Great Sex, Naturally

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

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.

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.

—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.

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, B₂, B₆, and B₁₂, 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 Q₁₀, 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 K₂, 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.

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.

4. Pumpkin seeds. An amazing food, pumpkin seeds offer you a diversity of potential health and libido-supportive benefits through their high omega-3 fat content. They can also improve your immunity, decrease your cholesterol, and promote your bone strength. They may also have anti-inflammatory effects that could ease symptoms of arthritis; researchers have found pumpkin-seed oil to be as effective as a well-known anti-inflammatory drug. Pumpkin seeds contain L-tryptophan, a precursor to serotonin, an important neurotransmitter that can affect your sexual health. They also contain an abundance of alpha-linolenic acid, an essential fat that may have benefits for your breast tissue, including potentially helping to prevent breast cancer. Pumpkin seeds are a great addition to your salads, trail mixes, and cereals, and give you a delicious alternative to cow’s milk. You may be surprised to discover that the dark green seeds (one cup), blended with just water (five cups), yield a milky-white drink. (Strain, add a dash of vanilla extract, and a touch of stevia to taste.)

5. Coconut oil. You might not expect coconut oil to be nominated as a super-libido food. For years, it was mistakenly assumed to be an unsafe saturated fat, but now we know it’s a heart-healthy, “friendly” saturated fat with numerous health and immune benefits. The Journal of Nutrition has reported that it can help lower your risk of heart disease, and according to the research journal Obesity, it may help reduce upper-body fat, prevent obesity, and stimulate weight loss. Heart health supports good circulation, which in turn gives you better overall vitality, including sexual well-being. (Good circulation can be especially beneficial for men’s sexual health, and as you’ll see later in this book, can help prevent erectile dysfunction.)

6. Pomegranates. Modern research confirms that pomegranates, long revered by traditional cultures for their medicinal and sex-promoting properties, contain antioxidants and other compounds that have many health benefits. You’ve probably seen pomegranate juice promoted as an elixir for men’s health concerns, but it offers you plenty of potential benefits, too: supporting your cardiovascular system, improving blood flow to your heart, reducing your blood pressure, increasing your circulation, and potentially reversing heart disease by inhibiting plaque buildup in your arteries. All of these health gains can enhance female as well as male sexuality.

7. Blueberry juice. Among the most health-conducive of fruits, loaded with antioxidants, blueberries support the walls of your blood vessels and help protect your brain from oxidative stress. Their protective compounds include anthocyanins (which help protect you from free-radical damage), pterostilbene (an agent that lowers cholesterol and also has anticancer properties), and D-mannose, which can help prevent urinary tract infections. (As you’ll see, urinary tract infections have the potential to be a major libido-breaker.) Keep fresh blueberry juice on hand, and enhance your Great Sex Diet by adding a splash of “purple power” to your daily smoothies.

8. Acai juice. Another mouthwatering super-juice to jazz up your sex-supportive diet, acai juice can ultimately reinforce your sexuality by boosting your general health. Acai juice is made from berries that have been used for healing purposes by the tribes of the Amazon for centuries. In addition to high levels of anthocyanins that fight free radicals, acai berries contain the health-protective antioxidants vitamin E and vitamin C, plant sterols, and fatty acids, which can all have beneficial effects on your cholesterol levels. Studies have found that acai berries are rich in polyphenols—phytochemicals that also have antioxidant properties and anticancer benefits. Research suggests that acai berries may help decrease the risk of diabetes and degenerative diseases like arthritis as well, and that extracts of acai berries may be useful in regulating blood pressure and treating cardiovascular disease. Other potential effects include elevating immunity, lowering cholesterol, and slowing the aging process.

9. Mangosteen juice. Yet another succulent exotic beverage, mangosteen juice promotes sexual well-being for much the same reason that acai does; mangosteen is rife with health-boosting nutrients. Studies have found that mangosteen fruit contains polysaccharides—carbohydrates that can stimulate immune cells to destroy bacteria—and xanthones (a type of antioxidant) that may help fight cancer. Research also shows that mangosteen has anti-inflammatory effects, and may be useful for treating allergic conditions. Mangosteen juice has a distinct taste that can be described as a combination of pear and strawberry. (Despite its name, mangosteen isn’t a member of the mango family.) One caveat regarding its health benefits: most research has been done on the rind of the fruit, and juices may not contain all of the rind’s medicinal compounds.

10. Cruciferous vegetables. You can fortify your Great Sex Diet every day with the cruciferous family of vegetables, which includes broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, brussels sprouts, turnip greens, bok choy, radishes, watercress, mustard greens, and collard greens. There’s an enormous amount of research on their ability to help your body create friendly forms of estrogen—one of your libido-supportive hormones—and on the anticancer effects of compounds in cruciferous vegetables. Broccoli sprouts, an especially potent member of the cruciferous clan, may contain up to 50 times the concentration of cancer-fighting compounds found in mature broccoli plants.

11. Green tea. A much healthier alternative to coffee, green tea (preferably noncaffeinated) may enhance your overall health and support your sexuality by helping prevent cancer and treat human papillomavirus (HPV). The polyphenols in green tea have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anticancer properties, and may help with weight loss as well. Studies have found that green-tea consumption is linked with reduced risk of ovarian cancer and that survival rates for this form of cancer are higher in women who drink at least one cup daily. Research also shows that green tea may help lower the risk of breast cancer and reduce the growth of a particularly aggressive type of breast-cancer cells. And green-tea extracts have been found to cause improvements in women with HPV-infected cervical lesions, a precursor to cervical cancer, and may also benefit women with vulvar warts.

12. Shiitake mushrooms. Long used medicinally in China, shiitake mushrooms make a wonderful, earthy addition to your Great Sex Diet. They provide you with powerful immunity-building glyconutrients—compounds found to improve the ability of immune cells to fight off infections. Shiitake mushrooms not only enhance your resistance to colds and flus, but studies suggest they can also decrease the duration of illnesses. Because of their unique effects on your immunity, shiitakes can play a role in enabling you to manifest peak health and sexual well-being. In addition, research has shown that shiitakes can lower high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and high triglycerides, so you may benefit from consuming them if you have cardiovascular disease (which can hinder healthy sexual functioning).

Like your diet, exercise is a part of your life that’s completely within your control and can profoundly change your health. We call exercise “sex-enhancing” because it’s one of the most important ways you can boost your sexuality with your lifestyle. Let’s take a closer look at the sex-enhancing potential of exercise:

—Exercise is therapy that transforms your entire body. Your body was made to move; the effects of insufficient exercise, which may include heart disease, arthritis, obesity, and depression, can directly interfere with sexual health. Physical activity can enhance your sexuality by increasing your oxygen intake, strengthening your heart, moving your lymphatic fluids through your body, helping eliminate toxins from your tissues, elevating your vitality, helping you lose weight, and making you look better. By improving the function of every cell in your body, exercise also promotes the healthy functioning of your sexual organs. Ultimately, all exercise is “sexercise.”

—You can specifically enhance your libido with exercise. Research suggests that women who exercise regularly have increased blood flow to all parts of their bodies, including their pelvic regions, which can improve sexual responsiveness and performance. Exercise can also enhance your libido by decreasing your stress-hormone levels; as you know, stress is a libido-buster.

—Exercise can increase your energy, which includes your sexual energy. You can dispel the old notion that exercise always “uses up” your energy or tires you out. To the contrary, by increasing your total number of mitochondria—the energy-producing “engines” in your muscle cells—exercise can boost the amount of energy you have in your body. And improving your overall energy means improving your sexual energy.

—You can bring more joy into your life, including your sex life, with exercise. By affecting your neurotransmitters—brain chemicals such as serotonin—exercise can stimulate your brain circuitry into “feel-good” states and alter your moods. Research shows, for example, that women who work out regularly have more confidence in their bodies. A high happiness quotient helps keep you receptive to all the joys of life, including the joys of sex.

Sex Can Make You Skinnier

Like any physical activity, sex can help you lose weight and may even help lower your cholesterol level. You probably burn about 200 calories in 30 minutes of lovemaking, although estimates vary depending on what kinds of sexual activities you engage in. While sex burns some calories, the real reason it can help you lose weight may be that it releases brain chemicals that make you happier, which in turn means you’re apt to make healthier choices that tap into your potential to manifest your ideal body size.

Although your body naturally needs and craves the medicine of exercise, your mind may make excuses—your job, children, other responsibilities, or even your personality or body type—to avoid it. For some women, the mind has a way of coming up with reasons to let the body stay sedentary, even at the risk of poor health, reduced sexual energy, or loss of bodily functions. But knowing all the benefits that exercise has for your health and sexuality can help put your body in motion. Let’s look at how you can get your mind more in touch with your natural motivation for motion, and move yourself to move.

When you exercise, you’re doing more than simply getting your body in shape and moving your limbs; you’re also shaping your mind and moving your emotions. You can think of exercise as meaningful movement. In a sense, all exercise is dance: it allows you to celebrate your physical nature in ways that can give you great joy, and you can experience powerful surges of self-confidence when you feel what it’s like to manifest potential you might not have known you had. If you’ve ever learned a dance routine, you may not remember how hesitant you felt when you took your first steps, but you’ll probably never forget how confident you felt when you mastered the moves—and still feel whenever you perform them.

No matter how physically inactive you were in the past, or whether you’re naturally athletic, discovering new ways of moving can transform your sense of self. Experiencing your body in novel ways can help create new neural tracks in your brain, actually changing how your mental functions work on a daily basis. And the boost in self-esteem you experience from new forms of exercise can enhance your capacity for great sex. When you feel more confident on the dance floor, on the soccer field, or in whatever exercise you choose, your confidence carries over into every other physical activity you engage in—and sex, of course, is no exception.

There’s also a lot to be said for the pleasure you can experience by reaching measurable goals and outperforming your personal best. If you swim more laps, walk more miles, or lift more weight than you once thought yourself capable of, it also lifts your spirit and changes your sense of yourself. And while exercise is changing your mind, it’s changing your body as well, giving you the added satisfaction of seeing it become fitter.

If you’ve been physically inactive, and you find the idea of exercise unappealing, it’s time to find a form of movement that lets you rediscover the joys of experiencing your body in new ways. Meaningful movement is one of your direct routes to becoming a healthier, happier person, more connected with your body, and more in tune with your sexual energy. And once you’re on the move, it’s that much easier to keep up your momentum. The more you exercise, the more likely you are to continue to do so. Make it your way of life, and it becomes you. The benefits for your health and your sexuality will multiply manyfold; it’s the “gift that keeps moving.”

Balance is the key when it comes to exercise and your libido; for example, you want to get the benefits of both aerobic exercise and resistance exercise like weight lifting (at least 20 minutes of each, three to four times a week). We can also use the principles of Chinese medicine to create balance by thinking about different types of exercise as either yin or yang. Yin exercises are gentler and may involve concentrated focus or “centering” techniques; examples include some forms of yoga and stretching. When you feel stressed, yin exercise can be especially effective in shifting your energy into a calm, relaxed state—from a sympathetic-nervous-system response to a parasympathetic response. Yang exercises typically push your body more intensely; examples include mountain climbing with a heavy pack, or running.

Many exercises can be either yin or yang, depending on your approach. Swimming, for instance, can be a mellow yin activity in placid water, or a vigorous yang exercise in rough water. Yoga can likewise be yin or yang; if you take a restorative hatha yoga class, and you hold supported positions while breathing deeply, you’re doing a yin form of exercise. On the other hand, if you practice Bikram yoga for 90 minutes in a heated room, you’re practicing a yang form of yoga.

You can support your entire body, reinforce your chi, and help optimize the health of your libido by creating a balance of yin and yang exercises in your life. Too much yin exercise, without enough yang exercise to balance it, can lead to stagnation, low energy, and diminished libido. Excessive yang exercise, without sufficient yin exercise to offset it, can burn out your energy and disrupt your hormonal balance. Energy and balanced hormones are both essential for keeping your sex drive healthy.

You can use the following list of yin and yang exercises as a general guide for creating balance in your life. Each exercise is categorized on the basis of how it’s typically experienced by the average person. But again, you can make many activities either yin or yang, depending on the degree of intensity you bring to them.

Your pelvis is your center of gravity, and it’s central to your sexuality. In Chinese medicine, your pelvis is a powerful part of your anatomy—the pivotal area through which all your chi flows from meridians throughout your body. Yet many women feel “blocked,” physically or psychologically, from this part of their bodies. They may have freedom of movement and normal sensation in other areas, but because of chronic pelvic pain, sexual issues, or past trauma—or perhaps as a result of growing up in an environment that didn’t encourage healthy awareness of their bodies and their sexuality—they remain unconscious of the full range of pelvic sensation they’re capable of.

In order to have healthy sex, you need to be comfortable with your body and intimately familiar with your pelvis and sexual organs. One of the best ways to physically and psychologically “reconnect” with your pelvis is through exercises and activities that strengthen and relax your pelvic muscles. This allows you to become more aware of your entire pelvic region and more familiar with sensations in those muscles. It can help you release tensions you may be unconsciously holding in your pelvis, and it may help you discover muscles that you don’t know you have. By incorporating the following forms of exercise and movement into your life, you can improve the health of your entire body and your pelvis in particular:

—Dance. When the energy of music fills your being and moves your body, no form of exercise is more joyful. And by celebrating your body with dance, you can do more than enhance your health and get in touch with your pelvis; you can dance your way to better sex.

Dance has been practiced by women all over the world since the beginnings of recorded history. In myriad forms of cultural expression, from African dance to the tango, it often involves powerful pelvic muscle movements that can help you maintain core muscle conditioning, increase your pelvic strength, and tone muscles that contract around your vagina.

With so many forms of dance, you can choose whatever fits your personality. One of the best for enhancing your pelvic health is belly dancing. By some accounts, it was taught to young women in ancient Arab tribes for strengthening their pelvic muscles in preparation for childbirth, as well as to ease its effects (although it appears to have originated as entertainment or for erotic purposes). Belly dancing not only tones and strengthens your pelvic muscles, it can also enhance your libido, build your “mind-hip coordination,” develop and flatten your stomach muscles, increase circulation throughout your pelvic region, give you a cardiovascular workout, improve your posture, and help prevent osteoporosis.

Another form of dance particularly good for your pelvic health is hula. The graceful, swaying hip motions of Hawaiian hula can increase your pelvic strength and coordination, maintain your pelvic-muscle vitality, and bring chi to your pelvic region. An added attraction is that you can do hula at any age; some of Hawaii’s most proficient hula dancers are older women.

You don’t need a traditional dance form to enjoy the benefits of this activity. Anytime you feel creative, you can invent your own form of dance right at home: turn on your favorite music, let yourself go, and dance to enhance!

—Pilates. When you join the ranks of the Pilates bodies, you’re usually instructed, even before you begin the exercises, to tighten your core by contracting the muscles of your lower abdomen and pelvis while pulling up on your pelvic-floor muscles, as if doing a Kegel. (We’ll explore Kegel exercises in detail later in this book.) Pilates can be a powerful way of strengthening your core, increasing awareness of your pelvic muscles, and enhancing muscles that contract your vagina during sex.

—Yoga. With yoga, you can change your body, including your core, from the inside out. Iyengar yoga, in particular, allows you to increase the flexibility in your hips, buttocks, abdomen, and pelvis. It also enables you to strengthen and tone the muscles of your pelvic region. And while you’re expanding your flexibility, it can help you increase your awareness of your posture and lower abdomen.

What does throwing out your Teflon pans have to do with having great sex? As you’ll discover in the pages ahead, there may be many items in your immediate environment that are compromising your health and affecting your sexual energy. Knowing which to eliminate is part of cleansing your body and enhancing your libido-building lifestyle—which is why we call the cleanse outlined in this section the Great Sex Detox.

If your body is in a toxic state, you don’t feel especially sexy or attractive. You probably feel tired, achy, and as if you have a hangover most of the time. Imagine what your life would be like if you didn’t take the garbage out of your living space for months, or years; that’s analogous to what happens to your tissues if you don’t detoxify your body. It’s no wonder if you feel literally “down in the dumps.”

By eliminating toxins accumulated in your body, the Great Sex Detox can recharge your energy, boost your libido, promote clearer thinking, support your brain health, elevate your moods by increasing the synthesis of “happy” neurotransmitters, improve your digestive health, help your liver work better, balance and strengthen your chi, help you lose weight if you need to, and more. It can make you feel more alive, and sexier, than you may have felt in years. After following this unique cleanse, many of my patients report having more energy and improved sleep, and say they feel “born again.” It’s about cleansing your body of impurities on a cellular level, as well as creating long-lasting behavioral changes and giving you a sense of empowerment.

The Great Sex Detox can also improve your hormone metabolism by boosting your intake of cruciferous vegetables, which contain compounds that help break down estrogen in your body. As you’ll discover in a subsequent chapter, you have better hormonal health, and better overall health—as well as potentially better sex—when your body does a good job of breaking down estrogen into its “friendly,” rather than “unfriendly,” forms. (There are many types of estrogen; you want to convert estrogens into weaker, friendlier forms—not unfriendly ones.) The friendly forms of estrogen help moisten your skin, hydrate your vagina, create pleasant moods, and support the functioning of your memory; the unfriendly ones may contribute to ovarian cysts, fibroids, cystic breasts, breast cancer, and a host of other problems.

The Great Sex Detox is easy to implement, and you can continue with all of your normal, everyday activities—your job, exercise, taking care of the kids, walking the dog, and so on—while you’re doing it. It’s a relatively gentle cleanse, unlike some aggressive detox plans that can be physically draining and interrupt your lifestyle. You should feel good while you’re doing the Great Sex Detox, and since you’ll be releasing toxins that may have been stored in your body for many years, you can expect to feel increasingly better as your cleanse progresses.

While you’re doing the Great Sex Detox, you can continue taking prescription medications—for example, if you’re on high-blood-pressure medication—but check with your doctor first. Abstain from all alcohol, recreational drugs, and smoking. It’s best to eat only organic foods, and important to avoid all junk foods, refined sugars, fried foods, and processed food products.

Some people have the misguided notion that a cleanse involves only your body. But to be effective, it should also involve your surroundings, because some of the pollutants you want to eradicate from your tissues may come from common consumer products you’re exposed to right in your own home. Every day, you may be running a gauntlet of chemical assailants with potentially serious consequences for your health and sexuality. If you don’t remove them before you begin cleansing your body, your cleanse may have limited benefits—like bailing out a leaky boat without plugging the holes.

This is why it’s essential to launch the Great Sex Detox by finding natural alternatives for as many items as you can that may release toxic chemicals in or around your household—including your cleaning products, cookware, personal-care products, food-storage containers, and more.

—The cleaning products stocked in many homes are a case of chemical overkill, needlessly laced with powerful toxic chemicals. Numerous household cleaning agents include cancer-causing compounds, neurotoxins, chemicals associated with decidedly unsexy symptoms, and ingredients linked to birth defects. There’s a plethora of safe, natural alternatives you can use to keep your home clean—arguably much cleaner than if you use toxic pollutants—and you probably already have a number of healthy options on hand. Vinegar, baking soda, lemon juice, castile soap, borax, and salt can be used in various combinations, with a little practice, to meet all your cleaning needs. You can find suggestions for cleaning your home safely by browsing the website of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), and nontoxic cleaning agents are available at many health-food stores.

—Next, let’s take a look at your cookware, and those Teflon pans. If you use nonstick pans to cook with, you may be exposing yourself to potential health risks that can seriously subvert your sexual energy. Sure, they’re convenient, but at what awful price? According to a 2006 news release from the EWG, a panel of experts confirmed that a toxic chemical used in nonstick pans can cause cancer, and may be associated with birth defects and other health risks. The chemical, which doesn’t break down in the environment, ends up in your bloodstream when you use these pans. Healthy alternatives to nonstick pans include stainless-steel and cast-iron cookware.

—Another area of concern, your personal-care products, includes everything from your shampoo, deodorant, and toothpaste to your makeup and nail polish. Many commonly used items contain ingredients that are neither health-supportive nor libido-friendly. Some contain phthalates and other potentially harmful synthetic chemicals, including ingredients that could be potentially cancer initiating. Safe, healthy alternatives to chemically laden personal-care items abound at your local health-food stores and online. For information on chemicals in your cosmetics, visit the EWG’s Skin Deep website at: www.cosmeticsdatabase.com.

—And what about your food-storage containers? You may not be aware that the chemical bisphenol A, or BPA, found in many plastics and commonly used in containers, can be released into foods and beverages, especially with temperature elevations. BPA can compromise your health and sexuality in multiple ways: it has estrogen-mimicking effects; potentially causes hormone disruptions in women and men; and may contribute to infertility, breast cancer, and early puberty in girls. Furthermore, exposure to BPA during pregnancy could negatively affect the fetus. To decrease your exposure, replace plastic food containers with glassware, and avoid canned foods if the cans have epoxy liners—a frequent source of BPA. If you drink from plastic water bottles, switch to glass or stainless steel.

In addition, you need to examine every other aspect of your home environment and daily routines, and ask yourself where you may be coming into contact with chemicals that could undermine your health and libido. For example, your sunscreens, laundry detergents, dry-cleaning services, pest-control treatments, and yard products like weed killers and fertilizers can all be sources of toxins and unhealthy, antisexual synthetic compounds. Another concern may be automatic-dishwasher soaps that include ingredients you wouldn’t want to ingest, even in minuscule amounts—and those “spot removers” for dishes that contain known skin irritants. And don’t forget about your medicines and health-care products, which all too often can be sources of questionable chemicals. (See sidebar, and if you use birth control, see Appendix H.) Remember that when it comes to your health and libido, less is more; if in doubt, leave it out. Your vigilance in rooting out hidden health foes and sex saboteurs, and eliminating them from your personal surroundings, will contribute to the success of your Great Sex Detox.

To learn more about the potential health effects of many chemicals found in products you may be using in or around your living area, visit: www.ewg.org.

Can Your Medicines Be Unhealthy?

If you comb your medicine cabinet, reading the fine print on products like cough medicines, nasal decongestants, antihistamines, and diet aids, you may be surprised by what you find. Many products contain synthetic additives, fillers, or colorings, some of which may even be listed by the EWG as hazardous to one degree or another. Eliminate anything you can do without; with a little research, you can find healthy natural remedies to replace a wide variety of health-care products. If you need assistance, consult a licensed naturopathic physician. (See Appendix B to find one.)

As you research your alternatives, keep in mind that natural remedies—including some that have been used for centuries—have a big disadvantage in the world of modern pharmaceutical medicine: large drug companies seeking to patent and market nonnatural products typically conduct numerous studies in an effort to prove their effectiveness, while natural substances, which can’t legally be patented, often get ignored. As a result, the number of studies on natural remedies may seem small by comparison—prompting misleading claims that there’s relatively little evidence to prove their effectiveness. With a few sound bites, public-relations firms hired by pharmaceutical giants can discredit natural remedies that, in some cases, have stood the test of time, were held in trust by your ancestors, and have been passed down to you over many generations.

Once you’ve cleaned up as many health- and sex-negating chemicals as you can in your home environment, you’re ready to begin cleansing your body. The dietary cleanse that is part of the Great Sex Detox is a three-week plan, and to optimize its benefits, you should adhere to all of the recommendations outlined in the remainder of the chapter for the full 21 days. After you’ve completed this dietary cleanse, its benefits—along with all the others you experience from the Great Sex Detox—will be ongoing. The dietary cleanse is essentially a way to jump-start your body’s detoxification systems; once they’re revved up, they’ll continue working optimally if you keep eating well and exercising. (And after the cleanse, you can continue to include “magic” smoothies, as described in this section, in your diet indefinitely.)

The Great Sex Detox dietary cleanse is specifically designed to enhance your overall health and sexual well-being by ridding toxic pollutants from your tissues, and it has many other benefits as well. It’s hypoallergenic (it protects you from most common allergens), and provides you with lots of healthy fiber from nutritious vegetables, salads, and smoothies. You may notice that all of this fiber improves the regularity of your bowel movements. This can benefit your hormonal health, which in turn can further enhance your overall energy, vitality, and libido.

Here’s an overview of your dietary cleanse, and what you need to do in order to get the best results from it:

—Limit your grain intake to five foods. Consume rice, quinoa, amaranth, tapioca, and buckwheat. These grains are free of gluten, a common allergen, and abstaining from other grains relieves you of potential allergic symptoms that can hinder your health and libido. You can eat whatever quantity of grains you want, as long as you restrict the grain portion of your diet to these five.

—Eat lots of vegetables. On as many days as possible, enjoy a large salad, including several different-colored vegetables—for example, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce. Also eat, on as many days as you can, a half cup of broccoli sprouts and at least two cruciferous vegetables (identified earlier in this chapter as one of your super-libido foods).

—Consume oils that support your health and sexuality. These include flax, olive, and fish oil; also eat nuts and seeds that contain beneficial oils, as well as avocados. If you cook with oil, use olive, canola, macadamia-nut, or coconut oil.

—Avoid dairy and egg products. Cows and other animals remove toxins from their bodies, in part, by excreting milk, so when you consume dairy products, you may expose yourself to increased toxins that can hamper your health and libido. Dairy products can also be particularly high in allergens, and many people have low-grade allergies to dairy or eggs without realizing it. Eliminating them during your dietary cleanse gives your digestive system a break from potentially unhealthful, unsexy symptoms.

—Limit your protein sources to certain healthy foods. Meet your protein needs by consuming only organic skinless lean chicken or turkey; wild salmon (avoid farm-raised); kidney, garbanzo, navy, or pinto beans (exclude soybeans, another common allergen); and lentils, peas, seeds, and nuts (but avoid peanuts and peanut butter).

—Eat until you’re full, but don’t overeat. You shouldn’t be excessively hungry, or overly full, during your dietary cleanse. To keep your blood sugar even—which, as you’ve seen, helps regulate your energy and libido—eat three meals a day, and two daily snacks if you like.

—Enjoy “magic” smoothies daily. Your magic smoothie, which includes some of your super-libido foods, consists of fruits, vegetables, and other ingredients. Blend as many of the following as you can in each of your smoothies. Since chia seeds can thicken your smoothie, you might want to add extra water, or blend them in last.

—Minimize your fruit intake. Limit your daily fruit consumption to two cups, or two pieces, of low-glycemic fruit, which includes apples, pears, cherries, apricots, plums, peaches, oranges, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries. As pointed out earlier in this chapter, some fruits are super-libido foods, but at the same time excessive intake of fruit sugar can disrupt your blood-sugar level, which is detrimental to your health and sexual energy.

—Add lemon juice to your water. Lemon juice supports your dietary cleanse by promoting the health of your liver, your body’s master cleansing organ. Squeeze the juice from a quarter of a medium-size lemon into 12 ounces of water, and sip during the day. Doing this two to three times daily will also help ensure that you’re getting plenty of water, which supports all your body’s tissues, including your sex organs. (If you have a history of heartburn, you may need to refrain from using lemon in your water.)

If you faithfully follow these dietary guidelines during your three-week dietary cleanse, you’re likely to be extremely pleased with the results and the potential rejuvenating effects on your health and sexual energy. For a day-by-day outline of the meal and supplement portions of your cleanse, see Appendix D.

While you’re cleansing your body with your dietary choices, you need to take the right supplements to maximize your ability to eliminate undesirable elements that can encumber your health and libido. The supplements you’ll take each day during your 21-day dietary cleanse (some of these can be found in Appendix C), along with an overview of how they can help detoxify your tissues and give you other benefits, are listed here. You can discontinue taking some of these supplements after the 21 days, but you should continue with the antioxidant formula, multivitamin, and flax oil indefinitely.

—Liver lipotropic formula. This formula consists of herbs and nutrients to help your liver more effectively break down toxins, which assists in their removal from your body. Take two capsules of liver lipotropic formula (see Appendix C) twice daily during your 21-day cleanse. You probably won’t want to add this to your smoothies because of the taste.

—Chlorella. A type of green algae that emerged on Earth billions of years ago, chlorella is a rich source of chlorophyll consisting of 50 percent proteins, 23 percent carbohydrates, 12 percent healthy fats, the antioxidant beta-carotene, and numerous vitamins and minerals. Chlorella is important in your dietary cleanse because it can assist in the removal of unhealthy, unsexy toxins from your body—including environmental chemicals such as dioxin and heavy metals like mercury and lead—and render some harmless. It can also improve your digestion, support the health of your intestinal environment, enhance the growth of friendly bacteria in your digestive system, and boost your immunity. As an added bonus, it helps freshen your breath. Take two 300 mg chlorella pills (see Appendix C) twice daily with water, or add them to your smoothies, during your 21-day cleanse.

—Antioxidant formula. Make sure that you keep taking your antioxidants, as outlined previously in this chapter, during your dietary cleanse. This aids your liver in breaking down toxins so it is easier for your body to eliminate them. To use the antioxidant formula in Appendix C, take two capsules daily during your cleanse. (You can blend them into your smoothies if you like.)

—Multivitamin. Continuing to take your daily multivitamin, as described earlier in this chapter, is an important part of your dietary cleanse because it gives your body the nutrition it needs to help eliminate toxins that can obstruct your health and libido. There’s no telling how many toxic chemicals and pollutants you’ve been exposed to, so you want to be sure you’re getting this baseline of nutrients. If you opt to take the multivitamin in Appendix C, consume two tablets twice daily with food during your cleanse. (You can also blend these into your smoothies.)

—Flax oil. As you’ve discovered, flax is a super-libido food rich in friendly omega-3 fats, and flax oil gives you many health benefits. It helps with your dietary cleanse by promoting your body’s ability to remove toxins from every cell in your body. Be sure that you’re getting one tablespoon of flax oil every day of your cleanse. You can mix it into salad dressings, pour it over vegetable dishes, or add it to smoothies. You can also take it in capsule form, if you don’t mind taking enough capsules to equal a tablespoon.

—Friendly bacteria. Friendly bacteria support your dietary cleanse and promote your health and sexuality in many ways. These supplements encourage the growth of other beneficial bacteria in your intestinal walls, help protect your intestines from pathogens like parasites, help break down compounds that could initiate cancer, and assist your body in making nutrients. Take at least a billion organisms of the friendly bacteria in Appendix C once a day with water, or added to your smoothies, during your cleanse.

—Antibug herbs. You may have any number of microscopic “bugs,” including hidden parasites, bacteria, and yeast, inhabiting your intestines, especially if you experience chronic gas and bloating. These bugs can have many effects that thwart your health and limit your sexual energy, and their number is related to the overall toxicity of your body; they essentially exert harmful effects and reduce your body’s effectiveness in dealing with your cumulative toxic burden. Antibug herbs support your dietary cleanse by rearranging your gut flora to give you a healthier intestinal wall. They also strengthen your immune system, help liberate your libido from undesirable symptoms, and can assist in lowering blood pressure and cholesterol.

For the duration of your dietary cleanse, take either of the following (available at many health-food stores) three times a day with food: one 900 mg garlic pill containing 5,000 mcg of allicin, or one berberine pill (a standardized extract containing 200 mg per pill). Berberine shouldn’t be used during pregnancy or lactation.

It’s important to adhere to these guidelines regarding your supplement regimen during your three-week dietary cleanse. (Again, refer to the outline in Appendix D for a day-by-day breakdown of the meal and supplement portions of your cleanse.)

While you’re eliminating toxins from your tissues with your dietary cleanse, there are a few additional steps that can help rid your body of unwanted contaminants. The following measures serve as catalysts by speeding up your body’s ability to shed toxins, and at the same time they increase the energy- and libido-building benefits of your dietary cleanse. After completing your 21-day cleanse, you can continue using these techniques indefinitely to optimize your potential to detoxify.

—Great sweats, naturally. Perspiration can be a key factor in the success of your dietary cleanse, because it’s one of your body’s most efficient ways of purging toxins. You can work up a healthy sweat with any kind of aerobic exercise, but one of the best ways to send your toxins packing is with a dry sauna. When you use a low-heat sauna for 60 to 90 minutes, your body begins to mobilize toxins out of your fat cells, into your blood, and out through your sweat.

Make a point to sweat out your toxins at least twice a week during your dietary cleanse. If your local health club or spa has a dry sauna that allows you to adjust the heat, you can find the temperature that suits you best. (The ideal for many people is about 105 degrees Fahrenheit, but it can vary from one person to the next.) Another great option is Bikram yoga, an advanced form of yoga done in a room heated to about 105 degrees. Keep your tissues hydrated by drinking plenty of fluids before and after a sauna or Bikram yoga class.

—Dry-skin brushing. You can further facilitate detoxification by skin brushing, because your skin accumulates toxins your body is trying to eliminate through your pores. You need to keep your skin—your body’s largest sex organ—as clean and healthy as possible. Because of its extensive surface area, you may be harboring a substantial residue of toxins and dead cells on your outer surface. Perhaps you’ve done everything right with your dietary cleanse, released toxins out of your pores, and have all but gotten rid of them—yet they still cling to the outside of your body. All you have to do is brush them off and they’re gone forever.

Skin brushing not only clears toxins and dead skin from the surface of your body, it also stimulates your blood and lymph vessels—both of which remove toxins and other debris from your cells. Do skin brushing at least once every day during your dietary cleanse; you may be surprised by how revitalized you feel after such a simple technique. With a soft scrub brush, use gentle, firm strokes to cover as much of your body as possible, always brushing toward your chest. (To most effectively enhance detoxification, it’s best to encourage the circulation of your lymphatic fluids in the direction of your heart.) Brush from your hands toward your shoulders, and from your feet toward your pelvis; upward from your abdomen and lower back toward your heart; and downward from your neck toward your heart. As an alternative to dry-skin brushing, you can use a loofah sponge or exfoliating glove in the shower.

In this chapter, you’ve explored three highly significant aspects of your health and sexuality: your diet, exercise habits, and ability to detoxify. You’ve seen the vast difference that each can make in your overall health and your capacity for sexual pleasure.

We began this chapter by reflecting on the notion that great sex is your birthright, but with an important caveat: you ultimately have to choose it. As you move ahead, you can use the tools you’ve just discovered to make choices that will maximize the effects of everything else you gain from this book—whether it’s new exercises, acupressure points, specific aphrodisiacs, or any other way of enhancing your sexuality or health. So let’s continue moving forward; the journey has only just begun, and there’s much more to discover. …

Yin Exercises	Yang Exercises
Gentle hatha yoga	Bikram or Ashtanga yoga
Light weight lifting	Heavy weight lifting
Walking	Running
Gentle stationary bicycling	Mountain biking
Day hiking without a pack	Mountain climbing
Low-impact aerobics	High-impact aerobics
Slow hula dance	Tahitian dance
Aikido	Kickboxing
Swimming in a lake or pool	Ocean swimming
Low-intensity cross-country skiing	Downhill skiing
Slow ballroom dancing	Fast dancing
Tai chi	Karate
Surfing in small waves	Surfing in big waves
Badminton	Tennis
Canoeing in a slow-moving river	Ocean kayaking

2	Tbsp. rice-based protein powder (see Appendix C)
1	tsp. cinnamon
1	cup parsley, spinach, or kale
1	small carrot (approx. 4 inches in length)
2	inches cucumber
1	or 2 inches zucchini, or similar amount of broccoli
½	apple
½	cup blueberries
1	Tbsp. pumpkin seeds
1	Tbsp. chia seeds
1½	cups water