Eat these 3 food types to boost your sex drive

Hiya all,

Since I published my article about how to have a beautiful skin I was thinking that actually by eating the right food one can sculpt not only how the skin looks but also increase the sex drive. I thought, wow if I have the same success with the sex thing like I am having with my skin then wow I am going to have constant erection throughout the day.

So I started searching the net and I found out that everybody are copying from everybody the same myths but no body is quoting a scientific paper. 

I decided to go deeper than that and read "great food, great sex".

Now let me give you the gist of this book...

First of all - disappointment - this book is not dealing with increasing ones desire. It deals with boosting the mechanism that help us maintain full erection, in short it's dealing with how to avoid erectile dysfunction (and of course its feminine counterpart).

So let's get right to it - 

The brain released acetylcholine (ACh) as result of sexual arousal. These things travel along the blood vessels and arrive to the sex organs where they signals to a guy called endothelium to release a gas, that's called nitric oxide (NO). NO then causes the endothelium to release something called cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP). cGMP relaxes the blood vessels and thus help increasing the blood flow into the sex organs and there you go - you have erection in men (or engorgement in women).

Maybe this illustration can help you memorize...

After sex, the enzyme phosphdiesterase type 5 (PDE5) deactivates the cGMP.

Now this is new stuff, only in 1998 three american scientists were awarded the nobel price because they discovered that the endothelium releases a gas called NO and it relaxes the veins. Before this discovery no one was able to gain erection!! Well at least these 3 scientists couldn't.

Anyway what could go wrong in this system? or in other words - why do so many fat slobs suffer from erectile dysfunction? (Don't look at me - I didn't suffer from this - you can ask my special lady)

Well first of all the Ach should reach the endothelium through the blood stream. For that you need your blood vessels to be clean so that blood can reach the endothelium with the Ach message. But if you are suffering from atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) then no way you are gonna get those messages. You need low LDL and high HDL. There's a paper saying that men with LDL of 240 have two times probability of having erectile dysfunction than those having LDL of 180. So you see where the knee in the graph is. For this you need to get rid of free radicals - you need to eat super antioxidants.

The second station is the endothelium - the guy that generates the NO. It uses the protein arginine for that so you better have enough arginine in your diet. And of course you need NO.

So if we summarize the food types that we need then there are 3 of them

1. Nitric Oxide (NO) rich food.
2. Arginine rich food.
3. Super Anti oxidants.

Nitric Oxide (NO) rich food

These are the famous greens and beans. Hey this is exactly that main food of my nutritarian diet. So I don't have to worry about these - I eat tons of them. Just for those of you who are not familiar with the term 'greens' (shame, shame) here's a list: Kale, Bok Choy, Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Collard, Celery, etc (you can see them here and here). I still remember feeding my aquarium plants KNO3 and these little bastards converted them to NO that animals eat after which they enjoy good sex. So I am all set. Of course the book doesn't say how much NO is required and at least by USDA data base doesn't tell how much NO we have in all sorts of food types... so no need to dig any further.

Arginine rich food

Well again the book doesn't say what the required daily allowance here... (shame, shame, shame) but it does say that an average american consumes ~5.4 grams. The main sources for this food is meat, fish and cheese but veggies still have enough arginine so the question is if my nutritarian diet gets enough of this arginine.

I had to work very hard to add arginine to the basic tables of the USDA data base and the result is that I consume daily only 3466 mg. This result is in line with the numbers provided by Dr. Fuhrman in his book "the end of diabetes" where he measured a typical meal having 3627 mg. The following cake shows which foods are providing me with arginine in my diet:

So as you can see my beloved greens and cruciferous are not contributing much. Nuts & Seeds are a known source for Arginine - so that's good to know however they cost tons of calories - I can't afford to be fat just because of this Arginine. It doesn't show here but half of the arginine in the 'other veggies ' section comes from Tofu. So there are two things that I should make sure I eat daily - and never miss - Nuts/Seeds & Tofu.

Now the question is if this is enough. Well I searched the internet and I couldn't find an RDA for arginine. I read that this Arginine is good for other benefits too:

• Impotents with erectile dysfunction are consuming 5 grams a day.
• For cognition improvement people are taking 1.6 grams a day.
• For body builders who wish to have higher level of growth hormone production - 6 grams a day.
• And of course for diabetes, coronary heart disease and such - we are talking way more. 

Well 3.5 looks sufficient for me, as long as I don't forget to consume my seeds, nuts and tofu.

There are no other sources for me. 'Normal people' can get it from meat, fish and cheese - but again - it's an issue of spending lots of calories for this arginine which is a problem for me.

Getting this as supplement means 0.5$ per day per gram. If I want additional 2 grams per day then that means 30$ per month. Not too expensive.

I notice that 50 grams of nuts & seed provide me with a daily 1g of Arginine. If I double that and eat more nuts & seeds then I can get an additional 1 gram of Arginine. It shall take my calories from fat up from 15% to 19% which is not that bad and I quote from the book "The daily addition of one or two ounces of nuts and seeds, which average about 175 calories an ounce, can bring the diet up to 15 to 30 percent of calories from fat. This is important, and I repeat: my recommended diet is eating 15 percent or more calories from fat in the form of healthy, whole foods, not oil."

But do I want it?

I have to say that I don't, at least not now when I am slimming down. I believe that if I want to be a big muscular monkey with lots of hair and hard and erect all day long - then it's not about just buying Arginine supplement I will have to buy a whole set of proteins, I believe that anything I eat is in moderation so I can't expect Arginine alone to do all the magic. I have to live with the fact that I should be moderate from now on and that's it. Less growth, slower life, live longer - hu humm yes!

Super Anti Oxidants

Well here my nutritarian vegan shouldn't be a problem right? All greens are anti oxidants, and especially the cruciferous family. Also onions are anti oxidants so my diet has plenty of anti-oxidants, no need to buy supplements for that.

Aviel.