Dr. John Gray - On the Science Behind Love, Intimacy, and the Impact of Hormones on Relationships

Welcome to another episode of the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast.

I'm your host, Claudia von Boeselager, here to bring you the latest insights and learnings to improve your health, your life, and happiness for longer.

Before we dive in, I just want to take a moment to thank you so much with my deepest gratitude for being part of this community and wanting to step into the fullest version of yourself. If you haven't already, make sure to follow on Instagram @longevityandlifestyle and feel free to leave a comment or message. My guest today is the legendary John Gray, an internationally acclaimed author and relationship expert whose groundbreaking book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, has forever changed the way we view relationships. John is an author of over 20 books, many of which are New York Times bestsellers, and he is a repeat guest on the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast, and it continues to be one of the most popular episodes that we have recorded. So please enjoy as we dive into the next conversation. So welcome back, John, to the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast for round 3. It's such an honor and pleasure to have you back on.

Thank you. I'm happy to be with you.

So we were just discussing, and I think this is so interesting because last time we spoke, you were discussing looking at genes and relationships and hormones, and you were just mentioning something. Perhaps for my audience, you could pick it up from where we were just discussing about the impact of genetics and relationships and hormones.

Well, let's build the context. You already have the context of my previous talks, but for longevity, it's very important. And I think everybody knows this. They just, there's different ways to achieve it. I have my own way I suggest, but for women, when their hormones are out of balance and as they get older, naturally they will produce less estrogen because they're done with their eggs. Now it depends on the adrenal glands. So adrenal health and the adrenal gland, if it's exhausted, that's why women go through menopausal symptoms. But as far as even longevity, we want to have healthy hormones all the way through our life. And when they're out of balance, you can know if you're a woman, you feel overwhelmed. Every time you're feeling overwhelmed, you should be saying, okay, I need to do something to support my female hormones. Because in my research, what I found is that when women are more on their independent side. I have to do something. It's up to me to do it. That's a part of life. But when it's too much a part of life for women, then what happens is they feel overwhelmed. Now, why don't men feel as overwhelmed? Because we have a brake system. There's a place which says, don't do something unless you have to do it. And what a wise thought. Well, women are also designed to do everything. They're designed to do everything. They're they're gifted with a brain that can work both sides more simultaneously than a man. They also have more fat cells, which produce 20 times more energy if she's feeling hormonally in balance. But if a woman's adrenal gland is being stimulated too much, and she's making stress hormones, always when a woman's making stress hormones, she's producing too many of her male hormones, the testosterone, and not enough estrogen on the upward part of her cycle towards ovulation. And after ovulation, she still needs to be making estrogen, but now she has to make more progesterone. So this is why women's moods are complex, because your hormones affect your moods. And so many times where women are depressed and anxious, often it's within the 5-day window before their period, which we call PMS. It's very real for many, many women. And what they're missing at that time is not enough progesterone. And progesterone is not the kind of hormone you'll get from being in a relationship with a man. You get primarily estrogen from being in a relationship with a man, being dependent in your life for certain needs and support from a man. But as you get closer, as after you ovulate, then you still need to have that Estrogen. Estrogen is produced when you're depending on people for significance. And particularly if you're depending on a man, it even goes up even more. That's why, you know, we have this thing called marriage, which is our man and woman. It takes a man and a woman making love, which is the only time when our estrogen and testosterone levels go to their highest, is when you're having heterosexual sex, which is, that's why you can make a baby. You know, you actually bring life into the universe. And unfortunately, people are having less sex today. They're having less marriage. And all of this is, we're just going downhill. And what we see along with that is imbalance of hormones. The interesting thing, many women feel like, I just don't feel like I want to be married. And I can tell you that when you don't want to be married or I don't want to have children, not that everybody's supposed to be married, not that everybody's supposed to have children, just most of us should, otherwise civilization will die. So there's a biological wisdom in our bodies that says, when women's hormones at a certain age of maturity, when their estrogen levels are high enough, she'll feel, I want to have a child. And it's very important to me. If she doesn't have those hormones, she's not going to feel, I want to create a baby. You see, the hormones actually trigger our motivations, our desires. You know, if a man's testosterone levels are low, he wants to be an alcoholic. There's just no question about it. He wants to be a playboy. He wants to have fun. He wants to, He can't maintain a commitment to a woman. And this is all simply because the testosterone in a man dramatically affects his attitude and his motivations and his dignity. You know, I would say my wife says I'm very reliable. Okay, I just say that word because it comes up all the time. My wife will say, John is so reliable. Now, what does she mean by that? It means she can trust me. She can depend on me. It's safe. And safe. You as a woman, you hit right on to Reliable man is safe and is consistent. And there's something about that's masculinity. And when women are interacting with that, then it allows women to be on their male side, but also on their female side. It's like women don't have the breaks that men have when there's so many things that have to get done. A man simply says, well, I don't have to do that because there's nothing I can do about it. I don't have to do that because if I did that, I would become exhausted and tired and I couldn't do the important stuff. Men have a lot of mechanisms to turn off that feeling of I have to do something. Whereas when women go into that side of I have to do, if there's not balance by I don't have to do, see, that's the feminine side. Other people do for me. You're the queen. You have people waiting on you. I don't have to do it all. And then progesterone, interesting, it's the balance of I have support is more of your estrogen. And the progesterone is more the side of I get to, I'm free to, it's more social bonding. If you're more extroverted, it's social bonding. And if you're more introverted, it's bonding with yourself, like baths, reading books, in your garden, me time. You know, there's that whole dance. You said me time. Are you familiar with my daughter's course on me time?

Oh, I haven't, I haven't seen it yet. I haven't.

There's a whole course that she did on me time, but she talks about me time, you time, and we time. We time is more of your estrogen hormone. You time is when you're serving other people, doing for them. It's more your, your testosterone side. And then you've got your progesterone side is the me time. And my daughter's a bit of an introvert. So for her, the emphasis was on bonding with herself as opposed to, but she, she corrected it. You know, it's depending on your temperament as a woman.

Yeah.

You're just going to be more, more engaged in social bonding. So there's a dance that women have to go through a cycle every month of balancing their we time, you time, me time. Men have a cycle, which is kind of what's a man's cycle. His 24-hour cycle, right? And it's, he has to work. Which is you time, which is for other people. Then he has to come back into his cave, which is me time and not social bonding. It could be, if he's more extrovert, could be social bonding. And then there's the we time. So we, we have our own balance. It's just every, every day, every 24 hours, we have, you got to get out there to work. In a sense, you exhaust your body to some extent. You use up your testosterone. Then you come back for your cave time. Which is a form of me time and not we time. And that's how men rebuild their testosterone. And then they get horny. That's the biological function in a man, which motivates men for we time, which is, and for a man, we time is all about let me provide something for you. And that's what it's really, it's a different form of you time. You time for a man is I'm serving other people that I'm not intimate with. See, there's not a lot of personal love. You have friendship and so forth, but you're not physically intimate with them, nor are they your children. But they're something outside yourself that you're serving and getting paid for or getting rewarded for, whatever the reward would be. Men need to have that to build their testosterone up. That also uses up their testosterone. You, you build it to use it up. And then when you use it up, you recover and that's your cave time. And when men don't work, then what the brain remembers, cave time makes me feel really good, but cave time does not rebuild testosterone unless you use it up. It's going to, you've got to use your muscles for them to be rebuilt. If you don't use them, they don't rebuild. And so So many men are lost today because cave time feels so good.

Yeah. But they just stay in cave time. They don't go out and work or they don't do certain things.

They don't balance it by action, rest, intimacy, action, rest, and intimacy. And for an immature man, you know, younger man, it's just action and rest, action and rest. But as maturity grows, then for a man to experience fulfillment, it needs to be action, rest, and intimacy.

So I want to touch on a few things. One, you mentioned like the importance, and I think this is the issue with so many women coming from like learning how to do me time, right? So that's self-care time. I mean, I had to learn this as well. It was all about action, doing, being busy, getting caught up on all the amazing things that life had to offer and completely neglecting self to the detriment of these things lead to, you know, chronic stress, chronic fatigue, etc. But also the role in what we're seeing more and more is, you know, men's testosterone Testosterone levels are at all-time low. The microplastics that are affecting, you know, men's hormones, the endocrine system, also for female hormones as well. I was speaking to Dr. Mindy Peltz at the weekend, and she was saying, you know, the amount of 20-something-year-old women she sees that aren't cycling at all from stress, from anxiety, from other issues too. So it's this almost real pandemic, it feels like, occurring and happening to us. And I'd love to hear your view and how you're seeing these statistics.

Well, she's all about cleansing, right? Yeah, I love her. And she helps understand women the best times to fast.

Yeah, exactly.

What does she say for women to fast? Which part of the cycle?

So her recommendation is the minimum of like the 12-hour window to 24. And then she said the second half of the cycle.

Right. During the time where you have progesterone needs to be the thing you build up. And it's important you don't feel that it's hard. So you should— anything that's difficult or challenging is testosterone-producing. For example, I fast. I can fast 3 days a month, 3 weeks. I do all kinds of fasts. I was a monk for 9 years, and that's how I keep my testosterone up. You're a pro. And it's not just the fasting, it's the mindset. Fasting's not easy. It takes discipline. So that discipline, anytime a man does what he has to do, So in my mind, I go, I want to have high testosterone levels, healthy testosterone levels, which is more than when I was a young man. That's what healthy is. Healthy is if you want to live a long, healthy life as a man, you want your testosterone levels to go up along with your estrogen levels going up, which is what genius is. Genius is when your testosterone and estrogen are very high in harmony. That's genius. We all get glimpses of genius. When we make love. Okay, that's sort of this nice given. That's why people always want to, in their marriages and whatever, they come to me and they say, how can we bring back those feelings we had in the beginning? Everybody wants those feelings if you've had them. Now, some people have never had them and maybe never will, and they can have a happy life. But, you know, some of us want ecstasy in our lives, and we want to feel that passion for a lifetime. And Making love is a big part of that. I just don't want to minimize that at all. Sure. For women, sex is, generally speaking, is not as important, but for men, it's very, very important. It's the most important thing when it comes to his testosterone levels. And paradoxically, too much sex can lower your testosterone. Not enough sex can lower your testosterone.

Can you explain that?

Yeah.

Men listening?

Yeah, for the men who are listening, if, let me just give you research, okay? Now I couldn't have done this years ago because, you know, I got a PhD in sex, okay? Sexual counseling. People think I have this great sex life. I should if I have a PhD in it, right? And I do. But they used to say, you know, how often do you have sex? And I would say once a week. And they'd be so disappointed that once a week, you know, so. Yeah, there was always this pressure we should be having more sex than once a week. And clearly there's times for more sex. And but as a good routine, it's important to keep it up once a week. It's very important. We have to know that there is this decline. Again, the research shows that men's testosterone levels decline 1% every year. Now, you, you know, mentioned at the beginning we have all this toxicity. Toxicity that's affecting us, hasn't affected my testosterone levels, just to let you know. I'm 50% higher, but I don't drink a lot of bottled water with plastic water. But, you know, I live in a toxic world. I travel. When you travel, I'm drinking stuff off the airplane. You know, that just comes from plastic bottles. So, and I do cleanse. So that's important. I do cleansing. And, but testosterone can go up. As we get older. For men, their estrogen, unless they're a sociopath, their estrogen levels will naturally get higher as well. That's the problem. We're built, you know, sort of to flow into estrogen. As you mature, you naturally develop more and more estrogen as a man. But if you don't sustain your testosterone, then you become passive, irritable, grumpy, lack of motivation, procrastination. You know, ultimately retirement is just the extreme procrastination. I just don't want to do it anymore. Good idea. People don't realize that, but that's what— that's, uh, so anyway, so, so back to— I made the point too much, too little sex, very important to know. So I just look at the research and the research shows that that was just my own natural tendency, my own marriage. I would say, you know, quality over quantity. Quality over quantity. Uh, because for me, it's a hugely, uh, ecstatic experience is making love. There's— it's never gone down for me. It just gets better and better. And as I'm in my 70s, uh, you can— you have more time and you can do more. Okay, but at the same time, has to be different. If you want to do more, it has to be different kind of sex. I'll do all three. So the research showed that when a man has— when he has sex we'll call it when he releases his semen. Okay, I'm not going to say the word because some people like can't say the word. But when he releases on Saturday night with his wife, he releases, then his testosterone levels will go back down to baseline. During the act of sex, it goes very high. If he has an erection, it's going much higher. Then after the erection goes away, it goes back down. He releases, it goes back down. Well, something happens when he releases. When he releases, his estrogen levels surge and that pushes his testosterone back down to baseline.

Okay.

So then, then his horniness will start to build up and he'll want to have sex, say, on Tuesday. Now, there's always exceptions here. Some men want it every day and that's called sex addiction. But just basically, it takes a little time to recover and then he has sex again. And after sex, it goes back down to baseline. Then on Saturday when he wakes up, he's at baseline and he does it all repeats itself. Okay. Now let's say you eliminate the release on Tuesday. He doesn't release on Tuesday, makes love to his wife, his partner on Saturday. And now 6 days goes by and he hasn't released. When he wakes up in the morning, his testosterone will be 50% higher. Hmm. Wow.

50%.

50% higher, which is what it was when they first fell in love.

Okay.

So they see that in the beginning, when you're falling in love with somebody who you don't really know that well, that's why it's called falling. But it's, you get so much dopamine in the brain that you get a surge of testosterone. So everybody gets free hormones in the beginning of a relationship. Men get free testosterone. Women get free estrogen if they feel safe. If they don't feel safe, then they get a blend of too much testosterone and estrogen and they have all this anxiety that goes with it. But it's very addictive. But anyway, these are the subtleties. So the dynamic here is dopamine raises testosterone in men, raises estrogen in women if she feels cared for. Now what's going to happen is they're going to have great sex. Okay. There's electricity. There's nothing you have to do. And it's wonderful. And you do it a lot. You do it a lot. Because there's just so much testosterone. As each time you do it twice a week or 3 times a week, what you're doing is declining your baseline of testosterone. It's going to go down anyway. Okay. And I just say that by the big studies which have been done. Now, here's interesting for men to know about testosterone. At every age group, you've got an you know, like from 34 to 35 to 36, there's an average drop of 1% of testosterone as you get older. This is your American person. All right. Now, the average person now in that category, let's say a 35-year-old who has the highest testosterone in that category, because, see, it's relationship that determines our hormones. This is my message now. It's never been put out. The most powerful thing that affects your hormones are your relationships. We talked about the you time, me time, we time relationship. These are all regulating our hormones. Now, so in the category of, of 35-year-olds or 45-year-olds or 55-year-olds, any category at any age, who has the most testosterone in that category? Single men. Okay. They, they have the highest testosterone. Now who's the next highest? That means they're lower is men who are dating a woman in a committed relationship. So a love relationship. The next drop in testosterone is married men. The next drop in testosterone is men with children. And the next drop is men who are retired and dead. So the, the, so what do we glean from that? Which is, well, why? Because the more independent someone feels, the higher your testosterone levels. So you have to have a sense of I can do. And I can't, it's just that sense of I have to do. Okay, so there's that place. That's why retirement just knocks a man's testosterone down completely. It goes into, I don't have to do anything but what I enjoy doing, what I like to do, what's fun to do. And his testosterone just plummets. Testosterone goes up when every morning you realize there's something I have to do. And that have to is the blessing for men and the scourge for women. I don't know if scourge is the right word, but when women feeling I have to do, that's overwhelmed. That's, you're on your male side. So stressed out. And you'll be producing, I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to do this. Your brain just doesn't turn off. Now I want to add to this because I was going to say it a few minutes ago. Why, why do men have this ability to turn it off and women don't? That's a good question to ask. I ask all these questions and then the answers I find them in research and whatever, but who would have thought? But we know that, and some people don't know, so I'll remind them that we all start out as little girls. Okay. Males are just like little girls for the first 3 or 4 weeks. All right. So this is, women have all of the genes of her male and female sides. They're all there. And men have all those same genes, except when the Y, after about 3 weeks, the Y chromosome, which women don't have, it comes into play. And remember, there's thousands and thousands of genes, but the Y chromosome gives men 23 unique genes that women don't have. So we've got 23 genes that women don't have. And what their function is, according to gene therapy, is, or gene science, is they override many of the man's female genes. So now I'm inhibited from having all my female genes. I have all the genes you have, but then suddenly I've got these 23 genes and they override override my genes. So when I look at that concept of overriding, I identify, well, men have this gene that's— women have this gene that says give, give, give, give. You know, this is the whole thing. They're nurturers. You have a baby. You can't turn it off. You got to keep giving, giving, giving. So for a man, we have that gene that give, give, give is overridden and with a new gene that says only give if you have to. Now this, this women misinterpret as narcissist man. Well, this is all men. There is a real thing called narcissism, which is not what women understand. Okay. They just think narcissist men are selfish. And, and there's a place where a man basically in order to be of service, which is what his genes designed him to do as well. He has these serving genes, but only if you have to. So he's gonna, see, he doesn't have for women, women have these fat cells that produce more for your body type than a man would have. And when you burn fat, you produce 20 times more energy than when you're burning muscle. Just to know that. Okay, these fat cells are amazing for women and are when you're burning carbohydrates. Okay, we're breaking down muscle into carbohydrate and then you have energy. That's one form of energy. And that's primarily the dominant way men make energy. Women, if they feel safe, remember, if they feel safe, then their estrogen levels are healthy, then they can burn fat. And that fat then gives them all this energy. So if you have all this energy, you can keep going and going and going. And you don't feel like, oh, I give, give, give, and I don't get back. It's very biological. Every woman who comes to my office is always feeling I give and give and give. And I'm exhausted and tired and I'm not getting back. Well, what would be giving back would be a man in your life who is giving to you so that you don't have to do everything. Partnership. You don't have to do everything. Now, a lot of women are just decide to be with another woman because you can get a lot of mutual support. But if you just look at efficiency-wise, if a man is over here going, I don't have to give to everybody. I can only do what I have to do. And if my wife requires me to give more to her than anybody else, then suddenly she doesn't have to do everything. So we are, in a sense, due to our different genetic makeup, we are designed to thrive by selfless giving. Now, selfless giving is a little bit misleading, but my wife says to me all the time, you're just so generous, you're so selfless, you're so giving. I can't imagine any man being better than you. It's a nice place to be in. I've learned it. And when she's basically saying that, there's this place of giving that I have. And I always remind her, I say, you know, I know you think I'm so generous and giving and from one perspective I am, but I'm extremely selfish at the same time. I know that if I want to have great sex and I want to have a happy woman and I want to be happy when I come home and I want somebody telling me I'm an amazing husband, then this is what I have to do. And every man, once he learns this, can be such a better partner. He just doesn't know the things you have to do. He just, see, it's sort of built in that because in the beginning of a relationship, you get this high dopamine, your testosterone levels are naturally higher, her estrogen are higher. There's so much love. It's so easy to go at the whole thing. That goes away. And what can keep his testosterone up and keep her estrogen up are basic mindsets and ways of relating with each other, strategies of relating with each other that will raise her estrogen and raise his testosterone. And that creates a magnetic field called polarity. Polarity. I'm way more masculine than she is, and she's way more feminine than I am. And yet many times she's more masculine than me. You know, she's like, when it comes to making money, she loves making money. Okay. She's like working, working so hard. But she says to me, it's different than when she was single. When she was single and working hard, there was all this pressure on her. Now she's free to go to her male side, knowing that she has the backup of her husband who is always there to support her. It's just once you get over to your male side, coming back to your female side takes willpower. It takes a decision. It doesn't feel natural if you've been over on your male side for quite a bit. And that's what I was talking about, our genomes. So the genome dictates everything in your body. It's the blueprint of the body. And one of the things your genome is going to be doing is regulating your estrogen and your testosterone, your progesterone, all that, all those hormones. It regulates them. And so if in order to survive, a woman is way on her male side for 3 months, her genome will now start making that the status quo. That will be what's natural. Okay. She's just going to go over there. To shift over to feel more feminine is not going to feel natural for her if she's been over there for 3 months. There's been some trauma in her life where she feels, I can't trust others. I have to do it all myself. And that doesn't get healed in a time period, which may just be 3 months. And that's because the genome repeats itself every 3 months. It adjusts itself. And when it adjusts itself, it creates a lot of errors from the original blueprint. So the blueprint is changing. That's what aging is basically, is errors develop over time in the genome. So for 3 months practicing these skills of coming back to her female side, the genome has a chance to repair itself and remember how to do that because it's going to remember, oh, this feels much better. I like this. But in the beginning, it's not your natural tendency. So you have to overcome that for 3 months. It's like breaking a habit. I think that's kind of the same thing. People say 21 days breaks a habit. But as far as the genome goes, to change your genome and repair itself completely into a whole new way of expressing, based upon your original blueprint, 3 months. And what can facilitate that process is that that's the research I found online, which is they're doing this research, PubMed and all that, on a substance called aradic acid. Aradic acid is in mother's milk. Okay. So mother's milk makes her brain and whatever. You can get it in cow's milk and you can get aradic acid and aradic acid. Is a substance that you can add minerals to it and it will bind and deliver those minerals to the genome. But more importantly, it's the uric acid that actually penetrates into the genome and supports genome repair. I hope this wasn't too complicated. Did it sound okay?

No, I love this because, I mean, the people listening here, we've talked about telomeres and genetics and DNA and all the rest of it. So this is really fabulous. And I'm just thinking for So many women out there that are either, you know, single and they're working hard and everything's kind of on their shoulders or even like single mothers or whatever as well. So you're talking about if they've been 3 months in that sort of male environment, male energy, but what if they've been 3 years or 5 years or longer?

Right, right. It's just in their space. Okay. I'm just saying it starts at 3 months so that everybody knows, you know, so many women, you just get habituated to interacting a certain way and Suddenly you're just filled with, I have to do, I have to do, I have to do. That's your go-to place as opposed to I get to do and I have support to do. And so what I found is, and I, I didn't know this about aradic acid. What I learned a long time ago is that if you bond lithium, which is also a mineral that will balance dopamine and serotonin in the brain. Okay. This is why it was known to be good for bipolar people because they had extremes. They go up and they crash down and they go up and they crash down. Well, they developed lithium because there were lithium springs. If people were depressed or anxious or couldn't sleep, they could just spend a few hours in a lithium spring and all their symptoms go away. They're happy for a couple of days. And that, that comes to the conclude that lithium is very good for balancing the brain chemicals. But how do you get lithium into the brain? Because if you just take the lithium out of the ground, it doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier. But psychiatrists, until they had all the drugs, They would use lithium carbonate, which is lithium out of the ground. So they're just taking rocks and grinding up and giving it to people. If you gave them a toxic dose of lithium, then you could cure bipolar symptoms. But if you stopped, the symptoms came back and you had the side effect of a toxic dose of something. Any good thing, toxic dose, you can't do too much of something. So what the psychiatrist offered was 500 times the dose of lithium that I recommend to everybody. I used to have a wellness center for 9 years. I was, I had early stage Parkinson's when I was 50. I'm 73 now. It went away very quickly.

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Once I set up the wellness center, I got into longevity, got into supplements. And what I find it, I opened a wellness store and I got rid of all that because other people are doing it quite well. But still people don't do the lithium thing. And to me, that was the most important thing because most people, when they're eating their carbs or when they're stressed, they use up lithium right away. It's carbs or stress, processed sugars or stress, or the stress of happiness. You have to realize that when you're really happy, like ecstatic, great sex, or some wonderful thing happened in your life, and you're using up lithium because you're having to constantly balance these two opposite male-female forces of dopamine is our male force, serotonin is our female force. And those hormones regulate testosterone, estrogen production, and all of that. So it's amazing without knowing it, lithium became, you know, I just saw the effects on me and other people, like right away for everybody, a small dose of lithium bonded to aradic acid has a profound effect in terms of helping you to restore the genome. And in the meantime, balance your hormones. It's very powerful. So I recommend it to everybody. You can go online.

Yeah.

Lithium orotate. The best lithium orotate that I found is not all made the same, but I make sure mine is made the same, the right way that Dr. Nieper discovered. He's a German doctor. And then we added to it ashwagandha and bacopa. Bacopa is for dopamine. Ashwagandha is for dopamine and serotonin. There's another really good supplement people can know now, particularly for women, but also for men. Saffron. Turns out saffron helps to feel satisfied after a meal and also lower stress levels. So I just added in a bunch of the goodies along with lithium orotate. And I also put in there magnesium orotate and calcium orotate. Doesn't take a lot. You know, people go, oh, there's a little bit of magnesium. I say, yeah, but when it's magnesium orotate, the magnesium's getting into the brain. Most of the magnesium doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier. Calcium doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier. But if you bond it to orotic acid, It does, and you don't need much. And just for fun, I look at the brain as having sex all the time. If you look at what's happening, very quick, and every neuron in the brain happening 1,000 times a minute is the neuron absorbs magnesium and magnesium promotes serotonin. If you're magnesium deficient, which so many people are, you will be stressed all the time and not being able to sleep well and constipation. That's a lot to do with magnesium. So, So the neurons all need to be, hold magnesium. Then what happens is calcium goes in and out, just like the man going in and out. Calcium goes in and stimulates dopamine. Calcium goes out and the magnesium stimulates serotonin. Calcium goes in, stimulates dopamine. Calcium goes out, stimulates. And what regulates that is lithium. So, you know, you need magnesium, calcium, and lithium. So my capsules have magnesium orotate. Lithium orotate and that combined together in one capsule plus a lot of the good adaptogens. So I really think it's a great stress reducer for both men and women because it's helping to balance our hormones. Having said that, it's not a drug. You have to change your behaviors if you want to make the change, changes to take place in your genome. So what that means, practically speaking, is for men, coming back to the original thought we were talking about, I went off on a tangent. Which was for a man, when he has sex twice a week, he will stay at baseline all the time. And baseline goes down over time, as we see as evidenced by the other studies showing that men's testosterone tends to go down. But if a man has, has a release just once a week, every Saturday, if that's the day you're having sex, it's going to go up 50%.. And that's what I found in my life. That was my rhythm. I tend to be more in touch with my nature and not addictions. So that was what worked for me for a long time until I learned the third kind of sex, which is there's one kind of sex is be frugal, but make sure that you're, you're doing it on a regular basis. And occasionally, of course, you know, the situation occurs. What happens when men have low testosterone is they quickly get addicted to sex. So that's the guy who wants to have sex every day. Because every time he has sex, his testosterone crashes down and he just has his fantasies that stimulate his testosterone again. And what that does is when it empties out, then you crave that moment of dopamine of the release. When you have that release, there's also a huge amount of dopamine. Your testosterone goes down, but the brain goes, I have to have the addiction. So you can get addicted to it. That's one side of it. You can also just do it twice a week. And what they found is your testosterone never reaches that 50% higher when you wake up in the morning. And it's just one day you wake up, but that's very important for the woman. Because for a woman, everything about sex is trust for her. Everything about estrogen is feeling unsafe. That's oxytocin. Oxytocin is the physical contact, why we get naked and we rub our bodies together and moving around, all that moving around creates oxytocin in women. The breast stimulation creates oxytocin in women. It's very important to take enough time stimulating the breasts in a way that a woman enjoys before going south. Okay. That's where the estrogen starts getting produced. I don't know if we've gone into this, but I can talk about the hormones of the clitoris. That's another interesting aspect.

We haven't discussed this yet.

So yeah, let's go ahead. Yeah. The clitoris, the breasts are producing lots and lots of oxytocin. The kiss opens the door for all hormones to get produced. That means you're now being intimate. You know, prostitutes will never kiss. That's the way they can stay detached from the whole thing. So it's very, very important that couples remember to kiss when they make love. So many men are not required to kiss to get turned on. So they don't think what's the big deal. Kissing is a big deal and saliva is a big deal. You know, actually tongues touching and various things. This is like very, very important to begin the stimulation of hormones. So it's kind of like a switch. Now the breasts, body's touching is oxytocin. You know, you sort of rolling around together, you know, cuddling and getting excited. That's a big key factor for oxytocin. Then the breast stimulation. Is very, very important. You know, the nipple, sucking on a nipple, if that's pleasurable to her, and usually it is once they start beginning a little erect, then what happens is she's producing lots of oxytocin. Okay. Literally all her worries will start to go away when she's feeling the safety because oxytocin, the hormone, does make you feel safe. Feeling safe will make more oxytocin, but stimulating oxytocin, this is actually using the body's chemistry, the biology. Because, you know, it's sucking on the nipples that produces the oxytocin, allows the milk to drop for when a mother, for a mother, you know, so this is biology. Now, now you get down south, you don't want to miss the clitoris. The clitoris is very important. It's what creates desire. Okay, so now this is something for couples in a marriage over time, you know, husband saying, honey, do you want to have sex? She goes, well, no, I'm not really in the mood. Well, that doesn't mean she can't become in the mood. She needs her estrogen levels to go high enough. Oxytocin raises her estrogen levels. Then when her estrogen levels go high enough, her testosterone will naturally go up and she'll want to have sex. So there's a place where couples— I have so many couples just, you know, realizing that women are happy to have sex, but they may not feel the desire to have sex. But if you just have non-goal-oriented foreplay, at least once a week, non-goal-oriented foreplay. Even if you're not in the mood or anything, just let's, let's get into bed, let's put on some nice music, let's light some candles, make some nice situation, and cuddle together and kiss, you know, just that little kiss, little kiss. You don't feel like you want to do it, you got to do it, because that will actually start stimulating the hormones to make you want to do it. But first, you have to have all this body touch, then the breast touch, then you get the clitoris. Now clitoris, Everybody, because you can have a climax on the clitoris and that's an easy climax. It's not an orgasm. It's what many people call an orgasm. I have to differentiate because I have to use language. I call that a clitoris. That's a climax, which is basically you intensify your pleasure until a spasm takes place and you have this release. Freud talked about this. He said there was what's called the immature orgasm and the mature orgasm. The mature orgasm is vaginal orgasm. And then all the women complained, said that's a myth. There's no such thing as a vaginal orgasm. Excuse me. My wife has a vaginal orgasm all the time. Exactly. Yeah. I've had people come to me and say, John, you talk about this vaginal orgasm. There are no nerve factors active in the vagina. I guess my wife has these special nerves.

A lot of women do. A lot of women do. But they haven't discovered it yet, maybe.

They haven't discovered it yet. Now, I've counseled women who say to me, you know, they can have a climax with their clitoris, but the husband puts his penis in, they don't feel anything. Okay, it's nothing. Now why that is, is because— I'm explaining why that is. Okay, so the biology is such that when you stimulate the clitoris, you're making testosterone. I'm making estrogen. Test— clitoris does not stimulate estrogen, but what it does do is it creates a desire. So basically you're you're getting your oxytocin with the breasts. As oxytocin goes up, your estrogen starts to rise where you start to, you know, oxytocin is the doorway to estrogen. Now, once you have your estrogen rising, you balance that with testosterone. See, this is what naturally happens in a woman's body when she ovulates or 3 days before ovulation. Naturally, her estrogen levels have doubled. Okay, this is, you know, if you're still young and you're not inhibiting it with birth control and various things, your estrogen levels will automatically double. This doesn't happen easily as you get older because we have higher levels of stress. We have inhibitions that develop and so forth, psychological blocks to feeling I can trust. But when you're young, you know, you haven't been betrayed so much. Your estrogen rises up to twice as high. Okay. So now this is twice as high. Now, what happens when a woman's estrogen levels double? Naturally, her testosterone goes up. That's when her testosterone level goes way, way up. That's where she starts to feel, I want to be penetrated. I want something in my vagina. I want to feel that connection. This is biology. When estrogen goes up, then again, she's feeling safe. And then her testosterone will go up. And testosterone then has a function of creating a desire to be penetrated so she can get pregnant. Okay, so this is, you know, the way nature figured this out. This is infinite intelligence working here. What you do is now your estrogen level is going up naturally. The, the, the clitoris will feel really good to be touched because that actual physical stimulation increases the testosterone to start balancing with the estrogen. Then what happens is testosterone starts to go too high. That creates an imbalance. That creates a tension. And that tension is pleasurable because that's the whole sexual tension is pleasurable. It's very addictive. So she intensifies until the body has a spasm and releases it. And that's what's called a climax. What the stimulation of the clitoris is for is to raise her testosterone until she wants to be penetrated, not to have a climax. So I'm telling women, give up your— what is it— your machinery. This is bad stuff. What you're doing with your machinery is you're overstimulating your clitoris, which then inhibits the energy of the vagina waking up and being multi-orgasmic. It's the vagina that can take you to the higher, higher levels of emotional vulnerability. Orgasmic pleasure, which rises and falls and rises and falls. It's become orgasmic. And then you kind of just feel a peak of that and you enjoy it and you're done. And it's like you've used up the sexual potency, but you can use up your sexual potency with a climax right away. Now, the reason I like to emphasize this is once I want couples to experience multi-orgasmic making love, But in studying Chinese medicine and acupuncture, I spent 10 years in China studying this stuff and Taoism and kung fu and qigong and all these various things. They have a knowledge of the energy systems in the body. And what they would say is that when you stimulate the clitoris, you're stimulating your adrenal, your kidneys, your kidney channels, okay, and the adrenal. Other points in the vagina stimulate other organs in your body. So this whole thing is that the sex is supposed to heal your body, create longevity. And there's 4 basic levels they talk about in the vagina that you want to bring your sex energy, love energy to those places. And the clitoris being one, the breast being one, the mouth being one, the whole body being one. So they call them the different gates that you go through. If you use up your sex energy on the clitoris, what you're doing according to them is you're overstimulating your kidneys. And when you overstimulate your kidneys, one of the symptoms of it is water retention. Some women don't want intercourse because it's too emotional. It's too vulnerable, just like touching your breasts for some women, too vulnerable for, you know, the clitoris. Ironically, it's the place that's the least vulnerable because it's a testosterone stimulator. When you see in the movies, it's like a cliché now is when the couple gets all excited, you know, they're going to have sex, the guy immediately goes down on her because he can stimulate the clitoris. And it's like easy, easy pleasure. It creates a tension. Women are in the habit of looking to the addiction. They get it like men get addicted to ejaculation. Women get addicted to the climax that happens with the clitoris. So they have to have an awareness, a knowing of observing what happens when the clitoris is being stimulated. It's very pleasurable, but the pleasure will go in waves. It will start to rise up and it will start to go down. And what women tend to do— I'm not a woman, so I'm not aware of this. I have a partner who told me this. And that there's a place where the energy will start to go down. And then that's when they focus in trying to intensify. So the whole idea of female multi-orgasmic experience is no, and no trying at all, no intensifying. The testosterone is intensifying, you know, focus. And so when, when the energy starts to disappear, if you don't understand that it will come back, okay, like a man's attention, he'll pull it away, it will come back. If she doesn't know it will come back, she'll pursue it. Okay, same thing with the pleasure and sex, which is it will naturally dip down and like it's, it's not automatic. It's not happening. So then she'll try to make it happen by focusing in and intensifying. And that intensifying builds up until spasm happens and she releases all her sex energy. And that will also create more distance between the two of them and prevent her from actually experiencing this high level of emotional bonding that can occur as different points in the vagina literally show up. Most commonly, that's called the G-spot. But the right arousal, the G-spot will naturally rise up like a little quarter. It comes up. And in the beginning, for some women, it feels like she wants to peek, but it's an emotional thing. It's actually a block to feeling emotionally receptive. And so you have to have good relationship outside the bedroom in order to have good sex in the bedroom. And then sex becomes what I call enlightened sexuality, which means you're not having sex for any goal. There's the goal of increasing pleasure is no longer the goal. The goal is feeling pleasure, which arises quite spontaneously in order to feel more. And as you can feel more, you focus on feeling. A man focuses on feeling his love that he has for his partner and expressing that love. And a woman feels more to feel the vulnerability of the part of her that needs love, that needs a man's love, that needs to be reassured that she is loved. So this is the depth of a woman's femininity, is the part of her that values love over survival even. So this is, you know, you can't get to this level of high ecstatic union unless you've gotten survival needs pretty much taken care of. And that's what's going on in the world today, changing the subject a little bit, is that to a great extent we're free from survival and a woman can go out and earn her own money. So it's basically we're out of the survival mode. And as soon as a woman can go out and make her own money, not dependent, not depending on a man for her survival to a certain extent, then what happens is she has a new need. And the new need is I need love. Love is more important than anything. Love is even more important than money. Money is survival. Okay. So you need money, you need survival. But at a certain point, If you're independent, you've got money to a certain degree. I mean, we always create worries and everything. That's human nature, but you're not, you're not homeless. You're not the bag person on the street, which is every woman's, almost every woman's deepest fear. So, my God, what if I was to be a bag person? You know, it's terrible. So these are these deep, deep insecurities. And there's nothing wrong with that. What you're doing is penetrating into the depth of feeling the value of love that I need to feel. A man's love for me. And ironically, the only time a man can fully feel his love for you is when he's turned on. This is why sex is so important for both the man and the woman. For me, enlightened sexuality frees me from being just this masculine being to being masculine and feminine. The feminine part of me is the love part of me. But once again, men have these genes that override to a great extent, their ability to feel. We just have muscle mass. The more muscle mass a man has, the less he can feel. Also, the less negativity he can feel. You know, he'll be very calm and peaceful, but he doesn't necessarily feel deeply. This is biology. This is muscle mass. This is testosterone. You know, think about it. Testosterone goes up if you're a warrior protecting your wife, right? You're out in the world protecting her. Testosterone goes up and you might have to kill somebody. You can't be feeling love for that person. You're feeling love for your wife, and that allows you to kill somebody or kill an animal or whatever you have to do for your family to survive. So we're cut off from our feelings tremendously. We can access them. It's very easy for a man to access feelings through addiction. Anything that feels good will produce estrogen in a man. But the problem here is that insecurity of a man, he immediately goes to his female side. And that's where addiction comes from. When I don't feel capable and confident as a man to make a difference in the world, I'll start finding something that will make me feel good. And that means he goes to his female side. Same thing for a woman. It's always easier to go to her male side. When you're a woman, the female side says, I depend on others to a great extent. Well, if I can't depend on others, I'll do it myself. And every woman knows how easy that is to say, I'll just do it myself. He didn't do it. I'll do it myself. Okay. Right over your male side. Well, when men have insecurity and where that's coming from is she's feeling insecure. I don't have love and support. Okay. I don't have that support. So I'll do it myself. Well, the same thing for a man. When he feels insecure on his male side, he'll go right to his female side. Well, I'll just, uh, if I'll just depend on someone else to do it for me and I'll wait and I'll procrastinate or I'll, I'll depend on food to make me feel good. I'll depend on some men are addicted to exercise even. I'll I'll depend on exercise to produce endorphins, then I'll feel good, as opposed to doing productive behavior in service of others in the world. And this is the training every boy needs. And unfortunately, the crisis I see happening really with testosterone, another side of it, is so clearly evident with fatherless boys, okay, and fatherless girls. Right now, 70% of the Black population in America does not have a man in the home. Boys have to have that. Girls have to have that. Otherwise you can't trust men. You don't know what's great about men. You don't know how to use men. You don't get the benefit what men can offer. You don't have it in your consciousness of how amazing it is to have a man around. And a boy doesn't know how to be a man. So when your masculinity is weak, it's so easy just to go to your female side and do what feels good. I remember this as a teenager. Okay. So for a different reason, I went to my female side. There was this natural balancing out. Happened in the collective consciousness for our consciousness was raised. The '60s was, you know, the Beatles, rock and roll, LSD, all those things was elevated consciousness just thrust upon society. Males started growing their hair out, you know, and started taking drugs, starting to be free. Sex was free. All of that is the message, do what you like. Do what you like. Now, if you take do what you like to the nth degree, it's a satanic message. People should just know that. I mean, I've read all the satanic books as well. The whole principle is you're above law. You do what you like to do. Your will is good for everybody. And that's pure narcissism. Okay. That's when we actually look at what narcissism is, is if something's good for me, it must be good for you. I'm not going to check it out. This is, this is the, the man who's turned on to a woman and thinks she's turned on to him just because he's turned on to her. Well, if I've turned on to you, you must be turned on to me, but maybe she's ready to throw you out the door. But this has no sense of other. Part of masculinity is of service to others. That's how it blossoms in grows through work and then eventually having the rewards, the spoils of work to share that with someone who's more important than anybody else. And that's called marriage. And people don't understand the benefits of marriage today. It's that there's health benefits, longevity benefits. People who are married live longer. Fact. People who are married have more sex. Fact. Even though that's going down, that is a fact. Uh, people—

would you say married happily? Because I mean, how many toxic relationships are there as well?

But I'm just looking at the statistics. It doesn't matter whether it's toxic or not. I mean, clearly toxic relationships, there are toxic relationships. But there's a, see, we're talking about optimum. I mean, I was just listening to a podcast, The Ultimate Human, nice podcast. And, you know, this is the ultimate life. Not everybody wants the ultimate life. Okay. So for me, I don't care about looking like Hercules. Okay. That's not for some people, that's their ultimate life. You know, what I care about is family relationships, grandchildren, great sex, happy wife. And I'm very selfish about that. You know, I know what it takes. I know what you have to do. What I'm seeing is that every man who doesn't have that doesn't know, hasn't been taught how you, what you have to do to get that. He just hasn't been taught. And the good news is women can actually educate men in a way to bring that out of him by just asking for what they need in a way that doesn't make him feel blamed. And that's tough. That, that's a whole nother talk, okay? How to motivate a man to be his best self, you know. But testosterone— we covered hormones quite a bit today, but the, the whole idea of, uh, too much sex or not enough sex is going to regulate your hormone levels. Um, yeah. However, as you get more mature and more free, more connected to your male and female sides— if you're a man, that's maturity. You can be both independent, but also deeply intimate and depending on your partner and appreciating her love, her support, and all that, which is there. Okay. As you get to that place, you make another hormone in your body, which is called prolactin. And prolactin frees men from sexual addiction or the addiction to release. So I have so much prolactin. It's also the monogamy hormone. Prolactin says, I'm not, I can't be turned on to other women. I can only be turned on to my wife.

Okay.

So this is amazing. This is produces prolactin. And they've measured this. When they're happily married couple, men produce prolactin. If I have sex with myself or had sex online or with a stranger, you don't make prolactin as a man. You only make prolactin with your partner. And that's built by nature. Nature says if you find a woman you love, be satisfied and stay with her with the children so you can be there for the children. So you make this prolactin. So as prolactin builds and you have polarity in your relationship, then you can have sex without the need to release. So when you have no need to release, you can have sex every day. She's in the mood anytime, anywhere, if you've got time, and he's in the mood as well. So that's what we can look forward to as we begin to master these basics that I'm talking about. Then there's the advanced stuff, which is the best retirement ever, even though you're not retired. You keep working, you're having more sex than you've ever had in your life. That's That's the situation I'm in now. But it took learning how to master these hormones and generate enough of the certain hormones that it can allow you to do this. As a younger man, I tried doing it and I used to just get blue balls. You know, my body needed to release. But after a while, your body doesn't, you can free yourself. That's very mindful. You have to practice it. It's another skill. We've sort of run out of time, but we had a great conversation though.

Yeah, I love it as well. I didn't get to ask the question around women being multi-orgasmic and the importance of that as well.

Well, that will happen more. Let's just finish. If you stop, if you just give up the clitoral release, stimulate the clitoris just enough where you feel, I want to be penetrated. But also, when the clitoris pleasure goes down, don't focus in on it, but just allow the body to relax and then feel the desire to be penetrated, because that was a surge of testosterone. It's going to drop back down. Then you go to gentle penetration. And then it's more emotional. And so then it's very, you have to talk a lot at this point. Okay. This, you have to, you have to build your estrogen to super high levels. Couples usually don't talk. So what I suggest is the beginning, this is a little bit advanced skill, but you have good communication. You can communicate it. I, if I have 15 more minutes, I can communicate this one, but it's basically what it looks like is while you're making love, she says, do you love me? He says, yes. She says, how much do you love me? With all my heart. She says, do you think I'm beautiful? Yes. Are you happy about, are you still mad at me? No, I'm not mad at you. Am I the only one for you? You get reassurance. You verbalize these insecurities, acknowledge the need for love and any doubts you might have. And he's trained to know that he's not going to say, well, of course I love you. That's why I work so hard. No, he just answers the question. And what that does in expressing his love in that way when she's needing it amplifies his ability to feel love. It amplifies his ability to feel love by articulating it. When he feels that love more, it allows her estrogen to go higher levels of feeling love. I mean, you can't feel so loved by a man if he's not in touch with his feelings. So sex is just there to help me feel more, and then I feel more love, and I communicate that love through my behavior, through my actions, but also through my words and through sounds. Sounds also, at a certain point, then you're bringing in the deepest level of instinct with the highest self. Then you're making lots of loud noises. The ahs and the oohs and, you know, all these humming sounds start coming out of you. But this is like fantastic for your body, for longevity, making love, not just having sex for a release, but making love.

Beautiful, John. Unfortunately, we have to stop here. I know that you have other appointments on. So I thank you so much for all your wisdom and insight. This has been a fantastic conversation as always. So I really appreciate you coming on. Before we just finish up, where would you like people to check out, to follow to, what can we link to?

So marsvenus.com, there's a free class there. Uh, there's also other classes there that have a cost something. And one of them is Secrets of Great Sex. Another one of them is, um, and they're whole workshops, you know, with little fill out the form and all these, what is it, modules and questionnaires and exercises. And I show you all the answers to the exercises. So you all make A. So that's one. And then the most popular is for women understanding men. Men. Uh, it's just fantastic. And then if you've done that and you love it, then go back and do another one, which is called the, the Me Time class, which is getting me time. We talked a little bit about that. Uh, yeah, it's just, it's a lot of single women go, I don't need me time. That's all I have is me time. And the key is how to be in a relationship and create enough time for yourself to find that balance. Understanding Men is a fantastic class. I highly, highly recommend it. And we've got some other ones, How to Bring Out the Best in a Man and so forth. Little. So sign up there. And also at the top of the page is lithium orotate. It's called Elemental Orotates is what it's called. And click there, it'll take you to a site at Amazon that at least explains it. That's the only place you can buy it is at Amazon. So those are some really wonderful options for people if they want to hear more.

Beautiful. Thank you so much, Shawn, for coming on again today. And thank you everyone for listening and tuning in.