Libido and Sexual Performance
It’s a touchy, sometimes awkward subject. Declining libido and male sexual performance are problems that can hit anyone at any age. Yes, these typically decline as we age, but waning sex drive can affect the young, overworked, and stressed individual as well.
On this week's episode, we speak about the possible causes of low libido and and some practical solutions. As always, we believe in not just treating the outward symptom, but the underlying systemic issue producing the symptom. We discuss pharmaceutical and natural options, new emerging treatments, and methods to lower stress and improve your emotional state.
Some Topics We Discussed:
What causes low libido and why is it so common? (1:17)
Are there any supplements we can take to help with low libido? (8:01)
How does your emotional state impact libido? (10:34)
What is the natural approach to dealing with less than optimal sexual performance? (13:09)
What are healthy testosterone levels? (29:04)
Key Takeaways From This Episode:
Low libido is almost always a multi-faceted issue that requires a much more holistic approach. (2:43)
The more common issue with men is not low testosterone but elevating estrogen. (4:17)
The key to enhancing performance is improving nitric oxide levels. (18:43)
Products & Resources:
Thank you to this episode’s sponsor: Silverbiotics
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Brian Strickland 00:43 Hello, friends and welcome to another episode of the holistic navigator Podcast, where we believe the body has the ability to heal itself. We're so grateful that you took the time out of your busy schedule to listen in today. I'm the producer of the show, Brian Strickland in here with me in the studio, as always is your host, Ed Jones. How are you doing today?
Ed Jones 01:03 I'm doing quite well and hope everyone else out there is doing well. And if they're not doing well, then you're at the right place. If it's about health, hopefully we can give you some tools to help you get to the optimal place in your life.
Brian Strickland 01:17 Absolutely. On today's episode, we'll be speaking on a bit of an uncomfortable subject for some, but declining libido and sexual performance is an important issue that affects a large portion of the population. So if we could start could you just kind of define libido? Talk about what it is. And maybe some of the statistics that have come out recently on how many people this actually affects?
Ed Jones 01:43 Well, it is a common question that I get asked and have for decades, but libido, which is most people know it but really it can be a confusing word really is the the urge to have physical intimacy with another human being. So libido has to be present for us to have fully functional human bodies in the area of performance. It just does. You can take all the drugs and supplements them on Earth. But if you don't have the brain urge, which means like a libido that has to be addressed.
Brian Strickland 02:20 Right? So I think it's important to differentiate that we're going to be speaking about not only libido, but actually erectile dysfunction as well. And some natural options to help with each of those areas. So starting off with the sex drive or libido, as some people would call it, are there any solutions or natural solutions, that you know that that can help increase those drives?
Ed Jones 02:43 Well, the first thing that I have come to a place in my life, as far as the conversations on any health topic is taking the step backwards and looking and trying to connect the dots rather than looking at a symptom and then trying to figure out a product or a service or this or that that can actually help you just feel better and act better. That is, to me a recipe for disaster because you're not addressing the underlying cause. What we talk about constantly is what we refer to as functional, holistic health or functional medicine, which is looking at the machine the machine being your human body and figuring out why is it not working now, when it worked five years ago, or 10. And so when you talk about libido, we have to discuss hormones. Because in men and women, this not just in men, if you have very unhealthy levels which unhealthy can be the right or incorrect ratios between testosterone and estrogen. When you are in balance, when you have homeostasis. Things work well. But if it's out of balance, we have to look at that, well, if men have too little testosterone, it's going to affect their libido. If women which the the body of a woman does produce some testosterone, and you need it because that is one of the bigger reasons why women tend to lose their libido is because they have ceased making enough testosterone. Well in men though, the other problem and issue is a guy will go to his doc and says, You know what? I think my testosterone low is low. And so he'll do a blood test. And he'll he'll maybe he'll say it's low, maybe he won't, but if he says it's low, well, then they're going to give or maybe recommend testosterone pharmaceutically, which I have no problem with if it's done correctly, but the the missing link in this problem is I see at least 50% of these man is not low testosterone, this an issue. It's elevating estrogen. And when estrogen which is the woman's hormone is out of balance with testosterone, what happens is the estrogen molecule tends to diminish. Any testosterone that the male is making, and it will cause breast enlargement, the inability to lower body fat hair loss, and prostate swelling. So when you're out of ratio of the two hormones, you're asking for multiple troubles. And so I rarely see a physician who orders both testosterone and estrogen tests. And because I want to make sure I cover this, and I won't remember to come back to it, if you are wanting to get blood testing, and your physician is not agreeable, or you just feel frustrated, go to the Holistic Navigator under products. And there's a lab called direct labs, and it will offer all the blood tests that you want, you'll have a drawing station in your local town, and you can pick the test that you want. Now, the one thing a piece of advice, I always have to tell every single male who asked me about this, when they say, Oh, my doctor checked my estrogen. I say which estrogen did he check? And they will normally say if he did check it, which is rare, but if they did, it would be what's called estradriol. Well, estradiol is one of the three estrogens that that women make. And we also can make that, but that's not accurate. What we want to check in men is total estrogen, not estradiol. I had a man about four years ago who came in and he had this terrible in inability to he couldn't lose body fat. He was working out six days a week, he ate literally, a really fantastic diet as far as breakfast, lunch, supper, supplements, proteins, this that. And I worked with him for like six months, and he just kept getting fatter, and had less strength as the months went on. And he said, Well, my estradiol, he checks, my doc checks it and it was very low. I said have him checked total estrogen. But when the total estrogen came back, he had probably four times more estrogen than most women at 50. And that was the key because once that lowered, that estrogen became lowered, everything fell in place, he started losing the body fat, it he started having better performance, he could work out and gain muscle. So it's all about chemistry many times and again, going to Direct Labs on the Holistic Navigator is one way to figure that out. But secondly, on this libido conversation is you have to look at your pharmaceutical drugs. And the biggest class of drugs that lessen the urge is antidepressants. And so people who are on antidepressants, they're probably not going to perform well. And they're not even going to care if they don't. So that's something you have to you know, work on your own with your health professional, if that's something that is causing the difficulty. But one last thing on libido, lack of sleep is going to devastate many men and women in the area of libido.
Brian Strickland 08:01 So obviously, there are a lot of different factors that come into play. But are there any supplements? Because obviously, this is a big part of what we do and what you do? Are there any supplements that you would recommend that can help increase those levels?
Ed Jones 08:16 There are a few that definitely help. So first off, again, going back to the hormone thing, you really need to assemble what I call a tool kit in your mind that you can access that is safe and holistic, as far as helping you as we age, and you need to have a team approach. So the toolkit is the supplements, the dietary changes, the lifestyle changes, and then the team approach is having people that have your back. As far as health professionals, you can do this on your own if you're very very well read experience and have knowledge and you'd love it, but it's rare that people can do this. But as the supplements I have used is that has helped my brain because really and truly what it is, is there's a neural power failure, neural power failure when you don't have libido. Well Maca is an herb that is one of the king daddy of all herbs for many men and women that helps them to increase this area of the brain that makes for more libido. Now there are many brands of maca and I have witnessed that most of them are not going to be effective, but you have to be an astute consumer and you're more than welcome to send me an email if you have specific questions and or and I can be happy to answer those. But maca is one you have to put in your toolkit. The other thing is ashwagandha which is one of the most incredible herbs and KSM 66 is the brand is not a brand but it's the type And I've always found that particular one to be the most effective, and only your leading top quality companies will use that that particular ashwagandha.
Brian Strickland 10:10 It's the KSM, I think.
Ed Jones 10:13 I am sitting here with the eyeglasses on that are not working very well, thank you for reminding me of that. So using that has lowered cortisol in many people as the cortisol goes down, then the other things tend to be able to come back to balance. And then you start again, getting back into that rhythm and balance. And that's going to help now, the emotions that will devastate libido, there's we can fill a page with but the big ones are anxiety, defensiveness, fear, and failure of communication. Because this is a blending of human physical and heart and soul. It's not easily accomplished. And we are in a society that deals poorly poorly. with emotions. Here's what people do with emotions, when they're when they're hurtful, when they're painful, when they are causing them grief. Most Americans watch TV away on emotions, they drink emotions away, they may exercise it away, I've done that before. They medicate it away, they do anything but facing it. And to me, the one big lesson of my life is the more I run from this ghost, the stronger it becomes. Now what do I mean by facing it? It doesn't mean that you, you know, sit in a corner and you get punished by it? No, it actually means coming to terms with it in with a practice many times a practice. What is that? I mean, many people use meditation, they may use it, they may they could use exercise, they, they could use travel, they could whatever. But there has to be a place where you become the observer of the emotion, where you don't totally believe the story. The storyline is really only framed because of past experience and all of that now, there is a technique called EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique that I have utilized off and on for 20 years. It's a tapping technique. It's connecting some of this hard wired, anxious fear thought patterns that can get locked within us. I have seen people break down in tears from doing EFT, because all of a sudden, they had been harboring these long term emotions for years, and all of a sudden the door cracked open. Well, and it happened that just the other day I was reading something and there was a great, great quote, and this is by Sigmund Freud. unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth and far uglier ways. And if there's anything I've ever said that I personally believe is truthful. It is that one. So EFT is one of my options. And, of course, eating correctly, which is, you know, too many carbohydrates feed the anxiousness within us because of the way it works with insulin.
Brian Strickland 13:09 Yeah, so now that we've covered most of the desire aspect, we can move on to the performance issues as well, I know that you have kind of a three tiered approach for performance issues.
Ed Jones 13:24 Yeah, you're exactly right, Brian, and you know, we want to create I, I want to make this easy for people to understand and not give a just a whole broad spectrum of information, and then you kind of wonder and you're left in the, in the cold, not really embracing anything. So this whole conversation, I want to boil down to three segments. And those three segments are number one blood flow, or lack of number two hormones as testosterone and estrogen, and maybe cortisol, which I will call into that class. And number three is the emotions which is the desire or the fear or the apprehensiveness things that we have to deal with. So that's what I really want to put in a concise manner with the options so that you can help to alleviate it, but do it in ways that we are course grounded in which is functional, holistic, safe options.
Brian Strickland 14:19 Hey, everyone, we just wanted to take a quick break and tell you about our sponsor for this week's episode. This episode is brought to you by silver biotics, creators of silver soul technology. Silver biotics takes colloidal silver to a new level by providing superior products proven safe and effective through hundreds of reports and studies. It's the only silver technology proven safe through human ingestion studies giving you peace of mind. Whether you're looking for wound care, immune support, or skincare. Silver biotics wide range of clinically studied products can help you stay healthy. Silver biotics strong support strong body The Silver strong. Can we talk about just briefly some of the common medications that are given some of the side effects, and some of the direct correlations and some studies that have been done recently with those medications?
Ed Jones 15:18 Absolutely. But I do want to say this, Brian, I'm not completely opposed to certain medications, I think there's a time in place. And I think we are very blessed to have a ability to access a certain amount of health or not healthy, but effective medications that have less risk than others, I really only count about seven drugs in my whole curriculum as being really worth using, because they have minimal risk and have and have great benefit in many cases. Now, again, I'll repeat this, if I'm in the emergency room with a terrible UTI and ammonia, I'm willing to take the risk of, you know, strong drugs because if I don't, and I'm going to die, then I'm willing, but many of those drugs that are given daily are really concerning to me. However, the drug that is, of course, everyone knows Viagra. And it is the most popular is still 50% of all the erectile dysfunction drugs is still going back to the purchase of viagara. What they do and the other drugs do the same exact thing they just have, they've tweaked them to have a little different effects, like Cialis would be much more long lasting, Viagra is about six hours Cialis, maybe 24, then you got Levitra, you got and but all of these work by one single mechanism of action, what is that? It is lowering a certain compound in the body that is would inhibit nitric oxide. What is nitric oxide? It's something you have a lot of when you're 20 to maybe 30 years old, and it is what signals the body and the arteries and vessels to relax. When those expand, you increase blood flows significantly. Now, a person can take these drugs and again, if the libido is zero, they will do nothing. Absolutely, except give you the side effect of flushing and now they give you a nasal congestion to speak on side effects. The one thing on Viagra other than stuffy nose, red eyes, sometimes headaches, is that there is some studies showing it will increase your risk of melanoma if used a long term and a lot of but taking the viagara works. But it's still putting the piece of duct tape on the red light on your dashboard. That's what it's doing. Because I think people could and maybe we'll have to some men will have to use small amounts of these drugs, even with the best protocol. But the problem is if you don't do the right practice in your life, you're gonna have to use more and more and more of these drugs as time goes on. And that's where the big side effects come in. So, you know, speaking of this, if I ever works, so well, what is working by increasing nitric oxide, and if we're not making nitric oxide, so why are we not making it anymore? That's always my question. Well, a lot of it is the raw materials that the chemistry of the body needs in order to make this does get depleted with yours. I mean, Father time is not really kind to the aging body. One of the greatest risk of your entire life is aging. It's now been quoted by the World Health Organization as a disease. And I'm glad they finally did that, because it's true. I have three, you know, I have an options of many things to help nitric oxide. But here's what I have done. Here's what has worked. And here's what hasn't worked, you know, if you Google it right now, and you'd look for like nutritional options for nitric oxide, arginine will come up first. I'm not a big fan of it. Arginine is a precursor to nitric oxide, it will make more of it. But the issue is it has to use very, very high doses, and it lasts very short periods of time. I do take arginine daily, but I do it in a sustained release form by Thorne. And I do it morning and evening just to support the system. I would never do it as my viagara substitute. There's a company called Berkeley and Berkeley makes test strips for nitric oxide. Well, myself and a few of my staff members, we went through everything that claimed to help produce nitric oxide and I used young people middle aged and older men and women actually, and we tested Arginine we tested these athletic drinks and we tested this and that and I found the number one most effective product of all time is beet and spinach that if it's concentrated, if it's in the supplemental form, I mean eating, it's healthy, but you can't get enough of it, you have to actually get it in a concentrated version, which are, you know, the right companies who make that.
Brian Strickland 20:14 Which they do come in in powders and capsules, right?
Ed Jones 20:17 They come in both, I'm actually using a spinach powder. And I'm using a beet capsule by Dr. Mercola. So the supplements that I would recommend if you want to investigate them, as far as nitric oxide is, the beet, the spinach, maybe using sustained release arginine, those are the three big ones, that's the ones right there that I really value the most, because they seem to work. Now, keep in mind the devils in the details on all supplements, they will only do this for a period of maybe three hours, I've seen it drop off about three to four hours. Again, we're not dealing with drugs, but also you're not dealing with the side effects. Now to get outside this conversation of supplements and drugs, there's one other option to increase blood to other options to increase blood flow, actually, that I have been very pleased with. They're not homeruns, but there are enough to justify doing them. One of which is an emerging treatment that uses a pain free low intensity wave therapy. We all know what lithotripsy are many of us do. lithotripsy is a technique that they use when you have kidney stones. And you go to the hospital and they use these really hot can almost like Sonic waves that go in and they bust up the kidney stone. And it's very effective, because it then makes it real small and then a kidney stone can be passed. Well, what they've done in Europe is they turn the dial down from a 10 to a one. And they subject the pelvic area to a once a week treatment of 30 minutes. And what this does is it actually creates micro trauma within the whole pelvic area. This is a emerging treatment, it is expensive to buy me two grand for six treatments. But about six weeks after that you're going to have a vastly increased blood flow. And that will last for a couple years. But if you want to find out more about that, you can send me an email and I'll certainly give you some heads up as to, you know, potential locations or where you can pursue getting that done. Now the very last thing, there is a machine that's out of Europe called a Bemer. That one is another that I have used myself and a Bemer has really cool ability to increase blood flow significantly throughout your body in eight minutes. And it's a home unit that you purchase. It is expensive. It's an FDA approved type of equipment in Europe, it's found in about 50% of neonatal units and a huge number of hospitals. Because what it does is it creates this pulsed electromagnetic field now that's different than the first thing I just talked about this you don't feel it. But you do it every day and it will end up very quickly actually creating this new blood flow and it lasts for about 24 hours every time you do it for those who want information on the Bemer. Okay, so we have you know, we've got the three prong approach the blood flow, the testosterone, the emotions, we've talked a lot about the blood flow, but I want to talk about more on the hormone aspect. Why is it that we have such a declining level of testosterone in many men or secondarily, why is it that even if it's not declining, it's not working? When you talk about testosterone? The things that compete against it are really numerous, one of which is cortisol. So let's try to lower cortisol by sleeping better and taking the supplements that we talked about. We talked about core four all the time. There's four supplements that everyone needs great multivitamin omega three probiotics and a green drink. You know, lowering the total estrogen. How do you do that? Well, guess what? There's a lot of plastics, bottled water, Saran wraps, perfumes. The air fresheners are horrendously bad, fire retardants in your mattress. I can go on and on and on about the fire lights and the estrogen mimickers and the the things that cause neurological damage, and along with the hormone damage, which is our environment, the things were consuming and eating. So if we're balancing the estrogen, let's say we've done that we've we've we've lowered we've helped the diet to not have a lot of the estrogen mimickers which so can be a modest one, but it's not alarming, but I would not recommend a lot of soy in your diet. And you know, we've worked on our sleep and we've worked in our diet to try to maintain more of a keto lifestyle. So now let's talk about how are we going to raise testosterone because if everything else is working, there are issues with lower testosterone levels. So, you know, and and on this topic, the people who use the creams the testosterone prescription craze, I totally 100% do not recommend it. I have seen so many problems with raising estrogen levels and with other issues from prostate swelling, it doesn't even increase your libido, it doesn't help erectile dysfunction, it's there for only one reason to make money. And so use injections use the pellets. That's the only two ways if you're going the pharmaceutical route. But before that, let's talk about vitamin D. The studies are very, very clear. If you can raise your vitamin D to A 50 nanogram level, that requires getting blood testing again to do this, because guessing is a joke. I've dealt with too many people, I can't guess you might need 2000 units, you might need 20,000 to do that. And you can't just haphazardly take it or there can be risk involved. So raising your level of vitamin D to 50 nanograms to and no higher than 100 nanograms will probably raise your testosterone considerably. We don't know how much everyone's different. But that one single $8 supplement can do a great amount for not only testosterone, but your longevity, your reduction of diseases. Sometimes depression blank, blank blank all the way down the list. Now there are herbs that also help I take and have taken off and on DHEA. What is the DHEA? it is a precursor to your hormones. It's like you take DHEA and the body's going to take this molecule and it's going to say okay, we can use this to make a little more testosterone. So it will have this like you're building a house and the people just delivered the bricks. And that's what the DHEA is. Again, be informed more is not better, because more is going to convert to estrogen. I can't stand it when men come in and say they're taking 100 milligrams, but the dose to me is 25 to 50. If you have health issues like prostate cancer, discuss this with your health professional, or if you have any, you know significant health diagnosis, talk to your health professional that you trust, to make sure that you are doing the right thing. I'm not here to give medical advice. And you know, we all know how that game has to be played. And then thirdly, I do love a couple of the herbs one of which is tribulus. Tribulus will signal your your your gonads basically to help you to make a little bit more testosterone. And then Life Extension company has the most interesting product called Male Vascular Sexual Support. And it has an ingredient called Black ginger, but it's a very special black ginger. And taking one pill a day of this has done a lot for not only blood flow, but some of which is the hormone. Those are four great ways to increase your testosterone naturally, now you can do testing, and then see the results. That is a very scientific way to do this. Or you can just see how you feel. Now, I have had other great feedback on one other method that can raise your testosterone between 10 and 30% is not something that anyone sells it's called intermittent fasting. And that basically means that you're going to eat in a 10 hour window and you're not going to eat in a 14 hour window. And so I recommend intermittent fasting to everyone I have a actually a staff member he's about 28 years old, he went and I don't recall exactly but something like he went from a 400 to a 540 doing nothing but intermittent fasting on testosterone. So that is significant.
Brian Strickland 29:04 Ed what kind of testosterone levels would be considered a healthy level?
Ed Jones 29:09 You know, if you're 25 years old, and you're really healthy and your your life's running smoothly, you probably will have a testosterone of a bout somewhere between 550 to 900. You could have it well over 1000 subs same plenty of guys that are but most guys are between 550 and 900. Most guys at 50 are somewhere between 200-500 what we want to do is take it back to where you probably were when you were in your mid 20s to early 30s. We don't know what that is no one got tested so we don't have a clue. What I number one rule is we do not ever in my opinion want it above 800 if it is at 800 then you want to ask for a lower dosage. Now when I say 800 here's the devil in the detail that you have To know, again, if you took a shot last Monday. And let's say you're coming back to the clinic, and here it is a week from that Monday, so you haven't had a shot for seven days and they check your blood before the next shot. That's not really accurate, because you probably have dropped about 70%. So if you sit there on that Monday, and you see a reading for 50 was like, Oh, no, I need more. No, you don't you want to test these things, in my opinion, between day three and day five, after the previous shot, that's where the probably the midline is. And so if you're running about 600, you can probably guess that you'll be 20%. Over that a couple days after the shot, you'll be 20% last the last two days, that's a good range to average at about five to 600. To me, if you're doing five to 600, maybe 650 to seven on the upper end, and your total estrogen is under 50. Actually, 40 would be more ideal, but you and believe it or not, you want some estrogen. You don't want this to be too. Well, that's it for this week's episode. And again, thank you so much, and I'd love to hear from you. So until next time, I'm Ed Jones, and remember this whenever a doctor cannot do good, please keep him from doing harm.
Brian Strickland 31:18 Thanks for listening to the holistic navigator podcast. For more information, previous episodes and other resources, visit theholisticnavigator.com