Sex on the Brain

A HEALTHIER BRAIN EQUALS A SEXIER YOU

Strategies to Improve Your Brain and Life

You know you’ve got to exercise your brain just like your muscles.

—WILL ROGERS

I am a sucker for a beautiful brain. Usually one needs to be attracted physically to a potential romantic partner, but my brain-imaging work has taught me that it is also a good idea to be attracted to the appearance of a person’s physical brain as well. Ugly brains usually make for ugly relationships. “Beauty and brains” is more than just a cliché. In 2001, CNN International aired a story on my imaging work. News anchor Marina Kolbe spent several days in our clinic watching us work and filming the imaging process; she was even scanned herself as part of our healthy-brain study. Besides being a smart, attractive woman, she also had one of the prettiest brains I had ever seen. Now, to a neuroscientist, that is ever so sexy. She and I have been friends ever since. Her behavior is consistent with her lovely brain. Beauty is much more than skin deep.

Roseanne has been a friend of mine for many years. She is an attractive woman, but not attractive to me. I saw her as anxious, worried, and fretful. One day her doctor put her on the antidepressant Zoloft to calm her anxiety. Several weeks later I found myself being more interested in her. Something about her was different. Even though she looked the same, she was more appealing. She had an air of confidence that had been missing before the medication. Her smile was brighter and she seemed to have a more genuinely positive internal state. Her eyes had a new, more intense sparkle. Her brain was more relaxed, one of the effects of Zoloft. A healthier brain is associated with a healthier, sexier you.

Since your brain is involved in everything you do, including everything sexual, it follows that a healthy brain is more likely to be associated with more effective behavior, at work, at home, and even in the bedroom. A healthy brain will give you more consistently loving behavior, help you read social cues, and allow you to be a better lover. As in Roseanne’s case, it can even increase your sex appeal. Working to keep your brain healthy increases your chances for loving relationships and great sex.

In my work I have seen many things that hurt how the brain functions, ruining your chances for love; and many things that help brain function, improving your chances for love. In this chapter I will explore behaviors that make your brain look old, ugly, shriveled, and damaged as well as those things that enhance and beautify the brain. Once you know what helps and hurts the brain, you will have a clearer choice on how healthy you want your brain to be, and subsequently how effective you will be.

Hurtful Brain Behaviors

Brain Trauma

One of the most important lessons I have learned from looking at 35,000 scans these last sixteen years is that mild traumatic brain injuries change people’s whole lives and virtually nobody knows about it. Virtually no marital counselor on the planet thinks about evaluating brain trauma as part of why people struggle in their relationships. Even what many professionals would consider mild trauma can be harmful. The brain is the consistency of soft butter or tofu, somewhere between egg whites and Jell-O. It is housed in a really hard skull that has many ridges.

I recently scanned a nineteen-year-old man who had a skate-boarding accident which caused him to be unconscious for about half an hour. Most physicians would consider that a mild traumatic brain injury. Yet on his scan it literally wiped out 25 percent of the front part of his brain; so the part of his brain that is involved with judgment, forethought, impulse control, organization, and planning is dead, from what professionals consider a minor brain injury. Protecting the brains of our children, our loved ones, and ourselves should be a top priority because brain damage affects us in a very serious way. A high percentage of people in prison have had brain injuries. There is a higher incident of children who struggle in school after a brain injury. There is a higher incident of depression and substance abuse after brain injuries.

I treat a couple in which the woman had a diving accident when she was eighteen years old, again something that was considered a mild traumatic brain injury as she was unconscious for only a short period of time. She was dating her soon-to-be husband at the time, and he noticed a big change in her behavior over the next six months. She went from being loving, attentive, sweet, consistent, and reliable to someone who was more emotional, depressed, disorganized, and temperamental. He felt committed to her and hoped she would change back to the person she used to be. Unfortunately, she struggled with her mood and her temper for thirty years, until she came to see me. When I scanned her, she was missing the function of about 30 percent of her left prefrontal cortex, which is the happy side of the brain. The left side of the brain has been reported by researchers to be the happy side, while the right side is associated with more anxiety and negativity. When you hurt the happy side of the brain, the more anxious, negative right side has more dominance in your life. This injury seriously affected this couple’s happiness.

I have discovered that you have to ask people five to ten times whether or not they have had brain trauma. People just forget, even serious injuries. I have a friend who has financial problems that have affected his marriage. His ability to have sex suffers due to his financial problems. His wife is anxious about money and she feels insecure about their future. He is an amazing, sweet man, but struggles to make good financial decisions. Before I scanned him, I asked him seven or eight times whether or not he had had a head injury, which is common in people who struggle with finances. He said no, no, no, no, no, no. When I scanned him, I saw a large dent in the function of the front part of his brain. The only thing that I could figure is that he had a head injury that he forgot. So I asked him again and he said no. I asked him again and was very specific, “Have you ever been in a car accident?”

“No,” he said.

And then, and it always happens this way, his faced changed, he got this “Aha” look on his face, and said, “I am so sorry. I lied to you. When I was fifteen years old I was in the front passenger seat of a car when we got in a head-on collision. I wasn’t wearing my seat belt and my head broke the windshield. I lost my eyesight for four days. I can’t believe I forgot that incident.” He hurt a significant portion of the judgment center in his brain. He’s still a wonderful, sweet, loving man, but when it comes to money, he would make bad decisions that increased his wife’s anxiety and decreased her libido.

Having a head injury can really ruin your chances for great sex. Protect your brain. I work with many couples who have experienced domestic violence. The incidence of head injuries in violent individuals is rampant and very few people know it. If you have serious problems with your temper and the police come to your house, the first thing the courts and mental health professionals recommend is anger-management classes. If a head injury is part of the cause of the trouble, anger-management classes are like trying software programs to fix hardware problems. Not very effective.

I once treated a man from Normal, Illinois, who was referred to me by his psychologist after I gave a lecture at the university there. What a fun visit for this California boy. I went to the Normal grocery store, was interviewed on the Normal radio station, and even had the opportunity to meet Normal women—not many normal women in California . . . . The patient had been arrested for felony domestic violence. He had broken his wife’s arm. When I met this man, he truly hated himself. He hated his temper and his inability to control the rage he felt inside. He was suicidal at our first visit. His SPECT scan showed a dent in the left-front side of his brain and he had very poor function in the part of his brain called the left temporal lobe, an area that we have associated with violence. I had already asked him six times if he had had a head injury, to which he replied no, but when I had evidence on the scan of a head injury and asked if he had ever fallen out of a tree, fallen off a fence, or dived into a shallow pool, an “Aha” look came over his face and he said, “When I was six years old I was standing on top of the railing on our porch, it was raining, and I slipped and fell six feet head first into a pile of bricks. My parents told me I was only unconscious for a little bit. Do you think that could cause this problem?” I said it could and asked when the temper problems began. He said he had always had them. I then asked him to ask his mom if he had them before he was in kindergarten. It turned out that his temper problems started when he was in first grade. He had problems nearly his whole life, probably secondary to a brain injury nobody knew about. He and his wife had been to multiple relationship counselors with no benefit. If you never look at the brain, you may miss very important pieces of information. The combination of the right medication changed his life. The other interesting thing is that it changed his wife’s life as well because rather than seeing him as a bad person, she saw him as somebody who was sick, that potentially with the right treatment could get much better.

Emotional Trauma

In a similar way, emotional trauma can change the brain negatively and make it harder for you to get the love that you want. Whenever people have been physically, emotionally, or sexually abused, brain changes take place. Being in a fire, car accident, earthquake, or flood can also change the brain. In our imaging work we have seen specific scan patterns associated with emotional trauma. The limbic or emotional centers of the brain tend to become overactive, making people vulnerable to obsessions, anxiety, and depression, all things that interfere with our ability to connect with others in a loving way. It has been well documented that adverse childhood events affect people throughout their life. These experiences disrupt the child’s ability to form secure attachments to their parents. This may lead to their inability to form secure attachments later in life. These people have multiple partners and are promiscuous in their sexuality.

As with brain injuries, many people forget they have had emotional trauma. When we see the scan pattern associated with trauma, we ask about it multiple times. I have been surprised many times by people who said they never had trauma, later to remember being sexually molested, in a fire, robbed at knife point, raped, or even attacked by animals.

One of our patients, who saw a colleague of mine at the clinic, had the scan pattern of emotional trauma. She initially denied any past trauma. When given more specific examples, such as being in a fire, robbed, or raped, she said no, no, no. Then after a long hesitation she said that there was this one time when she was ten years old and went to a friend’s house in the high desert of California. Her friend’s father was an actor who collected unusual animals. They had a lion at home and the day she was at her friend’s house, the lion got loose and chased her, pinned her, and actually had her head in his mouth before they got him off of her.

Emotional trauma can impact the brain and wreak havoc in your love life. Getting the emotional trauma treated can actually rebalance the brain and improve your chances for love. Many researchers have seen that early abuse survivors have overlapping psychiatric disorders. Therefore, they may suffer from major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and panic disorder. Emotional trauma, like abuse or exposure to domestic violence, at early ages has been studied extensively and has shown that negative behaviors have resulted later in life. Depression, suicide, and drug abuse in later life are often associated with trauma early in life.

Drug and Alcohol Abuse

Drugs and alcohol clearly damage the brain. They prematurely age and lower overall function in the brain. Alcohol is toxic to the brain if you drink more than a couple of drinks a week. A study from Johns Hopkins University reported that people who drink every day have smaller brains. When it comes to the brain, size really does matter. Alcohol kills cells in the cerebellum, the back bottom part of the brain that is involved with coordination, learning, and orgasmic pleasure.

Many people drink and use drugs as a way to medicate negative feelings. If you have experienced emotional trauma, you are more likely to drink. In fact, up to 30 percent of people with alcohol abuse or drug abuse have emotional trauma in their backgrounds. As many as 60 percent of women who are substance abusers have posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is associated with nightmares, flashbacks, emotional numbing, anxiety, insomnia. When they stop their drug or alcohol abuse, their PTSD often gets worse. People also medicate social anxiety with marijuana, painkillers, or alcohol. They feel better in social situations, less inhibited. The problem with using substances for self-medication is that they actually damage brain function and subsequently damage the parts of the brain involved in forethought, judgment, impulse control, organization, and planning—all things important for healthy sexual behavior.

I once saw a woman from Maine who had problems with obsession and anxiety. Her husband came along and got scanned, in his mind, just to support his wife. I looked at her brain and saw the trouble we expected and prescribed a course of treatment. When I looked at his fifty-six-year-old brain, his brain looked like he was eighty. I asked him what he was doing to hurt his brain.

“Nothing, Dr. Amen,” he said.

I said, “Really? How much do you drink?”

“Oh, not very much,” he replied.

“What’s not very much?”

“Oh, maybe I have three or four drinks a day.”

“Every day?” I said.

“Yeah, every day. But it’s never a problem. I never get drunk. I have never gotten into trouble with it,” he said with anxiety.

I said, “Why do you drink every day?”

“Since my son went off to college, I have this empty-nest thing going on. I just get great enjoyment out of going to the bar, seeing my friends. It’s a social time, kind of like the show Cheers.”

I said, “Well, you are poisoning yourself. You’re fifty-six and you’re brain looks like it’s eighty. If you keep this up, pretty soon a lot of your brain is going to be dead.”

It shocked him that his brain looked as bad as it did. Then he developed this concept I call brain envy. After learning about the brain, he wanted a better one. I helped him develop a brain-healthy plan that included abstinence from alcohol, regular exercise, mental exercise, vitamins, and fish oil. Four months later he wrote me back saying that he mentally felt like he was twenty. His energy and memory were better, he felt smarter, more articulate. His work as a writer had also improved.

Lisa, forty-two, drank three to four glasses of wine nearly every day. She rarely got drunk, but felt uncomfortable when she didn’t drink. Her husband noticed over the past few years that she was not herself. She was more forgetful and more irritable. She started to have high blood pressure and was much less sexual and less sexually responsive. I saw her out of concern for her memory problems. Her SPECT scan showed overall decreased activity. She had a toxic brain. The alcohol was damaging her brain, affecting her memory and moods, and even her sexuality. High blood pressure is a common side effect of too much alcohol. With high blood pressure, blood flow to vital organs, such as the brain and genitals, is impaired, so there will be trouble having an orgasm and trouble thinking, a bad combination.

Sometimes small amounts of alcohol can calm anxiety and help people be more receptive to social and sexual interactions. Small amounts of alcohol have been found useful for a number of issues, including heart health. But small amounts mean one or two glasses a week, not a day as most people think. A little bit of alcohol is not my concern in this section.

My favorite definition of an alcoholic or drug addict is anyone who has gotten into trouble (legal, relational, or work related) while drinking or using drugs, then continues to use them. They did not learn from the previous experience. A rational person would realize that he or she has trouble handling the alcohol or drugs and stay away from them. Unfortunately, many people with these problems have to experience repeated failures because of the substance use, and thus hit “rock bottom” before treatment is sought.

In treating substance abuse, it is important to recognize and treat any underlying cause of the problem, such as unrecognized depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, or ADD. New medications have been developed that have been found helpful in alleviating withdrawal symptoms and decreasing cravings for the substances. Psychotherapy and support groups are often helpful.

Drugs and alcohol are a nightmare for brain function.

Toxic Exposure

Toxic exposure hurts the brain. Many substances have the potential to be brain toxic and most people have no clue. Many medications, much caffeine, nicotine, and environmental toxins, such as pesticides, paint fumes, hair-coloring chemicals, and nail polish, can hurt your brain. Understanding the sources of brain poisons can help you avoid them.

Many medications are brain toxic. From a psychiatric standpoint, I was taught to use a class of antianxiety medications called benzodiazepines, such as Xanax, Ativan, and Valium, to treat patients with intense feelings of anxiety and panic. As soon as I started performing SPECT studies, I saw that these medications were often toxic to brain function. Scan after scan on these medications showed an overall diminished or dehydrated pattern of activity, just as there is with drug abuse. It didn’t take long for me to stop using these medications and look for other ways to heal anxiety and panic. In much the same way, painkillers often showed brain toxicity on scans: Vicodin, Darvon, Percodan, OxyContin, and others caused overall decreased brain activity. No wonder they help pain, they make people feel numb all over. Of course, this doesn’t mean that these medications are never indicated. Many people would rather die than live with chronic pain. It does mean, however, that we should look for alternatives to painkillers for chronic pain that also numb the brain.

Nicotine prematurely ages the brain. Nicotine, found in cigarettes, cigars, chewing tobacco, and nicotine patches, tablets, and gum, causes blood vessels to lessen blood flow to vital organs. We know smokers have more problems with impotence; it is bad to have low blood flow to sexual organs. Nicotine constricts blood flow to the skin, making smokers look prematurely older than they are. Nicotine also constricts blood flow to the brain, eventually causing overall lowered activity and depriving the brain of the nutrients it needs.

High amounts of caffeine can also be trouble. Caffeine constricts blood flow to the brain and many other organs. A little caffeine a day is not a problem, but more than a cup or two can be trouble. Caffeine does three bad things to the brain. First, brain-imaging studies have shown that caffeine constricts blood flow to the brain. Since blood is critical in bringing nutrients to cells and taking away toxic waste products, anything that diminishes blood flow to an organ causes premature aging. Second, caffeine blocks a chemical called adenosine and fools us into believing we need less sleep. Less sleep also causes overall lower blood flow to the brain. In addition, caffeine is a diuretic. The brain is 80 percent water. Anything that dehydrates you has a negative impact on brain function. As little caffeine as possible is a good rule if you want to respect and nurture your brain.

Sleep Deprivation

Sleep deprivation hurts the brain. People who get less than seven hours of sleep a night have lower activity in the temporal lobes of the brain, the part of the brain involved in learning and memory. Shift workers, those suffering from jet lag, teens who have their sleep schedules off-kilter from school schedules, and those suffering from sleep apnea are all at risk for poorer brain function. Those who are sleep deprived score poorer on memory and math tests, have lower grades in school, and are at much greater risks for driving accidents. Sleep deprivation is also associated with depression and attention deficit disorders. Recently, sleep apnea (snoring loudly, holding breath when sleeping, and tiredness during the day) has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease. This is due to the direct effect of a lack of oxygen damaging the brain. Work to sleep at least seven to eight hours a night. Practice good sleep habits, such as avoiding much caffeine or nicotine; staying away from alcohol as a sleep aide, as it will wear off and cause you to wake up in the middle of the night; and avoiding exercise before bed; and learn relaxation techniques to calm your mind.

Helping your partner get enough sleep is an effective form of foreplay. Helping with the children, work, house chores, or other things that interfere with sleep is likely to help your partner sleep better and be more available to you.

Untreated Mental Illnesses

As in the case of Roseanne earlier in the chapter, being plagued with depression, anxiety, distractibility, impulsivity, mood swings, or obsessions is not very sexy. Having an untreated psychiatric problem can ruin your chances for great love. Many people never seek help for their mental or emotional problems because they do not recognize them or think they can control them. All aspects of sexuality may be affected by the distress of mental illness. In both men and women, people who were depressed had half the sexual arousal than their normal counterparts did. Mental illness is very common, almost the norm. According to the U.S. Epidemiological Catchment Area Study, 49 percent of the U.S. population will experience a mental illness at some point in their lives, with anxiety, depression, attention deficit disorders, and substance abuse being the most common. If you suffer from emotional or behavior problems, get the help.

Poor Diets

The increase in fast-food diets and poor nutrition is directly responsible for the rise in mental illness over the past fifty years. Studies have linked attention deficit disorder, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, and schizophrenia to junk food and the absence of essential fats, vitamins, and minerals in industrialized diets. These illnesses have a direct impact on sexual and relationship health. Rates of depression have been shown to be higher in countries with low intakes of fish, for example. Lack of folic acid, omega-3 fatty acids, selenium, and the amino acid tryptophan are thought to play an important role in the illness. Deficiencies of essential fats and antioxidant vitamins are also thought to be a contributory factor in schizophrenia.

Helpful Brain Behaviors

Protect Your Brain

Protecting the brain from injury is the first step to optimizing its function. Your brain is the consistency of tofu and it is housed in a really hard skull. Wear a seat belt in a car and always wear a helmet when you ride a bicycle, motorcycle, or go snowboarding.

Limit Brain Toxins

As mentioned above, current research has shown that many chemicals are toxic to brain function. Alcohol, drugs of abuse, nicotine, much caffeine, and many medications decrease blood flow to the brain. When blood flow is decreased, the brain cannot work efficiently. Avoid these toxic substances.

Get Enough Sleep

Sleep deprivation decreases brain activity and limits access to learning, memory, and concentration. A recent brain-imaging study showed that people who consistently slept less than seven hours had overall less brain activity. Getting enough sleep is essential to brain function.

Counteract Stress

Scientists have only recently discovered how stress negatively affects brain function. Stress hormones have been shown in animals to be directly toxic to memory centers. Brain cells can die with prolonged stress. Managing stress effectively through meditation, relaxation, and exercise is essential to good brain function.

Eat Right to Think Right

The fuel you feed the brain has a profound effect on how it functions. Lean protein, complex carbohydrates, and foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids (large cold-water fish, such as tuna and salmon, walnuts, Brazil nuts, olive oil, and canola oil) are essential to brain function. Research has shown that fish consumption is associated with the prevention of cognitive decline as people age.

Daily multiple vitamins. With our poor diet, many Americans are overweight but nutrient poor. The American Medical Association recommends we all take a 100 percent multiple vitamin everyday. Your brain needs it.

Daily high-quality fish oil. Omega-3 fatty acids are essential to brain health. Low levels of this nutrient have been associated with depression, ADD, dementia, and even suicide. Fish oil has been found to be helpful for hearts, joints, skin, and brain. Take 1,000 to 2,000 milligrams a day.

Kill the ANTs That Invade Your Brain

The quality of your thoughts also impacts brain function. Happy, hopeful, positive thoughts are associated with improved brain function, while negativity (I call these bad thoughts ANTs, automatic negative thoughts) turns off certain cerebral centers. Positive thinking is not just good for you, it helps make your brain work better. List five things you are grateful for today.

Work Your Brain

Your brain is like a muscle. The more you use it, the more you can use it. Every time you learn something new, your brain makes a new connection. Learning enhances blood flow and activity in the brain. If you go for long periods without learning something new, you start to lose some of the connections in the brain and you begin to struggle more with memory and learning. Strive to learn something new every day, even if it is just for a short period of time.

Exercise for Your Brain

People who physically exercise on a regular basis have better memories with age, they have better blood flow to the brain, and many cerebral processes are enhanced. The best kind of exercise improves the pump force of your heart (cardiovascular exercise).

It has been known for many years that sex was good exercise, but until now nobody had made a scientific study of the caloric content of different sexual activities. An anonymous source on the Internet listed, tongue in cheek, the following results.

REMOVING HER CLOTHES

With her consent	12 calories
Without her consent	2,187 calories

OPENING HER BRA

With both hands	8 calories
With one hand	12 calories
With your teeth	485 calories

PUTTING ON A CONDOM

With an erection	6 calories
Without an erection	3,315 calories

POSITIONS

Missionary	12 calories
69 lying down	78 calories
69 standing up	812 calories
Wheelbarrow	216 calories
Doggy style	326 calories
Italian chandelier	2,912 calories

ORGASMS

Real	112 calories
Fake	1,315 calories

POSTORGASM

Lying in bed hugging	18 calories
Getting up immediately	36 calories
Explaining why you got out of bed immediately	816 calories

GETTING A SECOND ERECTION IF YOU ARE . . .

20–29 years	36 calories
30–39 years	80 calories
40–49 years	124 calories
50–59 years	1,972 calories
60–69 years	7,916 calories
70 and over	Results are still pending

DRESSING AFTERWARD

Calmly	32 calories
In a hurry	98 calories
With her father knocking at the door	5,218 calories
With your wife knocking at the door	13,521 calories

Results may vary!

Develop a “concert state” for your brain

Optimal performance is best achieved when a “concert state” exists in the brain. By “concert state” I mean “a relaxed body with a sharp, clear mind,” much as you would experience at an exhilarating symphony. Achieving this state requires the ability to relax and focus. Ten minutes of slow, deep breathing is usually enough to develop this state.

Coordinate Your Brain

Recently, it was learned that the cerebellum, a structure at the back, bottom part of the brain, is involved not only with physical coordination but also with processing speed and thought coordination, or how quickly you can integrate new thoughts. Doing coordination exercises helps the brain overall work smarter and faster. One exercise shown in scientific studies to help is juggling. People who learned how to juggle three balls for a minute straight enhanced brain function.

Make Love for Your Brain

As discussed in Lesson Two, making love on a regular basis improved mood, memory, and overall health. One study showed that it decreased the risk of heart attack and stroke by 50 percent. Hold the medicine, give me love.

Do Not Let E-mail Control Your Life

A recent study showed that constantly checking e-mails and phone messages actually lowered IQ by ten points, more than double the loss in IQ of cannabis users. E-mail can be addictive, as one is always waiting for the next good e-mail to hit, like waiting for the next blackjack in the card game twenty-one. The anticipation of something good keeps us checking something routine. It also distracts us from staying focused on the person or task at hand. Limit your time on e-mail.

Treat Brain Problems Early

If you have learning, mood, behavior, or memory problems, get an evaluation. The brain is an organ just like your heart or kidneys. When there are signs of trouble, work on getting it fixed.

Use these strategies to have the best brain possible. A better brain improves everything else in your life, including your sex life.

Lesson #12: Caring for your brain increases your chances for great sex.