How To Increase Your Sex Drive Part 15
Neuroscientists at the University of California at Berkeley recently made a breakthrough discovery: Sniffing a compound of male sweat called androstadienone causes hormonal, physiological, and psychological changes in women that result in sexual arousal.
Sweat has been the main focus of research on human pheromones. For example, we’ve known for years that male underarm sweat improves women’s moods and affects their secretion of luteinizing hormone, which helps stimulate ovulation. Androstadienone is a derivative of testosterone that is found in all body secretions but it has especially high concentrations in male sweat.
Trial by Sniffs
In the most recent trials, women were asked to take 20 sniffs from a bottle containing androstadienone. Don’t worry, they didn’t gag. It smelled vaguely of musk. When compared to sniffing a control odor (yeast), the women who sniffed androstadienone reported significantly higher sexual arousal.
Researchers also noted an increased physiological response, including blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing. These results were consistent with previous studies but they also discovered a tantalizing new development–androstadienone has the power to elevate hormone levels. In this case, cortisol, which is associated with alertness and stress. In fact, it remained elevated for a full hour after the sniff test.
So what does all this mean for you? The treatment applications for this discovery are unclear, but clearly, it will not hurt for you to work out with your partner and be conscious of sniffing his armpits (I suggest you do it when nobody’s watching).
Don’t sniff when the smell is so bad it could peel the skin off a battleship. Do it when it smells good. Sweat is naturally odorless. It only begins to smell when bacteria that live on the skin digest sweat and excrete waste. That’s why sweat smells clean in the beginning and slowly turns into mustard gas.
By the way, he doesn’t have to sweat enough to water a lawn; even a dab will do. Be sure to sniff his armpits when you’re making out, having foreplay, or making love. The research is solid and beyond question: Androstadienone changes mood and increases both sexual arousal (blood flow) and physiological arousal (blood pressure, heartbeat).
This doesn’t mean taking a few sniffs of his pits will make your ankles float to the ceiling. They won’t make you yell, “Take me like a vitamin!!” The effects are far more subtle. What it does mean is that you have one more proven way to arouse yourself and that in combination with everything else we’ve talked about, you will increase your libido.
Time To Decide
Over time, body-consciousness can flatten desire like a recycled can. When sex becomes a reminder of your perceived deficits, your subconscious often lowers your libido to avoid the source of shame.
Body anxiety can also lower your ability to experience pleasurable sensations. Disruptive thoughts can put an oven mitt over nerve receptors, decreasing your ability to fully experience sensations or even recognize erotic cues.
Psychological, physiological, and contextual factors work in concert to create a desire for sex. It isn’t one technique or the other that spells success. And it certainly isn’t one at the expense of the other, either.
Increased blood flow to the genitals will help but not if you’re stressed, fatigued, or distracted. At the same time, being relaxed, focused and willing won’t work without enough blood flow. There are few black and white answers to sexual arousal but there are lots of colorful contributions.
Exercise is at the head of the list because it accelerates arousal (in the presence of erotic stimuli), maintains it through resolution, and builds capacity for it in the future.
Raising your libido can seem like raising the Titanic–an exciting proposition undermined by a lack of manpower, knowledge, and equipment.
But decisions led the search party to find the Titanic and the right decisions will raise it off the seafloor. It’s the same with your sunken libido. Decisions will raise it. By deciding to strike into the mood instead of waiting for the mood to strike, by deciding to capitalize on a spark with ‘flicker stage’ sex, by deciding to exercise, by deciding to initiate sex, by deciding to use sexual cues, by deciding to ask yourself questions like, “How can I make this more physically arousing for me” during love-making, you will discover just how much power you have to create a sex life worthy of your relationship.