Great Sex, Naturally (7 page)

“Step by step, moment by moment, day by day,
practice will get us where we want to be.”

—L
OUISE
H
AY
,
E
MPOWERING
W
OMEN

We began the previous chapter with the idea that although sexual pleasure is your natural birthright, you have to nurture your capacity for great sex in order for it to flourish. On one level, your potential for sexual pleasure is connected to your health in obvious ways: to be capable of fully enjoying pleasure, you need a healthy body, the energy to be passionate, and freedom from the distractions and restrictions of illness and suffering. You’ll be unlikely to experience great sex if your health is often out of balance, you’re constantly dealing with challenging symptoms, or you’re frequently exhausted.

On a deeper level, the effects of your health on your sexuality are far more consequential than you may realize at first glance. Countless choices you make every day—every facet of your lifestyle, including, as
Chapter 1
explored, even your thoughts—can have direct or indirect long-term repercussions for your capacity for pleasure. The cumulative effects of numerous healthy choices, over the course of months and years, can allow your natural potential for radiant sexual health to thrive. On the other hand, consistent unhealthy choices can gradually reduce your sexual energy and ultimately undercut your capacity for pleasure.

Many people spend their lives somewhere between these two extremes, in a kind of libido limbo, never fully experiencing the sexual gratification they’re capable of and unaware of the extent of their birthright to pleasure. If you’re in this category, you may be amazed to uncover the power of the gifts you have lying dormant. This power may be only waiting for you to make the right lifestyle choices to allow it to emerge and reveal itself. And in addition, as we pointed out previously, abundant health not only increases your capacity to enjoy sex, but in a “virtuous” cycle, sex gives you many health benefits in return—another reason why becoming healthier can be synonymous with becoming sexier.

Now that we’ve explored the power of your mind and spirit—the first cornerstone of your sexual health—you’ll look at many more ways you can bring out your capacity for great sex with a healthy lifestyle. In this chapter, we’ll examine the three other key cornerstones that form the foundation of your sexual health: your diet, your exercise habits, and your ability to efficiently remove toxins from your body. You’ll discover many tools and techniques you can use on a daily basis to unlock your hidden potential and maximize your ability to experience your natural inheritance to pleasure.

The Great Sex Diet

Your diet is an area of your life that’s completely within your control, and it can have profound effects on your body and its resistance to disease, and on your zest for life. It may even help you fulfill your genetic potential. According to well-known researcher Jeffrey Bland, you can “alter the expression of your genes” with the food you eat. By providing you with high-quality food, the Great Sex Diet gives you the basis for more energy, potentially greater genetic expression, better sex-hormone production, and a more robust sex life.

You can eat only so much at any given time, so you want to choose the most densely nutritious options—high-vitality foods chock-full of essential nutrients. Every bite of every meal is an opportunity to add fuel to your body that will make the most of your health and your pro-libido lifestyle on a cellular level.

Let’s look at the basic components of your Great Sex Diet:

—
Choose organic.
There’s nothing sexy about eating nonorganic food. By choosing organic, in one move you can avoid numerous pesticides; genetically modified organisms (GMOs); fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge (some fertilizers contain waste treated at sewage plants, and may harbor food-contaminating ingredients); irradiation (nonorganic foods may be irradiated to extend their shelf life, a questionable practice for your health); and antibiotics and growth hormones.

Foods containing GMOs may be, by definition, among the unsexiest edibles in the universe, since they’re produced not by normal reproductive processes, but by inserting genetic material from one organism into another, giving foods genetic traits they don’t naturally have. Some genetically modified foods contain material that has never been consumed by humans and may pose serious allergy threats or result in antibiotic resistance. An extra word of caution regarding GMOs, particularly if you live in the U.S.: Although GMO foods haven’t been adequately tested for safety, the FDA, unlike regulators in many other countries, doesn’t require that they be labeled. In the U.S., buying 100 percent organic is the only way to ensure that you aren’t consuming GMOs.

—
Enjoy “good” carbohydrates.
Ignore the popular notion that all carbohydrates are bad for you. Eating the right carbohydrates can give your body the sustained, consistent energy it needs to power your muscles, brain, and libido. It’s only
simple
carbohydrates that you want to avoid, not complex ones. Simple carbohydrates, like white rice, have little fiber in them; on the other hand, complex carbohydrates, such as brown rice, give you lots of valuable fiber.

Fiber is the part of your diet that your body doesn’t digest. Along with many other benefits, it keeps you from feeling hungry too soon after a meal and prevents you from experiencing extreme highs and lows in your blood-sugar level. If you have steady blood sugar throughout the day, you have better regulation of your energy (sexual and otherwise), improved mental functioning, and greater feelings of well-being. Typically, the more fiber in a food, the lower its glycemic index—a measurement of how quickly a food converts into sugar in your body—so you want to choose carbohydrates with a low glycemic index.

—
Eat high-quality, lean protein.
Your body, mind, and libido rely on adequate protein to be optimally healthy. Protein serves as a precursor to important neurotransmitters, which, as you’ll discover later in this chapter, can be vital for your sexuality. Healthy protein sources include beans and legumes, eggs, nonfat dairy foods, lean chicken and turkey, and low-mercury fish and seafood.

—
Consume omega-3 essential fats, and avoid unhealthy fats.
To function optimally, your entire body, including your sexual organs, needs essential fats—“essential” because your body doesn’t produce them, and you have to ingest them in your diet. There are two kinds of essential fats:
omega-3 fats
and
omega-6 fats
. As a rule, you want to increase your intake of omega-3 fats, which have a wide range of health benefits. They assist in maintaining the moisture and health of your vulvar tissues, help with your production of sex hormones, and improve your circulation—including blood flow to your sexual organs, which enhances your ability to feel aroused. Omega-3 fats aren’t often consumed in the typical Western diet. They’re abundant in fish and flax oils; hemp, chia, and pumpkin seeds; walnuts; and seafood. If you take fish oil as a supplement, the recommended daily dose is an amount containing at least 500 mg of the omega-3 fatty acid EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and 300 mg of another omega-3 fatty acid, DHA (docosahexaenoic acid).

Omega-6 fats are found in corn, soy, cottonseed, safflower, and sunflower oils. Most Americans eat far too many omega-6 fats; it’s generally recommended that you avoid increasing your omega-6 intake.

Other unsexy fats to minimize in your diet include saturated fats found in beef, pork, lamb, turkey, chicken, and whole-milk products like cheese and butter. It’s best to steer clear of all hydrogenated fats (also known as trans-fatty acids), which are found in margarines, some candy bars, and many processed foods. These fats can obstruct female (as well as male) sex-hormone production; research also shows that these fats promote hardening of the arteries, which can contribute to erectile dysfunction in men.

—
Eat lots of fruit and vegetables.
By providing you with life-sustaining nutrition, vegetables support your sexuality. They should make up at least a third of your diet, and you should eat a minimum of ten servings a day whenever possible. Fruit is another important part of your Great Sex Diet, but keep in mind that it also contains a lot of simple sugar, so you may need to limit your intake. Avoid watermelon, cantaloupe, and mangoes; they’re high in fruit sugar, which can cause rapid increases, followed by steep drops, in your blood-sugar level—not good for your health or your sexual energy. In the pages ahead, we’ll explore some fruits and fruit juices that are exceptionally conducive to your overall well-being and sexual health.

—
Drink plenty of filtered water.
Keeping yourself well hydrated enhances your sexuality by helping to maintain your body’s self-moisturizing function, which includes your natural production of vaginal lubrication. When you’re aroused, your vagina’s ability to produce ample lubrication—potentially critical for your sexual pleasure—depends in part on your prior fluid intake.

Supplements to Reinforce Your Great Sex Diet

You can guarantee that you’re getting the nutrients you need to support your body and your sexuality by backing up your diet with the right vitamin and mineral supplements. No matter how carefully you eat, you may not always get all the necessary nutrients—because of seasonal unavailability of foods, depletion of minerals in the soil from certain farming practices (which can reduce nutrient content in your foods), fluctuations in your individual bodily needs and stress level, your exposure to particular health challenges (including contagious illnesses and environmental contaminants), and many other factors. The best way to ensure that you’re getting a baseline of vitamins and minerals to meet your needs is by taking the following daily supplements:

—
Multivitamin.
The important ingredients to look for in your multivitamin supplement are vitamins C, D, E, B
₂
, B
₆
, and B
₁₂
, as well as thiamine, niacin, folate, biotin, pantothenic acid, calcium, magnesium, zinc, selenium, copper, manganese, chromium, molybdenum, beta-carotene, pyridoxal 5-phosphate, potassium, and bioflavonoids. If you use the multivitamin recommended in
Appendix C
, take two tablets twice daily with food.

—
Antioxidant formula.
The key ingredients you need in your antioxidant formula are vitamin C, coenzyme Q
₁₀
, alpha lipoic acid, resveratrol, green-tea extract, and n-acetyl l-cysteine. Your multivitamin contains vitamin C, but the additional C in your antioxidant gives you further immune protection and extra assistance in fighting free radicals. If you use the antioxidant formula in
Appendix C
, take two capsules daily.

—
Bone formula.
The important ingredients in a good bone-support formula are vitamin K, vitamin K
₂
, magnesium, calcium, boron, and silica. The multivitamin recommended above contains magnesium and calcium, but women need an extra boost of both for additional bone support. If you take the bone formula in
Appendix C
, the recommended dose is two capsules daily.

The Dynamic Dozen: Super-Libido Foods to Enhance Your Great Sex Diet

To provide an extra punch to your sex-supportive diet, you’ll want to enjoy the following foods and beverages often. These 12 items are recommended because they’re unusually rich in nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that can prevent or treat disease, and have unique potential to promote your overall health and sexual well-being. (Most of these aren’t usually considered aphrodisiacs; later in this book, you’ll explore specific foods for their aphrodisiac potential.) They’re not listed in order of effectiveness—all are powerful as super-libido foods.

1.
Flax.
Flaxseeds are high in friendly omega-3 fats (which, as you’ve seen, are favorable to your sexual health), decrease inflammation in your body, and may help prevent cancer. Flaxseeds are also loaded with
lignans
, and research shows that high levels of these phytonutrients in your diet can reduce your breast-cancer risk. To enhance your Great Sex Diet, take one tablespoon of flax oil, containing 6,200 mg of omega-3 fats, every day. You can add flax oil to salad dressings or smoothies, or take it in capsule form—although you’ll need to take lots of capsules to get the equivalent of a tablespoon. Refrain from cooking or frying with flax oil, because heat not only destroys its benefits, but could make it detrimental to your health.

2.
Hemp.
Adding hemp seeds to your diet can promote your health and sexual well-being in many ways. Not only are they rich in beneficial omega-3 fats, they’re also high in gamma-linolenic acid (GLA). Studies show that GLA reduces inflammation, and can help treat premenstrual syndrome, menopausal hot flashes, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease, and other conditions. In addition, hemp seeds are high in vitamins and minerals, and contain all of the essential amino acids. You can find these seeds in many food products, such as hemp milk, hemp oil, hemp flour, and hemp protein powder.

3.
Chia seeds.
An ancient grain from Mexico, chia seeds can pack a lot of extra nutritional power into your Great Sex Diet. They consist of 44 percent carbohydrates—38 percent of which is fiber—31 percent fats, and 16 percent proteins, as well as some antioxidants. Because of their high fiber content, chia seeds support good elimination, and help stabilize your blood sugar, which is advantageous for your sexual energy. Since most of their fats are omega-3 fats, they can be a valuable asset for reducing your risk of heart disease and helping you control cholesterol. You can mix chia seeds into smoothies and soups, or add them to recipes that call for thickeners.