hurt. He feels rejected. And so, he's explaining that to her, except that like, what could have went so different is that he could have [00:44:00] just T boat the game, paused the game, prioritized his wife over the game, and listened to her for like five minutes.

And that could have helped alleviate one or maybe several of the blockades on the train track. Now, whenever I talk about this, I will often get comments from men who say like, well, all of that stuff up until him coming home, that was her stuff to work on. True. True. She does need to work on it. However, she also needs to feel comforted, held, and supported in her relationship.

She also needs to feel like she is in a partnership. with somebody who can alleviate some of her stress. When we talk about women's sexual health, because all of this happens in men too. It's true for men too. They need these things as well. When we talk about this for women though, in a heterosexual relationship, I think it's really important that we understand the level of vulnerability that needs to exist for a woman.

to experience vaginal penetration. [00:45:00] There is a lot of vulnerability. Your nervous system has to feel safe and secure in that. And I have heard too many clips from podcast bros, I think there's great men doing great podcasts out there. But when I say podcast bros, I think you know what I'm talking about. Uh, and they will say things like, we're here to like protect women.

And that's our role. It's alpha males. Like we're supposed to be protecting them, protect their nervous system. Hon, you got that wrong. Okay. Um, we don't need protection from a bear. What we need protection from is the stressors in the life and for you to hold space for that. But this goes both ways in a relationship.

Yeah. Now, what I'm illustrating here is all the ways that your nervous system. Can be impacted with stress throughout the day. So does Jill maybe need to work on meditation, deep breathing, stress practices? Sure. Am I going to tell her that when she's having the worst day ever? No, [00:46:00] absolutely not. The other thing too, is that, you know, sometimes when men will complain about like, Oh, this is just so much work just to have sex.

And, and yes, people have written this to me. I'm always like. Bro, if all you have to do is make your chonies in the hamper and that could get you laid, like, why would you not do that? Like, I don't understand that. So, I just bring this up because I think that, you know, it's a slippery slope for me to talk about like, Oh, what does Jill need to handle?

And for people to automatically go like, yeah, Jill's the problem. No, there's a dynamic. That's the problem. It isn't that he's bad or she's bad or it is that there's a dynamic. That's an issue. The dance that is being done is stepping on everybody's toes. So we just have to work that out. So maybe what could look different is that he gives her space in the day.

Like when You know, he comes home because undoubtedly she's touched out by the kids. They've been on her all day. Like, mommy's home. It's so special. Mommy's here. Like, [00:47:00] uh, you know, he gives her space so her nervous system can decompress. Instead of chasing gas pedals and, you know, one partner and coming home with like, you know, roses being like, Oh yeah, I know I did a bunch of bad things today in terms of my behavior, but like, here's some roses.

Uh, that you actually have a constructive conversation. It's the hardest thing. I think, I think we can fix hormones much faster than body image and conversations, opening communication and relationships. When it comes to our sexual health, we do have to eliminate body image. Unnecessary stressors. So take inventory.

Are there people in your life that you need to ditch? Are there unrealistic expectations that you've put on yourself because you found yourself scrolling Pinterest? Raise this hand that I've done this, uh, where I'm like, everything has to be perfect for the first day of school. And then it's like, no, it doesn't.

It doesn't like thank you for getting into my 40s and finally having the wisdom to be like, uh, done is better than perfect So letting go of unnecessary [00:48:00] stressors is a must. We want to develop stress reduction practices But we don't want to blame everything on stress alone Okay So I say that because I would hate if you miss some of the other things that could be contributing to a low libido I have talked about stress You In many episodes with many guests, I feel like the horse has been beaten to a pulp.

I'm not going to sit here and go through like all of the things that we can do for stress. I will give you some nutrition and lifestyle things that are going to help with stress, but I want to give you some practical things right now that can help overall with your love life. And so, as I said, though, as we go into this, when we're looking at lifestyle, we have to do a medication evaluation.

So, here is a list of the top offenders, medications that can tank your libido. SSRIs. This is one, uh, interestingly enough in the research, and as I talked about in Is This Normal? Saffron, may be able to help you overcome this, [00:49:00] but SSRIs are associated with Lack of sexual desire and anorgasmia, inability to orgasm.

Opioids, any kind of painkillers can definitely affect you. Cannabis is one that not everybody, um, gets thrilled about when I talk about because, you know, sometimes people are like, but it helps me relax. Um, it can absolutely affect your sexual desire. As can antihistamines, and it can dry stuff up down there, antidepressants of other kinds, anti seizure drugs, hormonal birth control we talked about, heartburn medications, cholesterol lowering medications, spironolactone, which is commonly used for acne, beta blockers, other heart medications, benzodiazepines, and anti anxiety meds.

It's a big list. This is why we use meds when we need them, but only when we absolutely need them at the lowest effective dose. And we always look at, can we possibly get this person off? Because saving your heart is really important. We like that. We want to keep that [00:50:00] healthy. It impacts your love life greatly to have good circulation.

Uh, but we, you know. We also have to be looking at the other lifestyle factors. So we, we've talked about stress. I want to talk about insulin for a bit as we go into these practical tips and these lifestyle factors. Now if you're listening to this right now and you are seated, put your feet flat on the floor.

If you can, maybe you're wearing high heels, knees approximately underneath or excuse me, knees approximately over your ankles. And what you're going to do, this is your foot. You're going to lift your heel up and you're going to drop it down. Lift and drop. You want to do like at least one foot. You can do one at a time, or you can do both at the same time.

You want to do 60 in a minute if you can. So every second you're going up. It's called a soleus push up. Okay, so you're gonna do that while I talk to you about insulin because I call the soleus a greedy glucose goblin. It's one of the muscles that pulls glucose [00:51:00] straight out of the bloodstream instead of Storing glycogen and breaking it down.

Glycogen is a storage form of sugar. It's found in our muscles. When we exercise, we'll break that down to liberate it to have energy. With the soleus push up, you just start pulling sugar out of the system. So going for walks after dinner or after meals or doing the soleus push up, if you have a desk job, is a great way to start getting the blood sugar under control.

But why do we care? Like, why do we care about our blood sugar and our sex life? What was the number two thing I said to you? That women report as, as the top issues with their sexual health. Inability to orgasm. Turns out insulin resistance is super bad for your clitoris. What is funny about this, though, is that I will tell you that whenever I talk about this, people are like, bring the studies.

You need to have more studies. I don't know what that little voice is I did, but There it is. Um, and we've got very few studies in women's medicine. [00:52:00] Very few studies. And we've got, and if you can see my hands right now, my fingers, I'm doing a little bit and even less on women's sexual health, right, because, you know, as long as a woman can get pregnant, like, that's all we care about in medicine, right?

Lame. Not right. False. Okay, so here's what we do now. Once upon a time, we were all embryos. And as we were developing, we were going the path of having a vulva, having a clitoris, having a vagina. Unless We had an XY chromosome with a specific gene on it and testosterone surged enough to activate that gene and that gene was responsive and at that point you deviate from the perfection that is the clitoris and you develop a penis instead.

They're the exact same embryological tissues and you won't often hear me say we can take studies done on men and apply it to women but this is one where we can because if I take a cross section of a penis that means I've done it. Ooh, that's not a good, yeah, we're going to chop a [00:53:00] penis. That doesn't sound good, does it?

But in dissection, we will slice a penis, we will slice a clitoris, that also sounds painful. We look at them and they're the same tissues, okay? They respond the same way a clitoris gets engorged, just the same way that a penis does. It fills with blood. When it comes to nervous tissue, uh, so we got way more nerve endings in the clitoris than the penis.

And to be fair, to the penis. You couldn't have all those nerve, you couldn't handle the nerve endings. You couldn't handle it all because penis lives on the outside of the body. Okay, that's a lot of stimulation. It also has to pee and it has to ejaculate. It's got a lot of things to do. The clitoris exists solely for pleasure.

That's it. And if you are somebody who is concerned about inability to orgasm, I'd like to drop this fact on you. When women are asked, only 18 percent say they are able to achieve an orgasm with vaginal penetration alone. What does that mean? clitoral stimulation, that is the yellow brick road, [00:54:00] if you will, to orgasm.

So I really want you to understand that clitoral sensitivity is important and clitoral stimulation is important when it comes to orgasms. So we know there's lots of research on erectile dysfunction, that if you have diabetes, you have prediabetes, the blood sugar being elevated will damage the nerves.

Now we have less sensation. We will also have damage of our blood vessels. Now, engorgement, not happening as regularly. We see this as erectile dysfunction. We will also see this with clitoral dysfunction. We just don't talk about that. I kind of hate the word dysfunction, just as a side note, because I just feel like it's, it's adaptation.

And a lot of times it's, it's being, Poor adaptation is things that we don't want. So how can we optimize insulin? If you've been doing the soleus push up all this time, good for you. If not, it's okay. We're gonna go into some more ways to optimize insulin. So we have to have individualized nutrition plans.

If somebody is already [00:55:00] pre diabetic or diabetic, if you're somebody who's like I just want to optimize my insulin, my estrogen, my progesterone, my testosterone, my thyroid, my cortisol, I got you. I will put a link in my show notes to drbrayton. com slash hormone kit. And that is going to be a recipe guide and meal plan and a whole set up for you to start eating in a way that really supports your hormones.

Now if there were two things I would emphasize the most to you. In terms of insulin resistance and sexual health, and it has nothing to do with how your body looks, but it will, will help your body how it looks, is to build muscle mass and to drop visceral adiposity. Belly fat. Okay. Building muscle is going to help you with your glucose.

It's also going to help with all kinds of hormones, going to help with inflammation, going to help with your immune system. Muscle is so important for your health. And visceral adiposity, that belly fat I alluded to, That's the fat [00:56:00] that's around your organs. It's associated with insulin resistance. When we enter menopause, when we are in a state where we lose estrogen, so maybe you're on a medication for endometriosis to tank your estrogen or breast cancer, that is going to increase visceral adiposity because estrogen influences body composition.

As you lose it, more abdominal fat, more abdominal fat, more insulin resistance, more insulin resistance, more abdominal fat. It's pretty lame. It's a vicious little cycle there. So how can we do that? So here's some things. So we talked about building muscle. Awesome. Do that. I want you to limit added sugar to 25 grams a day.

I am not talking about fruit, I'm talking about, you read the label, it's got sugar on there, watch it, monitor it. Your yogurt alone, little tiny yogurt with barely any protein could have like 16 to 30 grams of sugar in it, like you're already past your limit. And it was yogurt, don't waste your time on yogurt, like read those labels, because we still want to have like cake and cookies.

Like we still want to like enjoy [00:57:00] our life, but we want to limit the added sugar on the majority of our days. We want to have at least 25 grams of fiber every day. I have guides at DrBrighton. com on how to do exactly that. And we want to be making sure we're taking care of our gut health. So, whether that's taking probiotics, eating fiber rich foods, abstaining from things like alcohol and NSAIDs as much as possible, things that we know can be disruptive to the microbiome.

So, we've got to work on that visceral adiposity, that's going to help with blood sugar optimization. We also need to sleep. Oh my gosh, now this feels like another horse they don't need to beat, but we don't sleep, we snack more. Because sleep, when it's poor, we have an increase in our hormones that will drive us to eat more.

Our hunger hormones get messed with so I'm gonna have a whole episode about like sleep and how to optimize that but I just want to say you need to be tending to your sleep and if you're postmenopausal right now and you're like That's nice. How do I do that? You may be a [00:58:00] candidate for progesterone if you're not sleeping.

We may want to think about, um, melatonin, passion flower, phosphatidylserine, myoinositol, which myoinositol can help with your sleep. It can help your thyroid and it can help. with your blood sugar. So usually we're using about 2000 mg of myoinositol. Chromium, another great nutrient, 200 mg is typically what people will use daily if they need help with their blood sugar.

And berberine is probably one you've heard of. 500mg, 2 3 times a day. And the research has been shown to help with optimizing blood sugar, which is going to help optimize your insulin. Another good trick is apple cider vinegar. I want to read you this uh, one study, and we'll talk a little bit more about this.

So, a shot of of apple cider vinegar before meals improves insulin sensitivity by 19 to 34 percent during high carb meals. Now, here's what I want you to know about this. [00:59:00] They took diabetics with poor blood sugar control and fed them the worst meal they possibly could and giving them one shot of apple cider vinegar helped optimize their blood sugar.

So am I saying you can skip? Metformin or meds. No, I'm not saying that I'm saying this is one tool in your toolbox that you can utilize lifestyle wise to try to improve your insulin level. So apple cider vinegar, just a little shot before meals. You can chase it with some water. You can dilute it with water because we want to keep your teeth nice.

Um, my episode with Dr Dr Victoria Sampson. You want to listen to that because she would definitely be on me right now if I didn't say that to you. But having that before meals. But what should our meals look like? So, I like to use a plate, uh, to describe to my patients what their plate should look like.

So, we have a plate. We cut it in half. Half should be vegetables. Okay? Non starchy vegetables. Leafy greens. Cruciferous vegetables. We cut it in half again. We're going to make a quarter protein and then a quarter is going to be carbohydrates. And maybe that's a sweet [01:00:00] potato or maybe that is some brown rice.

Whatever works for you. But structuring your plate in that way can help you optimize your hormones and your blood sugar. Specific nutrients. So I want to give you some key nutrients. I could give you a whole lot. I actually do in my book, but I want to give you some key ones right now. So number one is magnesium and you might not think magnesium and mojo, but trust.

It works. So we typically are using 150 to 300 milligrams of magnesium glycinate in my practice. Remember, I'm a doctor, not your doctor. So this information, you want to run it by them. But magnesium can help with stress. It can help with your insulin, your blood flow. It can help with your moods. So it can impact you in a lot of ways that are very subtle in terms of nudging you towards having a better libido.

It also can help with better sleep and we can get magnesium in places like beans, spinach, chia seeds, uh, it's found, it's found in a lot of whole food items. And [01:01:00] despite that you may still need to supplement. And why I say that is because a lot of people, even with their best efforts, aren't getting enough in their diet.

Another great nutrient is vitamin B6. I could really highlight every single B vitamin, but what I want to highlight vitamin B6 is, is because if you are somebody who has PMS or you find that you're stressed in your luteal phase, your progesterone's not optimized. Now, here's the thing about progesterone that I like to say, is that when progesterone hits, You'd rather get into some sweatpants than get into their pants, and that is normal.

However, if your progesterone isn't right and you're at the mercy of stress and you're feeling all that PMS, things are going to be a lot worse. So that's where vitamin B6 can come in. We want to use about 25 to 50 milligrams. Know that going higher isn't better while it is water soluble. Some people can get paresthesia, so they can get numbness, tingling in like their fingers and toes.

Um, that [01:02:00] typically happens at really high doses for long periods of time. So like 100, 200 milligrams for like over six months. But some people are sensitive. So just want to be mindful of it and just because something's good doesn't mean that more is better. Now, in addition to helping progesterone levels, vitamin B6 can also help reduce inflammation.

Inflammation, anytime we have that, it's going to demand that cortisol rises to help control it. And as we already said, like cortisol can be a blockade, stress can be a blockade. And as I explained to you before, with the brain being the main sexual organ, vitamin B6, magnesium, a lot of these nutrients can help.

with brain health as well. Omega 3 brain health, you gotta talk about omega 3s, right? We're usually going for about 2, 000 milligrams of a combination of EPA and DHA. That is gonna help with blood flow. It's gonna help with insulin. It is going to help with brain health and your neurological tissue. So, all the feelings and sensations.

It also can help with lowering [01:03:00] inflammation, help you have more glowing skin, like, yes, we love all of this, don't we? Now, another nutrient which I find kind of funny is vitamin D. Now, we want to, if we're going to supplement, we want to do it based on blood levels, so we want 50 to 80 nanograms per milliliter of vitamin D in the blood.

If you're already there, you don't need vitamin D, but, I mean, we always need sunshine, right? And here's the funny thing about vitamin D. If it's low, people report decreased sexual desire. They will have a low libido. However, we have so many babies born in the fall, which correlates to like dead winter months when we're getting no sunshine.

And I sometimes like to joke that like, if you're not getting your vitamin D, you're trying to get the vitamin D a different way. Maybe that's a very inappropriate joke, but basically to say like you need vitamin D and you need sunlight. However, there is something to be said about winter months and people cuddling up and people, [01:04:00] uh, finding another way to have comfort.

Now, vitamin D can also help with brain health, and it can also help reduce inflammation. Um, you're gonna primarily get it from the sun. Egg yolks, fatty fish, mushrooms can have vitamin D. When it comes to omega 3 fatty acids, I didn't mention food sources. Salmon, mackerel, sardines, shrimp, anchovies, herring.

And with vitamin B6, we're looking at sweet potatoes, liver. So nutrient dense, but not everybody loves it. Um, eggs, avocados, chickpeas. So for, I always like to start with food first, rather than just going straight to supplements. Cause I think we get a lot more from our food than just these nutrients. Now, zinc is probably when you expected me to say, is it the oysters that aren't like they're aphrodisiacs?

Is it the way they look? Is it the restaurant you eat them in? Is it that you are spending time with someone special when you eat oysters? Is it, you know, just the whole act of being mindful of what you eat? Uh, or is it the [01:05:00] zinc? So, oysters are a rich food source of zinc. Zinc does help with testosterone levels.

And interestingly enough, zinc can help those with ADHD. And those with ADHD often report that sex is pretty boring, and they get distracted with sex. And that can be one reason why, They're not interested or they have a hard time orgasming. So zinc may be able to help with that. We don't usually supplement more than like eight milligrams unless it's like a very specific condition or acute condition.

And that's because we don't want to have zinc toxicity and we always need to balance it with copper. Now to the point with ADHD, I'm not saying that zinc is going to fix your love life, But I just find it an interesting tool to pull in if that is true for you. Beef, pumpkin seeds, really any organ meats or meats in general are going to have zinc in them.

We talked about testosterone, we talked about ADHD. It can increase desire, orgasm. And [01:06:00] it may even improve self lubrication. Now the last nutrient I want to talk to you about is really a group. It's polyphenols. Polyphenols are incredible for your circulation, your cardiovascular health, your blood vessels.

If it's good for the heart, It's good for erectile tissue. They can improve blood flow, they can reduce inflammation. One of my favorites is resveratrol. When I supplement with that, it's usually 50 to 100 milligrams that I'm using. That's how we've put it in our Balance Women's Hormone Support. But I also like green tea extract a lot too.

Green tea extract, non caffeinated, that can help with not only your cardiovascular health, but there have been studies to show that it can help with your weight and you're optimizing your body composition. So polyphenols are a great way to overall support your love life, but also your health in general.

I, uh, none of these nutrients are something that aren't [01:07:00] going to be beneficial for multiple things in your system. So we covered a lot today and I hope this was helpful for you. I would love to hear from you if it was helpful in understanding the multiple ways that. Our lifestyle, our nutrition can impact our libido.

I certainly, you know, at drbrayton. com have resources that go into like What foods are considered aphrodisiacs and what's the science say behind them and ways to, you know, improve your love life. And so there's more resources that you'll find there that I didn't cover today. But certainly, I think you can walk away with a lot today that you can employ to really take charge of your health, to start optimizing your hormones and feeling your best.

 

As always, I'm super grateful for you being here. It's always a pleasure to spend time with you and I look forward to talking to you next time.