The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #132 - Christine DeLozier

TRANSCRIPT

Melanie Avalon: Hi, friends, welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation that I am about to have. It is a blend of a few topics that I really, really love. I have done actually only one episode on this show on Traditional Chinese medicine and I had been wanting to dive deeper into it and in particular kind of go down certain tangents and rabbit holes in Traditional Chinese medicine, basically go down some specifics. Something was presented to me that was the perfect blend because it's another topic that I am personally a little bit obsessed with, but have not done an episode on and that is sex. So, how perfect is it that we are here today with Christine DeLozier. She wrote a book called Diet for Great Sex. Oh and of course diet which you guys know we talk about diet all the time on this show. The subtitle is Food for Male and Female Sexual Health.

Not only does it have a really epic cover art, I must say, but I read this book, and oh, my goodness, it was mind blowing. I learned so, so much about, well, first of all, about the history of sex, the history of how it's treated in culture, particularly in Asian culture, and its manifestations with diet, with sexuality, orgasms, so many things, and then beyond that, the role of diet in our sexual health, the role of Traditional Chinese medicine, the role of I don't even know if I can say aphrodisiacs, is that how you say it. I never say that word out loud. Aphrodisiacs. There is just so much in here. I have so many questions. I'm just really excited. So, Christine, thank you so much for being here.

Christine DeLozier: Well, thank you so much for having me on your show. I'm really happy to be here.

Melanie Avalon: I will let listeners know a little bit about you. You studied biology and psychology at the University of Rochester. You hold a dual Master's degree in acupuncture and Traditional Chinese medicine, and also a Master's in Counseling. Like I said, you do have this book, Diet for Great Sex. I'm excited to just dive in. But to start things off, I was wondering if you could tell listeners a little bit about your personal story. Were you always interested in sex? Did you have some of life event that made you more interested in it, especially its role and its connection to Traditional Chinese medicine? Basically, what led you to write this book?

Christine DeLozier: Well, I'll tell you underlying all of this is my love of food and all things natural. As far as my approach to health, I've always had this idea that the best way to promote our wellbeing is through natural means. The food we eat, how we treat ourselves. That's underlying it all. Plus, I'm a foodie, and I love making food, taking pictures of food, and all that. The sex part actually came later to that. I became an acupuncturist and like many acupuncturists, I was treating a lot of back pain, headaches, neck pain, when I first started my practice. One day, one of my patients who I was treating for back pain came in and asked me if I could help him to have stronger erections. I said, "Sure, let's give it a whirl. I don't treat it a lot but we'll see."

He had such good results. He was so happy. It made such an impact on his intimate relationship with his wife. Then I had a succession of success stories. Treating sexual health is difficult to treat with whether you're talking about conventional or alternative medicine, it's not easy to treat. The fact that we were getting such good results made me want to specialize in this, because it brought so much benefit to my patients. I stumbled across it. It wasn't really something that I-- "Hey, I love sex just like the next person and I definitely want to always have better sex." But it was more something that came to me. That's how I got here.

Then I have a history, when I was an undergrad, I trained to be a research scientist at the University of Rochester. I brought that into my practice and I really wanted to see what science had to say about this relationship. I knew intuitively that diet would affect sex just like it affects everything else in our lives. But I wanted to see what the science had to say about it. I pored over a ton of research in writing the book and it's an evidence-based look book with a cheeky, fun approach to it.

Melanie Avalon: I love that so much. Yeah, that's something I should comment on in the book. It really was a blend of science, of personal experience, and definitely a very approachable read, shall we say? There're so many directions we could go with this. Just a quick question about what you just spoke about, though. With the acupuncture-- When you started treating sexual issues with acupuncture, how is that addressing sexual health? What does it do to the body that can address those issues?

Christine DeLozier: Let me just preface that by saying that great sex from a physiological perspective is, when we have abundant blood flow to our genitals. It's when our nerves are firing strong, rapid impulses to and from the genitals. Those signals of pleasure, those signals of arousal, for lubrication, for blood flow, all those things, and it's when our sex hormones are balanced. When we think about something like Chinese medicine, which operates on the meridians of the body, we stimulate points on the meridians to move the chi. It's very simple and on a simple and basic level, but those meridians correspond with the nervous system and the vascular system. When we put a needle in, we're stimulating nerve pathways.

The reason this is important is because, well, for a couple of reasons. One of the reasons it's important is because every substance produced by the body, every hormone, every neurotransmitter is ultimately controlled by the nervous system. Also, when we put needles in, we direct the body's attention to certain areas and we increase blood flow. So, acupuncture, just to give you an example of one point that I tend to use with my patients is called Ren 1. It's a point that's on the perineum in between the vagina and anus or the testicles and anus. It's a major crossing point of nerves associated with sexual function. From a biomedical perspective, we're stimulating those very nerve pathways associated with sex. In doing so, we increase lubrication, blood flow, sexual excitability, and sensitivity.

From a Chinese medicine perspective, we are accessing the root chi. It's the lowest point on the midline and it's the Ren meridian, which is the embodiment of that feminine Yin essence. It's the root of the Yin, if you will. The Yin is the basis for blood and blood flow.

Melanie Avalon: That first point that you spoke about, was that what you spoke about in the book that was the perineum? Was that the same thing?

Christine DeLozier: The perineum, yep.

Melanie Avalon: Perineum, okay, so that's just an area in the body?

Christine DeLozier: Yeah. It's just an area where a lot of nerves cross that are associated with sexual function.

Melanie Avalon: With the acupuncture, because I haven't actually talked about acupuncture on the show, I don't think either. Is the basic idea-- Because hearing you say it that way, is the basic idea just creating a stimulus to the body that the body then reacts to?

Christine DeLozier: Well, yes. There are no drugs or anything contained within the needles. They're simply stimulating nerve pathways. Stimulating those local blood vessels and nerve pathways that end up connecting with the central nervous system and whatnot. When we're talking about something like musculoskeletal conditions, we're also stimulating the body's healing response. If you were to cut your finger, your body would detect tissue damage and it would direct the appropriate agents to repair those tissues. When we put a needle in or putting it in a little deeper than the superficial aspect of the skin, we put it further in, and it stimulates the body's healing response in the same way you get a similar increase in those agents, which repair your body's tissues.

Melanie Avalon: This is something I never thought about before, but does the effect with acupuncture, is it different or is it more potent if you are in the fasted or the fed state, or your baseline state of health? Does one make it more potent are more powerful than the other?

Christine DeLozier: Some people experience a more powerful chi moving effect in the fasted state because there's nothing to slow down the chi, if you will. Having said that, a person's baseline definitely contributes-- Acupuncture has been found in research to be adaptogenic. What I mean when I say that is that, if you give acupuncture to people who have high blood pressure, their blood pressure tends to go down following acupuncture. If you give people who have low blood pressure acupuncture, their blood pressure tends to increase after. It has a differing effect on different people. If you were to measure the baseline dopamine levels of, let's say, 10 people before acupuncture and half of those people had a headache or some pain condition beforehand, and then you measure post-acupuncture, the group who was in pain prior to that and this is according to research, their dopamine levels would increase more than the patients, who did not have pain to begin with.

Melanie Avalon: When did acupuncture-- because I know now, insurance plans, a lot of them are now including it. Was that a more recent development that it's starting to be more accepted by conventional medicine?

Christine DeLozier: Yeah, it is. It's based on all the growing research surrounding it. However, there's not a lot of money in acupuncture research for sure. But there's enough evidence now that it works, especially for certain conditions. We know that it works. It's recognized by the World Health Organization and the National Institute of Health. But the body of research that's largest is on things like back pain, headaches, neck pain, and a handful of other conditions. I found from my own experience that it was great for sexual health, but there are a few studies that I found that backed that up, but not a huge body of research. But that's why it's being recognized is because of the research behind it.

Melanie Avalon: It would totally make sense with what you said about blood flow being so important in sexual health. This is just one more random question. You're mentioning high blood pressure. Does blood pressure correlate to blood flow? Do people with higher blood pressure have faster or higher blood flow?

Christine DeLozier: Well, no. If you have higher blood pressure, it often reflects plaque accumulation. Remember, those, especially when we're talking about sex, the arteries of the penis, vagina, and clitoris are among the smallest in the body. They get clogged the fastest. Signs of heart disease or cardiovascular disease plaque accumulation show up in sex first before you see them in the rest of the body.

Melanie Avalon: Oh, wow, that is so interesting. That completely makes sense. Does the clitoris have the most nerves of anything in the body? I feel like I often hear that.

Christine DeLozier: I think so. Yeah, I think I've read that a few times. Yeah, that is true and as a matter of fact, I think I put that in my book as well. [laughs]

Melanie Avalon: I feel like I don't know who said that but I feel I might have read it in your book, too. But yeah, that is something that you talk about in your book is this basically sex triad of hormones, the nerve pathway, and the blood flow. Because I feel most people when they think sexual health, they probably just think hormones. They might think blood flow-- I don't think most people have that much of a comprehensive picture of all of those things. How are all of those related? Is it chicken and egg? Does one typically go awry before the other? Do they typically all get messed up at the same time? So, what is this triad?

Christine DeLozier: Yeah, it is kind of chicken and egg. Our nerve health, for example, how quickly our nerves fire to and from the genitals, how strong those signals are, affect things like orgasm. They affect pleasure, they affect clitoral sensitivity and penile sensitivity when we're in the act. Those can be affected by a number of things just even environmental pollutants or type 2 diabetes. But just as those are suffering the effects of type 2 diabetes, and the resulting oxidative stress that comes with it, so too our blood vessels. So, blood vessels suffer those same ill effects on the integrity of the vascular walls from oxidative stress. That just comes from life. Life causes oxidative stress. Our environment causes oxidative stress. What we put into our bodies or our diets and our lack of exercise causes further damage to all of those structures.

Yeah, it is kind of chicken and egg thing, they're all needed. When you see your partner naked or you are touched, your nerves need to send a signal to your brain, and then your brain needs to respond or in some cases it's not even in your brains, just to the spinal cord and there's a reflective response of arousal for blood flow and lubrication. But when we're talking about something like testosterone, if testosterone is low, that pathway's not even going to be relevant because you're not aroused to begin with, you're not in mood. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, they all are mutually dependent.

Melanie Avalon: Yeah, and actually speaking to that point, the role of the brain and your perception versus just the physical arousal, could you elaborate a little bit more on that? When we get aroused what is the primary driving factor? Is it our mental perception of things or is it much more on a subconscious level? I know you talk about arousal in men versus women and how it's very underappreciated how women are aroused. I don't know if it was in your book or if I was reading it extraneously, but I was reading about how they were looking at men versus women getting aroused. Apparently, women get aroused just as much as men, but we don't realize that we're getting aroused. But if they check for physical signs, we are getting aroused. So, arousal, what drives that?

Christine DeLozier: Yeah. Women under report their arousal. There's a lot of cultural reasons why we do that. But sometimes, it's not even a cognitive process. Sometimes, it's just a reflexive process. When the clitoris is stimulated or the penis is stimulated, there are nerve impulses that go to the spine, to the lumbar and sacral spine, and just reflexively fire back, and cause arousal if you will. And nothing needs to be processed in the brain. That's for part of it. Some of those signals just go to the spine. Some of them go to the spine, and then go to the brain, and are processed. And things like pleasure, things like that dopamine release is an example to illustrate that.

The dopamine pathway in the brain is involved in orgasm and it's involved in pleasure with regard to sex. Because of the fact that, that pathway is dependent on things like fats and particularly, omega-3 fatty acids, lack of that in the diet can actually disrupt that pleasure pathway, if that makes sense. Yeah, there's a cognitive aspect of it and there's just a structural physiological aspect as well.

Melanie Avalon: That's so fascinating. I'm really, really interested in the cultural implications surrounding all of this. This is a very nebulous question, you probably can't quantify it in an answer, but do some people have more of a mental sex drive, and so, even if maybe their blood flow isn't quite on point, they're just so mentally turned on that they can get turned on and sexually perform. Then, on the flipside, maybe some people who are epic health, and blood flow, and hormones, but just mentally for whatever reason, culturally, psychologically they're not into it. So, they can't really have that sexual performance?

Christine DeLozier: Yeah. I actually read a really good book called Come as You Are, by Emily Nagoski. I'm saying her last name, correct? But her whole book is about that stuff is just about how every single person is unique with regard to things like that. Some people don't even think about sex unless they're stimulated in the clitoris, and then the thought occurs to them. But they would never think about even initiating sex with a partner. Other people see very mild nudity and all of a sudden are aroused. That goes for male and female arousability. Everybody's different. On average, men have more visual, sexual excitability if that makes sense. Women on average tend to be slower to-- It takes a little bit longer, the whole process of arousal.

Melanie Avalon: I'm going to have to read that book, a whole book about it. Actually, and something else, so, something you talk about a lot in your book is the history throughout Asian culture and other cultures with sexual history. Because I think there's this idea that in Chinese history that sex is not encouraged but you paint a very different picture. What has been the history of sex in Chinese culture?

Christine DeLozier: What I was always taught even in school was that if you have too much sex, particularly, males you'll lose your essence and every ejaculation comes with a loss of your essence, the essence of life. The essence of life being embodied in sperm. For females, the essence of life being embodied in menses. It was considered to be more beneficial for women and not as damaging as it was for men. But when I looked in the research and looked in the history surrounding sex, I found that it wasn't always the case. That was something it was quite the opposite before Confucianism gained popularity in China.

You had emperors, who as a standard of practice would have over hundred concubines, and second wives, and consorts, and that sort of thing. They were encouraged to have sex with the concubines as much as possible because they felt that with every sexual encounter, the vaginal secretions of their partner would boost their essence. They were gaining something, they were gaining essence and building their essence with every sexual encounter, so that then on the full moon, when they had sex with the empress, they would deliver the most powerful sperm to give the strongest, most intelligent heirs possible.

But this all changed as dynasties were turning over. There was increasing struggle to control the people through governments in trying to stay in power. When Confucianism became popular, that was used as a tool by the government to control its citizens and that included in their personal lives and in sex. Confucianism had a completely different view on sex, more closed that led the way for how it is viewed today.

Melanie Avalon: What was that ancient sex book that you talk about in the book?

Christine DeLozier: Oh, my gosh, there were loads of them. There were loads of them. There's not even just one. The emperor's physicians would write manuals on sex, how to have sex. There're even books, something like 36 positions in the--. Sex was written about all the time. It was considered essential that for the happiness of a woman that she be pleased with every sexual encounter. That meant that men were instructed to read these manuals on how to please their woman. Not only that, on how to detect if they had truly had an orgasm. I guess people were faking it even back then.

Melanie Avalon: That's amazing.

Christine DeLozier: [laughs] You want to know she really had one, not that she's just trying to be nice to. Yeah, how to detect when she's truly had an orgasm, because the worst thing was the lonely concubine, who's not sexually satisfied and who's sexually frustrated. It was a male responsibility to do that. I have to say that, that's something that males need a lot of work on in modern days. Certainly, we've come a long way. We're further along than we were 20 years ago with our attention to the importance of female pleasure and equality in the bedroom, if you will. But we still have some work to do.

Melanie Avalon: Yeah. I was going to say, those ancient texts sound like modern day like Cosmo magazines, except more superficial level today and mostly women reading for men. [giggles] Oh, wow. That's so funny. Well, speaking of actually the women orgasming. I don’t think I have said that word before, and faking it and all of that, what are the stats on women, I guess, and men but-- that would be ejaculation. Women's ability to orgasm, can all women orgasm from sex? The difference between the G spot and the clitoris, what role does that play? Yeah, just what's going on with women and orgasms in sex today?

Christine DeLozier: According to the research, a lot more women are able to orgasm from sexual activity than are actually orgasming from partner or sexual activity. According to the research about 80% of women are able to. That leaves 20% behind, which is a lot honestly. But it's much less than that actually are and there's a lot of reasons for that. We have the interpersonal reasons. Just like we talked about this habit of faking it, that male ego is tied to pleasing a partner, and that if she wants to let him know that he did a good job, she has to fake an orgasm to let him know that he's sexually competent and that there will be problems if she doesn't fake it. There's a lot of pressure in some relationships to do that.

There's this myth that female orgasm should be just as easy as male orgasm. What that leads to is these relationships where it's just too much work to put in the time and effort that it takes in not only learning how to please your partner, but in actually doing it because what the research shows is that let's see, I forgot how many minutes it was to achieve orgasm and it's a little bit longer when with a partner versus when they're by themselves. Then with women, it was an average of eight minutes when they were by themselves and longer with a partner. But that was once they were fully aroused. Building up to that time took even more work.

When all is said and done, a woman, the entire act to help her to orgasm could take 30 minutes, 45 minutes, even an hour. A lot of couples aren't aware that that's normal. Therefore, there's this expectation that she should orgasm with her partner or that she should be able to orgasm from sex. For example, where that's an entirely other topic, which is that physiologically, structurally, the structure of the clitoris and its distance from the vagina, that distance has to be small enough to stimulate the clitoris during sex. That's only true for about 25% of women. So, physiologically, only about 25% of women can have an orgasm from just penetration alone.

Melanie Avalon: To clarify the initial 20% stat, about 20% of women are not able to orgasm without a vibrator, without anything, they just cannot orgasm?

Christine DeLozier: That's what the research says. I think if you were to dissect that and look at younger populations versus older populations, and the way we view sex now and female sexuality, I think that number would be much higher in younger people, if that makes sense.

Melanie Avalon: Like that we're losing our ability? Wait, which number would be higher? Sorry.

Christine DeLozier: The 80%. The 80% that can would be higher. Now, it's becoming okay to be sexual beings. In the past, that's why it was so underreported, sexual arousal, because we had this notion that being horny was curvy for women that we should be more proper and a little bit more team in our sexual preferences. It was more accepted for males to have more interesting preferences, if you will. But when they did research, they found women were just as aroused by even the more unusual things. They just didn't report that they were.

Melanie Avalon: I wonder what the actual stat is on the inability and I feel really bad for the people in that percent. Going back to the 25%, where only 25% of people is the clitoris physically in a location where it would get stimulated during sex. So, what about the G spot? Is that, that a thing?

Christine DeLozier: Yeah. The G spot is actually the root of the clitoris. Just like the tip of an iceberg, what you see is only a fraction of the actual structure. You're basically simulating a deeper level of the clitoris with the G spot. Yeah, there's a reason women report that it's pleasurable when stimulated.

Melanie Avalon: Oh, okay. I did not know that. I thought they were two different things. How do you feel about manual stimulation, masturbation, vibrators? Does that add to the sexual experience when you're with a partner or? I guess, those are different things, masturbation versus using toys. But how do you feel about all of that and how it ultimately adds to a person's sexual experience when they're with another person?

Christine DeLozier: Well, let's look at this. Women who report having the most orgasms with let's say partnered sex, also report masturbating. They report being comfortable talking about sex with their partner, communicating with sex, using toys if and when they want to. For some females, the only way that they have ever had an orgasm is with a vibrator. Their partner may welcome the vibrator or their partner might say, "Oh, I don't like that buzzing" or maybe they feel bad because they can't give their partner an orgasm. So, they don't encourage their partner to use the vibrator. I think the vibrator should be welcomed if it's something that adds to the experience, especially with maybe facilitating orgasm.

Melanie Avalon: It would be a problem, I think, for me in a relationship if a vibrator, a toy was seen as threatening, but I don't know how you would have a dialogue about that except just to clarify that it's helpful. I don't know. Do you have patients where this is a problem?

Christine DeLozier: Yeah. I had a patient whose partner didn't want her using a vibrator because it was distracting. The noise was distracting and wasn't considered sexy or arousing. Of course, as you can imagine, if the partner wasn't really accommodating in that respect, you can imagine how accommodating they were with their efforts to try to please my patient. Some lovers are selfish and others aren't. Some make much more effort to learn about the female body, and how to please it, and understand that you need a little bit more care and attention sometimes, a caring, understanding partner would welcome a vibrator if their partner wanted to use one.

Melanie Avalon: Yeah. Even on the flipside maybe the partner would be fine with it, but they're going back to that own personal cultural and insecurities. The person using the vibrator could feel uncomfortable with it.

Christine DeLozier: Yeah, exactly. I have patients who feel bad about their inability to orgasm as easily as their partner. They themselves are their harshest judge. Their partner, maybe is more encouraging and really wants to broaden their sexual horizons and they themselves are, well, they feel uncomfortable about making their partner take so much time with them. Of course, we've all had experiences with partners who weren't willing to put that effort in, who just want to rollover, and go to sleep, and that. So, it's definitely an issue of, yeah, sexual inequality or inequality in the bedroom.

Melanie Avalon: 100%. I'm just thinking about how my mom would be mortified if she heard this interview that I'd doing [laughs] because I was going to say that, that's been my experience that it's actually more in my head like, I feel bad or awkward about using a vibrator. Everybody has been very accommodating and said that it's not a problem. They don't mind. But I'm super in my head about it. I just feel stuff like this isn't talked about that much.

Christine DeLozier: Right. It's not. You know what? We all need to educate ourselves on the unique issues with ourselves, and our partners, and our physiology, differences in physiology, and things like that. My male patients, well, anybody who is going to be with a female can learn about that, and just they don't have to wait for an invitation or wait to be asked to use a vibrator. They can bring up the subject themselves. You know what I mean? They can go out of their way to make their partner feel comfortable by encouraging them to do whatever they want and need to do to have a good time.

Melanie Avalon: One more point about the vibrators while we're on this topic. I would love to know your thoughts on this. I recently interviewed Dr. Stephanie Estima. She wrote a book called The Betty Body. But she has a whole section on orgasms and the health benefits of them, and she talks about how one of the potential issues of using a vibrator is that, a lot of the health benefits of orgasm occur in between period. Before you actually have the orgasm, and that when you use a vibrator, you can speed up that process. You're not getting all the health benefits. So, I asked her if you can use self-control and hold out, and have a longer time until you orgasm, would that still create the health benefits? She agreed. But what are your thoughts on the health benefits of orgasms and sex?

Christine DeLozier: Well, there's lots of research to support that. We know that orgasming and sexual activity in general does have an impact on hormonal balance, for example. The more sex we have, the better and stronger our arousal is to begin with. We have more optimal testosterone, for example. There are definitely those benefits. Anytime you think about hormonal benefits, that's great, because you get a global effect on the body. Yeah, so, I would say that. Certainly, the release of dopamine and getting pleasure from life, we have stressful enough lives as it is. Our productivity is through the roof. We are managing and multitasking throughout our days with our work, and home, and family. So, getting regular pleasure is so good for our emotional health as well.

Melanie Avalon: To that point, exactly, because I'm all about the bio hacks, and what I'm doing with this show, and with my audience is I'm always, I find tips or things that work in my life and I just have to tell everybody when it really has an effect on me, and it's really unfortunate to me that there is all of this, people just don't talk openly about sex as much because one of the things that has really, really benefited me is, I was speaking about Dr. Estima, she has a seven-day orgasm challenge. I decided to do that. Then I realized the effects were just so amazing, so I've turned it into an everyday orgasm challenge. Basically, just schedule it in, have an orgasm every single day. The effect that it has had on me has been pretty profound, but it's something that I feel like on social media and with my audience, it's hard to just go around and just put that out there. So, this is me putting that out there more.

Something else though, this was something I learned in your book that I did not know that I thought was fascinating. This makes me a little bit angry almost and it's that Viagra works in females too. But it's really only prescribed for men. The thing that I find disconcerting about that is, to me, it just goes to show how much the emphasis is on male sexual pleasure and male performance. Medicine and the literature, why don't they prescribe Viagra for women? I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing health wise, but I just find it interesting that it's a male drug.

Christine DeLozier: Yeah, absolutely. It is infuriating. They do need more research on females with that, that's something that does have the potential to really enhance our intimacy and benefit our lives. We know that sexual health is very important to our sense of wellbeing, but we acknowledge that more for males than for females and that's-- We're just the sexual beings and we do deserve the attention in research and in science.

Melanie Avalon: Thank you for what you're doing and putting that out there. Something else interesting about Viagra. So, its mechanism of action, is it blood flow? Is that basically what it's supporting?

Christine DeLozier: Yeah, it is. Basically, it operates on cGMP, which is like it's a substance in the body that is associated with blood flow. It doesn't bring blood flow. What it does is it makes your body more susceptible to have a better blood flow response to sexual stimulus. It doesn't cause arousability, it doesn't cause arousal rather, but it makes your body more susceptible with blood flow. It works on this cGMP and also on nitric oxide, which stimulates the dilation of blood vessels. Spinach in research, after one serving of spinach in one study, they tested salivary nitric oxide levels, and they were eight times that of baseline. Something like spinach isn't going to be a Viagra pill, but it does operate on the same mechanism if that makes sense and it does have a pretty strong effect. Eight times baseline is pretty significant after one single serving of spinach.

Melanie Avalon: That's fascinating and I'm glad we go in the spinach route because we can dive into diet. One last thought about the Viagra was that, I did another interview recently and I think it was the one I did with Dr. Jacoby, who wrote a book called Sugar Crush, and his book is all about nerve impulses. I think it was him, I hope I'm not misquoting. If it was him, he was talking about the benefits of Viagra for not sexual stuff, but basically just because of its effect on blood flow, and I think is a consequent nerve impulse. So, that's really interesting.

Christine DeLozier: Well, it is interesting. Did he say that it increased blood flow to the brain or anything like that?

Melanie Avalon: I'm going to have to circle back and I can put it in the show notes and then I can let you know. If it was him, it was about-- because he was saying, if you want it for this reason, which was for nerve impulses and blood flow, how to get it from your doctor, and he was saying, "Don't say that you want it for these reasons, just say you want it for sexual performance." That's the way to get it prescribed. I have to look at it again. But going into diet, so, you've mentioned spinach, but maybe backtracking a little bit, I know this is a huge question, but Traditional Chinese medicine and Chinese dietetics, and all of that what are the basic tenets there for a healthy diet?

Christine DeLozier: You want foods that promote the free flow of chi and you want to limit foods that block that chi. You want foods that build the chi. How that is seen in a balanced diet is one that represents all of the five flavors. The five flavors are bitter, sour, sweet, accurate, and let me see, salty. Yeah, salty. Anyways, when those are out of balance, we have disruptions to healthy sex and sexual function. In our modern processed food diets, we tend to represent the sweet flavor is over represented in our diets, the salty flavor is over represented because of all the processed foods, and all the sugar and salt that they add to it. Then things like sour, which is fruit and things like bitter, which comes from leafy greens are underrepresented in the body. That is what causes disruptions. All of the rich, greasy, heavy processed foods that we eat, they slow down the chi, they block the chi through things like plaque accumulation and slow it. That's what gets in the way.

Of course, sexual health is rooted in the essence and we want a strong essence which is considered to be housed in the kidneys. There are foods that strengthen the kidneys for example and whatnot. But in general, as a general rule, we just want balance, if that makes sense.

Melanie Avalon: How do you feel about desiccated organ supplements and the idea of supports like--? I ask because I take kidney every single night and I really love its effects on me personally.

Christine DeLozier: I haven't seen a lot of research on it. So, I don't know. I should look into that. I think once we're done, I'll probably take a look and see what the research has to say on it because I don't know. I don't know scientifically what research has been done.

Melanie Avalon: I take spleen and kidney. I took the spleen because it has five times the amount of iron as liver and I struggle with anemia, and it's been the first thing that has actually kept my ferritin up. It's been amazing and then the kidney I take for its high in DAO, so for histamine issues and I often have a high BUN, so I want to take it to support my kidney, but I personally experience lot of benefits. Yeah, I would love to look in the scientific literature on it for sure. This goes into what you were just saying, because I'd asked listeners if they had any questions, and this relates to what you just said. Alison, she said, "I've had a low libido for a while except for a couple times a month when I'm ovulating. Up until now, I've had a pretty high sugar filled diet. Could sugar impact my sex drive?"

Christine DeLozier: Absolutely. Refined sugars, there're all sorts of research on that. Refined sugars do a number of things hormonally in the body. One of the things is that they cause insulin resistance and leptin resistance, which lead to imbalances in testosterone and estrogen. Testosterone is important for libido, not only in males but also in females. There are lots of studies showing how refined sugars are associated with low serum testosterone and disrupted estradiol. Not only that, refined sugars even disrupt testosterone in the short run. In my book, for example, I have a date night sex menu and it's filled with foods that have been shown in research to have an immediate effect on either blood flow or--

For example, there are two things. High fatty foods will sharply drop testosterone within the two-hour window after eating it, so too will high sugary foods. You want to stay away from those for a date night, a romantic evening. The sugar is something you want to avoid in the short term for sex and also in the long run just for major hormonal imbalance. If you want to try to offset some of those effects of the sugar, you really shouldn't be eating a lot of refined sugar. It's just overall bad. But things like leafy greens actually help rebalance testosterone. We have these really stressful lives, for example, and we are under a lot of pressure just like we talked about and we go around with higher levels of cortisol, which sabotages testosterone. Things like leafy greens and the zinc in them reduces cortisol and boosts testosterone. So that's one of the best things to help rebalance hormones.

Melanie Avalon: Yeah. Actually, speaking to that, the date night dinner, I don't know if it's just me or it's because I've been doing intermittent fasting for so long, but in my body, it feels counterintuitive to eat a meal and then have sex right after the meal. I know this is not normal, but having sex before a meal. I guess, especially if it's a heavy meal, definitely, it just doesn't seem intuitive to me at all.

Christine DeLozier: Yeah. Well, heavy meal does a lot of things. We talked about how it can tank testosterone. But a really fatty meal actually has a measurably stiffening effect on blood vessels in that two-hour window. There's a lot of research to basically show that your arterial function is diminished even two hours after having a really fatty meal. But interestingly, an omega-3 rich fatty meal had the opposite effect on blood vessels. So, it actually helped them to improve their elasticity and delivery of blood flow.

Melanie Avalon: Diving deeper into the fat, because a lot of my audience is low carb, or paleo, or even keto. Have you seen studies on the ketogenic diet and sexual performance, even if it's a higher fat diet?

Christine DeLozier: There're a couple things that you have to be mindful of when you're doing keto. Things like red meat, you have a great source of bioavailable zinc with red meat. There's a lot of benefits to red meat, for example. Well, you got to pay attention with keto is getting enough vitamin C, getting enough potassium, things like that because vitamin C and potassium for that matter are rich in a lot of carbs. Potassium isn't abundant in everything. There's really short list of foods. We used to as human beings get about 10 times as much potassium in our diets as sodium, and now it's just the opposite. We get about 10 times as much sodium as potassium. But if you're on a keto diet, you just have to make sure that you are getting a lot of leafy greens.

One thing I talked about in the book is the fact that human beings, we've lost our natural inclination for what foods are good for us. Other animals know exactly what to eat. They still have their instincts intact with regard to food. We ask each other what we should eat. What if you look at other primates, then you will see that they eat a lot of leaves, they spend a lot of time eating leaves. In doing so, they have a much more mineral rich diet and that includes potassium. But most of the foods with a lot of potassium are things like yams with the skins on, potato with the skin on it, mangoes, oranges, bananas. One, low-carb, potassium-rich food is leafy greens. You can't get potassium for meats but it's more 10% for a serving of it. You really have to reach for the leafy greens if you're doing low carb and you're not eating a lot of fruits or the starchier things.

As far as vitamin C, I know some people who are on keto do eat things like berries and some don't. But I would say bring berries in because it's a low-carb, low-glycemic index way to get a lot of vitamin C. Vitamin C is going to protect those blood vessels going to and from the penis, and vagina, and clitoris, and it helps make them more elastic. Not only that vitamin C is really important for our mood as well. In research, vitamin C was shown to rapidly improve mood. When you're thinking about something like sex, being in the mood for sex or just having anxiety surrounding sex that can help with all of those things.

Melanie Avalon: That was one of the things I love that you talked about in your books was, "we just have lost our intuitions surrounding food," which It completely makes sense because we're surrounded by foods that hijack, I think our intuition, processed foods. The quick note about the low-carb keto. I actually personally follow, I do intermittent fasting but then I eat pretty high carb, low fat. I eat a ton of fruit. I eat really high protein, but it's lean proteins. But even when I do do low carb and/or keto, I don't make it super high fat. I think a lot of people have this idea that keto automatically means really high fat, but you can do low carb and keto and not be slathering on this exuberant amount of fat. That might work for some people, but I think for others they might benefit from not going super crazy with the fat.

Christine DeLozier: Yeah, I agree. Different fats are different, too. If you're doing keto, you can have meat and you can have avocados, you can have fish, you can have all those things. You don't need to pour a bottle of olive oil on your dinner, which is going to be really concentrated fat and it's a more processed form of fat as well.

Melanie Avalon: What about protein? You do talk in the book about animals and how protein affects their sex drive. What do you find with humans and protein?

Christine DeLozier: That's a really good question. There's not a lot of research on that and specifically protein and sex. There's more research on fat and sex. There's research on carbs, and insulin, and blood sugar, and sex, but not a whole lot that I found on protein and sex. Certainly, having the basic building blocks. What I did find though is there's a lot of research on minerals and sex and then some of those are hard to get in certain forms. We talked about red meat having bioavailable zinc, for example. If you're doing plant based, for example, you have to eat those carbs in a certain way, your grains, because if that's your protein source, if it's coming from legumes and grains, if you're not soaking or sprouting them, the zinc is not absorbable because it's bound to these things called phytates. That's why traditional people have always soaked and sprouted legumes and things like that. Whereas something like red meat is very available, very absorbable as it is.

Melanie Avalon: Especially, people with food sensitivities, thinking it'd be very beneficial to take into account the potential for plant anti-nutrients and mitigating a lot of that. Yeah. The notes I had taken from your book about the animals was that, herbivores seek out animals to eat when they can. Apparently, baboons will eat grasshoppers, chimps will eat baboons, and baboons eating baby gazelles, I guess, they did a study where primates were given animal protein and it made them more sexual.

Christine DeLozier: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's the thing is that, other primates, the amount of animal protein in their diet varies. In some species of primates, it's 0% of their caloric intake, and others it's up to 90% of their caloric intake. Where humans fall on that? We're going to be debating this for a very long time. It's likely optimal health has some in it and I know that goes against some of the plant-based research out there. But again, just talking about the bioavailability of some of those nutrients, you were referring to one study where there were slow lorises, which is a primate. They've had them in zoos and they're often fed a strictly vegetarian diet, and when they introduced cricket dispensers, they had more sex, so that would reflect a better hormonal balance. So, in their case, the animal protein was helping them to have better sexual health.

Melanie Avalon: There were so many times I feel in your book where you had mentioned studies, and it was just really funny how they would quantify the rats having better sex or I don't know. What does that even mean? [laughs] I don't know. Those studies must have been pretty interesting to conduct.

Christine DeLozier: I know. [laughs]

Melanie Avalon: Another food that you talk about at length in your book are mushrooms. I was wondering if you could tell listeners a little bit about your thoughts on mushrooms?

Christine DeLozier: Oh, yes, I would love to. I love mushrooms. Mushrooms are so fascinating to me. I probably should have been a mycologist, because I just can't stop learning about [giggles] them. First of all, let me tell you that they're great for that entire trifecta of great sex. They're great for cardiovascular health, blood flow, they're great for nerve health, they're great for hormonal health. There's a ton of research to support this. They're a powerhouse of antioxidants, which are going to benefit all three of those. People don't think of antioxidants as benefiting the endocrine system but they do. They do help protect and they protect those vascular walls, they help speed and strengthen nerve conduction for more pleasure and for better orgasms. The coolest thing about them is the way that they act on the body, what the research shows is that mushrooms actually improve the microbiome. They improve beneficial species, populations of beneficial species and reduce less beneficial species of microbes in the digestive tract.

Of course, this is important because we're learning more and more. There's a lot more research every year coming out on just how important our microbiome is, which is the delicate balance of microbes, bacteria and other microbes in the digestive tract on how influential that is to our health. For example, even something like the risk of cardiovascular disease, we think of that as being maybe genetic, maybe diet and lifestyle. We don't think of it as being something affected by the microbiome, but it is. There is research showing that if you have a group of rats, who have high risk of cardiovascular disease, and then you take their feces and you implant it into the intestines of healthy rats with no high risk of cardiovascular disease, they will develop that same high risk of cardiovascular disease.

They also did another study, which was interesting. They gave these obese rats reishi mushrooms and they lost weight. Then they had a new group of obese rats, and they didn't give them reishi mushrooms. What they did do is they transplanted the feces into these new obese rats' intestines, and they too lost weight. So, it just demonstrated how the benefit from these reishi mushrooms was on the microbiome.

Melanie Avalon: Yeah. I think the microbiome is so, so huge. I feel we just only barely get a glimpse of what all is going on with all of that. The mushrooms are fascinating. Is there one that is particularly good for sexual health or an aphrodisiac mushroom?

Christine DeLozier: Yeah, well, it depends. I recommend Cordyceps for a lot of my patients who are coming in for erectile issues for a variety of reasons. But things like nerve damage, I have a patient, for example, who had his prostate removed and they spared the nerves, but there was some damage in there. I recommend lion's mane for him because that has the most research on actually growing and repairing nerves. There's a lot of research on mushrooms and nerves, but particularly lion's mane for that. But any mushroom culinary as long as it's safe. Even white button mushrooms have been shown in research to improve the biodiversity of the microbiome and offer benefits. You don't even have to get fancy, but each mushroom has its own benefit.

For those who don't like mushrooms, I have a recipe in my book for Chaga chai latte, which it's so good. Chaga is a mushroom that grows-- it is a very woody mushroom, and it grows underneath the bark of birch trees, and it's this black knot and it comes in chunks basically. They used it as a coffee substitute in World War II because it has this really pleasant vanilla flavor. It turns to same color as coffee when you boil it. What I do is, I make a really strong chaga diffusion and then I mix it with some fennel, and some cinnamon, and cloves, and cardamom, and I put a little honey, and almond milk in there, and it's loaded with antioxidants, which are great for sex, and it tastes delicious. It has anti-inflammatory properties, antiviral properties, and it's overall really nice fun thing to add to your diet.

Melanie Avalon: Listeners, you're going to have to get Christine's book, because it does have all of these recipes. It's an amazing resource. Also in this sphere, we had a question from Claudia and it's something I was going to ask as well. We've already touched on it a little bit but are there foods that really are aphrodisiacs?

Christine DeLozier: I have a whole chapter on aphrodisiacs in the book. I tried to stick with aphrodisiacs that had some research to support their efficacy. They haven't been widely researched. There's not a lot of money in that. The ones that I saw had a few studies. They didn't have a huge body of evidence but they did have a few studies. The most widely studied culinary aphrodisiac that was safe was saffron. There are plenty of studies showing that-- Both animal and human studies showing that taking saffron increases libido and sexual function and there are multiple dimensions of its benefit as an aphrodisiac.

Then things like cloves, there's one study on cloves that shows that one had an immediate effect. Some of the aphrodisiacs, it was more like you take it for two weeks, and then their sexuality was measured, whereas cloves were measured in the two-hour window after eating them and that showed better sex, better sexual satisfaction, and orgasm, I believe was the third thing studied on that. Yeah, there are. But again, it's subtle. There are herbs that have shown some efficacy. Many of the most potent ones, the safety margin was really questionable. So, the amount needed to produce an effective response was dangerously close to the amount that could be potentially toxic.

Melanie Avalon: That's actually in your book. It was fascinating. You really dove deep into all the foods. Saffron, I don't think I've ever actually used saffron in my cooking or as a supplement. It's really expensive, isn't it normally?

Christine DeLozier: Yeah, because it's the stamen of the crocus plant. There's not a lot of it per plant. That's why it's so expensive. It has a very unique flavor and it's often used for rice dishes and things like that. It can be very tasty for sure.

Melanie Avalon: What about chocolate?

Christine DeLozier: Chocolate is one of those things that has this huge reputation as being an aphrodisiac. Moctezuma used it to pleasure his 50 wives or-- wait a minute, no, he drank 50 cups a day to pleasure his wives. He drank a whole lot of chocolate and vanilla. He had a whole lot of wives put it that way. But there wasn't any research to support it, and there's been a lot of it. Actually, all of the studies that I found failed to show that it was an effective aphrodisiac. Even though, lots of studies have tried I didn't see any that succeeded.

Melanie Avalon: Oh, man.

Christine DeLozier: That won't make me give up chocolate though, I mean for sure.

Melanie Avalon: Claudia's second question was, "how about foods that make you taste better?" Then actually Jason wanted to know, "if it was true that pineapple actually makes you taste better?"

Christine DeLozier: I get asked that a lot and I didn't see any research on that. I haven't come across any research that has supported that, although with the exception of-- was it asparagus? I'll have to look at that again. Yeah, I really need to look at that again because I have been asked that a lot. The short answer is maybe and also, just with a little caveat is that remember that the genitals have a biological taste and smell. No matter how clean they are, they have secretions. It may be an acquired taste, but it's definitely one that anybody who wants to be an expert at pleasing their partner should develop an appreciation for that taste in my opinion.

There's a chapter in my book on sexual tips for oral sex because I do feel it's a really important part of having the most pleasure in a sexual relationship is, especially for female pleasure that's been underserved, learning how to really understand techniques that can lead to her pleasure are important. It doesn't quite answer her question. It's more of a tangent I would say. So, sorry about that.

Melanie Avalon: No, no, I love tangents. Yeah, I am super curious because I feel I hear the pineapple thing a lot. I feel that's an idea out there. I'm curious about that. Yes, you do have a very deep dive pun intended into oral sex and what you just spoke about with the tastes and people's relationship with that. It was very eye opening and super appreciated. So, again listeners, you're going to have to get the book for that. Also, in the aphrodisiac world, not foods like actual supplements, are there any that have seen--? You talk about a lot in the book, but I think ones that people might think of are things like Ginkgo or ginseng, or maca, are there any that have an okay safety margin and/or effective?

Christine DeLozier: Yeah, actually all of those that you mentioned. Maca, ginseng, all of those have a reasonable safety record as do Cordyceps. There is a good list of them. Some of the ones that were deemed effective, but something like Horny goat weed, we use it in Chinese medicine. It is an herb that we use but there were some safety concerns about its use as an aphrodisiac in higher dosages.

Melanie Avalon: I don't know if it was in your book. I feel this has come up recently and a few different things I've read like some drug or something that makes people tan, but it also super, makes their sex drive go through the roof. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Christine DeLozier: No, I haven't heard of that one. You get the double bonus of you can be tan and--

Melanie Avalon: Yeah. It's definitely come up in multiple places recently, I've been reading about it, I have to look into what that was.

Christine DeLozier: I'll have to look. Yeah, I have a list. After this show, things I'm going to look up.

Melanie Avalon: [giggles] I remember I read about it somewhere and then my friend was telling me an anecdotal story about how their friend took it. I think for a body competition to get tan and she literally had to leave work and they're like, "Why?" She's like, "I have to go home and masturbate" [laughs] because of your sex drive goes so through the roof. I have to look what that was. One more question, something I touched on but I did get a listener question about and it's something I already mentioned, but that's fasting. You do talk a little bit about fasting in the book. Nick wanted to know, "Does intermittent fasting increase libido, does it differ between men and women? He says from the male point of view, I'm doing a 19:5 intermittent fasting pattern, and I definitely feel charged and really alive, more alert. I feel an energy I haven't felt for years. I hope I meet someone soon with the same vibe/life goals, so that I can spoil her so much." So, intermittent fasting, do you have thoughts on that for sex?

Christine DeLozier: Yeah, absolutely. One of the benefits of intermittent fasting is helping to rebalance leptin, ghrelin, and subsequently sex hormones. When there's one hormone that's out of balance, it's typically a whole cascade of hormones. We rarely get one in isolation if that makes sense. Intermittent fasting has been shown to do all sorts of things. As you know, you have a whole show on it. But I'm definitely rebalancing hormones. So, I am not surprised at all that he's experiencing higher libido, because when your testosterone is more optimized, you will have way better strong of a libido.

Melanie Avalon: Fasting for the win. I know a lot of my listeners practice intermittent fasting. Yeah, well, this has been absolutely amazing. Was there any other topics from your book that you want to draw attention to for listeners?

Christine DeLozier: No, I don't think so. Yeah. There's a lot on food in there but then there's a lot on things that we can't really control like our environmental exposure to toxic heavy metals, for example, that comes from our air and our water. I guess, EMFs, which keep getting this idea that they're controversial. All this is controversial, we don't know if they're having a negative effect. But there's actually decades of research showing that EMFs very much do affect hormones. They affect us neurologically, they affect us endocrinologically. There's a very strong effect.

One of the best ways that you can protect yourself against EMFs is by pumping up your antioxidants, because the damage from EMFs and from toxic heavy metals is often in the form of oxidative stress. So, we see in antioxidants, it'll help protect you. There are other things that I talk about in the book as well, just ways to protect yourself.

Melanie Avalon: That actually reminded me of one more question I did have. What do you think about fasting from sex? I feel guys do this more than women. But the idea of going a certain amount of time without sex, do you think that has any health benefits or downsides?

Christine DeLozier: What I think and I hope you don't think I'm not answering your question. [laughs] I would really be in favor of fasting from porn because I feel porn, it can sabotage our appreciation of reality in real sex, in real people, in real bodies and things like that. As far as fasting from sex goes, I think that's more individual quite honestly. If you have sex with your partner seven days a week, maybe you don't appreciate it as much as somebody who has sex their partner once a month. I'm not that I'm saying that having sex once a month is better. I'm definitely not, because I wouldn't want to be having sex once a month with my partner for sure. But I guess what I'm saying is, sometimes, taking a break can help you re-appreciate sex.

One thing that I would like to look into is, what abstaining from sex or taking a sexual fast look like physiologically? What does that look in terms of testosterone, in terms of estrogen, progesterone, in terms of other markers, biomedical markers? I'd be curious to see for sure. Sometimes taking a break from sex can help us to have a new appreciation for it for sure. Everybody's libido is different and everybody's desired frequency of sex is different for sure. I would say that would probably be pretty individual in terms of how much benefit that would provide and what length of time you would want to go from fasting from sex. If you're having sex again multiple times a day, that might look very different from somebody who has sex every couple of weeks or something.

Melanie Avalon: I was listening to an interview with Dave Asprey. I think with John Gray, who wrote Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. I'm so excited. I'm going to be interviewing him. That's very, very exciting. But he has so many books on openness. I can't read all of them. I've been trying to speed read through as much as I can. But I think it was their interview, and I think they talked about this, and he was saying that there were one of them, either Dave or John was saying that there were health benefits to men holding off, but not to women. Yeah, so, I'm not sure-- [unintelligible [01:09:09] for our list that we're creating to go down the rabbit hole. But I'm glad that I asked that question more so for your answer about the porn, because I'm glad we touched on that, because I'm very much concerned about its role in modern society, and what it's doing to our sexual health, and just our experience of relationships with people. So, super appreciate it to hear your thoughts on that.

Well, this has been so amazing. Listeners, you've got to got to get this book. We only barely scratched the surface of everything that's in it. And like Christine was saying just a few moments ago, she was saying how it covers so much. There's diet, and there's recipes, and way more than what we talked about, but then there is just so much on sex, and we've talked about oral sex, and pleasing your partner, and it's just a really, really valuable resource. So, I can't thank you enough for that. Any links that you'd like to put out there? How can listeners best follow your work?

Christine DeLozier: Sure. I'm at dietforgreatsex.com and I'm on social media @dietforgreatsex.

Melanie Avalon: Awesome. I feel I don't follow you. I will follow you right now. The last question I ask every single guest on this show, and it's just because I realize more and more each day how important mindset is surrounding everything. So, what is something that you're grateful for?

Christine DeLozier: I am so grateful for my family. Yeah, I'm so grateful to have love, and especially, during COVID and everything, I feel there were a lot of people that my heart really went out to, who had to have a lot of isolation, whereas I've had my family close to me the whole time and my children. So, I'm very grateful for them. Thank you for asking.

Melanie Avalon: Oh, that's so wonderful. Now, I'm just thinking I'm jealous. If my mom was an acupuncturist, that would be so amazing. Do you do it on your children?

Christine DeLozier: Yeah, I did. I did it on my son yesterday as a matter of fact, he had a headache.

Melanie Avalon: That's amazing. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much. Again, thank you for your work. I'm super grateful for what you're doing. I think it's so needed. Hopefully, we can talk again in the future because this was wonderful.

Christine DeLozier: I'd love to. Yeah, thank you so much for having me on the show.

Melanie Avalon: Awesome. Thank you. Bye.

Christine DeLozier: Bye.