Some of the natural ways of increasing your libido includes getting sufficient sleep, exercising and lifting weight, eating brazil nuts, reducing stress through meditation, eating fatty foods, getting more sunlight, losing some weight, taking natural aphrodisiac supplements, drinking red wine and eat chocolate.
Your libido is a natural part of being a healthy adult. Libido is a measure of your sexual desire, or the desire to want to have sex. Many experts on psychology and sexual health agree that having sex is a natural response, and one that indicates health.
Unfortunately, many regard this as a taboo topic, and often a drop in libido will not warrant an investigation, even though it should. The good news, from all of this, however, is the fact that there are effective natural ways to improve your libido, widely accepted as safe.
Even if you assume all is well with you libido, chances are you can safely increase it. Also, it is likely that your libido is sub-par, and can be optimized.
How to Increase Your Libido the Natural Way
1. Get Sufficient Sleep
There are a number of reason why lack of sleep adversely affects your libido, with the two most common reasons being lack of energy and diminished testosterone levels. Testosterone is one of the primary hormones that dictates your sexual drive, with individuals that have lower free blood testosterone levels correlating with lowest desire for sex. Sleep is a proven way to help improve your testosterone levels. Secondly, is the fact that if you do not sleep enough, you will feel chronically tired and less inclined to want to have sex. The next time you can go to bed will be the only thing on your mind, acting as an effective barrier to sex.
2. Lift Weights
Many women shy away from weight lifting due to the belief that they will become stocky muscular beings like men, when in reality this is the furthest things from the truth. Women are by nature unable to build that amount of muscle, since there testosterone levels are but a fraction of what an adult man’s is. Weight lifting helps to optimize testosterone production for your body type, so that a woman will not magically attain the level of a man just by weight lifting. Men are likely to see the greatest improvement in libido from weight lifting, since testosterone synthesis can be greatly increased in them via resistance training.
3. Eat Brazil Nuts
These nuts are relatively unknown, even though their important in sexual health and men’s hormonal is immense. Brazil nuts are among the richest sources of selenium on the planet, a micro mineral essential in production of testosterone, and maintenance of prostate health in men. Selenium is also an important precursor in the production of many co-enzymes, acting as a catalyst to speed up synthesis. It also assists with detoxification in the liver, promoting the excretion and recycling of cholesterol so that more testosterone can be made.
4. Keep A Handle On Stress With Meditation
Many people discount the impact stress can have on your life, possibly because it isn’t believed to be a real thing. However, while stress won’t always show its face, the effects it has on other body processes is very visible. Amongst these is reduced libido or sex drive, along with diminished testosterone levels. The stress hormone cortisol and testosterone share an inverse relationship, so that as stress increases, testosterone and your sex drive take a harder hit.
Meditation is one stress management technique that has proven itself to be very effective if performed daily. Schedule 10-20 minutes daily for meditation as a way to help increase your libido.
5. Eat Fats
Fats are not as bad as they are made out to be, especially when it comes to overall maintenance of health. Fats have many important functions in the body, including the production of sex hormones- in particular testosterone. Consuming a diet that is very low in fat will impair the production of this very important hormone, and adversely affect you libido. Be sure to consume a combination of good fats, including those from avocados, fatty fish, beef and dairy. Saturated fat is necessary for cholesterol and hormone synthesis, which dictate how efficient you libido can become.
6. Get More Sun
Exposure to daily sunlight is important for the production of Vitamin D in the skin, which is responsible for assisting with testosterone production. Studies have found that higher Vitamin D levels are positively correlated with greater free testosterone levels, a key indicator of libido and sexual health. 15 minutes of sunlight daily is sufficient, or during the winter months use of vitamin D supplements.
7. Lose Some Weight
Having excess weight serves no beneficial functions, but even makes your libido suffer. In men especially, the greater the amount of fat you carry, the higher the possibility for correspondingly lower libido and testosterone levels. Fat cells work as a kind of estrogen “incubator”, as it is these fat cells that testosterone is converted into estrogen. This will in turn reduce the sexual characteristics of testosterone, and negatively affect your erection strength and libido.
8. Try Natural Aphrodisiac Supplements
By far, the number of thing people of all walks of life turn to when they notice a diminishing libido, are herbal supplements. While dietary and lifestyle changes should be the number one priority, it is far more convenient to pop a pill and have your problem rectified.
But do they work? Some definitely do. They either work to directly improve libido, or indirectly by improving one or more aspects of your sexual health (such as erectile strength). Common supplements used for increasing libido include tribulus terrestris, a well-known testosterone booster that was used early on by soviet athletes as performance enhancement, to other options such as the African herb Yohimbe, and Peruvian ginseng better known as “horny goat weed”. One thing that is common among most of these supplements is the need for consistency; meaning that if you use just one and see magical effect, it is your brain lying to you.
9. Red Wine
Alcohol is bad for you when taken in excess. However, red wine is not merely alcohol, nor are we recommending you drink glasses upon glasses. Red wine, different from many other alcoholic beverages, is rich in an anti-oxidant known as resveratrol. This compound has become extremely popular over the past 20 years, owing to its anti-aging properties, but today also because of its ability to prevent testosterone from converting into estrogen. Reduced conversion means that you have greater levels of testosterone, and a correspondingly greater libido.
10. Dark Chocolate
Chocolate is often regarded as a sexual food, though the reasons eluded us for many years. However, not any old chocolate will do this. You need rich dark chocolate, the kind loaded with epicatechin, a potent anti-oxidant compound. Epicatechin found in dark chocolate increases nitric oxide synthesis, essential in helping you achieve stronger erections, and in a woman, improved clitoral blood flow.
It also has a great stress hormone busting action, allowing more of your testosterone to be able to increase libido. Just be sure to get high quality chocolate (standardized to 70% or higher epicatechin content).
Conclusion
If you are younger than 40 years, your libido should function optimally and independent of external intervention. This of course, depends on your overall health, as obesity and poor lifestyle factors could accelerate your sex drive deterioration. When it comes down to it, start by implementing diet and lifestyle changes, then if in 3-6 months not much improvement is made, move on to supplements and other advanced techniques.
See Also
11 Impressive Benefits And Uses of Cottonseed Oil
13 Surprising Health Benefits Of Jojoba Oil
11 Impressive Health Benefits of Flaxseed Oil
11 Evidence-Based Health Benefits of Avocado Oil
