Foods That Destroy Your Sex Life and Which Ones Spice It Up [Episode #421]

Welcome to the Feel Good Podcast with Kimberly Snyder. Our goal is to help you be your most healthy, confident, beautiful and happy! Our topics focus on health (physical, emotional/mental and spiritual), wellness, holistic nutrition, beauty, meditation, spirituality and personal empowerment.

Feeling Good means we tune in to our bodies and our intuition, including making food and lifestyle choices to feel energized and beautiful, what serves us and what doesn’t, and being in flow along our unique journeys. Feeling good naturally leads to also looking good, in a much more powerful way from glowing skin created from within, a beautifully strong body, radiant energy, and a level of peace and confidence in our perfectly imperfect lives.

Once a month, I do a Solocast with my insights, as well as current research on a trending topic from our community, to support you in living your most beautiful, inspired and joyful life.

I’m your host, Kimberly Snyder, founder of Solluna, New York Times best-selling author and nutritionist. I’m so grateful and honored we found each other!

Today’s solocast topic is: Foods That Destroy Your Sex Life and Which Ones Spice It Up 

Today I’m covering a topic that I think many will find interesting and useful, but is something that we don’t often consider: how food impacts your sex life. The same way that food can affect our moods, weight and skin, it can also make or break our performance in the bedroom.

Countless studies have been done over the years to prove that food is tied to sexual performance and fertility. Every subject, from insects to animals to humans, has been studied in order to prove that food has an effect on sex life, whether it’s positive or negative. Since hunger and sex are both natural human instincts, there’s no denying that what you’re reaching for in the kitchen is inexplicably linked to how you feel in the bedroom.

I’m going to share about several foods that could destroy your sex life, and a few that are sure to spice things up!

In Today’s Episode You’ll Discover…

#1. 3 foods and beverages to avoid for a better sex life

#2. 3 spices that are sure to heat things up in the bedroom

#3. 2 aphrodisiacs to enhance your sex life

#4. Plus, discover how food and your hormones affect your sex drive

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Want to know what to expect from other episodes of the “Feel Good Podcast with Kimberly Snyder”? My passion is to inspire and empower you to be your most authentic and beautiful self. We offer interviews with top experts, my personal philosophies and experiences, as well as answers to community-based questions around topics such as health, beauty, nutrition, yoga, spirituality and personal growth.

The intention of the Feel Good Podcast is to well…help you really Feel Good in your body, mind and spirit! Feeling Good means feeling peaceful, energized, whole, uniquely beautiful, confident and joyful, right in the midst of your perfectly imperfect life. This podcast is as informative and full of practical tips and take-aways as it is inspirational. I am here to support you in being your very best! I have so much love and gratitude for you. Thank you for tuning in and being part of the community :).

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[RESOURCES]

• Spice up Your Love Life With Dr. Laura Berman
• Sex Life Need A Boost? Read This Before Thinking About Popping The “Magic” Pill
• 20 Surprisingly Sexy Natural Aphrodisiacs
• 10 Herbs and Spices to Heat Up Your Sex Drive
• Probiotics
• Detoxy
• Digestive Enzymes  
• Feel Good Starter Kit
• FREE Gift: 7-Day Meditation Series (DIGITAL COURSE)
• Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life
• Be a part of the community Join the Feel Good Circle
• Four Cornerstones FREE PDF: Text the word: feelgood (833) 744-0079

Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:

• Living More Vibrantly with Jill Blakeway
• Female Anatomy & Fitness with Brianne Grogan and Pregnancy Nutrition
• Winter Aromatherapy Trends With Charlynn Avery & Too Much Estrogen?
• Shifting Our Energy With Charlynn Avery & The Power of Prebiotics!

Additional Research Resources:

• Prevalence of sexual dysfunction in male subjects with alcohol dependence
• ACUTE EFFECT OF ALCOHOL ON ANDROGENS IN PREMENOPAUSAL WOMEN
• Dairy Food Intake Is Associated with Reproductive Hormones and Sporadic Anovulation among Healthy Premenopausal Women
• The milk we drink, food for thought
• Role of Caffeine Intake on Erectile Dysfunction in US Men: Results from NHANES 2001-2004
• Dehydroepiandrosterone and Erectile Function: A Review
• Ginger and Testosterone
• Blood pressure-lowering, fibrinolysis enhancing and antioxidant activities of cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum)
• Chocolate and women’s sexual health: An intriguing correlation
• Allicin Bioavailability and Bioequivalence from Garlic Supplements and Garlic Foods
• Therapeutic Uses and Pharmacological Properties of Garlic, Shallot, and Their Biologically Active Compounds

Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Kimberly: Hi Beauties, hope you had a great weekend. Welcome back to our Monday Solocast episode where our topic today is foods that destroy your sex life and ones that spice it up. This is a fun topic and perhaps a useful one for you and your partner because we often think about foods, especially in our community as far as our energy and vitality and our skin beauty and our just overall wellness, of course our immunity, but we don’t always think about it in terms of our sex life. Of course, our sex life is very much dependent on our overall circulation and it is a part of our energy. There is amazing research correlating certain foods with either breaking our performance in the bed and the bedroom and making our sex life more of a drag. On the other hand, foods that can really help to spice things up and raise our libido and make us feel great.

Fan Of The Week

Kimberly: By the way, this also applies if you are flying solo right now and you are in masturbation mode, which is totally cool. That is also part of a healthy sex life. You don’t necessarily have to have a partner to feel good sexually and of course, there’s a lot of research advocating the benefits of orgasm even if it’s self orgasm and masturbation. This topic can apply to most all of us. Told you it was going to be a fun one. Before we dive in, I want to give a shout out to our beautiful fan of the week. His or her name is Teridpw. I always say his or her because I don’t like to assume. You know, my son’s name is Emerson, but I’ve also met girls that are Emerson and girls that are named James and so on and so forth.

Kimberly: He or she writes anyways, “I’ve been following Kimberly for years. I have all of her books, read her blogs, I’m on her social media, et cetera. This podcast gives me the chance to absorb her wisdom while driving, cooking, cleaning, or just sitting at home with a cup of tea. I look forward to the interviews on Mondays and the Q&A on Thursdays from beauties out in the world just like me. It makes me feel connected even when at times I feel isolated in my own world. Thank you Kimberly for spreading your beauty around the world and being available weekly from this podcast. Terry from Little Rhody.” Terry, thank you so much for your beautiful review and for being our fan of the week and being part of our community and simply being you. This review in particular really touched me because I feel that a lot of us can feel isolated. We can start to feel that we’re on our own.

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Kimberly: Community is so important and it’s something that we’re really working to build here at Solluna. It’s one of the reasons we have the Solluna Circle. It’s one of the reasons we have this podcast because we’re here to support each other and love each other and help each other on this sometimes crazy, chaotic, insane journey called life. None of us have all the answers but we can certainly learn from each other and support each other. Thank you so much Terry, and I send you so much love. Beauties, for your chance to also be shouted out as the fan of the week, please just take a moment or two out of your day and leave us a review on iTunes. It’s free, it’s easy and again, it’s a great way to support the show and help other beauties just like you find the show and find information that could really help them as well.

Solocast

Kimberly: Please also be sure to subscribe, that way you never miss an interview or Solocast Monday or Q&A Thursday. We are constantly coming out with new topics and new experts and you want to stay tuned in. All that being said, let’s dive right into our topic about foods that affect your sex life either adversely and can really take you down and take down your fun in the bedroom or foods that help to spice up your sex life and make it more fun. Now I’m sure my new husband, John, is going to love listening to this podcast. He’s probably going to tease me a little bit about this, but this might be a fun one to share with your partner too. There are countless studies that have been done over the years that prove that food is very much tied to sexual performance and also fertility.

Kimberly: It’s interesting, if any of you have seen the recent documentary that came out called The Game Changers. It’s absolutely fantastic. It is on Netflix now. It was produced by James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger who are both plant-based among some other EPs. There’s part in the movie that’s actually quite funny. They hook three college athlete men up to a machine that measures their penis overnight as far as the quality of their erections. Men do get erections overnight. I believe it was the frequency. All three of them experienced a substantial increase in the hardness and quality of their erections as well as for some of them it was like a 388% increase in the amount of sexual activity overnight. The erections, they were getting the blood flow going to their penis. They did it over two nights. One night they ate animal products and the next night they ate plant-based foods, and the increase in thickness and hardness and frequency all came in dramatic, dramatic increase and came after the night where they ate plant-based foods.

Kimberly: This just shows in general one of many studies in that film and in general how much we eat impacts us both in the short-term and in the long-term. We know in the short-term we’ve all waken up the next day after eating a really salty processed meal and maybe our skin looks puffy or our skin looks dull or we feel really sluggish. That applies to our skin. It applies to our energy, and as we’re talking about here, it does apply to sexual performance. It also applies to fertility. We’re going to be talking more about fertility and food coming up. We have some amazing authors that have written books about this subject. If that’s of interest to you, you can stay tuned for that as well. This subject, today we’re talking about sexual performance. This has been studied from insects to animals, to humans, all sorts of creatures in the animal kingdom.

3 foods and beverages to steer clear from for a better sex life

Kimberly: There’s no denying that what you are eating and putting in your body is very much going to impact your libido. It’s going to impact your performance as far as your energy and your ability to please yourself and please your partner. Let’s get right into it. This may not be a huge surprise to you, but one of the foods that can really destroy your sex life, or maybe it is a surprise, is alcohol. It’s not technically a food, of course, it’s a drink, but it’s something that we often go to when we’re going out. Whether it’s a glass of wine or a cocktail because we want to feel social at a party or at an event, guess what? It’s not going to be great if you end up going home with somebody or you go into your partner.

Kimberly: For instance, a study published in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry found that alcohol has a direct connection to sexual dysfunction in men. This includes decreased sexual desire, aversion to sex, erectile dysfunction, and premature ejaculation. Not exactly sexy. Quote from the study says that, “Virtually all aspects of the human sexual response are affected by alcohol especially sexual desire and erection.” Another study found there was a correlation between alcohol consumption and hormonal imbalance in women, which affects sex drive, fertility, menstrual cycles, and pre and post menopausal symptoms. Those research has been shown to prove that alcohol also impairs judgment, consent, decision-making. Now we all know that bad decisions can really impact the rest of your life when it comes to sex. Just remember, I’m not saying that you necessarily can’t have an alcoholic drink for the rest of your life.

Kimberly: I know that’s not reasonable necessarily, it’s not necessarily realistic for a lot of you listening to this, but what I want to stress that maybe if it is a night that you are planning to be with your partner or loved one, you hold off on the alcohol or maybe you just have one drink or you plan a sexy night that is not when necessarily when you are drinking a lot together. Just be conscious of it, know that it’s not great for either of your sex lives in general. Now the next food that could destroy your sex life is dairy. Now we talk about dairy a lot in our Solluna beauty detox community. I’ve written about it since my first book, The Beauty Detox Solution, for reasons having to do with being very difficult to digest for a lot of us, for clogging our skin and clogging our GI tracks and many, many reasons.

Kimberly: What’s really interesting is that dairy can also have an adverse effect on your sex life. Conventional dairy is filled with synthetic hormones that can throw off your natural hormonal balance for instance. This is from a study in The Journal of Nutrition. The right balance of hormones is essential for making sure everything in our bodies are functioning properly, including our sexual glands. The lactic acid in dairy greatly impacts testosterone, which is the hormone behind libido. You might want to think about that before you guys have a cheese plate as a dessert at a French restaurant before heading home with your partner or before you reach for cheese in general with your loved one. You may want to opt for something like the Miyoko’s, amazing plant-based cheese, which is my favorite plant-based brand of cheese right now. They have this smoked farmhouse cheddar, which is incredible. It’s based in cashews. It’s really, really good.

Kimberly: Michael Hertz, the founder of the Center for Integrative Medicine says, low testosterone means for a lower sex drive, which is quite obvious. We know, and again, this is been shown to be adversely affected by dairy. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine also says that there is a correlation between high milk consumption and poor sperm quality along with greater risk for prostate and testicular cancer. Not to mention that dairy as I’ve often spoken about many times leads to bloating and increased mucus production. This is not sexy. This does not make you feel confident as you are taking off your clothes and getting into the bedroom. Nobody wants to feel bloated before they get naked, so that’s another reason you may want to stave off the dairy. Third is coffee. This is a really interesting beverage that has been studied in relation to sexual performance.

Kimberly: I know that some of you would die before giving up coffee completely, but you may want to think about reducing your coffee intake to one or two cups a day, which is maybe where you are right now anyway. The National Health and Nutrition survey found that men who consumed two to three cups of coffee per day had an increased likelihood of erectile dysfunction. Coffee can also throw off your blood sugar, which can impact your adrenals. Now your adrenals control the hormone DHEA and cortisol. There is further research that shows that decreased levels of DHEA can cause lower sex drive or decreased libido and increased instances of erectile dysfunction. Of course, it gets worse if you were to add sugar, artificial sweetener, cream, milk, et cetera, to your cup of coffee. Something to think about. Again, just like with alcohol, it doesn’t mean that you can’t have any coffee again ever, but it means if you love your coffee, maybe curve it at one cup. Maybe switch to tea and some of our amazing herbal elixirs that are soothing and grounding and actually have really positive benefits for your body.

3 specific spices that are sure to heat things up in the bedroom

Kimberly: There can be adaptogens like Tulsi that you could choose, or Rooibos or even ginger tea. We’re going to get to some of those good sex foods in just a moment. Actually, let’s get to it right now. I don’t want to go too much into a downer of foods that are taking you down. I think that those are three ones to be aware of, alcohol, dairy, and coffee. Now let’s talk about foods. Let’s switch to a positive topic. Foods that you can incorporate more of that will enhance your sex life, that will make you feel good, that will make you feel sexy and confident and energetic and help you connect more with your partner. I think sexual connection is such an important part of wellness. I really do. I think again, whether you have a partner or not, whether you are connecting with yourself or you’re connecting with a partner, it’s a beautiful way to explore energy. It’s a beautiful way to deepen connection and to deepen intimacy. I think that it’s really sacred. I think that it should be treated as such.

Kimberly: I don’t personally think it should, again, this is my personal belief, I think there needs to be a lot of respect around it. I think it can really be a beautiful way to grow energetically and to grow in confidence and connection. Along with that we can incorporate foods that help with those goals. The first category that I want to talk about is spices. There are a few I want to call out here. Spices are really powerful way to give your health life and your sex life a boost. Spices are potent. Spices and ayurvedic medicine are considered medicinal, so they’re food and they’re medicine according to ayurveda. Ginger is the first one I want to talk about. It warms the body and increases circulation. It increases blood flow to sexual organs, which is important when you’re trying to boost your sex life.

Kimberly: In fact, a study published in the Biomolecules Journal found that ginger also boost testosterone, which again as we mentioned is the hormone responsible for increasing libido. It’s as easy as slicing up some fresh ginger. I do this now that it’s getting cold, I probably have ginger tea at least once a day. You can just slice it up. I don’t even peel it if it’s organic. Slice it pretty thinly, an inch or two, steep it in hot water for three minutes. Sometimes I mix in lemon juice. Sometimes I put in a little bit of a sweetener depending on my mood, my coconut nectar, whatever, but sometimes I just like the ginger itself. This is also a really great thing to do throughout the day.

Kimberly: As I said, if you’re trying to cut back on coffee, it’s a great thing to do after meals because the ginger helps with digestion. It’s a good thing to do in the evening before you get in the bedroom as we said, because it will increase blood flow to your sexual organs. Maybe you want to give some to your partner as well. Next are chili peppers. According to a study from Northwestern University, chili pepper is considered a natural aphrodisiac because it releases endorphins, which are feel-good hormones. It also increases blood flow similarly to ginger. Endorphins have the ability to increase pleasure as well as block pain, and endorphins are like that runner’s high that you hear about with athletes. It makes you feel like you’re floating. It makes you feel really good. Again, you might want to have some chili pepper in your stir fry before you go to bed.

Kimberly: It can inhibit sleep for a while though, know that. You plan ahead. Maybe you have an earlier dinner and you have some fun in the bedroom and then you could go to sleep. The next one is cardamom. Cardamom is also very, very highly used in ayurvedic medicine. It is an aphrodisiac that dates back as far as the Arabian nights. It’s been used all over the Middle East. It’s used in a lot of countries in Northern Africa. I’ve enjoyed it in many places I’ve traveled around the world. I’ve seen it in Sri Lanka. I’ve seen it in Morocco. I mean, it’s very common worldwide. It too is warming and pungent. You get the theme here with the spices? It’s increasing circulation to those sexy organs, but it also has been shown in research to act as an anti-inflammatory agent because it has potent antioxidant properties.

Kimberly: When we decrease inflammation in our body, it can just boost our wellness in general and help to alleviate issues that can interfere with a really healthy sex life. In that way, cardamom is multi-functional, I would say. In general, it’s a wonderful thing to have. You can have ground cardamom in your tea at night. You can mix it with ginger. You can mix it with warm almond milk, which is what I like to do a lot. I like to make my own warming versions. Sometimes I use ginger, cardamom and turmeric as a version of golden milk or cinnamon. You can play with all these warming spices, but it’s definitely one that you want to stock in your kitchen, one that you want to keep around. You could even do cardamom and sweet potatoes. You could bake the sweet potatoes with coconut oil at 375 or so and sprinkle cinnamon and cardamom on top. That can be really yummy, and sea salt.

2 other aphrodisiacs to enhance your sex life

Kimberly: Moving on from spices, our next food that is also really wonderful for your sex life is dark chocolate, which is a great piece of news for all of us chocolate lovers, including me. Even though I pretend or try, I attempt to give up chocolate for short periods of time. I always go back to it. I am a lifelong chocolate lover. There was always dark chocolate in my fridge and I can’t really imagine a life without chocolate to be honest, which is good news here because chocolate is a natural aphrodisiac. This is why chocolates have been traditionally given out on Valentine’s Day. Chocolate contains PEA, it’s very hard word to say. We’ll try it again, phenethylamine. It’s one of those words I read a million times but it’s hard to pronounce.

Kimberly: This is basically a hormone that your body releases during sex, it sparks the production of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is responsible for feelings of pleasure and satisfaction in your brain. There is a study that has been done in Italy that suggests there is a correlation between chocolate and female sexual function. Use chocolate, consume chocolate judiciously. You do not want to eat a whole bar in one sitting, but if you do have a sweet craving, if you are looking for a little bit of a treat, it’s probably, in my opinion, one of the best things you can go for. Just make sure it’s organic, make sure that it is a high chocolate, a high cacao ratio. I usually get at least 72%, if not, something like 81%. You definitely want to get dairy-free chocolate for sure.

Kimberly: Finally, I want to talk about garlic. Now garlic is an interesting food. I personally largely avoid garlic. I find it doesn’t really work for my body type. I find that I get more agitated when I have a lot of garlic. Here and there, again, used sparingly, used consciously, used purposefully, especially in this case if you know perhaps before a night with your loved one, it can be helpful. There is a lot of research around garlic as being a compound that can boost your sex life. That compound is called allicin. This is another one of those words A-L-L-I-C-I-N. You know what’s funny is when I read the audio of my books, the audio version of books, I have a sound editor. When words come up like this, we pause and he looks it up on the little online audio dictionary and he reads it back to me, and then I read the word and then they substituted in. When I’m doing the podcast, I do not have a sound editor, which is why I run into words like this and I think, oh my gosh, where is he right now?

Kimberly: It’s allicin, allicin is I think is how you say it. Anyways, I spelled it for you guys. You can see it in our show notes, but it is a compound. All you really need to know is that it’s a compound in garlic. It helps to increase blood flow in sexual organs in both men and women. This is from a study in 2018. It has blood thinning and anticoagulant properties, both of which contribute to increased sexual energy and arousal. Like the benefits of garlic, but you don’t want to have bad breath. Well, you could also have a garlicky meal together, that way you both have that breath or you can make sure to brush your teeth really well and perhaps have a cup of ginger tea or mint tea afterwards. This would be a great time to have mint. You mask the smell before you go into the bedroom.

Kimberly: Again, with a lot of these foods that are about increasing blood flow, you would probably want to enjoy them in your dinner a couple of hours before to get the most potent benefits. In this case, like I said, just brush your teeth, have some mint tea. It’s not going to be the biggest deal in the world. There’s some other foods that I won’t get into too much detail, but some ones that have also been related to increasing sexual performance, one of them is celery. It’s believed that celery also has compounds that can help increase blood flow and are beneficial to the blood and thinning the blood and getting arousal going. Another one is avocados. Avocados are believed to have compounds as well that boosts libido. In fact, there’s some folklore saying that avocados have been referred to also by the shape as testes fruit. There are some definite sexual linkages between avocados and libido. I want to call out some of those foods as well, but I think the ones that we talked about here, again, specifically spices like ginger, cardamom and chili, very easy to keep at home. You don’t have to shop for them every week as well as, what else did we talk about?

Kimberly: We talked about garlic, we talked about dark chocolate. These are just ones you can keep at home once you can keep top of mind for those nights to give yourself a boost. In general, and also say that if you are looking to really feel sexier, it’s a good idea to exercise regularly and make sure that you feel that movement, that flow in your body. For me, I like to walk a lot. I do beach walks. Yoga is also really fantastic for moving your body and just getting energy throughout all your organs and throughout your whole system. It’s just great for you mentally as well. Just moving your body is also going to help you feel sexy, feeling hydrated, sleeping well. Many of the protocols that we talk about for general wellness and beauty very much do apply to our sex life because everything is so interrelated and everything does very much affect everything else.

Kimberly: I will also say that healthy digestion is also critical because if you feel bloated, again, if you feel constipated, if you feel gross in your belly, you’re not going to feel sexy. Take the steps, take your probiotics, take care of your gut health as we talk about so much here on the podcast and in Solluna, to really take care of your gut and that will really serve you as well in terms of this topic. I also want to say that true sexiness cannot just be painted on. It’s something that you really build from the inside. I think that confidence is very sexy. I think that it’s very magnetic. This comes when we are in tune with our true beauty, our uniqueness, ourselves being comfortable with ourselves, and that’s something that we really foster here as well in Solluna through our four cornerstones of true beauty, which is food, which we really focused on here.

Kimberly: Body practices like moving and exercising and proper sleep. Emotional well-being and spiritual growth. Even though it may not feel like all these topics are interrelated, they very much are because they help us tune in with ourselves and our power. When we are tuned in with our power, we are incredibly sexy. We are incredibly magnetic, and it all does very much work together. I will be talking about this further. I think this is a great topic. I will be talking about the glandular system, the sexual organs, fertility more, and how foods and lifestyle affect that. I think it’s really important. We do get a lot of questions about fertility here, so you can look out for that in an upcoming show. Thank you so much beauties for tuning in. As always, it is a great honor. I love our time together.

Kimberly: Remember that you can always ask me questions over at mysolluna.com/askkimberly and we answer four every Thursday. Ask me anything. Ask any sort of topic, whatever’s on your mind. It could be about diet, it could be about mental health, emotional well-being, spiritual growth, whatever. Whatever’s on your mind, I would love to hear about it and hopefully support you and be here for you. I appreciate you so much. I appreciate our community so much. Have a wonderful beginning of your week. Remember how beautiful you already are. Remember, you are unique and there’s no one else like you. Take great care of yourself. I will see you back here in just a few days, beauty. Lots of love, and see you back here soon.