Sexual Health, Nitric Oxide & Fostering Intimacy

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Sexual Health, Nitric Oxide & Fostering Intimacy

Techniques for a more satisfying sex life with Susan Bratton.

Dr. Michael Ruscio:     In today’s episode, we are joined by Susan Bratton who is a sexual health specialist and we definitely got pretty deep into the world of sexual health. Now, of course, we hit some of the things that you’re probably expecting like nitric oxide production and how this is so important for blood flow. The importance of gut health. She did have some opinions on citrulline versus arginine, two of the more popular supplements that can help to promote nitric oxide production. And made some very interesting tie-ins to your oral health and how actually your oral health and your oral microbiome have a fairly sizeable impact on nitric oxide and therefore your ability for arousal in both men and for women. And she really laid out some great ways of reframing and thinking about sexual health and partner connectivity and intimacy and introduced some exercises that I thought will actually be and could actually be quite helpful, especially for those who have been in relationships for more than a year or so and might be having some of those initial feelings of complacency.

Certainly for couples who’ve been together for years and years, some very helpful techniques. Including a couple of different types of massage that can be used. And she also is pretty graphic with some of the anatomy. So I guess we’ll give you a little bit of an explicit warning. If you have been enjoying the podcast, please head over to iTunes, leave us a quick review. It really does help us come up more quickly in iTunes so that people who are looking for information on their health will hopefully find us and we can really provide them with some good science-based and practical information. With that, we will now go into the conversation on sexual health with Susan Bratton.

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In This Episode

Episode Intro … 00:01:00
Hormones and Libido, Before and After 40  … 00:01:45
Oral Microbiota … 00:13:59
Healthy Sex and Enhancing Libido … 00:15:37
Episode Wrap-Up … 00:38:27

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Episode Intro

Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Dr. Ruscio Radio. This is Dr. Ruscio. I am here today with Susan Bratton and we’re going to be discussing libido, sexual health, intimacy connection, this important deep root need that we all have and hopefully something that we are fueling and taking care of. But, if you’re like many people, this may be something that’s collecting some dust and you could be in use of some tips to help rekindle some of that flame. And that is why I’m so fortunate that we have Susan here to elaborate and help us figure out what we can do to kindle or rekindle some of that flame. So Susan, welcome to the show.

Susan Bratton: Thank you, Dr. Ruscio. It’s so nice to be with you. You and I have so many friends in common that it’s a real pleasure to have the opportunity to talk about people’s intimate lives, their intimate health, sexual regenerative medicine. There are just so many things that are available for people that often they’re not even aware exist. But I’d just love to shine some light into that dark bedroom space and bring some pleasure, fun, and connection to the conversation.

DrMR:  Now, when we were talking off-air, you had made one remark I’d love to start with, which I agree with conceptually, but I’d love to expand upon this, which essentially boils down to, people oftentimes want to go to hormones. That’s the first thing they’re considering when they don’t have the libido or the drive or the desire that they’d like to. And you said essentially that can be part of it, but it may not be the best starting point. So where do you launch into unraveling some of the confusion here?

Hormones and Libido, Before and After 40

SB:       Well, I think often people equate libido with hormone balance. The issue is that if you’re not producing enough hormones yourself, and certainly as we age and we hit about 40, we go into perimenopause, beginnings of andropause and our hormones kind of take a pretty steep decline. So there are two conversations. There’s the kind of before 40 years old and after 40 years old and obviously that can hit at different times, but that’s just a good general benchmark.

The other thing that happens is there are our nitric oxide synthase pathways and essentially what happens with sexuality is that sexuality relies very heavily on blood flow. Blood flow when you’re young works great, which is why when you’re 17 you get a lot of boners, and as you age, as a man, you stop getting erections at night and then you’re not getting a lot of blood flow in your penis and then you’re starting to get atherosclerosis or your blood is thickening, it’s getting stuck on the walls of your blood vessels, it’s starting to build up plaque, then it gets calcified, then your blood vessels get brittle and this is not happening just to men. This is happening to people across the gender spectrum.

Which means that you can’t even get blood to your brain or your heart. You definitely can’t get it to all the other little parts, the bedroom parts, because your body is going to protect your heart and your brain first. So the first thing that goes is, men and women alike, they get heavy legs, their hands start to ache, they get cognitive function issues, they start to see erectile dysfunction as a man. Well, a woman is getting an equal amount of erectile dysfunction.

The thing is that we have innies and guys have outies, but neither of us are getting blood flow to our genitals. So for women, lubrication slows down. A lot of times women think, “It’s my hormones. I’ve got to drop an estrogen now. I’m getting a loss of lubrication, I’m getting vaginal laxity, I’m feeling incontinence.” When in reality, certainly estrogen is a very, very big part of keeping tissue supple and enervated, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. Nitric oxide is equally as important.

So for us to get good blood flow, we need something called vasodilation. Your blood vessels have a tone to them and they have a tightness to them. Then when your body wants to send blood to your gut to digest your lunch or blood to your brain to read that book or blood to your quads, when you’re at the gym, it does that through relaxation. And the problem is that as we age, all those blood vessels get really stiff and we can’t get blood supply and literally our vessels and capillaries start to recede into our body.

That’s why older people are small and dried out and wrinkly, and they shrink. A big part of that is a lack of vasodilation. So we have multiple nitric oxide pathways in our body, and the nitric oxide is the gas released in our system to dilate those blood vessels and get that blood pumping where we needed to go. So I like to tell people, make sure that you’re taking a nitric oxide supplement as well as balancing your hormones.

And the way to balance your hormones is, of course, looking at not just what your hormone levels are, both free and bound, but also how’s your gut moving? If a poo, if a gorgeous big fat poo is not sliding out of you in the morning when you get up with ease and grace, if it’s not coming out of you like a ballerina dancer and dancing down the bowl, then you need more healthy fats in your system.

So many people think, “I eat an avocado. I have a handful of nuts. I’m getting enough fat.” You’re not getting enough fat. In the morning I get up and I take a big giant tablespoon full of Cod liver oil, I take vitamin E mixed tocopherols. I use avocado oil and extra virgin olive oil in my homemade salad dressings. Big plates of greens all the time.

I mean, we women, we have our vaginal microbiome, men have their prostate microbiome. You can think about them being, part of the overall gut microbiome. If your gut microbiome is not good, it is likely your vaginal and prostate microbiomes aren’t good. Pumpkin oil is wonderful for the prostate. It’s full of zinc. Your prostate needs a lot of zinc. Multivitamins. If you’re deficient in vitamin D, if you’re deficient in boron, you can’t get your free testosterone uncoupled from the protein.

People are mineral deficient. Just taking your basic multivitamins, getting your fats. I mean, we say these things, but you actually have to do them. You got to take your daily vitamins, you got to take your nitric oxide supplements if you want to have a healthy sex life that goes on until the day you die. And that you have a great sex life at 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 years old, because you can with the right support.

DrMR:  Now, regarding nitric oxide, I think most people have heard of arginine. Sertraline seems to be a newer kid on the block. There are some co-factors. What do you feel it’d be the best one or cocktail things to support that?

SB:       I’m so glad you asked me. The first thing is that you have to look at the bacteria in your mouth and you have to look at your stomach acid because the number one place that you get all of the precursors to nitric oxide is leafy green vegetables, specifically kale, a Rhodiola, Swiss chard, deal, cabbage, bok choy. These are some of the highest nitric oxide coefficient vegetables that there are.

But the thing is that if you use mouthwash like Listerine, you’ve actually killed all the bacteria in your mouth. So you eat the nitrate-rich foods and then there are these bacteria in the crypts of your tongue that actually break down the nitrates into nitrites and then you swallow it and your stomach acid turns the nitrites into nitric oxide, and it pumps through your salivary system.

So you have that as one system and if you’re taking proton-pump inhibitors, if you think you have too much acid and you’re trying to tame the acid, which is actually the opposite, you probably have too low of acid because the sphincter in your stomach works on acid, needs acid and we lose acid over time.

You’ve got to get off the proton-pumps and start with your apple cider vinegar and do the things that you need to remediate your stomach acid that turns it into the nitrates into nitrites, into nitric oxide.

So you need that whole system working and then you’re actually swallowing nitric oxide in your saliva all the time. You have a salivary nitric oxide storage system that’s only one pathway. Your endothelial system, which is the smooth muscle tissue in your blood veins and all your veins and vessels. There’s nitric oxide production in there, that starts to wane. So then, okay, how do you replace it? Citrulline arginine. I don’t like our arginine for two reasons.

Arginine exacerbates herpes and a lot of people have herpes. Herpes viruses include Epstein-Barr, shingles as well as oral and genital herpes. So you don’t want to have to take yet another thing. All right, I’m going to take arginine, so now I have to take lysine on top of it because I have herpes, that’s more trouble than it’s worth. Citrulline is not the hepatic pathway through your liver either like arginine is.

It goes through the renal system because we have these fault-tolerant, redundant nitric oxide systems because we need blood flow to stay alive. And so citrulline to me is the most bioavailable best way to, especially if you have any issues with your mouth bacteria or your stomach acid, is the best way to get your nitric oxide blood flow. What’s interesting is that even if you have to take Viagra or Levitra or Cialis right now, pumping up the supply of your nitric oxide with citrulline will actually help your Viagra et al. They will help them all work better.

So you’ll get a harder, firmer erection as a man. As a woman, you’ll get a more engorged vulva, you’ll get a clitoral erection, your orgasms will become more intense again, you will have more lubrication because there’s more blood supply to the entire urogenital system. Nitric oxide also helps with people with bladder problems because it ends up that the bladder, the endothelial muscle tissue in the bladder is weak. And when it gets enough nitric oxide, it can actually help improve bladder problems. So the pelvic floors of both men and women can really benefit from a daily dose of citrulline.

DrMR:  I love the fact that you mentioned food sources because it’s obviously very important that we don’t just gloss over the food sources and go right to supplements. Do you have a list of those somewhere online or on your website if people wanted to look at those and make sure they’re incorporating plenty into their diet?

SB:       Yes. As a matter of fact, citrulline is named after the Citrullus. Do you know what the Citrullus is? It’s watermelon. Watermelon, the Latin name is citrus vulgaris. And I think because it’s so big and red and lusty.

But the problem is to get enough citrulline you’d have to eat a lot of watermelon, which has high sugar content. So I think a beautiful bedside platter for lovemaking that includes some grapes, some watermelon, some strawberries, and a big pitcher of water so you can stay hydrated during your lovemaking. It’s the perfect sex food. A little chocolate that’s got some all the polyphenols for blood flow, everything, blood flow, blood flow, blood flow. And not just for our male-bodied lovers, our female-bodied lovers we have as much erectile tissue inside us as our male-bodied partners have outside. We have innies and they have outies, but they work on the same function systems.

DrMR:  Sure. I mean, circulation being what drives, whatever the function is going to be seems to be the most important pathway, but it seems like circulation is potentially the most important factor that makes sure you’re getting blood flow circulation, moisture. It’s really the blood flow.

SB:       It is the most important. It’s the most important pathway. That’s what anybody who appreciates good sex should be taking a nitric oxide supplement and eating a ton of leafy greens, not using mouthwash and making sure they have lots of stomach acid because you want it to go into every… you want to keep all your nitric oxide pathways in good shape. Nitric oxide, you generate it by exercising as well. But as you age, your ability to generate enough nitric oxide from exercise diminishes. So you really have to give your body a lot of different ways to create it.

DrMR:  And regarding mouthwash, do you have more specifics there? Is there some mouthwash that is better than others? Do you get rid of all? Are there some kinds of toothpaste that are better than others? Because it sounds like the oral microbiota here is important. So wondering if you can give us a list of do’s and don’ts.

Key Takeaways

  • A healthy amount of nitric oxide is needed for strong blood flow which is needed for a healthy sex life
  • You can get Nitric oxide from food and supplementation
    • Highest nitric oxide coefficient veggies: leafy green vegetables, specifically kale, arugula, Swiss chard, cabbage, bok choy and more
    • Citrulline is the most bioavailable way to get your nitric oxide
    • Watermelon contains citrulline
  • Great food combo for bedside – grapes, watermelon, strawberries, chocolate and a big pitcher of water

Oral Microbiota

SB:       I really like a particular toothpaste called luscious libations. I get it on Amazon. It’s all-natural and made with essential oils. It’s essentially baking soda and essential oils. That’s what it is. You can make it yourself at home. There are a lot of chemicals in toothpaste that are not only not good for you, but they’re also just not good for your teeth. There are a lot of oral experts out there that have lots of great things to talk about.

I think you would definitely be benefited by having a holistic oral dentist on your show because it’s an entire category itself. But I personally have never seen a mouthwash that didn’t have a lot of chemicals in it. I recommend using an oral irrigator instead of mouthwash. An oral irrigator is like a Waterpik, and what’s great about that is you brush your teeth very gently from the top down, not back and forth and you’ve got to watch your gums and you get out as much detritus from your day as you can, but then you use the Waterpik and you send the little shoots of water between the teeth and gunk still comes out. So it’s good to use that together, those two things in combination and just not use mouthwash. There’s no benefit to mouthwashes. There are only negatives as far as anything that I’ve ever read, learned or can tell.

Key Takeaways

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Healthy Sex and Enhancing Libido

Shifting gears for just a second. I would like to get your thoughts on kind of a lifestyle method of enhancing libido. I don’t know the exact quote here, but a friend of mine, actually, I believe it was Ben House at his retreat in Costa Rica here a few years ago, made a remark akin to saying that, libido was like a flock of birds. If you only have one bird looking at sex and all the others, one is looking at work, the other is looking at kids, the other is looking at financing and the other is looking at your calendar, the other is thinking about whatever it may be, that it’s hard to get the flock of birds to move from the libido direction.

So I’ll throw that out there. It’s just a paraphrase that I thought was interesting on a lifestyle strategy, which I guess that boils down to reducing distractions and being able to have some private time. But in this theme, are there strategies or tips you found to be helpful to, unfettered from all the burdens that we carry with us around daily?

Libido

SB:       Most definitely. So first of all, let’s talk about libido, desire, and arousal as three separate entities. Libido is, let’s just say we’re going to stack them like three bricks right on top of each other. On the bottom is libido. That’s your health, that’s your sexual vitality, that’s your drive. And we should talk a bit about libido botanicals as well. I think that would be really fun to talk about.

So we’ve got our desire for sex, the kind of butterflies in your pants type of stuff. It’s the body based piece of things. If you don’t feel well, your desire is suppressed. If you’re on medications, it suppresses your desire. If you have a bad gut microbiome, if you’re full of toxins, if you eat crap, all those things, those are the things that suppress libido.

Desire

Then you have desire. That’s the next brick on the stack. Desire is how I feel about myself, how I feel about you. So do I feel beautiful? Do I feel ugly? Have I been repressed? Have I been shamed? Am I embarrassed about the way my vulva or my penis looks or the way my breasts look or what have you. You’re dealing with all the kind of that piece of it as well as how do I feel about my partner? Am I getting my needs met outside the bedroom because I can’t let go into pleasure if I’m angry or my other needs are not being met.

So you have that or if you’re not in a relationship, what’s my relationship with myself? Self-care of solo pleasuring, not thinking about it as anything dirty, but thinking about it as something that increases your sexual pleasure, potential and your joy in life, releases lots of great oxytocin and endorphins and wonderful, feel-good neurotransmitters. So you have desire, do I want sex? And do I feel well enough to have it? Do I want to have it?

And then if all those things are in alignment, if you will, you’re in the bedroom. Let’s say this is the arousal phase. Am I getting the stimulation I need in the right order that I need it? Because we really get down to testosterone versus estrogen and a lot of this conversation. Testosterone is very full speed ahead, confident, conquering. It’s the prow literally and figuratively of the boat.

So it’s ready to go. It’s turned on, it’s horny every day, it wakes up and wants sex. That’s testosterone. And estrogen is, I’m cyclical. I’m monthly. Sometimes I want it, sometimes I don’t.

Sometimes I’m in the mood for being a little kitty and sometimes I’m a tigress. I’m up in my head. I’ve got my mind on a million things. I can’t settle into my body. I’ve got body image issues. Estrogen has a lot to overcome to calm itself and drop into its desire for sex.

So you’re already dealing with kind of the, a difference between if you’re in a heterosexual, monogamous relationship which is what most people are in. Everything that I’m saying could be said for anyone anywhere on the gender spectrum. So you have to feel your way into this conversation if you’re not, the most common coupling. But it’s one of the reasons why men often tend to rush sex because he wants your hand on his package immediately as a reassurance that everything is okay.

You do not want him to be grabbing your crotch right away because that’s annoying to you. You’re not ready. You’re a bullseye and you want to be touched from the outer rings and work your way into the erogenous zones. You want your hair petted, full-body stimulation, your feet rubbed, your neck rubbed. You want to be told that you’re loved. You want that soft sweetness and connection unless you don’t, and that’s fine. That’s the communication piece.

If you’re ready to go and you want to ravish him, there are those moments too. We have all of that in us. So for women, it’s often helpful if they are held first and that there’s an emotional connection, a connection of the heart, a connection of the eyes, a connection of the breath.

These are things that help a woman get out of her head and get into her body. That masculine holding, squeezing, touching, the strength of a man, his presence, his calmness, his grounding, that’s very, very desired by the feminine.

She wants to feel held, to feel safe, to feel desired, to feel adored by him. So the man that understands that, she’s not necessarily going to initiate sex. I mean, I get a lot of emails from guys that are like, “I’m so mad. My wife never initiates sex.” And when I say, “What if it’s not her job? What if she never will and you just let that go, and you are the initiator and she is the responder. Would that be so bad?”

Because what happens is, and I’m not saying that that’s right for everyone, but once you let go of, she never initiates sex, I always have to, I feel totally rejected. She never wants me. And when I offer she says no. Instead of that, if you said, well, maybe if I didn’t make her such a big offer, maybe if I just held her more often. Maybe if I brought some fun and adventure and romance back into the relationship, maybe if I reminded her why she fell in love with me in the first place, it would allow her, those little baby steps toward the relaxation she needs to get to the desire she feels for you.

So if he’s so ready to go and he’s ready all the time, it’s hard for him to take those steps back to where she starts. But once he understands that she loves him and she wants him and she wants sex with him, but that sex is too big an offer and that holding and slowing down and connecting is the offer that she needs so that she can relax. Relaxation is the first step toward arousal. So the way to get the flock of birds all flying in formation is to start with the little things.

It’s the little hinges that swing the big doors. It’s the slippery slide to seduction that is these small little offers. Baby would you like a glass of wine and I’ll sit on the couch with you and rub your feet? You can tell me about your day.

That emotional unloading for her is the first step in her relaxation. When she gets her foot rubbed, it calms her nervous system down so that she can begin to connect with you.

It’s just really understanding the operating system of the woman versus the man. I have this super funny little skit on my YouTube channel. It’s at betterlover.com, where I talk about how to make love to a woman versus how to make love to a man. And it’s kind of like a humorous-skit but it’s totally true. At the end, you make him a sandwich. Every guy wants to know he did an awesome job giving you incredible pleasure and he wants a sandwich.

DrMR:  That’s great. And I love your story there because I think, as a man and thinking through the times when I’ve felt all those different aspects of the wonderful cropping of scenarios you painted, there does seem to be differences obviously in how men and women approach sex. And it’s, I agree with you fully, an error for the man to think about what he’s not getting and looking at it through a kind of transactional lens.

And sometimes it’s best to just, and I believe this is an old Kona Hawaiian philosophy, which is, you give that which it is you want to receive. I mean, if a man wants sex, he hopefully understands that the way to get sex from a woman is not to go in with the same level of aggression that he might be feeling, but rather to give her what she likely wants, which is that connection, that compassion, that emotion, and then allow that experience to flower from there.

So it’s just such a great reminder for all guys to stop counting what you’re not getting, but think about what you can do to get more of what you want. What would you say to a woman, like what could a woman do if, because there are two sides to this, and I get them the male end of it? But how should women be looking at this? Should they be monitoring, man, when’s the last time we had sex and maybe what can I do? How does a woman interface into this?

SB:       Women have no idea how horny guys are. Just no idea what the torture you guys go through with all that testosterone, making you chronically horny because we’re not chronically horny generally.

We ebb and flow with our hormones. And so during our ovulation, we really love to have sex. And then certain times of the month we’re like, what? What do you want? So it’s hard for us to understand our male body partners.

You’ve heard the statement “men feel loved when they have sex” kind of thing. And it really is true. Men desperately want more affection, more attention, more wet kissing, more genital stimulation. A lot of the people that I think I’m the most helpful at supporting with my work are longterm married couples. And I teach them how to run these menus of small offers. Would you like a foot rub, a glass of wine? Would you like to sit on the couch? Would you like me to hold you? Those kinds of things to warm her up. They really help.

And then for women to understand that he is almost always ready to have sex. He will drop whatever he is doing to make love with you. So you really do have to think about putting your attention on giving him physical pleasure but not doing it as a chore or as something that you have to do. Teaching him how to give you what you need so that you want more sex with him. And where that really comes, where the rubber meets the road on that is, slowing down and having him learn how to give her more genital massages. It is the Rosetta stone to getting a woman so turned on that she’s scheduling sex dates with you.

DrMR:  That’s a win for any guy I’m assuming.

Yoni and Lingam Massage

SB:       It is. Because how we were talking about the erectile tissue of the innie and outie earlier.

DrMR:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

SB:       His penis, the part of his body that sticks out is half of his penis, that there’s 50% more buried shaft in there, and that whole big banana is erectile tissue. The corpus cavernosum. There’s two big corpus cavernosum and there’s a spongiosum and they’re these spongy things that fill up with blood when he gets an erection. 100% of her banana is inside and it looks like a little starfish. So he has a banana and she has a starfish with a little ball at the top and a little ball at the bottom.

The starfish is her clitoral structure and she also has a G spot, but it’s not a spot. It’s a sponge and it’s the same sponge he has in his penis. Her G-spot is actually her urethral sponge. That’s the same as his corpus spongiosum. It surrounds the urethra and goes all the way up and down his penis from his bladder out his penis. Hers is from her urethra above the vaginal opening all the way up along the top of her vagina.

And so she’s got that big sponge up there. She’s got the whole clitoral sponge, that essentially is the tip of her clitoris, the shaft of her clitoris draping into little arms that hug the opening to her vagina, and then these little punching bags called vestibular bulbs that are underneath the fur on each side of the opening to her vaginal area. And then she’s got another sponge on the bottom that’s called her perineal sponge between the bottom of her vagina and her rectum.

So her entire vagina is literally surrounded with the same amount of tissue that he has in his banana. She’s got the starfish with the two little balls, one on the top and the bottom. He wouldn’t want to have intercourse without an erection. Yet she does that all the time because she’s not aware that she needs all that blood flow and engorgement to get the lubrication going. So if he starts to give her Yoni massages, and Yoni is another word for the vulva, and vulva is the entire female genital system, not just the vagina, which is the shaft, the canal.

So the Yoni is a word we like to use because it sounds pretty, it sounds like a little flower or something. If he starts giving her Yoni massages without expectation of anything in return, if it doesn’t turn into sex, it’s fine. He’s banking Yoni karma.

You want to bank Yoni karma points as much as you can. The more you stimulate that tissue, the more it’s going to fill with blood, the more she’s going to get lubricated and have desire and have relaxation, and she’s going to start having really great orgasms.

The tip of the clitoris is a nice spot, but it is like, I mean, really, if all you’re doing is touching the tip of the clitoris, it is like, I don’t know, taking a penny out of Fort Knox. Seriously, there’s so much beautiful, delicious sensation that can be had by really getting all of the Yoni plumped up and full of blood, and the same with the male-bodied partner, giving him manual genital massages where you’re not just focused on the part that sticks out from his body, but you’re also playing with his testicles, underneath his testicles, the perineum area, that if you press up in there, you’re touching up into the prostate area. That’s his G-spot. It’s called a P-spot.

So feeling down at the base of the shaft of his penis where it enters into his abdomen, feeling in there with your fingers and feeling all that erectile tissue, giving that man really great, full, full erections, getting all that blood going. That’s not only going to help if he has any kind of premature ejaculation issues, but it’s going to help him with erectile function and it’s certainly going to increase his pleasure.

So just laying down together and doing genital massages will bring back a youthful feeling, both in your relationship and in your body. Get that blood flow going again.

And so often when my husband and I are tired because we work so hard, he’ll just give me a Yoni massage or I’ll give him a lingam massage. That’s the word for the male. The male penis is a lingam, and we’ll just do that and then we’ll go to bed.

We have a fantastic sex life. When we make love, we have an incredible time, incredible pleasure, incredible orgasms, incredible connection, incredible functionality, but we don’t always have the time and energy for it. But we stay connected and intimate and touching. And if a man gets a really nice manual massage of his package, you don’t even need to take him all the way. He can do that himself anytime. It’s just that getting connected and touching each other and getting the blood flow and the oxytocin happening and the intimacy going. It makes all the difference in the world.

DrMR:  I would assume also reframing it where every time that you’re intimate, you don’t have to climax or have full-on intercourse makes it, I don’t want to say less intimidating, but you might feel, well, we’ve got to get to this level and if we don’t hit X, then the whole endeavor has been a failure. And it sounds like you’re reframing it in such a way that you’re not creating that expectation always has to be achieved.

Couples that stay together play together

SB:       I think the couples that stay together play together, especially in the bedroom. The more fun you bring in, the more new things you try. Here’s an interesting equation around sexuality. Desire equals two things. You must have these two things. You must have novelty, variety, a little bit of danger sometimes, that excitement plus you must have safety and trust to achieve surrender, and that is how you create desire.

So if you have lots of trust, lots of safety, lots of nothing’s going to happen, it’s all good, but no excitement, variety and novelty, desire falls. If you have just all the variety, but no trust and safety, you can’t feel desire. And so it’s for longterm relationships it’s really, really fun to learn new sex techniques together. I’m going to learn how to give you oral pleasure. I’m going to learn how to give you female ejaculatory orgasms. We’re going to have an expanded orgasm, genital massage date. We’re going to do some role play. I’m going to dress up in lingerie for you. We’re going to have sex in a different position. We’re going to have sex in a different place in the house. Anything. Anything. Just keep trying new things.

Schedule sex dates where you try new things. I alone in my company, Personal Life Media, have a dozen different programs from the steamy sex ed video collection, to expand her orgasm tonight, to female liquid orgasm, to how to become a multi-orgasmic man. How to learn how to have heartgasms and braingasms and to have non-ejaculatory orgasms. So people are often not even aware that all of these things are possible.

A lot of times people think, well, I’ve never had an orgasm from penetration. A lot of women think, “I’m just not the kind of person who can do that”. They don’t understand that everything is a learned skill. Sure. There are some people who are lucky and it just came naturally to them and they can orgasm from intercourse, but the large majority of women don’t know how to do it until they learn.

All of these sexual abilities to have 15 different kinds of orgasms, but everyone across the gender has, they have easy peasy, 15 types of orgasms that they can learn how to have. So there’s just a huge field of delicious opportunity that’s available to anyone who’s a lifelong learner and treasures their sexuality and wants to stay sexually vital.

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DrMR:  I love it and I’m glad we’re having this conversation because it does seem to me that there may be this perhaps, using my labels here loosely, counterproductive draw some times to look for a different partner when things have gotten boring and that might just be using the one solution to add some variety and the variety is now the person rather than looking at the various tools that you outlined. So I think it’s nice to have resources for people so that they don’t kind of fall into the rut of, well, things here are kind of dwindling and maybe that means it’s time to find a new partner or what have you.

Key Takeaways

  • Libido = Health
    • Libido can seem low when you are not feeling your best and when you are stressed
    • Find ways to relax – have your partner help with that for a better outcome
  • Desire = How you feel about yourself and your partner
    • Tell your partner what you love about them and how attracted you are to them, this helps them feel desired and desire you in return
  • Arousal = Blood flow and stimulation
    • This can look different for women and men
    • There are many techniques to stimulate arousal for yourself and in your partner
    • There is way more to stimulation than most people know Susan has lots of resources for this

Episode Wrap-Up

And with no judgment against that, but just providing people another set of tools for maybe keeping things interesting. You mentioned your website. Will you give that to people again just so they know where they can go to track down the numerous, I believe you said you had written 35 books and programs. So it’s a large offering. So where do people go to interface into that?

SB:       My business is personallifemedia.com, that’s my website. And from there, there are thousands of articles you could look on any topic that would be of interest to you and you’ll pull up lots of articles on it. We talk about dating, relationships, seduction, anatomy, physiology, hormones, a lot of sexual regenerative therapies. I think I am probably in the world today one of the people who knows more about sexual regenerative medicine than almost anybody out there.

I have really made a study of how you keep your genitals in tip-top shape using vacuum erection devices and GAINSWave treatments and FemiWaves and FemiLifts and Mona Lisa’s and hormone replacement and VFits and like I know everything that’s out there and I’ve tried it all and what works and PRP, huge, fabulous PRP stuff. So anything that is of, kind of piqued your interest is on my website.

And then another place that I think is my happy place is YouTube. At betterlover.com, I have a couple of hundred videos on almost any subject you could imagine from shaving your pubes to losing your virginity to how to make love to a man instead of a woman. How to ravish a man, how to ravish a woman, like how to have penetration orgasms, what is female ejaculation. I mean, there’s just so many wonderful things we can do together.

DrMR:  Awesome. Well, you’ve certainly given us plenty to think about. And for those who feel like they’re in need, some great resources to point you to, to make sure that this very important aspect of life, the most intimate type of social connection we can have with our sexual partner, stays healthy. And I’m just really appreciative of all the work you’re doing to bring these resources to people. So thank you, Susan, for taking the time.

SB:       Thank you, Michael. It’s been a pleasure to be on the show. I really enjoy your show and the depth of knowledge you bring to everything and just the holistic approach you have. So thank you for the welcoming of the discussion of sexual vitality. It means a lot to me.

DrMR:  Absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you again.

Key Takeaways

  • personallifemedia.com
    • You’ll find articles on many topics: dating, relationships, abduction, anatomy, physiology, hormones, a lot of sexual regenerative therapies
  • betterlover.com

Discussion

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