Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1540: How to Boost Your Sex Drive

Episode Date: April 26, 2021

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover four natural ways to improve libido. Why your libido is a key indicator of good health. (1:35) The evolutionary argument surrounding stress and how it affects the body. (2:52) How to Boost Your Sex Drive in 4 Natural Ways.  #1 – Improve your diet and identify nutrient deficiencies. (6:05) #2 – Re-frame your mentality surrounding stress. (18:45) #3 – Value your mental health. (28:30) #4 – Apply the proper amount of exercise. (37:38) Related Links/Products Mentioned April Specials: MAPS Anabolic or Shredded Summer Bundle 50% off!  **Promo code “APRILSPECIAL” at checkout** Visit Super Coffee for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code “MINDPUMP” at checkout** Great Sex…How optimized exercise and good health contribute to an awesome sex life – Mind Pump Blog Cholesterol For Muscle Gains – Mind Pump Blog What are Fats? - Mind Pump Blog Common Signs of Low Testosterone – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1497: Five Weird Supplements That Actually Work Mind Pump #1495 The Science Of Happiness With Arthur C. Brooks Mind Pump #1402: Good Stress Vs. Bad Stress & How To Know The Difference Searching for Spirituality - Arthur C. Brooks How to Stop Stress From Destroying Your Fertility Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race Mind Pump #1230: Surviving & Thriving In A Toxic World With Max Lugavere Men in their 30s hit by impotence epidemic as half suffer from erectile dysfunction Loneliness: A disease? How Important Is Physical Contact with Your Infant? Why Resistance Training is the Best Form of Exercise – Mind Pump Blog What are the Top Benefits of Resistance Training? - Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Paul Saladino, MD (@carnivoremd)  Instagram Arthur Brooks (@arthurcbrooks)  Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pup, right? In today's episode, we talk about boosting your libido, your sex drive. How to get horny? We talked to you about in ways you can make your libido healthy. We go from diet, we talk about stress, mental health, and of course, exercise. It's a great episode, we know you're gonna enjoy it.

Now, this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Super Coffee. Now, Super Coffee combines the caffeine from two cups of coffee with protein and healthy fats, plus things like theinein to give you tons of focused energy with no jitters or crashes. It's also keto friendly, by the way, those of you guys trying to lower your carbon take.

And the stuff tastes really, really good. I actually like their ground coffee quite a bit. Go check them out and get the Mind Pump discount, which is 25% off. Go to drinksupercoffee.com forward slash mine pump and use the code mine pump at checkout for that discount. Also, we're running a promotion on Maps and Obolic. It's 50% off and on the Shredded Summer Bundle, which includes Maps aesthetic, Maps Prime, Maps Hit, and the Int nutrition guide. That is also 50% off. So it's a huge sale. Go check them out. Head over to mapsfitnessproducts.com and use the code April Special with no space for the discount. Let's talk about sex baby. Let's, that's a good idea. This, this episode we're talking about how to improve your libido. You know, libido is one of the,

it's a key thing to look at when you're looking at your health. You know that? When the libido drops considerably, it's actually a pretty good sign that something is off. Now that something could be physical, it could be hormonal, it could be mental. Is that why, is it because it's connected to so many other things?

Is that why? Why is it that there's multiple factors that could really be affecting your libido? Well, I mean, if we use the evolution argument, right? That you're, when you're procreating, right, that's what sex is ultimately is procreating, or at least the possibility that your body and mind really wants that to happen so long as the environment is safe for you and your off potential offsprings. So if you are for example under a lot of stress, evolution in evolution terms, that could mean that there's not enough food or that there's a lot of predators, in which case your body's like, uh-uh, having a baby could put you in at a lot of risk, or just even taking the time to have sex, for example.

So is there something that happens? Let's go all the way back to like caveman days here, right? For instance, you like to talk evolutionary theories like this. Caveman days. So you're about to have sex with your partner in the cave, and there's a lion's den around the corner and you almost got eaten at lunchtime that day already, and they've been, they've been, but you're gonna have sex anyways.

Is there something chemically that's going on in your body stress-wise because you're heightened because of that, and that you're having sex and you're less likely to get pregnant? Yeah, front-end stress, lowers to testosterone. Cortisol goes to the roof, and it starts to become, break your body down, starts to break you down. And again, that's the evolutionary argument, right?

Is if you don't, and this is especially true for women, you mentioned the danger aspect where they just, they won't, they don't want to because they have to feel safe. And the bodies like this as well. So, libido is one of those things. And actually, what's funny is the number one, I would love to hear you guys's opinion or your experience with this. From my clients, one of the number one things

I would get comments on would be that they would notice an improvement in the libido. Of course, people would lose weight and get stronger and feel more fit and all that stuff, but I would also have clients tell me that they felt stronger. Yeah, it seemed to be those two factors of the libido increase and also the appetite increase. And a lot of this was just that a lot of the factors of feeling and being healthy, a lot of these things started to really align for them all at the same time.

And I think, well, there's a couple of things. You get more confident, obviously, when you get stronger and when you feel like you're improving yourself. So that's got to be, you know, one component to that is now I'm going to portray myself in a kind of a different way, which then is attractive to potential media. That's interesting. It kind of speaks to the types of clients that we all train. Like if we were to say what category you train the most of, I've talked on the show that I did a lot of like

middle-age, high-performing like CEO type, you know, clients and VPs and stuff. I would actually say like the number one thing that I would see was related more towards like stress. Just high stress job and feeling that all the time. And not realizing, because they think, oh, because they exercise, and they exercise high intensity, so they're consistent, maybe not overweight or anything. And so they're coming to me going like, this is not adding up at them.

I'm not way overweight. I train five days a week consistently. I have a great job. I have money, so I'm not poor and broken, worrying where my next meal is going to come from. I got that a lot. They're getting in and in, and they're stressed, and they're not sleeping.

I mean, I got that all the time. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's a lot of things that can influence your libido in a negative way. And so there's a lot of ways you can look at this. Now, someone might be thinking, what does libido have to do with a fitness and health podcast?

Everything. Again, libido like hunger or like your natural, your body's natural ability to fall asleep and wake up, you're, when you're thirsty, like these are all, these things are intricately tied to health. And libido is no different. It's affected by quite a few different things. So let's start at the top.

Let's start with diet and how diet can affect libido in a positive or negative way. Now the first thing that comes to mind is nutrient deficiencies. This is a big one, by the way. I'll talk about one client in particular that comes to the top of my head. I used to train this woman who was a vegan for a long time.

She'd come to me, she'd been a vegan for, I believe, was 10 years and we started to do some strength training. Up into that point, all she'd done was cardio and then, of course, her diet. Now, she was not overweight, if anything, she was underweight. And she had some interesting symptoms, fatigue, kind of weakness. We got a little deeper.

I started working with her and her doctor. She just, her period was kind of on and off. And I noticed when I trained her, I had to be very careful with the resistance training. Like, like moderate intensity was about as hard as I can go. Anything over that, and it's just like fried her body. So the doctor started doing deeper and deeper tests on her and found that she had some nutrient deficiencies.

She started taking supplements. She got a little better but not much. Finally, she took the leap and started to include animal sources of protein into her diet. And especially red meat. And she noticed a marked improvement. By the way, this isn't the solution for everybody who has issues or every vegan, but for her it was. She started eating some red meat, and she noticed a marked improvement. By the way, this isn't the solution for everybody who has issues or every vegan, but for her it was.

She started eating some red meat, started eating some fish, she threw in some eggs into her diet, and she was like a brand new person. Now would you say it's something that was in the meat or just in general low protein? No, it was something that was, there were nutrient deficiencies were pretty specific. Like iron, yeah.

Just like that, yeah. and it made a huge difference and nutrient deficiencies will make you feel terrible by the way like this is when taking vitamins can make a huge difference for someone right in man zinc if zinc is a little low testosterone can get converted to estrogen at higher rates you could get if you if boron boron is a trace element right boron is low in a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little that's too low for example. So where do you find that? Boron, I'm not quite sure the foods you can find that in. I know you could supplement. Yeah, maybe Doug could look that up for me. But that's just one, it just off the top of my head. One thing that popped up, vitamin D, right?

A lot of people are lacking in vitamin D. Vitamin D being low in men and in women can cause low blood pressure. And low testosterone in men. Right, right. Magnesium, another very common. And I believe both magnesium and vitamin D are, I believe north of 65% of people have a deficiency.

Some people, some studies will say that much, some studies will still last a little last, but basically a lot of people. Okay, boron, you can find it in avocado, raisins, peaches. Oh, good. I thought I was going to be able to go to some kind of like, be nuclear plant or something. Yeah. Give me some boron. Yeah, no. like being nuclear plant or something. Yeah. You have some bar on. Yeah.

No. So if you have a nutrient deficiency, everything is going to feel much worse. Lebedo is usually one of the very first things to happen. This is why they say, think of foods that people would consider, or widely consider to be affradiageous, oysters. Right. You've heard that, right? E-oisters, and it's a, oysters are high in zinc. So those have

a lot of zinc. Now, is your theory on this with the evolutionary theory is, is our women more susceptible to this than men are? So if, let's say you have a man and a woman, both are nutrient deficient, are they equally affected? Do you think libido wise of this or because women are the ones that are carrying the baby and are, are they at higher risk for having deficiencies? That's a good question. It depends on the deficiency. I know the deficiencies tend to be different in men and women. For example, it's not common for a man to have low iron. Far more common for a woman to have low iron, especially if she has a regular period. For example, right? So the nutrient deficiencies can be a little bit differently different magnesium I said magnesium earlier that

Requirement goes up the more stress that you have so now the only way to know if you have a nutrient deficiencies really to get your blood tested And to test yourself and see But if you have a diet that's very restricted then you may be having a nutrient deficiency So that's one of the first things I would say with diet, to have a balanced diet, make sure you have your animal sources of meats in there, those are the most nutrient dense foods, organ meats are also very high in nutrients,

and a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. Now in terms of cholesterol or something like that, in terms of how that affects, it's a hormone-sensitive tissue. We're consuming cholesterol. How is that going to affect my performance? Yeah, so eating cholesterol seems to increase strength in some people, muscle, and some people.

The FDA now says it's no longer a nutrient of concern. Really, it has more to do with your own blood lipid levels. If those are off, your blood pressure is high, that kind of stuff, then we do see, especially in men, lowering libido and problems with erections. I also think it's important that we elaborate on balanced, quote unquote, diets, too,

because you can go wrong both directions, right? For example, like obviously, if you're grossly over-consuming food and you're eating a lot of carbs, fats and proteins, so you have a balance of macrointretry. But you're over-consuming a lot, high body fat percentage, you're just as at almost or just as at risk as somebody who is eating tremendously low because they're trying to lose body fat.

So you have to be careful when you say something like balance, like some people think, oh, balance diet, I'm gonna diet, I'm following whatever. Yeah, dude, because you take somebody who's like, just their obese, because they overeat, and you cut them down, they all of a sudden feel that libido go up. On the reverse, you take someone who diets all the time,

and you boost their calories up, all of a sudden they feel a libido boost. Also, carbs, fats, and proteins, especially proteins and fats, those are essential. I would see this with female clients where their fat intake was too low. Yeah, and I swamped their fat. That was very common. The first five years of training, this was actually one of the most common things.

Now that you guys are bringing back memories, I remember that when I first came in at 20, this is 20 years ago, the whole fat makes you fat was still popular. So that was still like the prevalent message in the space. And so I think that that was really popular. And even myself, I did the low fat or non fat milk and I avoided a lot of high fat stuff. I didn't eat a lot of red meat.

If I did eat meat, it was like flamin' yawn and like leaner cubs. Because I was always trying to keep my fat intake. I remember when I first did some diving on like how much fat, like per eye should have been eating, I was grossly under eating by like 50%. And also too, a lot of female clients, I noticed that it could be in a calorie deficit

for just an extended amount of time. Like it really affected a lot of, you know, the libido and you know, like in in terms of the hormone balance and everything else so not having periods anymore and getting down so low where they had hair falling out, things like that. Well, of course, because what is the night? Forget what I've seen.

I wanna say it's like 3,500 calories. Like in order and serving a liver, I think I've heard, right? In order for someone to get all the nutrients that their body needs through whole foods like the way they would have to eat. It's more calories than most people burn. It is.

So I want to say it was somewhere around 3,500 calories plus a serving of liver. This is why nutrient dense foods are so important because they have calories, but they're also chock full of nutrients. Otherwise you're eating calories without lots of nutrients, and that can pose problems. You could eat the right amount of calories,

but your nutrients be too low for your body. This also reminds me of a point that we're trying to always present on this show too. It's like, we came out really hard early on when my point first started, like kind of hating on a lot of supplements, right? Just it's a waste of money for most people and don't spend money.

But where I do see tremendous value in supplementation is when you have a deficiency. Oh yeah. And I think that's what it's a miracle. This is where I see a tremendous value. And the beauty of that, by the way, is those are relatively cheap. Like you go buy vitamin D or something like that

or K or something is it's really, really cheap to get. So, getting your blood work done, finding out where your levels are at, and instead of running down to your performance or GNC or whatever, you know, supplement store and buying the latest fat burner muscle builder type of thing, you should first look into all your potential deficiencies that you have balanced that out first before you ever think about spending any money on like a performance.

Yes. Also, don't go too low in any macro nutrient, even a super low carb diet. Now, here's the caveat. If the low carb diet is greatly improving your health, then that's totally fine. So anything that improves your health should improve your libido. But if you're okay eating some carbs

and you decide you just want to cut them all out because you think it's gonna make you lean faster, whatever, going too low in carbs can also, in many ways, negatively affect people's libido. I've seen this happen in clients as well where they're just dieting so hard, their carbs are so low, and I just have them bump their carbs a little bit.

All of a sudden, libido comes back. You know, you're talking about supplements. Besides supplements that fill nutrient deficiencies, which is number one, there are supplements out there of everything else is okay and good that can help quite a bit. Like, horny goat weed for men actually has been shown to improve erection, quality and libido. In women, Maka is a supplement that has been shown to help womenction, quality and libido. In women, Maka is a supplement that has been shown to help women, so is Jinsing. So there are some supplements out there.

Toncat Ali. Toncat Ali is another one for men, tribulus would be another one. So there are some supplements out there that can definitely help in the libido department. But they don't hold a candle to replacing a new trend. And a lot of time nutrient that you need. Not to mention, you're also sometimes,

you're just treating the symptom and not the root cause. You're true, right? So if the reason why you have a low libido is because you're super stressed out and you got a bunch of shit going on like that, and then you take those supplements that you just said and it makes you feel a little bit better, it doesn't mean that that was the problem

and this is the answer. It just means that temporarily, that's making you feel better than what you felt before. It becomes a bit of a bandage. Yeah, you have to be careful stuff like that. Yeah, here's another one with diet. This is a big one. Eat foods that you can digest easily.

Nothing will kill your libido faster than having your gut feel bloated or have heartburn or gas or constipation or diarrhea. In fact, that's probably one of the most common things that you see where somebody isn't in the mood and why their digestion feels a lot. I feel bloated, I got heartburn.

Those gas noises are not sexy. Is that because it has to do with circulation? Is that why? I think it's probably partially because it's low in flammatory, right? So you got some inflammation nearby. You just don't feel good. That's, I mean, if you're in flamely that I would imagine that slows down circulation. Yeah.

Also, not ideal for trying to get an erection. No, also, you just, you don't feel sexy. You know, if you're bloated or you're constipated or you had diarrhea, you got a bunch of heartburn. You're just not in the mood. It's funny because I've seen this with clients too, where we do a elimination diet so we could find the foods that are bothering their digestion poorly.

They'll take those foods out and everything is better. Lebito too, but everything is better because they don't have that low level inflammation from the foods that bother them. The common offenders for people tend to be gluten-processed foods, nuts, egg whites, and dairy. Those are the most common ones. So if you're trying to figure out what's bothering you start by eliminating those and then see how you feel.

Vegetables can sometimes cause nutrient deficiencies, so I tell people to, excuse me, not nutrient deficiencies, but rather gut issues. So I tell people to cook them very well. So raw vegetables can cause bloat in issues. Cook them really well, watch what happens. And oftentimes you can just... I just flare up those autoimmune. You know, I just saw the post that our friend,

Paul Saladino did on the carnivore diet with his, he had a client that had the psoriasis really bad, like worse than I have, and how much like the carnivore diet completely just healed that up. Which is an example of elimination diet. Right, it's like the ultimate elimination. I definitely don't advocate forever, long term,

but if you're eliminating things to see what's bothering you, that's about the most extreme you can go. All just all neat and then slowly start to reintroduce things to find out what's bothering you. We've mentioned stress a bunch of times. That's gotta be one of the biggest problems. You know, the issue with stress, because I keep hearing people say this

when it comes to stress is they'll say, you know, do things that aren't as stressful. And I get that, the problem with that is sometimes the things that you do that are stressful are things that are necessary. Like, well, my job, I have to work. It will change your job. Well, yeah, that's easy for you to say, but-

Yeah, I like get your kids ready for school. Yeah, like I'm a father, or I'm a mom. Like, it's just, I have a baby at home. Like, I can't, you know, how can I deal with the stress differently? I would say it's probably a better approach. Sort of reframe your mentality towards a lot of these things. Yeah, one of the best things you could do is, and this is what the study show is, have

a spiritual practice. Now, this can look like religion, it can look like meditation, but in Arthur Brooks says it's very well, he says, it's a 40,000 view look at life and meaning and things. So daily, if you, if you're religious, daily prayer could do this for you. Or it just daily examining things and looking things. What's the meaning of this? Why am I doing this? Why am I here? What are the important things?

What that does is it takes stressful situations and it really does reframe them quite a bit. I also think the other problem talking about stress is actually there's a big portion of my clients that didn't think they had it, right? Because they've adapted to their lifestyle so well. They're this high performing CEO, like I said, VP, and that's been the grind for the last 15 years. That's just life. Life is that way, or they are always rushing to get their kids ready because they got four of them and they're doing it by themselves.

And that's just my life. I don't consider that stress. They've learned to reframe it is not a negative thing, but it's still this low level of stress that they're constantly taking on. And that person has to know that their diet and training needs to be able to mirror their lifestyle and support it instead of piling on more stress

because exercise is also a stress. This is why we like talking about diet nutrition and exercises because we're now bringing that focus on yourself. You need to be able to pour from a full cup and to be able to take yourself out of, I have to do all these things for all these other people and then I have to do this over here for work

and really taking that time out to be present and really assess and have that talk. What can I do better to improve? Like how can I be more present? How can I calm down and just focus on breathing? Are doing something very specifically for yourself is an important factor. Well, yeah, I mean, if you're stressed out

cause it's hard and you have kids and you can't change those things, and on top of it, your body's not fit, you're unhealthy and you don't get good sleep, well, you're just way less resilient. You just not gonna be able to handle those things. And on top of it, your body's not fit, you're unhealthy and you don't get good sleep. Well, you're just way less resilient. You just not gonna be able to handle those things as well. So, basically what you're talking about is building your body's strength and resilience

to deal with the stuff that's gonna happen, no matter what. But I can't stress the spiritual practice enough because it does change the way you view things. I'll give you an example, so as a dad, when I, my first kids, I was in my 20s, and it's a big change. It life is not about me anymore.

Now, it was a big learning curve, and initially, you think to yourself, I want my old life, but I also want my kids. It doesn't work that way. Life is different now, and it took me a second to accept it, and when I did, it wasn't stressful, but when Life is different now. And it took me a second to accept it. And when I did, it wasn't stressful. But when I didn't accept it, and I'm like,

but I wanna go out and hang out, I wanna leave the house whenever I want. I don't wanna have to drop a mile. You know, now I gotta wake up earlier, just to drop a mile. If you don't accept it, you don't have that practice, boy, can it be real stressful? But when they have this spiritual practice

where you look at things and you see the meaning things, then it's like, oh yeah, this is something that's cool. I want to do this. It's not that big of a deal. It's still hard. It's just not as stressful. By the way, hard doesn't mean stressful necessarily, right? Oh, there's low level stress.

Yeah, they long. That's what I'm saying. I think there's a lot of people that don't think they're stressed out like that. I mean, I think that you just get used to it and you just assume that this is life. And so I don't realize that I'm taking on all this. And then again, and what I have found in my experience, that same type of client that has a lot of that also gravitates to the diets and the exercise

that's not ideal for that. They go for the extreme stuff. Right, they like that intensity. And we talk about this, we've talked about this a long time ago, the cortisol junkie. They get that adrenaline rush and they need something so intense that crushes them to get that rush or that high again.

And so they gravitated, not realizing that it's the complete opposite way of training that that person actually needs. Yeah, to put it more, to put it differently, right? This person is, they're always flooded with stress chemicals and hormones. Their body has literally become desensitized to those things, so they feel tired, sluggish,

and so, and for them to feel normal, they have to squeeze out more stress chemicals and stress hormones, and so what do they do? Super intense workout. And for an hour or two afterwards, they feel normal again, until they cry. They don't just feel normal, they feel great. That was one of the hardest things as a trainer

that I had to overcome. Like I didn't understand this on this level when I was first training and you get a client be like, I don't care what you say Adam, I take that class and I just, I feel great afterwards. Because that's the most they get flooded ever because like you said, they become so desensitized to it that they have to do a class like that

to get that rush and that fuel again, and trying to take that away from somebody is really difficult, but they have to realize it's not what's ideal for them. Here's one that's more modern times is turning off electronics. You know, it's funny, I never really consider this until Jessica pointed this out and I first started dating her and she said, you know, we don't have a lot of time where we do nothing.

And I'm like, what do you mean? We have nothing time all the time. So no, no, no, what I mean is, back in the day, if you're waiting in line, for example, at the store, you didn't, you weren't stimulating yourself with social media and reading. You were just standing. If you were in traffic, you might have music on, but you're just sitting. Or when you're at home, sometimes you got nothing to on but you're just sitting or when you're at home Sometimes you got nothing to do you just sitting there in the quiet and that definitely allows the body to

Kind of repair and recover a little bit Turning off electronics and make a big difference and what's funny now is we're so used to Constantly being distracted turning off electronics can feel like I don't know what I do Yeah, what do I do? But that's a big one. This is why sometimes going in nature I think makes a big difference because you turn everything off. What if it also allows you to be introspective that you're talking about? You talk about your spiritual practice.

You open the door for whether you want to do a spiritual practice or just practice being coming more self-aware. You need to create that space for yourself to allow yourself to even go there and do that if it's going to be recuperative for you. Oh, absolutely. And what goes hand in hand with the electronics is just what kind of content you're consuming constantly and what you're getting inundated with. And you know, you have to kind of assess that.

Like, is what I'm looking at constantly benefiting me. And a lot of times like, I know like especially these days with everything going on, everybody wants to keep paying attention, be informed. And that, you know, involves a lot of taking in the news in the news, and the latest and greatest, unfortunately, it's all negative doom and gloom these days. All of it's negative doom. Other stresses on our body are environmental toxins. There's a new book that just came out that talked about, in fact, I've talked about this

on the podcast several times, how sperm counts are dropping, testosterone levels are dropping, fertility is decreasing, and women. I've seen a lot of people say that they're not in the same class as other people. They're not in the same class as other people. They're not in the same class as other people. They're not in the same class as other people. They're not in the same class as other people. They're not in the same class as other people. They're not in the same class as other people. They're not in the same class as other people.

They're not in the same class as other people. They're not in the same class as other people. They're not in the same class as other people. They're not in the same class as other people. They did some studies on mice in fact where they exposed them to phallates and the male mice grew with smaller penises, testicles that wouldn't descend. Essentially the body stopped forming into male. This was in utero. They find these plastics in pregnant women's blood and their breast milk. This stuff is everywhere. So literally buying products from places that minimize or eliminate some of these things

can make a big difference. It's cumulative and it's usually the places that we tend to find them are in the containers that we hold things. So plastic containers, whether it be water or food containers or whatever, and cosmetics, the things that we rub on our skin, that we put under our arms,

the perfumes that we put on, those have a pretty big impact. Was this the scientist that Joe Rogan just had there? Okay, I didn't say we've been getting tagged all day today. I don't know if you guys saw that, and I know he just posted. I know you listened normally. Yeah. Did you listen? No, I started to listen to his, great, it's confirming everything we brought up from that

study that was alarming, really alarming. Because everyone's tagging us, going like, the mind pump's been saying this for a while, so I was wondering what, if she, that were a lot of the information that you... That's where all of it was coming from. Oh wow, okay, oh wow, she did all that research. Yeah, they did, and they did research on people too, and they actually found these strong connections. So you can minimize your exposure by buying products

that go on your skin or that you cook with or you store things in that don't contain these chemicals or that aren't plastic at all. Like you could switch all your containers to glass, the things that you store your water into glass, you can even use stainless steel. And then of course cosmetics, you can get your products from places that don't sell. You know, the other one that was really bad that I didn't think would be that bad is receipts. Yep, that waxy. Yeah, you know how high that is in some way. It's really high.

That's what I thought was really interesting. I'm always like, when they ask for my, not, I don't wanna know. Yeah, I do that to me. I did that the other day, I was just picking up a drink from the gas station. You want your receipts, you sound, nah, I don't want to receive it.

I didn't know. I wanna be having sex for start, nah, I don't want to receive it. I don't want it. I want to be having sex for 10 more years. You may have micro penis. Let's talk about mental health now, right? Well, that's a perfect transition from talking about stress because a lot of the things that you guys are talking about right now, right, with spiritual practice

and getting outside and turning off your electronics, a lot of that feeds into mental health. Yeah, so here's a big one with mental health. And this one is a relatively new phenomenon that we're seeing, that we've seen now in the past, I guess, decade in particular, the use of pornography. Pornography's existed as long as we've been able to draw on walls. I mean, I know we know this. We've seen these old paintings and stuff and there's definitely evidence that we would draw

pictures of naked people and stuff like so. It's been around for a long time. The difference is these days and for a while now, it's been easily accessible and the variety of pornography, the novelty of it, which there's a novelty aspect is huge, right? If you look at a pornographic image, it has an effect on your brain.

And after a while, it starts to lose that effect. And if you look at another one that's different, you start to spark that same effect. Well, we have so much novelty, so much variety and ease of access that we're actually desensitizing our brains to sexual stimuli. And they're finding that it's causing

like a rectal dysfunction in man and it's causing sex dysfunction in women as well. So pornography is one of the big ones. Not watching it, not using it. Oftentimes the side effect of that is a ramped up libido. And then this doesn't have to do with masturbation, by the way, you could still masturbate, just not use pornography,

and you still see this ramp up of libido. Were they able to trace it back? Cause I know they started to really see, you know, it go younger and younger to where it was like almost in the teenage boys that were, you know, having this problem of erectile dysfunction. And you wonder if it's because of all of the exposure

and accessibility to porn. Oh, it makes a huge difference. There's actually voluntarily young men are, are, it's chewing pornography. They have like groups online where the, where the guys say, oh yeah, it's nowhere, is nowhere, nowhere no fat came from.

That's where it came from. Right, I mean, November. And is that the, it started because of that? Yeah. Because of the, the, the issues that we're arising in. I mean, to me, that was, that's been the most alarming and interesting things that I've noticed just in our business in the last 10 years.

That is completely different. If I compared like our first 10 years as trainers to the last 10, like as far as the clients, the questions that's stuff that I get, since mind pumps, so six years we've been doing this, I never, before that, I never once had a 24-year-old guy come up to me and say, I have- This is an issue.

Yeah, I have low testosterone or ED. I've never, not one time, did that ever happen, Michael? I get that's a common actual DM now. Because we openly discuss and talk about that on here, I get a lot of these guys that tell me that this is something that they either went to get their blood worked on, came back and they got like 200 or lower levels, or they have ED issues, like unbelievable that you're seeing that at such a young age.

Yeah, yeah. Here's another one is to have good close relationships with the people around you, especially with your partner. That makes such a big difference when it comes to mental health. I mean, we really tested that this last year with our lockdowns and the way we isolated ourselves. The social, you know, being social is such an integral part of human health.

I mean, it's considered a cruel and unusual punishment by the Geneva Convention to take a prisoner of war and to isolate them from all people for too long. I mean, these are war roles, right, that we all agree upon. This is how important it is to have relationships and connections to the people around you. And if you have none or their shallow

or you're not allowing yourself to have some, maybe you're too afraid of getting your feelings hurt or whatever, you're actually causing yourself some mental anguish. We're social creatures. I mean, that's the way that we're wired and to try and remove us from that experience. We feel that and our body responds according to that. And I remember that one study you brought up about, I forget about the relationships and what that, in terms of the blue zones, that being a massive factor. Oh, it was bad for you as smoking,

I think it was like a pack of cigarettes a day, which is incredible. Now, do you guys think that connecting on Zoom and Facebook and Instagram and being socially connected like that, does this not count towards our, our, you know, social interaction? I talked to Arthur Brooks about this and he said that it counts a little bit. Now, you know, social media, not the same,

debating and talking to some random stranger online over a post or whatever. No. Connecting with some friends that you haven't talked to for a while. Right, our family, right? For a family. He says it counts a little, but the way our bodies and brains are wired,

you need to be in person. It makes such a tremendous difference that 3D image of the person, all the details of how we're interacting, the fact that I can't just hang up and turn off about your language. Body language, all these things make a huge difference. Yeah, I would think that like the social queuing

from like body language and gestures and your touch. Yeah, I would think the social queuing from body language and gestures and your touch. Neurologic, touch, all those things I would think. I mean, that just makes you a more socially aware person where when you're doing that on a screen, you don't get that, right? What is that 2D versus 3D, right? You don't get all of those social queues, which is what makes sometimes the same way at all. Now my interpretation of this is is and where I think I've seen examples of this and you guys can agree or disagree with this. But we've got the opportunity to obviously interview hundreds of people now

that we've been doing this for so many years now. And within those hundreds of people, we've met quite a few people that are you know would be quote unquote you know insta famous or youtube famous with millions of people paying attention to them and i would say more often than not these super famous social media people uh... are socially awkward when we meet them don't make good i depressed yet and there and they have a whole different character. They've substituted real connection for fake connection. Yeah. They are acting and putting on a show and they seem very charismatic and sociable and fun on Instagram or on YouTube. And then in person, awkward and shy and nervous all of a sudden. Yeah. Really, really interesting

to me. It is. And it's funny when my kids finally went back to school, I remember my daughter, she's fifth grade, being nervous to go back to school, and almost awkward about it because it's a skill. It's like any skill. I mean, imagine if you live in a cave by yourself for 15 years, you're gonna be weird when you come out. You know what I mean?

You're not gonna be the same. So it's all very important. You know, you mentioned touch. That is, that has been proven to be integral to our health. In fact, the Soviets did a terrible study. Yeah, with babies. I remember this. Terrible study. This was a real study that they did where they had orphans and they divided the orphans

into two groups. Right, they were like twins or triplets, right? Is that what it was? I don't remember if they were twins or triplets. But I do know that this had to do with orphans. And what they did is they took one half and the nurses were the caretakers would go in, feed them, and that's it. So all they would do is go in, feed them with the bottle and walk out.

The other group got fed, but also got held and cuddled, and they make eye contact with them. And the study was to see, does it make a difference in health? Tremendous difference. The babies that were not held and cuddled and make eye contact with developed mental and physical issues, motor control issues,

mental issues, mental disabilities, all because of the lack of touch. So this is a very important thing. It's funny when I used to have my wellness studio, I had a massage therapist in there. And I remember sometimes I'd get the occasional client that I could tell would benefit from, these are people that were either high performing,

but they're very closed, very closed off. And I remember I'd think to myself, like boy, this person could really use massage. Not the massage aspect, that's nice, but just somebody touching them. There was one guy in particular, I won't say his name, but he was kind of like that. Very abrasive, standoffish.

Yeah, everything was at arms length with the sky, and I remember thinking like, oh, he'll totally change if I can get him in. And so that's why I did. I offered him a free massage, I eventually convinced him. He's like, I don't like people touching me. And the way I convinced him was, you need to do this for muscle function.

It'll help you build muscle reality. I'm like, you need someone to frickin' rub some oil on you. He went in the back and he came out and that was it and he would get massages weekly and he opened up and became a different person. It's a very important part of all. Yeah, this is interesting, the transfer of energy or something involving that.

I had the same experience with some clients that were very standoffish. Like that was the big hesitancy towards massage. I just don't like other strangers or people touching me or they're creating this complete barrier and wall around them physically. And to be able to break some of that wall down was a huge transformation that they went through.

Yeah, now let's talk about exercise, right? So this is what we deal with the most. Exercise can either help or hurt your libido. So someone listening, I'd be like, what do you mean hurt? How's it gonna hurt my libido? Well, if you do it wrong, or you do too much, I'm like, I alluded to.

Yeah, or like, exactly what you said earlier, where if it's too much of a stress on your body, you're not getting good sleep, you're really stressed out and on top of it, you do high-intensity interval training or long distance running, too much of a stress on the body. Now you're libido. And I've seen this, by the way,

one of the number one signs of overtraining is a loss of libido. So if you're wondering, am I working out too much, is your libido down, if it is, Shaq, in the morning, your libido might be low. So proper exercise will always foster a healthy libido. Now the best form of exercise to do this is, in my opinion, strength training.

Resistance training done properly is a pro tissue form of exercise, right? So pro tissue, meaning the direct result of resistance training, proper resistance training, is to send the adaptation to the body to build muscle. So let's say pro-anabolic form of exercise. In order for that to happen, hormones need to balance out.

So we find in men is reliably proper strength training raises testosterone. No other form of exercise will do this in men on a reliable basis. In women, it'll balance out, progesterone and estrogen. Sometimes razor testosterone a little bit as well. Yes, women have testosterone and many times they benefit from having it be a little higher as well. Strengthening will

do this. And it's mainly because the main adaptation that it's asking the body to do is pro and pro tissue. Other forms of exercise not like this, right? Excessive cardiovascular activity or a lot of cardio is not pro tissue, tends to be anti tissue. In order to increase your stamina, your endurance, you're probably gonna lose a little bit of muscle. And of course, both of them, all forms of exercise done properly might help you burn body fat.

But nonetheless, it's not a pro tissue form of exercise. This is one of those situations where I say the opposite tends to be the rule, right? The people that need to get strength training exercise more in their life are the ones most likely to gravitate to not exercising at all, not training, and getting them involved in moving and exercise is gonna do tremendous things

for their libido. The people that love to exercise and train hard and push themselves all the time are the ones that normally need to scale back on this. Knowing who you are if you have a low libido, and then asking yourself, which one of those people are you? Are you somebody who has a low libido and you already like to train and stuff?

More than likely, you need to change the way you're training and actually be more recuperative. If you're somebody who has a low libido and you never train, you need to move your ass. Yes. Here's another one, right? Insulin sensitivity. So insulin resistance is directly connected to,

and man low testosterone, but low libido in both men and women. One of the most effective things you could do to improve your insulin sensitivity is build muscle. Muscle is a wonderful protecting, it's a protective tissue. It is insulin sensitive. It improves or increases your body's ability to store glycogen or store sugar. So more muscle tends to equal better insulin sensitivity. So again, another case for strength training, being one of the best forms of exercise, in terms of that.

So again, balances out the hormones, improves insulin sensitivity, pro tissue. Here's another one. If you're in pain because of, nowadays most pain is a result of not moving enough and having poor mobility, or just being weak in general, right? Proper strength training improves mobility, reduces pain.

So if you have chronic hip pain, chronic knee pain, chronic back pain, that's gonna kill your libido. You don't want to feel like doing anything when you're hurting. Well, correctional exercise. In the positions too. That's right. Correctional exercise applied properly involves a form of strength training and that also,

of course, takes away the pain, makes you feel better, and that can improve your libido. Look, if you like mind pumps content, you gotta go head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out all of our guides. We have got great guides on fat burning, muscle building, I have it to stop, to stostro and boosting guide. I even have guides for personal trainers.

Again, it's mindpumpfree.com. You can also find all of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin, me at Mind Pump Sal, and Adam at Mind Pump Adder. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adder. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com.

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