What’s Causing Your Low Sex Drive and How To Fix It!

Why does low sex drive happen, and what does it really mean for your health? In this episode, Dr. Diane Mueller, naturopathic doctor, leading expert in sexual wellness, and founder of MyLibidoDoc, discusses the physical, emotional, and relationship causes of low libido in both women and men, and how understanding these root factors can help you reignite desire, Balance Hormones and Restore Vitality. Welcome, Diane.

Oh, thank you for having me, Rita. It's gonna be a great convo. And, you know, maybe I'll just start by saying that, that it's estimated that 70% of people want to talk to their doctors about sex and their libido and don't, according to surveys. So I'm just so grateful we're talking about this today because I think it's something that people have on their minds. Like, what is happening here? But oftentimes we don't feel safe to bring it up, and we feel like maybe we're gonna make somebody uncomfortable. So I just— thank you so much for having me so we can, you know, put those things away and really help some people.

It's almost like there's a bit of shame attached to if you don't have— if you're not virile, you don't have this amazing sex life. And it's— and I also find it really curious how many people Ask married couples, so what's your sex life like? How many times do you do it a week? And— but it's, it's none of their business for a start. And it also makes people feel like they can't tell the truth.

Yeah, you know, I think we ask those questions because we're all trying to figure out, like, are we normal, right? There's like an element of like, what's normal? Are we on track? Are we normal? Like, are we off track? You know, it's a funny thing too, because even in medicine, we don't even really know what normal is. And so, like, But when we're actually defining low sex drive, low libido, in medicine we call it hypoactive sexual desire disorder, that stupid mouthful. But in order to get this diagnosis, right, from your doctor, here's how you get it. You go to your doctor and you say, hey, doc, I've had a low libido. I've had a low sex drive for 6 months now. And the doctor's like, oh, 6 whole months. Now we can officially diagnose you as having low libido. So if you tell your doctor that you've had a low sex drive for 5 months, you don't have a low libido. If you tell your doctor you have for 6 months, you do. We're not even defining low as compared to what. So like, it's like maddening because low, there's, there's no definition for what is normal and what is not. So here's how I define it. What we see, and this also kind of goes into your, with like what you've already said around people asking their friends or like, how much do you do it? And how much do you do it?

Right.

What we see is that when we're looking at surveys of couples that are reporting the happiest, in their marriages, in their long-term relationships, they're having sex about 50 times a year, just barely under that once a week mark. So that's what I tell couples is like, hey, if you're not moving towards like, you know, having that desire, prioritizing that at about once a week, that's where we can say, hey, if it's less than that, we should really look and say, this is probably a low desire, low sex drive, because we know less than that has a, has negative impacts on the relationship. And that's what I'm interested in is How can people be the healthiest and the happiest? So if we're finding that, oh, less than this is— we're moving away from relationship health and happiness as well as even personal health and happiness, which we can get to. That's where I feel like we should draw that line of, okay, less than this is a level of imbalance.

What do you think, in your opinion, are some of the real causes of low libido? You know, because everyone blames their hormones, but it's not always your hormones.

Yeah, it's not always your hormones. So I talk about this in my book, Want to Want It, which is up for presale right now. I don't know when this episode's coming out, but the book's coming out soon. So wherever you're at, you'll be able to get it soon. Um, and to tell you some information now, it's so important, this whole thing around hormones, because—

Mm-hmm.

One of the things that I find in these conversations around holistic care and getting to the roots is We are in a culture that thankfully is moving towards finding the root. But here's where we're going wrong with that is oftentimes we are looking for— the way people are defining it is the root cause singular.

Mm-hmm.

And in 15 years of having a medical practice, I've never seen one person with a root cause singular. Everybody has a root cause plural. So maybe there's gonna be somebody someday in my career that's gonna ruin my, you know, my perfect batting average here. But I think it's gonna be of anything. I think it'd be a very rare case, right? So point being like hormones are absolutely very, very important but it's not uncommon that somebody gets, you know, gets put on something like testosterone replacement therapy and their libido goes up and 3 weeks later, they're like, well, it's back down. It doesn't mean the hormones weren't part of the picture. It just means there's many root causes. Hormones, thyroid, stress, and the interesting thing about stress as a root cause is—

Stress.

Some people— there are exceptions where some people do find that stress puts like the real brakes on their libido. Stress can cause our testosterone to go down, so that's one mechanism. There are exceptions though. Some people will find that stress revs up their libido, so I do wanna at least name that. And then we have circulation and circulatory problems. But here's what's also interesting around that is oftentimes we think of circulation and we think of, okay, that has something to do with men and men's erectile tissue. And of course it It does. But we're kind of leaving the ladies out of the equation here, and the ladies really need circulation too, because when we have a proper circulation— circulatory system and the blood flow goes to the vulva and the vagina, what happens to all of these structures for the female is they engorge, they fill with this blood. And if they don't, sex hurts. It does not feel good. So we need, as the— as ladies, we need that circulation just like men.

Mm-hmm.

Pelvic floor function is another big thing, and pelvic floor will drive— like, dysfunction will drive low desire, sometimes through pain, sometimes through creation of things like numbness in parts of the tissues. And this is kind of the opposite of circulation, because with circulation, we think a lot about, like I said, like, that gets a lot of press for the men. Well, pelvic floor gets a lot of press for the ladies, you know, do your Kegels kind of thing.

Yeah.

But pelvic floor problems for men can actually be a cause of erectile dysfunction. And so we're kind of leaving the men out of the conversation there. So we need the pelvic floor, the 14 muscles that make up this hammock that sits at the bottom of our abdominal cavity. We need it working well for the gents. We need it working well for the ladies. And then another big root cause is neurological system. And if the neurological system's inflamed, that can send improper signals to the genitals. You can get improper feedback. So maybe you're not— you're not feeling these sensations correctly. And then we have to say, well, what's gonna cause neurological inflammation? So this is where we get into like blood sugar problems, infections, toxins, and toxic overload can lead to a lot of those problems. And in order to like determine all this, because I'm sure so many of your listeners know that a lot of the tests that we're running in conventional medicine Are not very good for, um, you know, looking at this.

Absolutely not. Right.

So if people go and take my free quiz at libidoquiz.com, it's gonna spit out which, based upon your symptoms, are the likely top root causes here for you. And then you're also gonna get a list of lab tests that are important for you to ask your doctor about. So I created that free quiz so that people would have a way of advocating for themselves. To actually say, oh, doc, you're not ordering this full panel. I need you to order this, this, this, and this. And if they're not, then maybe it's time to, you know, find a different doc. But that's a great resource for people to at least get like a solid list. So now you can self-advocate.

When it comes to finding out, well, like, like you said, you've got this quiz and people go to the doctor and they say, oh no, you're fine. You know, I've had it myself. I've gone there. And they go, you're perfectly fine. Your, your thyroid is within normal range. And then you walk away and you're still confused. Like you said, it's so hard. Even though they go, oh, is it going to be my pelvic floor? Oh yes, I— maybe my circulation isn't that great. But where do they start? How do they even start assimilating this information and go, okay, this is going to be my first step?

Yeah. I mean, that's why I created that quiz. So I would definitely say go take that quiz because that is going to tell you like we should consider all these things, but the quiz is gonna tell you based upon your symptoms, this is like the area to start. That is exactly why I created— I worked with a developer to create this very, very detailed, you know, programmatic quiz so that it really can help people get. And of course, you know, it's not medical advice. Like always talk to your doctor about it. But as we said, like sometimes they're not fully investigating as much. So that is really a great first step for people to do that. So you can know, oh, this is, this is a good place to start. Because really, without testing, any of these things can be involved.

Exactly. And someone, if it is blood circulation, or if it is muscular pelvic floor, are there recommendations there of who they can see for that type of thing? Or Do you know where they can start with that?

I mean, the biggest thing I would look for is a holistic or functional medicine doctor.

Yes.

So that's what— I don't have recommendations there because I do so much internationally and sadly I don't have doctors in every country around the world yet, but hopefully I will at some point have people all over the world to refer to. But— but for now, just things to look at are, you know, like look up functional medicine docs and look up holistic docs and I would actually, you know, talk to them on that first Uh-huh. You know, visit, talk to their staff and ask things like, okay, well, what do you— you know, what tests do you run for the thyroid? For example. And if they're just saying they run TSH and maybe like free T4, for example, they're just saying they run those tests and they really don't like to run anymore, that's probably a sign that they're not the right doc for you from a standpoint of really understanding the whole mechanisms of that. So that's where you can use like once you have the list that my quiz will generate, you can even use that as a way of interviewing docs to say like, hey, like, are you— you know, how do you look for circulation? Because, for example, like with circulation, a lot of all like what docs are doing is just looking at blood pressure.

Okay, that's good.

We want to know that. And looking at cholesterol. But what we even see of like the normal cholesterol panels is when we're doing scans of the arteries, like ultrasounds or like calcium scores, Which are really showing the plaque on the arteries, which is really more the problem from a standpoint of the circulatory system, right? Is like, are the arteries full of plaque where they're not gonna harden, they're not gonna contract, we're not gonna get the blood flow? Well, your standard cholesterol panel is not very well correlated with actually showing act— or predicting plaque on the arteries. Now, if you order a, a serum, a blood marker called apolipoprotein B, That is a much better marker for showing— it's much better correlated with doing things like an ultrasound to see if there's plaque on the artery. That ultrasound much better matches that apolipoprotein B than a regular lipid panel. So now, you know, okay, at a minimum, if you're going to look for things like circulation, scans are good, right? Imaging is great. But as a minimum entry point, you want to at least look at that apolipoprotein B.

Uh-huh.

So you get a sense of it, a better sense of it. And that's the kind of stuff we wanna— how we wanna advocate, you know, and not make sure we're not just doing something basic in this example like a lipid panel.

Libido is kind of a reflection of your overall health.

It is. And I'm so glad you brought that up, Rita, because I think so many times I feel like what happens for many people is they make a decision to be like, oh, you know what, my libido's low, I'm just not going to like prioritize, I just don't care anymore. And the libido is a flag of just like any other, any other imbalance in the body, right? It's, it's in many ways like people wouldn't, like, wouldn't say like, well, I just decided that I don't have— I don't care if I have diarrhea every day and I'm just going to be okay with that. And we can make that decision for sure, but it would be very normal if somebody said like, well, I'm just gonna live with my diarrhea, for somebody to be like, okay, well, there's clearly something going on why you have diarrhea every day. Maybe you should get that checked out. And yet we're still at a point where we haven't realized like what is behind low libido. And so oftentimes there's like this separate category that when people are experiencing that, that they just put this on the shelf as like, well, I don't need to worry about it. When actually it's— it's just a different imbalance in the body. It's just a different imbalance sometimes in the relationship, just like having diarrhea or any other symptom.

We all, you know, know about now, you know, the— everybody talks about the mind-body connection. So when it comes to emotions, and if we can touch on now the emotions and the relationship issues and how that can affect— so you may be feeling full of energy, or, you know, you feel like, oh, I can run 7, 10, 20 kilometers and I don't have any problems. And you think physically you're fit. Emotionally and in your relationship, it's not going so well. Or how does that impact our libido?

Yeah, you know, there's 3— when I look at libido and root causes, there's 3 different pillars, kind of like categories that I put the causes in. So the one's a physical root pillar that we've just talked about, all the physical things. The second pillar is the personal thing. So this is anything from our— if we have body shame or genital image shame, it is If we have any shame with sex, it's, uh, are we feeling like we can be present in our body? Are we emotionally regulated? All of those things. And then the third category is interpersonal. And interpersonal is how is our relationship with our partner? Are we able to ask for our needs, our wants, our preferences, our desires? Are we able to receive that from our partner? Right? So—

Mm-hmm.

So those are the different areas. So we do wanna consider all 3 of these pillars always in our conversation and our, our diagnostics and looking at the Cause here. So from that standpoint of what you were talking about, you know, some of what you were talking about is in the personal pillar, right? So it's in that, that emotional, like, standpoint around like, okay, do we feel safe? Do we feel safe in ourselves? Now, if we don't feel safe in our partnership, you know, that's in that other pillar. But we wanna start to say like, how are we able, are we actually able to stay present when somebody touches us? Not even sexually. Let's say just our, our partner puts their hand on our thigh or puts our, their hand on our belly, our back. Are we like, ooh, like, oh, I don't want them to feel my fat rolls. Right? If we're, if we're thinking that way, one of the problems with that is the moment that we are in this, in this place of being so worried about like this fat roll or that fat roll, or how I look here or how I look there, it's impossible to enjoy.

Mm-hmm.

Pleasure, because we cannot enjoy pleasure if we are not present. And if my mind is constantly leaving because of, um, how I'm feeling about anything, right? How I'm feeling about my body, how I'm feeling about my genitals, any shame I have, any, you know, anger I'm still carrying, any frustration. If my mind's out there, then it's very, very impossible to actually feel the arousal systems of the body. And, and really sex and intimacy. It's a mindfulness-based kind of stress or stress practice because what we're really doing is we're saying, hey, if your mind wanders to anything, you know, your frustrations of the day, whatever it is, then just like with any other mindfulness-based type of activity, your mind wanders and then the exercise is like, oh, I noticed my mind's over there and it's not present in the moment, and we bring it back and the mind wanders in and we bring it back and mind wanders again and we bring it back. That's really what we're doing with sex and intimacy. Like the mind may wander, it's normal, but we wanna catch it and bring it back. And if we're finding that our— we're constantly in this phase where like we're not able to stay present with the touch and stay present with the sensations, then oftentimes there is some level of something in that personal realm that may need to be looked at. Like what is our body image? What is our genital image? How are we feeling about ourselves?

Mm-hmm.

Do we have shame around our sexuality? Those kind of things.

I think societal and family influence on sex would play a huge part, like especially if being told by your parents that sex is, you know, not something to be celebrated, it's only to, you know, should be in private. Or even some people like a generation back, or even in this generation, can say, you know, sex is a bit dirty. You know, remember they always said, oh, sex is dirty. Don't— you know, it's not to be talked about, it's not to be celebrated. All those subconscious beliefs must be playing a significant role in how you open up your, yourself, your heart to receive, you know, uh, sexual gratification.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And you know, it's, it's so interesting how much the world plays into this. Like, even thinking about Movies and porn. And we see these scenes, right? Like, even like, take like porn's its own category, but even take like regular movies where we see these scenes. And, you know, a classic like rom-com kind of hot scene is like, okay, guy like approaches woman and like, you know, lifts up her skirt or whatever, and they're in some hot scene in the library, and in 2 seconds he's penetrating her, in 2 minutes she's orgasming, and they're both having the best time of their life. And it's not real. It's fantasy. It's just fantasy. Like, that is not real.

Everyone's looking at it, if only.

Right, exactly. And so it's so easy to like— like, like, the example I give is like, the, the brain knows how to differentiate superheroes from reality. So we don't watch Superman and think like, oh, that's Superman and I can fly, right? The brain's so like— it's so obvious to the brain That that is fantasy and this is reality. But I think because, you know, when we're dealing with things like watching other humans, you know, that look like us in many ways—they're not in superhero costumes—is what I mean by that. And they are engaged intimately, and that's oftentimes the only model we have of like because we don't talk about this. So we have to get all the information we have from these scenes like that, and we see that, and we think like. Oh, that's what sex is supposed to look like. It's— that's how I'm supposed to feel. I'm supposed to like have an orgasm that fast. It's supposed to be that hot and heavy all the time. I'm supposed to be wet in 2 minutes like that as a woman. I'm, you know, all of these different things that are just fantasy and not reality. So I don't think it's necessarily like bad from the standpoint of like those scenes can be in there, but I think what is bad is we're not taught to recognize those scenes as fantasy. fantasy. And so oftentimes we are influenced by them and, and think that that's more like the reality of what our sex life should look like.

Yeah, absolutely. It's a bit like that for everything, isn't it? As in social media, everybody thinks, you know, oh, that person has such a fantastic lifestyle, or look how healthy they are. If you have this, you'll be like that. It's confusing for people, and you can understand, like, it would be like Emotional exhaustion trying to decipher that's fantasy and this is how I am and this is how I feel good and this is what's good for me. That level— you'd need a level of confidence in yourself, would you not, to say, this is what I like, this is how I like it, and this is what makes me happy and gives me pleasure, as opposed to people pleasing or pleasing your partner but you don't find it enjoyable.

Yeah, that happens so much. And the cool thing though that I find for many people is like the bedroom is a great place to practice for the boardroom. And what I mean by that is that it can be a beautiful place for people to start speaking up and being like, oh, this is what I need and this is what I want. And for many people, this is like the first time it's a place where they can self-advocate for themselves. And if we're with the right partner and we're doing it the right way, and there's ways I help people learn how to do this more effectively cuz communication's crucial here.

Mm-hmm.

But if we're like all of a sudden received well with that and, and we're received and we're loved through our requests, it actually can give people a lot more confidence to be like, oh, like, yeah, I have had success asking for things that I want. And, and so it really— and we actually see that, that, that sex can improve and in many cases does improve confidence. And I think this is one of the reasons is that once we start advocating and say, hey honey, like. I would like this position or do this here, touch me this way, or let's change this, and we start to advocate it really, it's a practice skill. And the more we get natural at it, it just bleeds out into many areas of our lives.

Centuries, women have been indoctrinated that we have to be passive in the bedroom. And pleasure is about— our pleasure is about how much pleasure we give to our partner.

Yes, it's so, it's so messed up. And, you know, I think to further add on to that, another stat that people should realize, because this is a pretty important one, is only 18 to 30% of women can actually orgasm through penetration alone. So it's another myth, right? Like, we're taught oftentimes, and like Freud— Freud did like some really bad things for females. Um, one of the things he believed and he taught, that it was that A female could have orgasms through clitoral stimulation pre-menarche, meaning pre her first menstrual period. But at the first menstrual period, she was spontaneously supposed to switch over to only having orgasms through vaginal intercourse. And if she was not able to do that, then she was frigid. So there was this real like cultural teaching around like this, you know, intercourse and orgasm through intercourse as being like the way. And it's still in our culture and society today. And, you know, intercourse is wonderful. It's a wonderful, like, part of the whole experience, but it's only one of many wonderful parts. And for most women, for the majority of women, we need other types of stimulation other than just penetration to actually experience the depths of our pleasure.

When we look at men and women and what influences us and how we feel comfortable and perform in the bedroom, Do you see distinct differences? Like, you know, does, say, uh, performance anxiety affect men more than what it does women? Are women more conditioned to be, like we said, passive? And that has its own issues. Do you see some, you know, distinct differences between the genders on what they struggle with?

You know, there can be— there's definitely tendencies, but a lot of these things can go either way. Um, you know, for women, it's like you're not dealing with like the performance anxiety that men are, but a lot of women are worried about needing to orgasm at the right time or needing to orgasm at all. And, you know, there's this like vicious cycle that gets oftentimes created for the female, especially for the female that is not able to orgasm through intercourse alone. The majority, if there's not this awareness and there's just that focus on penile sex because Oftentimes she'll feel like a level to perform the orgasm and be like, okay, well, you know, I have to give my partner this orgasm, otherwise they're gonna feel like they're incomplete or that they're letting me down. So oftentimes females know that, that it's a very important thing for their partner to feel like he provided this to her. And so females can have a different sort of performance. For the females, it might not be like the performance anxiety around, you know, around actually maintaining an erection, but it's like almost like the performance sex type of anxiety around like, okay, well, like, if I don't come, I'm gonna have to fake it. And what does that look like? And that, and that sort of thing. So I think a lot of these things can happen bidirectionally, but it oftentimes will, you know, kind of show up slightly different in man versus woman.

When it comes to— you talk about, you know, reigniting desire in your clients. So how can you give us a snippet for someone who's gone, oh wow, this is what I need? Can you give us a snippet of how you help clients to reignite that desire. What, what do you do with them?

Yeah, I mean, there's so, so, so many different components of this. So I have tons of classes and workshops and online ways of helping, definitely more than we can cover now, but I'm always about action. I'm always about action right now. So one of the first steps for that is I find that oftentimes people need to find a way to motivate themselves. And, you know, especially if it's like, like most humans where we're, you know, most humans these days are productivity focused and high performers and we're balancing so many different things. And it's so easy to put that on the, you know, the desire on the shelf as like, well, maybe it's important, maybe I don't care, but whatever, I'll attend to it later. So here's the exercise. That being said, make a values list. And so write your top values just on a piece of paper, kind of top to bottom being the top 2, hopefully. Are gonna be yourself and your partner and, you know, and God's spirit, you know, if you believe in anything like that. If it's not, if you find your partner's not right there at the top, it definitely would be a good time to talk to a therapist about that because most relationship coaches have said that, hey, we, that's incredibly important for the health of relationship to have your partner at that top of the value. But make your values list. Now, second exercise. Draw a circle and make a pie chart. You're putting 24 pieces of pie in the circle. They don't have to be equal in looks. It doesn't have to be pretty. Just make 24 pieces of pie. And when you do this, you're going to write in hopefully 7 to 9 of them. You're going to write sleep because that's what you're doing during those 24 hours of the day or during those, those portion of the day. Then we're going to fill in the rest of the pieces of pie with what you're doing hour by hour on average. And this is an aha exercise. It's kind of like deciding one day when you think like, oh yeah, I'm eating pretty well, and then you decide to use an app to actually write down what you're eating and you're like, wow, I'm like, nah, maybe I'm not eating as well as I thought, right? For a lot of people, it's that aha moment of like, yeah, I think I have like, you know, I see my partner at breakfast, I see him at dinner, like I think I'm like giving him time. I'm talking about him-specific time, not when it's Him and the children are running around, not when it's him and you're managing work, like him or her specific time. And what you're looking for is, do you have a place in the pie for your top values, yourself, your partner, and, you know, God, spirit, if you believe any of those things? And if, if you do not have a place in your pie chart for those things, if this continues over months, years, you are going to have Uh-huh. A problem. So it's kind of like looking at food and being like, oh, yeah, well, okay, I can get away with this for a couple weeks, sure. But if I continue to eat chocolate cake every day, you know, months and years go by, I might have a problem and, you know, the problem might be diabetes. The problem might be all sorts of things. So it's just that aha moment and the other key piece of this is to remember in the words of a mentor of mine who wrote a book called Someday. Sam Horn, is that someday is not a day of the week. We got to remember that we're seeing this when we're seeing this, and the value list is right there, and we don't have time for, you know, we don't have a place for our partner in our pie chart. That if we say we're gonna get to this someday, someday's actually is not actually a real day. So it's this, that is that first step to say, holy crap, holy cow, like this is a real thing. It's in your face. You can see the problem and that is oftentimes that motivational step for people to say, you know what? This is a very risky thing to do to download this, you know, this book or to sign up for this course, but I'm gonna do that and I'm gonna take action today because Sunday's not a day of the week.

When you're busy, you're stressed, you have a newborn or you have a young toddler, you know, and you're both working. Sex goes on the back burner for so many, and even the desire, because you're so exhausted, goes right down. So it's making that special effort, you know. Like, I like, um, a lot of my friends my age, and, you know, we've been married a long time and we still go, you know what, factor in date night, you know.

Yes.

We're going to put in date night. Not, oh, let's just go to the movies, you know, because that's just like, let me escape the boredom from home and my routine. But calling it date night, all of a sudden it's like, oh, I might get dressed up, you know?

Yes.

Maybe we'll go— what about a little meal beforehand with a glass of wine, you know, and talk to each other? Essential. I find it's essential. And it is, it is going that extra mile. And, and it feels like it can be something that's just on your to-do list. But it's really important for it to be something special. How much does a healthy diet play into having a healthy libido?

Well, a lot. But the thing that I always like people to know in this regard is my personal belief around aphrodisiac foods is don't look at— don't look like, like for a list of aphrodisiac foods on the internet and be like, oh, I'm gonna eat these foods and my libido is gonna be great. So here's why. So if we look at aphrodisiac foods, one of the big aphrodisiac foods is oysters. And oysters has likely been known as an aphrodisiac food because it has a lot of zinc which helps us create testosterone. Now oysters, in my experience of talking to people about oysters, is generally a love-hate type of thing. You either love oysters or you hate them. Some people are in the middle, but most people when I've gone out— I hate them. Like, yeah, exactly. That's how most people are. And so if we're gonna say this food is an aphrodisiac, but it feels not good to us, we like don't like the experience. We're like just trying to get it down because there's no pleasure there. Now I'm checked out of my body. Now I'm not enjoying— that is not going to be a turn-on to my body. So I don't really personally prescribe to those aphrodisiac foods. I think it's just a fun conversation. But what I do find is that the foods that tend to help the libido Are the foods that are non-inflammatory.

Uh-huh.

And that actually feel good in our body. So, you know, making sure our industrial seed oils are out of the diet. Making sure we're not on a lot of sugar and if we're doing, we're using our maple syrups, our molasses, our honeys, our, you know, our healthy types of sugars and then doing things like— like food allergy and food sensitivity tests because anything that is creating a high level of inflammation in the body. Could have a potential to inflame the nerves like we talked about. And so it's less about these are the perfect foods and more around generally eating clean, generally eating balanced, and then making sure you are specific about these are the inflammatory foods for the uniqueness of you and then getting those out.

Intimacy anxiety, like anxiety around intimacy. So I know— I know someone who whenever we're watching Netflix, It's actually a friend. They always ask, can you— and a sex scene comes on, they ask, can you fast forward? I feel uncomfortable watching that. Or I find that if someone is talking to you and they just cannot keep eye contact, they can't keep eye contact with you, would you say they are markers for maybe intimacy anxiety? Being that even if you're not you know, in a relationship with that person. It's just being able to be present and open around these things.

Yeah, I mean, there's, there's a lot that could be. It could be a sign of intimacy anxiety for the stand— the area of like not being able to watch a sex scene and making that uncomfortable. That also could be a level of shame, feeling a sense of shame around sex and sex being dirty like you were talking about earlier. That sort of thing. Um, you know, there's always, I think, to not being able to look somebody in the eye. Sometimes there's a lack of feeling like confident in oneself that can be there. Yeah, I think that so many times too, we are looking oftentimes for validation outside of ourselves. And so there's like, you know, a created anxiety sometimes people have where it's like, well, I, I'm feeling, um, not good about myself in these areas. So. You know, we need that validation, but then we're meek about getting that validation. And that's a very different experience than being like, oh, it's great to hear praise and be validated exteriorly, but ultimately it doesn't matter because I have so much praise and internal validation that I know I'm fine no matter what is happening outside. Like, not saying it still doesn't feel good, but it's not gonna shake somebody to the core because they know they're good. You know, they're good either way. So I think there's a lot of different factors that could be at play there. And even more than we're mentioning here, I'm sure.

One thing that you could recommend to our audience that they could do today to start bringing themselves back into their body so they can start learning how to remain present, because you have to do that before you can remain present whilst having a sexual relationship.

Some— like bringing some sort of mindfulness-based practice into your life is essential. So the practice, like what you're saying, the practice of being present is directly related to the practice of experiencing pleasure. So it can be as simple as like, like, like I love from a habit perspective, like habit stacking concept from BJ Fogg and James Clear in their books. Their books are Atomic Habits and Tiny Habits. Yeah. And those books, they talk about habit stacking, right? So it's like, okay, well you're gonna bring something new in. Well, how do you like, so that we don't get overwhelmed, stack it on top of something you're already doing? So a good example of this is we all have to Eat, right? We all have to eat to survive. So there's ways you can eat with pleasure, which is mindful eating, which is like taking a moment to smell your food, being grateful, getting you know getting into the mood of gratefulness, chewing slowly. You know if you're alone, like watching something or listening to something or reading something that is not stressful, like enjoyable, just like creating that pleasure out of it versus there's non-mindful eating, which is like da da da you scarf it down in two seconds. It's like oh I didn't even realize I ate. So, you know, so bringing in some pleasure mindful activity like that. You can do it when you're walking by saying taking a mindful walk, which means instead of doing the to-do list in your head, you're going for a walk in nature and you're just like, ah, I hear the sound of the birds. I hear the trees rustling. I hear my feet on the ground, the sand, the road, wherever.

Mm-hmm.

And so, you know, that's, that's what we can do is these Mm-hmm. Activities that we're already doing, taking time every day to spend at least one of these activities with intentionally bringing in and making it a mindful activity. So you're not adding things, you're just changing how you do them to practice the brain. And same thing, if the brain wanders in these activities, you just bring the brain right back to the mindfulness, cuz that's what you're doing with sex. And we practice outside, at that outside of the bedroom, it really goes and applies to what's happening Inside the bedroom.

Dr. Diane Mueller, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom. And I tell you, if anybody loves what you've been saying, and they feel that they do need some help around their sexual health, please, all of her details will be in the show notes, website, socials, connect with her, take that quiz, because that's your first step. The quiz will give you so much information. And then once you have that information, Reach out because sexual health is really, you know, it's going down between couples. We need it to go the other way.

Indeed, indeed. Yeah, thank you for having me. Like you said, all the links will be in there. Another fun link for everybody is havehotsex.com, and that's like a one-stop link to get freebies and products and discounts and, you know, a whole lot of other stuff. So it's another fun one for you. But thank you for having me, Rita.