Change Your Brain Every Day - Sex on the Brain: Sex and ADD - Part 4 of an Interview with Dr. Emily Morse

Episode Date: April 13, 2017

In the last installment of a series on sex and relationships, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana are joined by Dr. Emily Morse to talk about what you can do if ADD is causing problems in the bedroom.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics. Amen Clinics represents a true paradigm shift in mental health, utilizing SPECT imaging technology for assessing brain function. Amen Clinics focuses on personalized treatment plans and has an 85% proven outcome rate for patients. For more information, visit amenclinics.com or call at 1-888-288-9834. Hi, I'm Donnie Osmond and welcome to the Brain Warriors Way hosted by my friends Daniel and Tana Amon. Now in this podcast, you're going to learn that the war for your health

is one between your ears. That's right. If you're ready to be sharper and have better memory, mood, energy, and focus, well then stay with us. Here are Daniel and Tana Amen. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. I am here with Tana and on the Brain Warriors Way podcast today, we have Dr. Emily Morse. So this is the fourth in our series. So much fun.

Sex with Emily. Emily is an author of Hot Sex, Over 200 Things You Can Try Tonight. She hosts the wildly popular Sex with Emily podcast. You can learn more about her work at sexwithemily.com. And today we're going to talk about a topic near and dear to my heart. We're going to talk about sex and ADD. I am also a child psychiatrist. ADD has been one of my specialties for the last 30 plus years. And I know more about this disorder than I want to know. Having several children who have it, along with my wife.

You're here today with two women who have ADD. And it can be a huge blessing because you can pay attention to six things at once. And it can be a curse because you can struggle in school or in your relationships. And it affects sex. And it can affect sex in an exciting way, but also in a really negative way. And so... But it can be treated and there's hope. So you just have to understand it.

Well, and my first wife, Tana's my second wife, had ADD. And I just didn't understand why when we had sex, there had to be complete silence because she heard absolutely everything in the house that went on.

She slept with a fan. It's the middle of winter. It's cold outside. I knew if I died and went to hell, the first thing I would hear is the fan. Because they need white noise on at night. Otherwise, they can't sleep. That's not me. They just hear everything. And orgasms can be really hard because what do orgasms require?

Focus. You have to pay attention to the feeling long enough in order to make it happen and if you get distracted by every little thing um and so i learned about this firsthand but then i really started paying attention to my patients and i'm like oh get your add treated life is going to be a lot more fun. Yeah. And sex will be more fun. Right. So talk to us, Dr. Emily, about what you know about people who struggle with attention span and sex.

Right. I mean, it can be, yeah, exactly. I mean, what you said, exactly what you said is that it's, first of all, we're starting to have sex. Then we get, because so much about sex is being in the moment, being present, being connected to your partner. And we get, because so much about sex is being in the moment, being present, being connected to your partner. And if your brain is going like,

oh my God, is it going to happen? Am I going to have the orgasm? What's he doing? Did I just hear a noise? Did the kids get hot? I mean, there's no way that orgasm is going to happen because sex is about being

present, being connected to your body, you know, your partner and be staying with this one sensation. And then all of a sudden you get, you know, you know, you know, you're about to get there and then something happens.

So it can be, it can be just, it can just wreak havoc on your sex life and your ability to orgasm. But the good news about it is that people with ADD crave novelty and newness. And so, so something that you can do is work on changing up sex. So if it's like having sex in a different location, I mean, sex can be because people they do these things become very boring and monotonous and routine but with sex there's so much you can

do even if you're changing that up the location changing up positions introducing toys sensation play like what did you start with like some massage or some light tickling or you know some bondage or you take away like i I always say, use a blindfold, like, you know, and you take away, you know, sight and then everything else becomes more heightened. So you just mix it up and novelty and it can actually, it can actually help people with ADD because it's something new. So they're super focused. They're like, I don't know what's going to happen next year. For example, like if you've used a blindfold and you are like tickling them or giving massage

or spanking, you're going to stay focused because you're moving the skin, you know, you're adding a blindfold and you are like tickling them or giving massage or spanking, you're going to stay focused because you're moving the skin, you know, you're adding a lot of new elements to it. But for orgasm, it can be, I mean, I think that was my problem when you asked like why,

why I got interested in this is because I never thought to even masturbate as a child, never even occurred to me because I think I was really anxious. I was distracted. I had ADD. It just, it was the last thing I even touched my body. But then during sex, it was the same thing, distractibility. And so I just had

to focus on this topic because I wanted to have better sex. This is really why it became my life work. And so I kind of look at ADD as kind of a gift now. And sex, since it can be, there are so many ways, paths to orgasm and to pleasure that if you kind of embrace that and say okay i'm not going to be able to have sex the same scheduled sex that's not going to work for me typically i'm going to find out what turns me on and what does um like what that secret sauce is for me you know even if it's like every time it's these three positions i you know i can't have any noise i have to have all the you just you become more aware of it you know and um

you know being sensitive to touch is another big issue with people who have add they can't be touched in a certain way now it's it's not true for everybody, but high enough percentage. And they also hate things like tags. And as little kids, they take their clothes off all the time. As little kids? Yeah. As little kids, they take because their clothes have to be just right or it drives them insane. So like seams on socks.

And it's funny, jordan talks about he has add and he came up with the haynes tagless underwear that's awesome remember it because you know tags just like maybe you still you still joke around because you walk in the house you can always tell when i get home because there's a trail of clothes going to my room i'm like i cannot wait to get the house and just rip my clothes off that didn't come out right that totally did not come out right no i knew what you did i was a kid so fucking my mom i was like i would walk around if i felt any tags any scenes yeah i totally get it so know what your part, and this is back to communication, know what they like and pay attention to it so that he or she can focus.

Exactly. And then get your ADD treated because, you know, and, and, and, you know, there's all sorts of controversy about stimulants and all of that. I'm a huge fan for the right brain because what happens after I treat someone's ADD,

she'll come back, if it's a woman, the first time, and she just has that little smile on her face. And I'm like, so what's the smile for? And I already know. She's like, unbelievable. I never could have orgasms. And now I can because I can focus. And so getting the ADD treated, and it doesn't always have to be about medicine. I wrote a book called Healing ADD where I talk about natural ways to treat it.

But I'm not opposed to medicine. Like, I wouldn't be opposed to medicine for cancer or hypertension or heart disease. And you know, the brain has issues like your pancreas. But keep in mind, like our new program, the brain warriors way focuses on this. There are so many things that can affect ADD diet. So if you're eating, you know, the wrong diet, it's going to increase your ADD. So focusing on more protein and fat as opposed to sugar or meditation. I know for me, meditation is like my best friend. So that's going to help you improve your focus.

There's a lot of things you can do. Of course. And on the podcast, we always talk about what are the natural ways to do it. But I have to tell you, the little yellow pill for so many women- They don't know what the little yellow pill is oh it's riddled was riddled just made a huge positive difference in in their sex life so um you know more about add but uh this is a critical topic because if you have add but you don't really know it and you've never been diagnosed but if you have a short attention span you're easily distracted you're sensitive to noise orgasms are really hard it's at least one area to explore would would seeing if i have this make a difference in my life because it's obviously not just about

sex right it's about so much more how add can negatively well and we didn't bring up the flip side of this people who are hypersexual because of because their impulsivity exactly impulsive sex wanting to like they always need to raise the bar to try something new because otherwise they're getting bored exactly there's that too i mean there's so many different right people that can be very impulsive but they're not actually having orgasm they just want the conquest or more partners or they're not really having enjoyment because nothing else can turn them on but dangerous sex. And that damages relationships also. Absolutely. That's why, yeah, to treat it. But I do think

that meditation and meds, I mean, there's a combination of it. But once you learn to, with meditation and breath, your mind like it's like anything else you can actually teach yourself how to have organ that's what a lot of people have to do a lot of women it doesn't come naturally for them a lot of women are like oh when i was five years old i was riding a horse i was in the shower i had an orgasm but for a lot of women it doesn't happen in the way especially of add so if you, that's why masturbation for women, it's so important because if you, even with ADD, it's fine. Like whatever you have to do, like turn on the white noise, shut your door, turn off your phone, practice with fantasy. If you can figure

out your secret sauce, how you have to move, what makes you feel good. When you're with a partner, you mimic that and you bring that to the situation. Like this is what I, these are the conditions that I need. That's okay. Right. I was just just going to say that so even like what you were talking about earlier that's okay um just like the not shaming men you know with with ed you know it's it's okay to work around that and figure out how it works and how it functions but just like we talked about with you know within a relationship we need to be very careful about understanding, because I know we see a lot of it in our clinics, this sex addiction, and a lot of it has to do with ADD. And that devastates- We actually did a study of 200 sex addicts, and 70% had low activity in the front part of their

brain, which is what we see with head trauma, but we also see it with ADD. And it was just devastating their marriages, which in turn devastated both partners. So getting- High-risk neighbors, right? We're seeking to be drugged, sex, right? Yeah. And it's so easy to get addicted because it's everywhere well it's a pleasure it actually affects the pleasure center in your brain which that dopamine rush you know so it's it becomes addictive yeah absolutely and i'm thinking now i mean i'm wondering if you've

seen after all these years you know with the availability of porn and sexual energy for kids like if it's even higher the rate of people seeing that greater form of arousal and also just people having more ADD. Do you feel like it's just diagnosed or people are just more distracted? I'm sure you get asked this question all the time. I've just been very curious about that. There's more

of it because people with ADD have their kids younger. On average, an ADD woman has her first baby at the age of 20 because of teenage pregnancies and impulsive sexual behavior where a woman that doesn't have ADD has her first baby at the average age of 26 so if you just think about that over a hundred years an ADD family will have five generations and more children per generation

where a non-add family will have fewer generations and fewer children per generation so over time you you will see genetically there's an increased incidence of add add that, we're not exercising as much, we're not in the sun as much, we're eating more garbage. And one of the other things that's really important, I don't know if you know the app Think Dirty, love that app, but you can actually scan your products and see the toxic things that are in them that are endocrine disruptors. So why are we having more sexual problems than ever before? It's because whatever goes on your body goes in your body. And so the aluminum in your deodorant is pervasive in your body, which is now disrupting estrogen, progesterone, dhea and it's causing more sexual problems than ever before

because they're endocrine disruptors and your sex hormones you know come from endocrine glands they're yeah it's there are so many more problems with sex i think that than ever before i really do on so many so many levels because even with add but i don't know there's just so many things that have to be in place for people to to have great sex right now or we think and i do think that exercise and meditation and people think oh god i can't talk about another app like a headset you guys know headspace app it's a great yeah i've been meditating for a long time so for some people they're like i don't know how to start it seems really overwhelming even. Even five minutes, you know, and running,

it means like you're doing something where you're going to get that blood flow pumping. It's just, you can talk about all these other things, but like exercise meditation have been like such great healers, I think, and have helped so much with orgasm, with sex, confidence, all that stuff. Wow. I feel like we just like opened up. I feel like we need way more than a week with Emily because my daughter comes home.

We're very, very open in our family, and she comes home, and starting in junior high, seventh grade, she comes home, and all the boys are now starting to have porn on their phones, and how do kids handle this? How do you take that in at that age? And then this whole idea of hormones and how it affects sex and there's so many things we still need to talk about i feel like well but that's why we're here for people on the brain warriors way podcast that's why emily is

here for you in her podcast sex with emily or you know her website sex with emily.com her best selling book hot sex over 200 things you can try tonight. Emily, it's been such a joy to host you this week. We are grateful for your time and look forward to talking to you again soon. Thank you so much, Emily. Thank you. You're listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. We'll be back.

Thanks for listening to today's show, The Brain Warriors Way. Why don't you head over to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. That's brainwarriorswaypodcast.com where Daniel and Tana have a gift for you just for subscribing to the show. And when you post your review on iTunes, you'll be entered into a drawing

where you can win a VIP visit to one of the Amen Clinics. I'm Donnie Osmond, and I invite you to step up your brain game by joining us in the next episode.