How Orgasms Could Add Years to Your Life, with Dr. Diane Mueller

Foreign. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. I'm Wendy Trubo. Obviously, Ed's not with us today and we have an amazing guest today, my friend and colleague, Dr. Diane Mueller. She is a board certified sexologist. We're going to dive into what that means. And she has dual doctorates in both naturopathic medicine and as well as acupuncture and oriental medicine. So in other words, she's really freaking cool. She's the founder of the sex education center mylabidodoc.com and hosts the Libido Lounge podcast where she helps monogamous couples create more passion, desire, hotter sex and better communication. Diane, welcome. I'm so happy to have you here.

Oh, Wendy, it's so good to be back with you. I'm so glad to be here today. Thank you. My pleasure.

All right, how'd you get into this?

There's so many stories I can tell here. My favorite story to tell is really around what got me into being interested in sex to begin with and pleasure really to begin with. So I grew up extremely Christian, Catholic actually. And in the dogma that I grew up, it was really trained into me that it was wrong to talk about sex, that pleasure was wrong, that I had this body part that I had a lot of shame around. So fast forward to college and I now have this very interesting vulvar pain. And I go to the doc and the doc's like, well, everything's normal. Every, you know, he ran STI tests, he ran, you know, did basic pap smears, all that kind of stuff. Everything was normal. But yet this pain was keeping me up at night. So my friend and roommate at the time, she had been hearing me talk about this pain and this insomnia that was with it. And one day she handed me a book that just completely took me by surprise based upon my upbringing, which was Sex for One by Betty Dodson. And I was like, I don't know about this girlfriend. Because it was so out of everything that I was taught around sexuality, around self pleasure. So it was a huge edge for me, but took the book. Few days later, lying in bed with the pain, started reading the book. And the book is really interesting because this book talks not just about self pleasure, but it has story after story after story people that were actually using self pleasure to heal pain. And now I'm interested, right? Because now I can't sleep and now it's like, okay, I have a possible solution. So I self pleasured myself for the first time in my entire Life and Wendy, the pain went away. I was like, oh, this is interesting. Okay, so next day, pain's back, try it again. Pain's gone. So I do this a few more times and eventually after a week or so, the pain was totally gone. So this was like a completely like earth shattering type of like.

I already have a question, Diane, had you told your parents about this pain?

No.

So it wasn't like you would go home and go like, okay, Ma, I figured out the problem, right? I just needed to masturbate.

It was not comfortable to say that. You know, I'm still honestly not comfortable to say that to my parents. There was still this paradigm difference. But it was, it was like that from a standpoint of like, oh my gosh, like earth shattering. Like, how could all these things I'd have been taught, how could they be, like, truly wrong if this is where, you know, like, this is like something that can deeply heal me? So that was like the first mind blowing thing to be like. I think what I've been taught is not totally right here and kind of the foundational launch for studying sex.

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think the thing to underscore, I mean, there's, there's a good amount of stuff to unpack in that, but the thing for that stands out so strongly to me is just this whole idea that your body is whole and complete and beautiful and there's nothing shameful about any part of your body ever.

Yeah, exactly. And I think that's what limits so many people from experiencing pleasure. Like, it's. There's so much shame that we have that we carry around as humans through things like this. Like anything from how we are raised to that thing that was said to us when maybe by a teacher when they were teaching us about the birds and the bees. Or maybe it was something that a partner at one point said to us when we were in bed with them. So there are so many different ways that we hold shame, especially around our sexuality. And it really does limit the ability, this shame, to experience pleasure and to use all the chemicals for pleasure that can actually be healing. Like, there's actually research, there's. There's studies now that are out that actually show the administration of oxytocin for things like reducing pain. So like now we're saying, you know, I love that, like, you know, I experience something in life and years later it's like, oh, the studies show up, right? That's like, that makes sense with my experience. So we see that. And yet there's so much shame around this that I think a lot of people are holding subconsciously that really prevent them from living a life full of pleasure.

All right, so let's pivot. Talk to me about the relationship between healthy sex and how long you live. Longevity.

Well, it's really interesting, right, because we see that oxytocin, our major hormone of orgasm, which a lot of people will talk about oxytocin from a standpoint of like cuddling. So some people know oxytocin as like, oh, the cuddle hormone. And I'm going to talk about, like, answer your question in a moment when I talk about all the things oxytocin does. But so people really understand pleasure in sex and oxytocin hugs will reduce or hugs will increase oxytocin in the blood 20 to 50%. Orgasms will increase oxytocin in the blood 200 to 500%.

So you get more bang for your buck, right?

Way more bang for you. It's a lot of hugging to make up for that oxytocin. Right. It's a lot to make up for that orgasm. So way more efficient, you know. And as one of my core values, efficiency is it's like I like things that are going to really, really work. And so oxytocin, we see it do, it does so many different things. It is a cardiovascular protective effect. So it increases something in our body called nitric nitric oxide synthase, which is the enzyme that makes more nitric oxide, which then leads to our blood vessels dilating. And so it leads to this lowering of blood blood pressure. We see it has like a cardio protective effect on the heart muscle itself and the cells of the heart. We see that it has an anti inflammatory effect. We see that it has an anti anxiety anxiolytic. So it lowers anxiety, it lowers depression. It actually resets and can help to reset the HPA axis. So when people are, you know, using all the buzzwords around adrenal fatigue and cortisol problems, you know, cortisol imbalances, oxytocin can really reset that. So as we, you know, we change all of these, these things that are associated with more disease and the body not functioning as well, and we use oxytocin to bring some of those things back in balance. It's easy to see, like, how this can be related to longevity and health.

You know, my kids said to me last night at the dinner table that thank God I wasn't more popular because I would be canceled because I come out with like the rudest things and I Was like, well listen, that's a good thing. I'll try not to be more popular. But I'm thinking like it's so pejorative to say like, oh, you just need a good orgasm. Do you know what I mean? Like it sounds like, you know how many women are just told like, oh, there's nothing wrong with you, honey, you just need to have some sex. Like that sounds really pejorative. But on the other hand, the data suggests that there's something to that.

Well, you know, in my mind I think it's like anything, right? Like we can easily hear this and we can reduce it down to everybody just needs more sex. And so I think your point, it's really important, right? I'm not by any means saying like, hey, orgasms are gonna cure everything, right? That's not what we're saying here at all. It's more around like one of my biggest points in the longevity space is like in the longevity space we're talking about so many great things, right? We're talking about powers of intermittent fasting, we're talking about the cleanliness of food, we're talking about, you know, how much movement we need with muscle building on and on and on. Methylene blues into play peptides, right? So there's so many things that are coming up in the longevity space. So my point is not reducing it down to hey, everybody just have more orgasms. By no means am I saying like they are the cure all, but it's more around realizing that there's so many health benefits that can actually come from this. And oftentimes I think people, when it comes to anything pleasure, we are oftentimes really thinking like, well this is like hedonistic and hedonistic. This pursuit of pleasure I think has this real negative versus this concept of healthy hedonism that I first heard from Dr. Nan Wise, which is really around, hey, pleasure actually has a point. And just like anything else in the self care world around, we take care of ourselves more and we have more to give to the world, right? We have more to give to our children, to our partner, to our work, to our career, all these things. It's less about saying orgasms can cure everything. Certainly that's not what I'm saying here. And it's more around, hey, this is such a fundamental piece in the longevity space that I think it just needs to have a voice in the same way that intermittent fasting or all the other things have a voice as bringing this into part of our overall self care practice.

That's fair I have two questions for you that kind of came up as you were talking because my brain is all over the place. One is, do you need to be partnered? Because part of your bio is about monogamous couples. But when we're looking at the effects of an orgasm, you don't need a partner to have an orgasm. Is the partner part required or just helpful or neither?

I don't see anything. I've not seen anything from a study perspective that's really saying one versus the other. Right. So it's from a standpoint of truly a research based standpoint. From what I've seen, there hasn't been a good study that's like, hey, this is what happens orgasm with a partner. This is what happens orgasm with a self. Right. So in my mind, orgasm could just be orgasm could just be orgasm. But it is an area where I do think we need more research, truthfully. And when it comes to my work, it's more around like my work in part is around, hey, helping people, you know, longevity wise. But my work is really also helping people that are at that point where it's like they love their partner, they've been with their partner for a while and they become roommates and best friends and they're kind of losing some of that passion and that connection. And it creates in many scenarios this underlying stress in relationships. So a lot of the work on, you know, monogamous couples is really about, hey, let's look at all of these different things that can help the relationship be stronger so that people ultimately can have more passion but also just better relationships, better connection, happier relationships. Right. But from the true like orgasm oxytocin thing, I mean, I don't, like I said, I don't think there's like a specific study, at least none that I've seen that I've looked at that. But I do think there are so many benefits out of masturbation and self pleasure and perhaps the same level.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

You know, it's funny because they've studied women who have been partnered for a period of time and found that the number one thing to improve a woman's sex drive is novelty, I. E. A new partner.

Yeah.

But for people who are in long term monogamous, committed relationship, that's not an option. So let's back up. Talk to me about what are the things that cause someone's sex drive to decline other than just you're bored, right. You're like, oh, I know what's going to happen here. I've read this book 16 times, 20,000 times. Other than just kind of same old, same old, what are the things that decline our sex drive over as we age?

Yeah, I mean, few different thoughts, right. So it's like we have all the physical side of things. So the things that we look at in functional medicine that I know both of us look at a lot in our one on one practices, anything from cardiovascular health to hormonal health to pellet floor issues to neurological problems, stress, inflammation, toxins, stealth infections. Right. So, you know, we have these, these major functional medicine root causes, obviously the boredom. But one of the key things that I think is super important to mention that is revolutionary for a lot of people when I talk about it is men and women, the way we are wired is that men have desire first and then arousal, and women have arousal first and then desire. And what, why, what the difference is, is desire is of the mind, arousal is of the body. So desire is like, okay, in a hetero relationship, man sees a woman and his wife, partner, person on the street, walk by, you know, as a thought around their physique. And then all of a sudden, so that's in the mind, that's desire. And then all of a sudden they get stuck, turned on, they get a hard on, that sort of thing that's in the body, that's arousal. And women do oftentimes work that way early on in that new relationship energy. But six to 18 months, when the new relationship energy tends to fizzle for most women, it tends to shift and it tends to be arousal is before desire. So what this means for most women, and this happens a lot as, as the relationship goes on and so a lot more with age is that we think as women that, okay, well, I'm not in the mood, like, I'm so stressed out. Work has been hard. I got 16,000 things to do. I got to take the kids up, you know, I got to get the kids early in the morning ever, it's already 11 at night. And we're like, there's no way there's space for that desire in the mind. So for many women, what will happen is when they decide to start having sex, oftentimes when they're not even in the mood 15 to 20 minutes in, all of a sudden, hey, because now they've dropped into their body, now they're feeling the sensations of the body, now they're feeling aroused. And this is when the thought goes back up to the brain that says desire. And all of a sudden there's a thought that's like, this is actually Feeling really good. And this is why, at the end, it's very common for her to say something to our partner like, that was really great. Why don't we do that more often? Right.

Right.

So some of the low desire, in part, is that we're just not taught about the difference of these arousal cycles. Like, I certainly wasn't taught about this in any of my medical education programs. And most, you know, most people I. I've talked to have not been either. So that low desire is just coming from. Hey, we don't understand oftentimes as women that it's arousal first. And so that means in order to get the desire, this is why it can be really helpful to start it, like, 20 minutes of sensual massage with, like, taking sex off the table. And just, like, practice getting into one's body. Because once you're feeling the sensations of the body, that can lead to the arousal, and then the desire can succumb. Secondly.

I think this is great, Diane. I think the other thing we want to highlight is, you know, I always say to my patients, can you. Do you get into it? You know, like, great. You don't have a great desire, but can you get into it? Once you start. Once you start fooling around with your partner, can you get into it? And if the answer is yes, I'm happy. If the answer is no, I want to explore more. And then my next question is always, are you able to orgasm at some point in the process? Because I'm looking for, are you intact neurologically? Right. Because if you cannot have an orgasm, and orgasm is such a broad term, so it doesn't always look like. And when Harry met Sally, when she's in the restaurant and she has this crescendo, and it's amazing. Sometimes it's a quieter response for women, but that you want to feel at the end of it like something was satisfying, it was good for you, and you feel satisfied. Right. That you notice that you feel a different sense of desire at the end than you did at the beginning. Yeah.

What's interesting, too, about that is, like oxytocin, pleasure actually stimulates more pleasure. So most of the feedback loops, the neurological, the hormonal feedback loops in our body are on negative feedback loops. And so for your listeners, I'll explain. Explain what that means, which is like, if the brain is stimulating to the thyroid to secrete more thyroid and there's enough thyroid in the body, the thyroid levels go up. Then there's a signal back to the brain that says, stop sending me the signal. I'm Good. Right. So, you know, you and I both know that's called negative feedback. But what's interesting with oxytocin and pleasure, it's actually on a positive feedback loop. So when the brain secretes oxytocin and the oxytocin goes up in the body, what winds up happening is the body's like, well, this is really good. It sends a signal to the brain that says, I want more. Right. So you're totally right on in these, you know, these questions and in my opinion, around, hey, if somebody is not experiencing that orgasm, which if anybody is listening to this and is not, everybody can. So I always like people to know, like, just because you haven't had an orgasm or you haven't had one for a long time, it doesn't mean you're broken. It just means there's something out of balance that needs to be brought back into balance. And so with that we see once we do things like erotic recovery and orgasm training and that sort of thing that once those, that pleasure kicks in, what tends to happen is people tend to want more of it because oxytocin is gonna lead to the desire for more oxytocin.

I always joke with my patients who are talking about abstinence. I'm like, abstinence always fails eventually. It always eventually is a failure. Right. Okay, talk to me about, let's talk about adrenal health and desire. Because my firm belief is if you're tapped out, it occurs more like a burden than a pleasure. And it's either sex or stress. You can't often have both. So what role? Well, I guess I just answered it. But talk to me about what you've seen with adrenal health and libido.

What's interesting is so some of the work of Dr. Emily Nagoski. She really goes into this concept and what she has found in some of her work is that stress has a two part reaction for people on sex. So for some people that that stress, that adrenal, you know, burnout kind of scenario can actually lead to an accelerator for libido. So there are people that the more stress, the more burnout they have, the more they are actually that's craving sex. Now what I have found in my work is that while that can be true, that at least statistically from what I've seen seems to be a much more of the minority of people. But I like to at least name that that is possible. So there are some people that can have that happen. I think for most people it's really what, you know, what you're talking about here, what she's seeing with Dr. Emily Nagoski seen in her work around the issue being more of like a break in the desire. And some of this is exactly what you're saying. It's like with the overwhelm, with the stre, it's like there's, it's almost like there's just this thing of, hey, this is just an extra thing to do. And that's where I really get into talking to people about, you know, the prioritization of it and the scheduling of it. Like an exercise I love to give couples is to make, have them make a value list of all the things they value in their life, right? Their relationship, their work, their kids, their house, yada, yada, yada, and kind of put it in order. And then to make a pie chart with 24 pieces of pie representing the 24 hours of the day. And then you're going to write in each of those, you know, pies, like what, what you're doing on average. So you know, seven to nine of those, you know, pies or those slices, you're probably going to be sleeping hopefully. And what's interesting is how many people, when they do this, have their relationship at the very top or you know, real close to the top and there's not even a slice of pie for them on an average day. And I think that's innately part of the problem is just like we, we do everything else around like, okay, here's when I'm going to take my kids to school and here's when I'm going to take myself to the gym and here's when I'm going to go get the groceries, here's when I'm gonna work. And so everything else in our life has a spot. Well, it's easy to see that if we don't have a spot for intimate life, even if it's just once a week, that things are gonna, you know, oftentimes like fade. So the first step oftentimes is like looking at this pie and saying, hmm, doing this awareness exercise of where is our time actually matching our values. And if it's not, then I think it's a good soul searching exercise on what do we really want to reprioritize even in an overwhelmed scenario. Because if we don't have space and time for that partner, what is gonna happen to that relationship over time?

Yeah, I remember Ed talks about this old Native American story about there's an evil, I'm gonna totally massacre the story but there's like an evil wolf and a good wolf, an angelic wolf, and which one is gonna grow? And it's really the one you feel feed. So when you look at your relationship, the, the way you feed it is the way it's going to look. So. So it's important to prioritize it.

Exactly, exactly. And, and people sometimes resist. Like when I say, oh, start scheduling sex and start scheduling intimacy, it's really like, it's people like, well, I don't want to do that. It's not hot if it's not spontaneous. But the argument that I give over and over for that is if we go back to like the new relationship energy when people are dating, what a lot of people don't realize in the relationship in the beginning is that everybody was scheduling it. It's like, oh, we finally have our third date on Tuesday and we get ourselves super gussied up and are we gonna make out or are we gonna do this? And then we have another date and are we gonna have sex for the first time? And so oftentimes in the beginning we are because we're not seeing this person all the time. Anytime we see them, we are orienting to, oh, we are likely gonna engage in some intimate or pleasure filled activity. We're getting our mind around it, we're making space for it, and in many ways we're really scheduling it. It's on the calend date. Right. And so it's only when we combine our households, we combine our schedules, we combine our lives, that most people stop scheduling it. And then we don't want to schedule it because it feels like, hey, this isn't sexy, this isn't spontaneous. But the fact of the matter is, back when things were in that new relationship energy, we were actually scheduling it. So it's just a reorientation there for people of like, this can still be scheduled and still be incredibly hot.

I mean, I think about I schedule going to the gym, it's in my schedule, I go to a trainer, and I love the outcome. And so it feels very similar, right, that we can schedule sex as a thing that we need to pay attention to. And we might not feel like it, but we're always happy we did it at the end.

Exactly. And that's a lot of it too. And like erotic recovery and like the sex therapy world, that's something that's talked about a lot, is like, especially if people haven't had sex in a while of like starting with intimate dates where it is just about massage and touch and Kind of this erotic feeling without going into sex, without going into orgasms. And the idea is like you show up kind of whether you feel, you know, feel like it or not. And just like you said, it's the gym or it's anything else. And if we don't make sense space for it, it is just going to fall away. So we have to make the space and just show up just like putting on our gym shoes and going to the gym when we're just not in the mood. But like you said at the end, it's like then you feel great and then you're so glad you did it and all the other things benefit from it. And I think we just haven't prioritized it so much in our conversation. So it doesn't get prioritized in our relationships without talking about it.

Right?

Yep.

Can you talk a little about women in midlife and how hormone balance influences sexual desire and overall vitality and response and connection?

Yeah, there's a real direct relationship with estrogen and testosterone in particular with everything we're talking about here. So for example, estrogen will increase the number of oxytocin receptors. So as. So basically because of that, with the more receptors, oxytocin can have a better response on the body. So when we get to midlife, when we get to perimenopause and menopause and we start to see, see those estrogen levels fall, oftentimes we can see those oxytocin levels or at least the oxytocin responsiveness fall. So it's thought that some of like the anxiety, for example, that can happen to many women around midlife that oftentimes people just attribute to things like hormone imbalance is not just due to the decline in things like estrogen, but it's actually due to the decline in fertility functioning of things like oxytocin. So I really feel like at midlife with everything going on with that decline in estrogen, the decline in progesterone, the decline in testosterone, there's a lot to be said around, hey, we're doing all this great bhrt, you know, in functional medicine to help women of these age, of this age. But I think in addition to things like pleasure filled activities, I do think there needs to be more conversation around what happens if we also add in things like intranasal oxytocin because of this decline on that in the resultant changes we see on cardiovascular health. Like that's another thing, right? With age and menopause there's this concern of like estrogens impact positive impact on the heart and the cardiovascular system. So as estrogen declines, we see that, you know, that negative impact. But oxytocin, remember, is declining there too. And that also is cardio protective. So I think it's like a metabolism missing component in this overarching, like hormones are falling type of scenario that happens at midlife is really the oxytocin component as well.

Talk to me about, please, methylene blue and oxytocin. Are you are. I'm assuming these are both compounded?

Both compounded, yeah. Methylene blue. I love methylene blue. I take often, not quite, quite every day, but almost every day. And one of the things it helps to do is bring more oxygen to the cell. So it's been studied for things like neurodegenerative diseases. I've used it a lot clinically to help people with energy. It can help with fatigue a lot. And so what it essentially is, is a dye. And when you take it, usually starting around 5 milligrams, sometimes working up all the way to 50 milligrams a day, it does all the things I mentioned. Now, it's really important because there's a lot of places online where you can just go buy methylene blue direct to consumer. But there is a genetic abnormality called a G6PD dysfunction. And if you have this G6PD dysfunction, you really want to test for it. Because if you have it and you take methylene blue, it could actually lead to a very, very quick anemia that you could actually end up in the hospital over. So you do want to make sure that you're testing for that deficiency. Oxytocin oftentimes is delivered intranasally. So both of these things, Diane, before.

We go off that when you have the methylene blue, if you have the G6PD deficiency. So we measure G6PD for IV. Yeah, for IVs. And people can generally get, you know, 10 to 15 grams and they're fine. We just don't do the high dose IDs. Is that similar for methylene blue that people can tolerate a lower dose on that spectrum, but they shouldn't be at the 50 milligrams? Or is it that they just really shouldn't take it at all?

Honestly, I feel like it's a gray zone with what I've seen. I don't think it's like, unless I'm missing a paper out there, I haven't seen anything around, like, where is the statistical problem at 5 milligrams versus 50? You know, I think in the lower doses you probably are a lot safer. It's probably why a lot of these places are selling it online. But I do, I do think it's a point of caution around, hey, something like this could happen. I certainly would never do anything like a high loading dose of 50. I still test all my patients for it before putting them on, just out of safety. But I don't, I haven't seen anything truthfully that's been like clear around, like, hey, you know, where is the risk tolerance statistically speaking at 5, you know.

Versus 50, you know, I was trained in methylene blue as an ob GYN because, because if a woman came in and thought she ruptured her membranes, we would insert methylene blue into the uterus and then stick a tampon in to see does it turn blue. Because if she ruptured her membranes, it turns blue and if it doesn't, she'll just pee it out. And that was how, you know. So when methylene blue came on the scene, I was like, oh, I've known about that for years. But not from an anti inflammatory standpoint. It was literally just an OBGYN trick.

That's a really. Yeah, it's so interesting. I had not heard that. Very interesting. And so were you testing people forgesic?

No, no, no, because they weren't taking it iv, they were, it was going into the amniotic fluid when they were, it was going into the uterine, into the, into the uterus. So it was never getting systemic. It was in the, the uterus. And that's a closed system essentially.

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, it's a fun, fun use.

Okay, so then going back to the oxytocin, the nasal nasal administration, how are you dosing that?

So usually, usually starting around 20 I use a day, but 20 to 40 I use is where I've seen like to be kind of spot with that. And the cool thing about, about oxytocin and its use, I mean methylene blue too is they really can be used as needed. So because of that, it can be a really helpful thing to have around, especially in the conversations around like stress and HPA access and showing up for your partner and just living a like more balanced life. You're having a stressful day, you get home and you want to be present with your partner, your kids, et cetera and you can use it as needed where like, oh, wow, I need to have that stress reduction right now. It can be administered just that way and you don't have to worry about, well, if you're not taking it the next day there being any sort of problem. Yeah.

Is this. Will it raise your sex drive or more raise your ability to be present?

I've seen, like, clinically what I've seen. Like, we can go clinically or, like, theoretically. Right. Because anytime we increase oxytocin, potentially, it could lead to increasing sex drive. I haven't seen really any of that, truthfully, in my use of it. More what I've seen. And when I say my use, I mean personally and professionally. What I've seen more is, like, the ability to be present, the ability to be calm, which then, of course, could lead people to be more open to, like, okay, let's get in bed and let's try this. But it's like, from what I've seen in my use has been more the ability to be present and calm. Have you seen anything different in your clinic?

I haven't used intranasal oxytocin.

Okay.

So I can't comment on it.

Yeah. Huh. Yeah. It's a. It's a fun tool, but, like, from a standpoint of, like, you know, sex drive, it's gonna be way less of a punch than putting somebody on, like, a higher dose of testosterone, for example, from, like, an immediate clinical result in most cases.

Got it.

Yeah.

Any downsides to it?

Not that I've seen. I've seen no side effects.

Can we talk about some simple daily habits that. That our listeners can implement to feel more energized and more connected sexually?

Yeah. The way I like to say it is that the practice of pleasure is deeply connected to the practice of presence. Right. So it's like, anytime I get a real easy thing for people to understand is thinking about food. And I'm sure everybody can think of times, probably many, where they have sat down for a meal, and two seconds later, they look at it and they're like, wait, where'd it go? Right. So it's like we're not experiencing presence in that moment. We're just, like, going through the motion, shoveling the food, versus, like, a present way of eating, which is like, I'm gonna take a bite, I'm gonna put my fork down. I'm gonna taste all the flavors. Well, in doing that, in tasting all the flavors, we're actually practicing pleasure. We're practicing the ability of our sensations to engage deeply, enjoy the moment in the meal. So it's like that. That real connection. Right. And, like, the pleasure in my mind is one of my favorite, like, mindfulness types of practices. Right. Because it is truly mindful. We can't truly, deeply enjoy pleasure without being mindful to the sound, to the taste, to the smells, to the tactile sensations. All of that we really need to be present for. And so with a pleasure practice, it can start very simply as like a pleasure presence practice of saying, okay, well I'm gonna take a moment when I get my coffee in the morning and maybe I have to go run around, but I'm gonna start a habit of setting the clock and spending one to three minutes just taking a few sips, sitting down and actually enjoying the flavor of it versus like running around. And obviously this is like said cautiously, right? Because I know people have so many things going on. But the question is like, when in the day can you actually, in the normal things you're doing, drinking coffee, lifting weights, like we can turn the gym into a pleasure practice, right? We can basically lift weights, for example, in a way where we're like, okay, let me deeply feel into my muscles and you know, it's like pleasure, pain, of course in this scenario, right? But let me actually deeply feel into what my body feels like to move so correctly with this movement. And that can actually bring a lot of pleasure. So the, you know, one of the initial conversations with like kind of habit stacking without adding more is saying, what am I doing anyways that I can take like I can have cues and reminders, sticky notes, alarms on my phone, notes around my house, notes in my car to actually remember remind me to say, hey, the first like one to two minutes, one to five minutes of this activity, I'm really going to focus on the sensation. So I'm practicing the pleasure. And then, you know, the more we practice it outside of the bedroom, you know, the more we can bring it in. But they really do reflect on each other, the inside the bedroom and the outside of the bedroom.

So really slowing down, get present, be focused and try not to multitask and run through your day to get to the end of it.

Correct? Yep, correct. And obviously we're going to do that some as humans in our super busy, you know, first world lives. But the more we can actually implement moments where we're not just like, you know, a visualization practice, just like a yoga practice, just like a meditation practice. It's just a different version of that of really saying coming to the center. And then similarly on date night, you know, scheduling a date night once a week, couple times a month, if that's all you can do and have the first like five or ten minutes just on some sort of like non sexual pleasure Practice just holding hands, looking each other's eyes, rubbing each other's bodies, just really being present to the sensations without an agenda of, you know, needing it to lead to a certain thing can be really helpful too.

So being connected to your partner.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

This is cool. Diane, where can people find out more about you? And we'll put everything in the show notes. Like we'll, we'll, we'll have it in writing.

So one of the things I want to bring up is you mentioned novelty earlier and novelty being a huge part of how couples get out of boredom. So I have a whole checklist of different ideas for people to bring novelty into their long term monogamous partnerships totally for free. So people can download that for ideas at my sex document. So that's a really great place to get started. My sexdoc.com and then another free gift for your listeners is if they go to libidoquiz.com so on libidoquiz.com if they take the quiz, then they will get answers of some of the likely root causes of their low libido from a physical perspective as well as lab tests to make sure they're asking their doctor for. Because as we know, sometimes doctors run, you know, very superficial lab tests. So the point of this is like, to help people advocate for themselves to get the right tests from their doctors and complete tests. So that's@libidoquiz.com so. And those are the best places to get started. Yeah.

Okay. And then my libido doc.com is also your site, right?

Correct. Yep, exactly.

All right. This is awesome. This is, I mean, this. And I think the thing that you really highlighted also is you should be talking to your doctor about this. This is like actually bring it up because your doctor can't fix something that they don't know about.

Yeah. I read a survey the other day and I have no idea how accurate the survey is. So I say that cautiously because I don't know where people are getting these things from. But I did read a survey that said 72% of people want to talk to their doctor about sex and don't. So, you know, I don't know for sure if that stat is accurate, but what it does tell me and what I feel is true is a lot of people really are dying for somebody to talk to about this, but they don't know who to go to. And I do think it's a very important thing to have these kind of conversations. So thank you for, you know, letting me speak today. Because it's really, it's just, you know, low sex drive, low libido. Any issues here are just another imbalance in the body. It's really another imbalance in the body, another imbalance in the relationship. And we really need to get the taboo off of it.

And it's fixable. I think that's the most important thing to remember is it is fixable.

It is. But not if we don't do anything and not if we don't say anything. Actionable.

All right, Diane, this has been great. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast for the listeners. This is Diane Mueller. She's a board certified sexologist, and you can find her@mylabidodoc.com and Diane, really, thanks for being here.

Thanks, Wendy. Thanks, everybody.

Sam.