Barbell Shrugged - Physiology Friday: [LIBIDO] The Biochemistry of Improving Your Sex Drive w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Travis Mash and Dan Garner

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

In today’s episode of Barbell Shrugged you will learn: The internal mechanisms that create your sex drive. How psychological, hormonal, and functional dysfunction impacts sex drive. The biochemistry of boners The nervous system’s response to sexual arousal The psychology of porn addiction Supplementation that can improve your sex drive Impacts of chronic fatigue on sex drive How estrogen and testosterone influence sex drive Hormonal changes during pregnancy that heighten sex drive How aging affects your libido They affect of marijuana and alcohol on sex drive Hair loss medication and erectile dysfunction symptoms To learn more, please go to https://rapidhealthoptimization.com Connect with our guests: Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram Dan Garner on Instagram

Shrugged family this week on Barbell Shrugged, Physiology Friday is back and today, we're gonna be talking about libido and how you can improve your sex drive. As always friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galpin are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis

and you can access that at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash, Dan Garner. In the house today, we are talking about libido. That's like the coolest subject for any podcast because everyone's going to get a little something they like.

And hopefully if you pay attention, you get a lot of something you like at the end. I got a lot of something. If you got a lot of libido, you get a little more. If you don't have libido, maybe get some. Travis Mash level libido in the next 60 minutes. Oh, hanging out with us. I hope my laws don't listen to this.

Yeah. They can always stay at it. We hit the record button too late for that one. I think everybody probably understands what their libido is, but has no idea What the mechanisms in place are for you to have a sex drive? Where does our sex drive come from? Okay Umbrella over this as possible to start. Well, actually here this back up just for a second You said nobody knows where their sex drive comes from.

I feel like that's kind of accurate, but not all the way accurate. I feel like most people think it's like pure testosterone. Like that's it. Like if you have tight testosterone, you got sex drive, and if you don't, you don't. And I feel like it's probably not that simple. And now we'll turn it over to Dan.

There he goes. Yeah, sure. We need a new host. I'll tackle this one the best way I can here. So libido is actually super complicated and it's way more prevalent than people allow themselves to admit because it's something that's super private. It's something that people are embarrassed about. But I work with a lot of people with low libido. That's not an uncommon complaint to come my way, is low libido, low sex drive,

it's not the way it used to be. And I'm talking males and females. This is absolutely a unisex thing that applies across all categories. And when it comes to libido, there's primary areas that you wanna focus on. There's psychological, there's hormonal, and then there's actual function. But I think a more productive place to begin the conversation would be to understand function first.

That actual, like the biochemistry of libido and how that's actually going to break down and help us. So why don't we just talk about achieving interaction? That's probably one of the biggest, one of the bigger complaints that we get. Hold on a second, I can even give like some real, this is probably like 20% of the people that come to see us. It's a very high number. Yeah, it's something that affects, and affects way more than 20% of people. It's just 20% of people reach out for help.

That I get to talk to, yeah. You know, yeah, exactly. So this is something that's hypercommon, but it's understood biochemically. So basically what you're looking for when it comes to achieving an erection, you've got three different primary types of muscle tissue in the body.

There is your skeletal muscle tissue, your cardiac tissue, and your smooth tissue. Skeletal muscle is the stuff we normally talk about on this show. Biceps, pecs, get inject. Cardiac tissue is a little self-explanatory. That is the muscle tissue that is a part of the heart and allows the heart to do what the heart does. And lastly, there's the smooth tissue. Smooth tissue is different from the cardiac and skeletal muscle, and it's found in things like the lungs and in the intestines and also in the penis.

So there's a spongy type of muscle tissue in the penis called the corpus cavernum. And the corpus cavernum, that's actually where we're trying to dilate vessels and get blood flow into so it can expand and stiff it up for you to do what you need to do. The process is not unlike what we're trying to do in the gym, believe it or not. So what we're trying to do, you've got nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is what's going to trip off activity of an enzyme called cyclic guanosine monophosphate

or CGMP. CGMP is what allows the vessels in the corpus cavernsum to relax, dilate, and completely fill up with blood. So the degree of activity of the CGMP, you can think about the degree of activity of the CGMP like the degree of integrity of your erection. And everybody on here knows that that's a continuum. You can have a 25% good one, you can have a 50% good one, you can have 70, or you could have that 100% this is we're ready to

rock. We're ready to rock being a pun, rock hard. But that's totally a continuum. And that is dependent upon CGMP activity. So we want plenty of nitric oxide to activate CGMP activity so that that activity is very high, so lots of dilation takes place and therefore lots of blood flow can get in there. But there's something known as phosphodiesterase or PDE5. PDE5 is what inhibits and breaks down CGMP because biologically or evolutionarily speaking it doesn't make sense to walk around with interaction all day. So PDE5 will slowly degrade that activity of CGMP and this is actually how things like Cialis work. Cialis inhibits PDE5. So PDE5 is what's breaking down CGMP. So when you stop the enzyme that is breaking down CGMP, then you allow not just more CGMP activity to take place,

but it can take place for a longer period of time. So then you get that 100% erection that you're after, and you also can sustain it for a longer period of time so that you get that 100% erection that you're after and you also can sustain it for a longer period of time. That function is important to understand because this is how we can kind of utilize certain over-the-counter things to get the job done. Things such as arginine, things such as citrulline, these have been demonstrated to increase blood flow. Yes, in the gym, we take them pre-workout, but they also increase blood flow to other areas as well. And blood flow is not only a thing for males either, because when it comes to desire, sexual function,

blood flow, even to the clitoris and vaginal area is just as important as blood flow to the penis. So that's actually a unisex thing that we can apply to both categories. Now that function, that needs to be happening properly because there's such a thing as having desire without function. Those are like two different categories. So when I'm looking at somebody's questionnaire or I'm looking at somebody's questionnaire or I'm looking at some of these labs, I'm basically trying to break it down into psychological, hormonal, and function. When I can identify where that issue is coming from, then we've identified how we're going to increase libido. Wow. I've got a question like with NO22 explode, somebody told me that like with NO2 explode

that a lot of the breathing techniques, you know, like breathing through your nose is a part of like the NO2 because it is potentially through the nose. Can you explain that more? Because ever since I was told this, I've been curious. Sure. So yeah, nasal breathing enhances parasympathetic activity. So our nervous system's basically got two branches, right? We've got the sympathetic branch,

and we've got the parasympathetic branch. Sympathetic is very fight or flight. Parasympathetic is rest and digest. So parasympathetic activity actually dilates blood vessels. So parasympathetic activity actually dilates blood vessels. So parasympathetic activity, and this is actually how ejaculation is accomplished. So you actually wanna be maximally parasympathetic

to have a maximum erection, but then your body actually flips from parasympathetic into sympathetic for and during the ejaculation stage. So somebody who is able to nasally breathe and therefore activate more parasympathetic activity is going to have greater blood flow due to not being in a sympathetic state. And this is exactly why,

and then it kind of starts to make sense when you start thinking about evolutionary biology, but also kind of just common sense because common sense would tell you, hey, if I've got stress, am I going to be in the mood? Probably not. If I've got a lot of anxiety going into this, am I going to perform very well? Probably not. And this is largely due to sympathetic activity overriding parasympathetic activity and therefore overriding proper blood flow. So that's something where, and you can actually read more about that. There's a book called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers that I read a long time ago.

And that part actually stuck with me. He goes over an entire section on parasympathetic activity for, during sex, and then sympathetic activity for, that's when the ejaculation takes place. So that nasal breathing is a huge part of it. But it's also why I kind of begin that whole libido breakdown process with the psychological because we can talk function all we want. It's very easy to talk about that. But psychological, like when you go through the literature on libido, you just see an undeniable connection with depression, with fatigue, with insomnia, with stress, and with porn addiction. But between fatigue, insomnia, depression, stress,

and porn addiction, those can absolutely railroad libido because they do a lot of things to us that is simply gonna make, let's just back it up to an evolutionary perspective. Stress, because we are hardwired to survive. We're hardwired to survive. Our DNA hasn't changed a whole lot since back in the day. So when we have any form of stress

that are coming into our body, our body sees that it's very sympathetic, very fight or flight. And this is a connection to reduce reproduction at the expense of survival. Because for example, if you've got a tiger in front of you, it's going to be a really bad idea to have sex with your girl. Okay? So that stress is in us to survive so that we can reproduce another day. So any kind of psychological disorders that is going to play a huge role

in reducing many, many, many different areas of libido that say Cialis or Viagra or any kind of supplement could never do. So that's kind of like number one is if you haven't seen a sex therapist, for example, and you've tried a bunch of stuff, that's a huge thing that I would recommend. And if anybody's listening right now, if you think you're the first person that that sex therapist has seen that has your exact issues, you're fucking wrong. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the Arte program, which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garner and I have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the world's most elite performers, award winning athletes, billionaires, musicians, executives,

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Now back to the show. Like that person has seen many, many people like you and if you need help, go freaking talk to them because your root cause isn't going to be found in biochemistry, it's gonna be found in psychology. So how would that be different than just seeing a regular psychotherapist? Like a sex therapist may be dealing with like a sex specific issue, but it also could be something totally unrelated to sex.

Like you had trauma from when you were a little kid, you feel like nobody loves you, that type of type of thing has nothing to do with sex. And that's just it's just a downstream consequence of some totally unrelated issue that a regular psychotherapist that presumably could handle is it is it radically different? Do you know much about the distinctions there? No, I don't know much about the distinctions there, but it would be my it would be my intuition that

psychology is very much like physiology, and that you're going to have one person that specializes in the endocrine system, one person that specializes in the immune system, one person specializes in the muscular system. I think that in the world of psychology and how much goes into that, there are likely specialists in sex by itself, and then that person would be able to better identify if their client needs to go see someone else. This is not a sex thing, this is depression.

This is not a sex thing, this is this. So I think that that would just be a better curator if there need to work with them or exactly who they would need to see next. If you had adequate desire, we'll say, but it was purely a function issue, you think a sex therapist would still help in that case? Or is that if you have good function

but you just don't ever feel like doing it, is that more a sex therapist's role? In my opinion, yes. So if somebody has adequate desire, I don't think they need to go talk to somebody because the desire is already there. It's going to be a function thing. So that's actually when I'd start going down the list, I'd be looking at hormones, and then I'd be looking at function, and I'd be looking to incorporate things from there. Because you know all that nitric oxide stuff

that I just talked about? Well, in the genital area, that's mediated by testosterone and estrogen. So testosterone and estrogen both play a huge role and that's something that a lot of people kind of miss too. And something that I believe you talked about, Doug, at the beginning of the podcast, everybody thinks it's only testosterone. It's absolutely not. Testosterone plays a role in this, no doubt.

But estrogen plays just as big of a role and in a lot of data, it plays an even bigger role in sex drive, not just in females, but in males. Estrogen is absolutely required for libido. Ask any bodybuilder who's five weeks out from a show and taking a lot of anti estrogens to create a real dry look in his physique. What happened to his libido in those last five weeks? Even while he's taking tons of testosterone? Yes, even while they're on testosterone, trend, you know, master on that, the suppression of estrogen is enormous to.

And of course, the hypocaloric state in that context. But the suppression of estrogen is absolutely enormous when it comes to libido. So testosterone and estrogen are key for both sexes and estrogen. That the way in which the menstrual cycle works, estrogen actually peaks right before ovulation. And it's very clear in the literature that sexual desire in females is highest during ovulation. And that's triggered by that peak in estrogen.

Yeah. So both of them. If you've got hormone issues on either side, and that begs another question too. So like this topic is so big. So we go over that psychology stuff, right? But then even when you get into hormones, we can dive into the nitty-gritty on testosterone and estrogen, but those could be completely thrown off due to obesity, due to insulin resistance, due to sleep apnea. Like these are things that like even testosterone and estrogen therapy, which people freaking jump to,

they will jump to hormone replacement therapy in so many different scenarios, but never actually address why that took place. That's such a huge mistake because you're kind of missing the point. Maybe you got your desire back, but you're not any healthier. You just got a thing that got your desire back. And it's actually artificial desire. Like it's not even the real deal because insulin resistance was offsetting your hormones. Obesity was offsetting your hormones. Sleep apnea, insomnia. What was the freaking reason why you had stress or anxiety that's offsetting your hormones? Because that's still in your life. It's just now you've got some desire. So like I'm very big. I'm just take, I like to take a more holistic approach and it's kind of like my answer to everything is when you improve health, you're

never worse off. We just improve systemic health and everything gets better along the way. Yeah, go ahead. I was just gonna say like if you have a low libido, isn't there a big chance that you have a much bigger problem that could be early death? I've read everything I've read about low libido. It's a very good sign that you have a much bigger problem you need to deal with. So, if you just take the hormones, you might just be placing yourself into an early grave. hormones. I mean, you might just be like placing yourself into an early grave. So, yeah, absolutely. Because one of the key predictors of erectile dysfunction is high cholesterol. And then that starts to make sense. Like, yes, that would absolutely increase mortality risk. But hey, that also reduces blood flow. So it

makes perfect sense that that's impacting the erections, but also impacting mortality. So while you're trying to impacting the erections, but also impacting mortality. So while you're trying to chase an erection, you're going to die sooner. So let's hear that out first. Something more important, brother. I mean, yeah, yeah. Believe it or not, there's something more important. Yeah, if I die at 50, my volume doesn't get to where I want.

I'm looking for volume sex. Yeah. Not intensity, volume, boys. Yeah. Mm-hmm. When you were going through kind of talking about the psychological side of this thing, we've also done a show, I can't remember the exact number, what show it was on, the number of ways

that poor health actually leads into the behavioral health side of things. Is that also a factor of it? Like, obviously, I think the running theme of all this, let's get you as healthy as possible and then see how does someone know if they need to go to a psychologist or they need to get look into dopamine and serotonin and understand hormone levels before they've gone into see a behavioral health or sexual health specialist. I think that there's going to be some degree of escapism. So with people who are honest with themselves, humans, we do an amazing job at justifying our terrible decisions. We are so

good at that. Justifying cheat meals, justifying alcoholism, justifying substance abuse, just we justify all this stuff. And it is just that a justification. But somebody who's truly ready for change will reach a level of self-awareness to identify, hey, is this psychological? What type of am I doing some form of escapism here? I truly think that a coach will bring that out of you. And sometimes that needs to take

place where a coach just needs to reach into your heart and pull it out and show you that this is actually the route you need to go. And I've done that for a lot of people in the past too. And you just tell someone, hey, have you ever talked to someone about this? And then the answer is almost always no. And then that you almost give them permission because now it's not them, you know, um, seeing that they've lost in their mind in some way and going themselves. No, it's like a prescription from coach. Hey, go talk to them. Just give it a shot. Try it out. And then there's, there is an admission there. So I think a lot of people, it out. Yeah. And then there's there is an admission there. So I think a lot of people,

whether they're ready to admit it to themselves or not, they know if they have some degree of depression or some degree of anxiety, or some degree of porn addiction. Yeah, these are all things that play a huge role in it. So I think that that would just simply be a conversation you have with your clients. I totally that conversation goes well, then do your labs. And we'll see what's going on under the hood so I can fix your testosterone, estrogen and function. I've asked two people that we've interviewed on this podcast over the last couple of years about the porn addiction thing

and nobody really has a great answer. Cool. I feel like those, like the depression side of things, if I were to look at behavioral health as like going a, and maybe I don't understand all of the pieces of depression. But that seems to be like a psychological issue where I view like the porn addiction side is like alcoholism. Is that correct in aligning those two in a way of like, this is a

personal choice that you're making and it's negatively affecting your life, where depression seems like it's in a way it's like some event triggers and stacks on top negative emotions and negative like seeing where you're going to be in the future. You don't like where that's headed, the anxiety, that side of things. Obviously this is a massively prevalent thing in our society and that somebody is going to Pornhub billions of times a day to make it like the fifth most visited website in the world. What does porn actually do to your body

that is so detrimental or your mind that is so detrimental that, um, one it's labeled as an addiction now to look at naked people rub, rubbing each other. And then to like, how does this create like long term issues where people can become impotent or have no sex drive whatsoever? Sure. So that was a beautiful question, my man. I think this is something that's so important to talk about. And I really like actually how you separated depression and addiction, because that's like, that's important. Like depression, and depression is kind of a big category where you're, you're apathetic about most things, like being motivated to have sex is hard for someone who's depressed. Being motivated to work out is very hard.

Being motivated to make a meal or even get out of bed. Like these are all things that's very hard for someone who's truly depressed, but they don't represent the characteristic traits of addiction, whereas addiction is a totally different thing. And this is already in the research that alcoholism and opioid use reduce libido dramatically. And one of the reasons why they reduce libido dramatically, chronic alcohol use, not acute. Acute can drive it up because of estrogen factors, but chronic abuse completely suppresses it. And one of the reasons why opioid use and alcoholism

suppress libido over time is because dopamine is involved in libido. So dopamine is the reward neurotransmitter. So when you have that orgasm, you have a dopamine rush and it's rewarding and you remember what that was like and that's what's going to have you come back next time. That's very dopamine mediated. However, if you're getting your dopamine elsewhere, your desire for other things to get dopamine isn't even nearly the case because when you feel how exactly when you know how good painkillers feel, when you know how good heroin feels, when you know how great of an escape alcoholism gives you from the reality of your life. These are all rewards that actually make sex secondary as opposed to primary.

They're not having the right sex thing, but go ahead. Yeah. Yeah, man. So it's a dopamine thing. If I can get a better kick, if I'm getting more juice from something else, then why would I go for another treat? Like, I'm not going to visit the tree over here if I've got a tree here that could give me everything that I need. So that's a huge part of the chemistry behind how addiction can over time reduce libido. But hey, that's also pornography. When you log on to Pornhub, that porn addiction's a thing.

That's a real thing. And there is so much porn out there now that if you wanted to watch a porn video every day for the rest of your life, I'm sure you'd be able to do it. You can't keep up. There's no way. It's produced way faster.

Yeah, yeah. You think it's tough to keep up with shows on Netflix. Try keeping up to Pornhub. Jesus. Like, like. Like. Like. Nobody quote me on that actually, by the way. I heard Huberman talking about this to where the most important part is the difference in the amount of dopamine to the baseline. So like, it's not really necessarily how much it's the difference in baseline,

because if you watch, I guess, if you watch porn every day, that baseline creeps up. And soon, like, you have to go to crazier porn or something more, you know, out there to get that difference in baseline, because you're increasing that baseline, which then therefore makes normal sex really hard for you to get excited about, you know, for that dopamine dump. What are your thoughts? What's the truth to that? Well, I think that a comparable example would

be caffeine. So like the first time you have 100 milligrams of caffeine, it makes you feel freaking great. And then, you know, over time, you might go to 125 and then 150, 175, 200. And you kind of keep climbing up that ladder, even though you're still never achieving that initial 100 that you got, you're keep chasing that hit. You keep chasing that same feeling that you originally got in the world of pornography, you can look at something that I guess societal norms would be would call somewhat normal. Right. I think it's a normal thing to explore pornography. But when you start doing it every day, dude, you're going to start looking for that extra hit, that extra hit that.

And then it ends up getting more weird, more hardcore, more all kinds of things. And you've reached a scenario where like, you're actually watching something that you don't necessarily enjoy. And I think a good a good way to almost calculate this is if the moment you're done, the moment you finished and you look at the screen and you go, Oh, what the fuck's that? Like, that's like one of the. Yeah. If like you can actually get into these states where you're like in a type of trance seeking that reward and then it's something you would never do in real life. It's something you're not fucking interested in at all. But in that moment, in that heat, the dopamine rush is worth it and you're going to go after it. So then that over time can raise that dopamine baseline.

So then when you go have missionary sex with your girl later on, it's quite below baseline and then you're not going to be able to perform because the desire is not as high because the dopamine rush isn't as big as it otherwise would have been. And you might be going to the tree of reward of dopamine on pornhub.com rather than having a healthy, loving, great relationship with your girl. So that's something where if people can kind of understand that and stop, let me tell you something,

your life will never get worse if you quit porn. Your life will never get worse if you quit it. It will only get better in so many different ways because of dopamine and a host of other factors revolving around being in a healthy, amazing relationship with your partner. I have a question about how that that same cycle repeats itself in in real life and that I have talked to multiple people that are unable to climax, even though

all of the hardware works. And in the back of my mind, while they were explaining to me the issues that they're having, realizing that these people have probably gone out almost nightly, had plenty of success due to the level of power that they have in their life, whether it's financial or access or whatever that whatever allows them to meet the opposite sex and influence that situation to get those people home with them, whatever it is, that are now unable to actually enjoy even real life sex to the point of climaxing and having an orgasm. Is that, is it possible?

I mean, it almost has to be, I guess, but those mechanisms can play themselves out in real life as well. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like that, you're just simply finding another way to raise that dopamine baseline that we were just talking about is that if you've had these extreme experiences, it's kind of like, this happens a lot in the fight game, actually, is like when you've been the main event of a pay per view and you've won a world title via knockout. Oh, yeah. You actually you hear about a lot of these fighters actually getting a lot of trouble after their career

because they're that nothing gets their juices going anymore. There's no that that same thrill of victory, of fighting in a cage, of prepping for it, that is just an unbelievable high that they're constantly trying to chase again. And I think that an example of somebody who's killing it at the bars and now has a troubled time being loyal to their girl or to their man, that's just another representation of someone who kind of needs to reset their priorities and do like a type of, um, I don't know what to call it. A dopamine fast. You could like, uh, like just truly not, you know, cut out pornography, revisit your priorities. Um, and then also use some, you know, there, there are things over the counter that can actually help in

this situation. Like Macca. Have you guys heard of Macca? No, no. M-A-C-A. That's like one of the most well demonstrated things for libido. And it's males and females. But everything I'm saying right now, I'm using males because I'm so I want to speak from experience about a topic as important as this. But everything I'm saying also applies to females. Everything. Three grams. There's just to provide people with some some value here. Three grams of Macca powder with breakfast. And there's no difference if a yellow, red, green,

there's different colors of Macca. They all seem to work very similarly. Three grams with breakfast for males or females. Reliably improves libido without altering hormone status. So you can really increase desire over time without impacting hormone statuses. That's why it's really good from a unisex perspective. But the problem with Maca is, A, people take underdose stuff, like the 500 milligrams or something like that. Three grams is really

where you want to be at. And Maca actually progressively increases desire for eight weeks. So when I give someone Maca, like first off, I want to do the psychological, hormonal, and function thing. But if someone really just wants a little boost, a reliable and safe for long-term use boost, three grams of Maca with breakfast over the course of eight weeks will increase sexual desire for males and females.

And then after that, that's when I start looking at other function things. Citrulline is great for blood flow. Arginine is another one demonstrated in the world of research that's good for blood flow. Citrulline is a little bit better. I've seen a study actually in, this was actually on heart disease patients, but it was found that three grams of citrulline increases that three grams of citrulline increases levels of arginine inside the body as much as six grams of arginine. So three grams of citrulline via the arginine-citrulline cycle that happens in physiology, three grams of citrulline is as effective as six grams of arginine. So it's actually better at increasing blood arginine than arginine itself because arginine gets really eaten up by the liver.

So citrulline is great for blood flow. Cocoa powder, believe it or not, is well demonstrated in the world of libido and function because of its impacts on nitric oxide as well. And then there's also yohimbine. I don't really recommend it as often, but yohimbine at about 0.09 milligrams per pound of body weight, it's a stimulant. So it's a hundred percent. It's very bad for people who have, who are prone to nervousness or anxiety. Like that's, it's totally contraindicated in those situations. It seems to exacerbate nervousness and anxiety, but Yohimbine is one of those, you know, kind

of unique ones that improves desire and function. So it'll actually increase desire while improving blood flow. Whereas arginine and citrulline, they're more just blood flow based and Macca is more pure desire based. Yeah. One thing I'd love to get into is how sleep affects libido. There has never been a time in my life that I have wanted to have sex less than having children. And the lack of sleep, like I, if somebody was like, you could have

sex with whoever and whatever. How about I just take the eight hours of sleep? Is that possible? Can you just, can I trade that sex life with just an extra three hours of real sleep? I had never experienced like a low sex drive into my life. And now it's like, I shouldn't say all the time, thanks to Dan Garner, now I sleep very, but especially during the like first, you know, year two, you have another one on top of that. And then all of a sudden you start back at zero. Like it's like a three, four year long process of feeling alive. And I honestly had never felt like I had a low sex drive by any means. And then kids showed up, the sleep went away. And all of a sudden it was like just pure survival. And the last thing I cared about was like rolling over

and performing for three and a half minutes so that I could go to sleep I'm fine. I can go to I need sleep Well, how does that all play together? Well, first of all three and a half minutes you stud you I know, right? That that's three minutes longer than me did I've been practicing. That's three minutes longer than me, dude. So you're a lot. My wife might argue with me too. She'd be like, why are you making yourself sound cool on the podcast?

When it comes to sleep, fatigue is just an enormous overwhelming factor to where if I sleep three hours last night, I don't, sure, my libido is lower, but I also don't really feel like training. I also don't feel like recording a podcast Yeah, I also don't really feel like walking the dog Also, I definitely don't want to go shovel the driveway or get groceries or any of that shit So I think just fatigue is Systemically down regulating everything which again, I just always think in terms of like evolutionary biology Is it a good time to be a dad if you're never sleeping?

I think that that in many cases is just biology, answering questions that we don't even know are questions yet and having protective mechanisms in place. And that protective mechanism will play itself out from an endocrine perspective because sleep reduces testosterone and increases cortisol. So we're having less drive for reproduction and more drive for stress response, which is not an evolutionary great situation for reproduction and having kids. So it's playing itself out from an endocrinology perspective. It's playing itself out from an evolutionary perspective, but then I also

just think fatigue is a real big factor there. Yeah. I actually saw a study a while back, don't quote me on the numbers here, but it was something along the lines of like 30 minutes extra sleep per night increases sex drive in new mothers by 14% or something like that. And I showed to my wife and she was like, see? See? It's not just me. I just need some more sleep. I know. Okay, go take a nap. Let's do this. I'll see you in 30. Yeah, I think too that that would just that would improve female hormone balance. It would reduce her fatigue. And I also think it would reduce her stress. And I think that's a great combination to have a higher percentage chance of being in the mood. Yeah, you do get the double whammy with kids. You get the sleep thing,

but then you also have the stress thing on top of it. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. That time alone, even if it was 30 minutes of peace, let alone 30 minutes of sleep, I think they both have a pretty similar effect. I have two. So I don't know about you guys, but in my life, when my wife got pregnant, fireworks. Like what goes on hormonally when you're pregnant? When for the first time in my life, I was like, Hey, can we just like take a night off? This is like rock. I'm trying to read it off. Yeah, like I literally can't keep up.

I have I can run like a 5K in 20 minutes, but I cannot keep up with you right now. Why? What what hormonal is going on when women are pregnant that potentially sends sex drive just through the roof? Well, I am not sure of the exact answer, but my greatest guess, there is a form of estrogen known as estriol that has estrogen-like properties that increases over 100X on the onset of pregnancy. So estriol increasing 100X,

I've actually seen it on a lab before and it was actually, I think I told this story in the seminar. I've seen it at a lab before and actually had to tell someone that they're pregnant. But Estriol can increase 100x and it has estrogen-like properties. So it would be my prediction that that is what's creating the hormonal response that's allowing for libido to take place. I also think too You know depending on a certain situation that there's a lot of people who struggle with pregnancy There and when you get pregnant finally, it's like a huge Sigh of relief. It's like a weight off your chest. There's a weight off your shoulders when you can't get pregnant It's the worst and I'm speaking from experience. It's like a weight off your chest. There's a weight off your shoulders. When you can't get pregnant, it's the worst. And I'm speaking from experience. It's the absolute worst. It's a real tough time

for everybody involved. And then when you actually do get pregnant, there is an enormous sigh of relief. And I think that you do sleep better. You do have less stress. You're happier. I think that also when you're trying to get pregnant, it's like prescript happier. It's not, you know, that I think that also, when you're trying to get pregnant, it's like prescriptive. It's like, this is the day we got to do it. This is how we're going to do it. It's like, as opposed to just frickin doing it and enjoying yourself and remembering why you did it in the first place. Like I think that the combination of a lot of those things would would contribute towards that. But SGL being a big one. The other piece, as we get older, I don't know if it has to, but most people trend towards having a lower sex drive.

Is that merely just because you've had decades of sex, or is it the lowering of testosterone? What happens when we get older that makes sex drive and libido lower? I think that the progressive reduction of testosterone in estrogen is very well documented. So that would play a large role. I think also, like when you say things like this, there's always reading between the lines because you say that libido decreases over the course of time you know what people over the course of time

also get fatter lazier like that i think that those are actual contributors to libido and not necessarily libido because people can actually they can show you a beautiful graph and be like you know libido has decreased this over the course of time and this is what happened to their age. So the correlation is great. The correlation is not causation. As people get older, they do have a higher body fat percentage. They are more insulin resistant.

Their testosterone and estrogen is down, not necessarily because of age, but because of their bad decisions. There's a lot of things happening that can contribute to that. So I think that that would play a role there. And I think that's probably all I would say in that category. That'd be my answer. Can we dig into, you mentioned alcohol earlier, can we dig into alcohol, marijuana, recreational drug use, steroids, and just other things people might be consuming for a variety of reasons and how that affects sex drive both in the short and long term? Yeah. So, estrogen is increased by marijuana and alcohol. They both have estrogen-like properties.

The difference is marijuana for a large amount of people is kind of like cut in half. It either gives you anxiety or it allows you to calm down. And there are different strands. You can go Indica, you can go Sativa, you can have a CBD to THC ratio. I'm telling you just from a coach's perspective, there are people out there that get anxiety kind of no matter what combination of stuff

they throw at them in that department. So I think it's kind of just right tool for the right job. Alcohol is likely the worst of the two because of the amount of calories it has because of the the larger negative effect on hormones because it reduces testosterone over time because it dehydrates the body and the genital musculature is still musculature and that requires hydration. the genital musculature is still musculature and that requires hydration. Alcohol also reduces serotonin over time, which is actually what creates the alcohol dependency.

Alcohol, it does this like very strange thing where you take it. So if you're someone who has anxiety and you drink alcohol and it reduces your anxiety, that's the alcohol is actually providing you an artificial form of serotonin synthesis. But then that actually reduces your baseline serotonin in the absence of alcohol. So then although alcohol reduces anxiety by improving serotonin, you end up having more anxiety without alcohol because it reduces

your brain serotonin in the absence of alcohol. So then next time you need more alcohol and then more and then more and then it becomes more frequent. And then you run into a situation where yes alcoholism is going to impact libido in its own way because of dopamine pathways. But then I also think it's going to impact libido in its own way via serotonin pathways because it's going to impact anxiety and nervousness. So at the end of the day, when it comes to poisons, less is better. Poisons. I want to ask one more question about the nitrous oxide.

I've been trying to find what they're talking about. The lady that I spoke with said that there's in the sinuses, that there's actually when you breathe in your nose, you take nitrous oxide in from the sinuses. Is that right? I'm actually, I'm sure I'd be the wrong guy to ask. I've never seen that, but that'd be fascinating. Yeah, I know. I've never heard that, so I was going to ask the expert. I found an article, but I don't know proof of that. Yeah, yeah, unfortunately, I don't have the answer for that one.

No problem. When we start to get into the testosterone thing, I know we've done multiple shows on testosterone and kind of as it was discussed earlier, it's like adding it, just throwing testosterone in your body without the health side of it really is not the best solution. Is there a time or like when, how many layers of things can people do before it's like now there's an actual testosterone issue and we need to kind of go down that that route. Is that is that a real thing for for increasing sex drive? 100% Oh, there is undeniable that

hormones play a huge role. And that's why it's the first thing I look at after psychology. A lot of times those acts kind of a chicken in the egg at times too. So you got to be you got to be pretty intricate with your data collection process. But there are many things to rule out before you know you need a hormone like ruling out environmental pollutants, ruling out heavy metals, ruling out dietary consistency, ruling out body fat percentage, ruling out micronutrient availability, ruling out psychology because stress by itself reduces testosterone, ruling out sleep quality because sleep reduces testosterone. I mean, that was seven or eight things that also have their own subcategories of things that all negatively impact testosterone.

So I'm just a guy where if somebody comes to me and they want sexual desire, then I want to achieve that through also making them a way healthier person at the same time. Because I think that's the way that they're actually going to maintain that desire in the absence of supplements. Because I could give them three grams of Maca and it's probably going to work. But did I actually help that person? Or am I kind of a guy now who's a symptom manager rather than a root cause solver? I could help that person or am I kind of a guy now who's a symptom manager rather than a root cause solver? I could give that person desire. Sure.

And I might even do it or recommend it in the short term while we work on the root cause in the long term so that they can eventually come off of that and sustain their own sexual desire moving on in the future. But yeah, I like to do a comprehensive process to improve the system as a whole. We got to remember, we're hardwired to have sex. Humans are hardwired to reproduce. That's another, I keep saying evolutionary biology. We are hardwired to keep this species rolling and reproduce

and increase the population and do what we need to do on this evolutionary journey. When you aren't executing something that's hardwired, we should look under the hood and see where that dysfunction is. Under the hood sometimes might be in your mind, but under the hood other times might be enzyme-related, it might be blood flow-related, it might be blood flow related, it might be hormone related. So I just, I think that that comprehensive process would, is extremely likely to not just eliminate a lot of things that will make you a way healthier version of yourself, but in the process of doing so, increase your libido at the same time. Gotcha. So we talk a lot about hormones impacting sex drive and the desire to have sex. Does it work the other way as well? Like if you don't lot about hormones impacting sex drive and the desire to have sex. Does it work the other way as well?

Like if you don't have a very strong sex drive and then all of a sudden you find yourself in a situation like you have a new partner and like the opportunity to have like a lot of novel exciting sex becomes available and your partner is bringing it to you, like having more sex, does that improve your hormones? Does it work like that at all? Not to my knowledge, no. I think that, I don't know if having sex improves hormones, but that might be something that would be more fit

to ask somebody, because there's a whole area of research in like the world of pheromones and sense and things like that. And I think that that would likely probably have an impact on hormones, but I don't know the research offhand on that. But I do think that that desire is a big component of sex drive and then hormones are a big component of sex drive. But I don't know if having sex would increase hormones. I just I haven't seen that in the literature just yet, but I feel like if you do consider it on a case by case basis or really just talk yourself through it, it's

not unreasonable that there would be an increase in hormone synthesis due to having more sex, probably just because you're a happier person. You are in a new relationship. The sex is being brought to you. It is fun. You are getting a dopamine hit from it, which means you're going to want to come back for more. And that's also great for confidence. Confidence is good for libido and testosterone. So I think probably you could talk yourself through a scenario where that makes a lot of sense, but I just haven't seen any studies on it. Yeah. My final question, hair loss medicine seems to be, have a, brushing it without it. Right. You don't need that. Who cares if you have the hair if you can't get the down range result of getting the curl and then getting it up.

Who would knowingly want hair over libido? Well, I don't think it affects everybody the same, which is really what is interesting to me of like, why are some people go on Propecia and then have erectile dysfunction or there's many hair loss medicine or no risk like that. No risk. But what what happens from hair to penis and all or finasteride, what they do is they inhibit an enzyme called 5-alpha-reductase, which allows for the synthesis of our conversion rather of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone. Dihydrotestosterone plays a role in libido and it even plays a role in flaccid size. So it plays a role in the grower or shower. But for real, it does.

Dihydrogen testosterone plays a role in that. Finasteride actually reduces the activity of 5-alpha-reductase, which is what increases DHT. So to the degree at which that happens, and the degree at which you're naturally predisposed to making DHT is likely what's resulting in the inter-individual variability. Because if we had a very low conversion rate to begin with, and then we cut the enzyme off, it's likely that that is going to have a major impact on libido and erectile dysfunction. But if you had a decent conversion rate already, and you do reduce enzyme activity, it's not going to completely cut it off, it will reduce it and then you will have basically not as large of a reduction. So you can think

about it like going from 100% to 50%, rather than from 50% to 0%. And that's likely resulting in the variability. But that's a major, major prevalent thing. And if people are on antidepressants, can actually reduce sex drive. So like, it's just a good conversation, even larger than that. Finasteride or Propecia, antidepressants have a big impact on libido, alcohol, opioids, pain medications. There's a lot of things like I would just also invite people to go to Drugs.com and type in their blood pressure medication reduces libido. Like a lot of people don't know that.

The blood pressure is one of the top things that reduces libido. How many people are on blood pressure medication? A ton of them. And so like I think that it's important for people to just go to Drugs.com, type in your medication and then look at the side effects because you might find something that matches a lot of your current symptoms. Yeah. Yo, one last thing here. I believe I heard Huberman say on a podcast a while back that a lot of people kind of

incorrectly, and we already addressed this, think that high estrogen is a problem for sex drive, even though that it actually can be beneficial in many ways. But high prolactin is very often an issue for decreased libido. Do you know anything about prolactin specifically in relation to the other hormones? Not in the way in which it impacts libido. No, nothing I'd be able to rhyme off hand here. Yep. Cool.

Got it. Dan Garner, where can the people find you? At Dan Garner Nutrition on Instagram. There it is. And Coach Garner, Team Garner. CoachGarner be able to find you at Dan Garner nutrition on Instagram. There it is. And coach Garner team Garner coach.com. There it is. Yeah, make sure you get over check out those courses. We I tell many people to go check out those nutrition courses so they can start to dig into their own labs and understand how all this stuff works together.

When we hire new coaches, one of the first things they do is watch the ultimate nutrition mentorship. So we recommend that one first for sure. Yeah. Travis Mash. mashlead.com or What do you have going on? What are you putting out into the world these days? How's your Olympic lifting coach course going?

Really well, you know, we sold a ton of those. We're about to release a live seminar we're going to do in California with stronger experts. We're going to do the basically version two but live. It's going to be really good. I'm the one that developed all the different categories that we're going to touch in. It's going to be cool. We're going to go deep into correcting dysfunction. We're going to look into the advancing techniques in programming. It's the are tickets on sale? Any minute today they launched. So we're just waiting on Phil to give you the website and then we're going to we'll have it up on the next show.

It'll be me Spencer Arnold, Chris Amenta and then of course my man Phil from Stronger Experts. There you go. Awesome. Doug Larson. Right on my Instagram Douglas E Larson. I am Anders Varner at Anders Varner and we are barbell shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged and make Doug Larson. Right on, I'm on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. I am Anders Varner at Anders Varner

and we are Barbell Shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged and make sure you get over to rtalab.com. That is the signature program inside rapid health optimization where you can go and experience all the lab lifestyle, performance, testing, analysis, and coaching to help you optimize your health and performance. And you can access all of that over at Aratelab.com.

Friends, we'll see you guys next week.