Aphrodisiacs That Really Work
For as long as humans have been having sex, they've been trying to get in the
mood--or get their partners in the mood. And if necessity is the mother of
invention, it's no surprise that humans have developed a wide variety of creative
solutions for the old "I've-got-a-headache" problem.
The most recent solution, of course, is online pharmacy. But in ancient India, a young
man who proved passionless in the sack might have tried goat testicles boiled in
milk. Oysters are another common turn-on; the Roman satirist Juvenal was the
first to note their seductive qualities. In medieval times, honeyed mead was the
equivalent of Bud Lite for loosening up carousing swains.
Fresh snake blood is still revered as a stimulant in parts of Asia, as are
bat blood, reindeer penises, shark fins and ground rhino horns. And what
sad-sack hasn't at least contemplated Spanish Fly? It's not a fly at all,
actually, but the dried remains of beetles, which irritate the male urogenital
tract, causing a prolonged erection--and potentially causing serious discomfort
and even death, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
In
Pictures: Ten Aphrodisiacs That Work
Beyond their collective exoticism, the only thing the above have in common is
that they don't work. Named for Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of sex and beauty,
an aphrodisiac is just about anything that awakens or increases sexual
desire--be it your own, or the object of your desire's. In reality, however,
most aphrodisiacs are folklore at best and hazardous to your health at worst. As
the Food and Drug Administration has declared: "There is no scientific proof
that any over-the-counter aphrodisiacs work to treat sexual dysfunction."
But there is still some hope for those seeking a libido boost. The herbal
supplement Ginkgo
Biloba is being studied by the Office of Dietary Supplements, a subsidiary
of the National Institute of Health, as a treatment for erectile dysfunction.
The FDA has called animal studies of yohimbine "encouraging." Derived from the
bark of an African tree, yohimbe has been used as a sexual stimulant for
centuries. But the FDA notes that animal studies can't be used to prove
effectiveness in humans.
Even when aphrodisiacs do show promise, they don't always work for everybody.
Sexual desire is rooted in the mind more than the genitals. One person's fantasy
could be another's turn-off. "We're all unique individuals, and we all respond
differently to different things," says Dr. Beverly Whipple, a professor emerita
at Rutgers University and author of, most recently, The Science of Orgasm.
At the root of human sexual desire is the "core erotic personality"--a.k.a.
"sexual template"--which, in a nutshell, is whatever gets you off. "Everyone has
in their mind an image of someone or thing they find sexually desirous,"
explains Dr. William Granzig, dean of clinical sexology at Maimonides University
in North Miami Beach and president of the American Board of Sexology.
That image might be a person of specific age, race or hair color, or it might
be every person. It could be a fondness for a particular style of dress, objects
such as women's shoes or fur-lined handcuffs, or behavior such as cross-dressing
or exhibitionism. Whatever it is in particular, the sexual template is believed
to develop early on during a childhood erotic experience--perhaps as early as
age three or four--and it sticks with you for life.
The difficulty of maintaining sexual desire over the long term, of course, is
that if your partner falls outside of your sexual template--or you fall outside
theirs--sooner or later one of you could lose interest. "Many people whose
template is not, say, age-specific, can have great sex throughout their lives,"
notes Granzig. "But if you're only attracted to 20-year-olds, once your partner
hits 30, your desire will decrease. Unless, of course, you can figure out some
ways to spice things up."
Spicing things up is where sex gets complicated, because men and women
sometimes have wildly divergent desires. For men, a sexy photo is often enough to get blood flowing in the right direction. For
women, pornography can be a major turn-off. Orgasms are also less central to
women, who sometimes need full body stimulation, not to mention mental
seduction, in order to achieve climax. "There are just so many variables that go
beyond the physical in sex for women," says Dr. Janice Epp, a clinical
sexologist at the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San
Francisco.
There are also a host of external nuisances that weigh heavily upon sexual
desire--and that may dampen the mood. Studies routinely rank American culture as
one of the most sexually repressed in the world thanks to its forbidding
Judeo-Christian origins, high incidence of sexual problems and dysfunction, and
a lingering Puritan discomfort with the very topic of sex.
And while Europeans take mandatory month-long vacations, Americans routinely
work 60-hour weeks, and stretch their ten vacation days over the entire year.
With the demands of our modern day technological society, it's little wonder the
search for aphrodisiacs continues. "I see a lot of highly evolved, highly
skilled people who are losing desire because they have such an overriding focus
on their profession," says Epp, who works in Silicon Valley. "For them, the
temptation to believe that there's a magic pill that will make them desirous of
sex again is very strong."
Inspired by the phenomenal success of Viagra, which rang up over $1.6 billion
in sales for Pfizer in 2005, it's perhaps not surprising that there has been a
recent push to find more pharmaceutical remedies for flagging sexual desire.
It's a focus that throws many in the sex field into apoplexy. "The idea that you
can just give someone a pill, and they'll be interested in sex is like putting a
band-aid on a tumor," says Epp.
In the end, the only truly effective aphrodisiac seems to be that's been
working for humans all along. "Your biggest sex organ is the one between your
ears," says Dr. Granzig. "What is desire, after all, other than the hope that
you can fulfill your sexual fantasies? And that's all in your mind."