People have been having sex for a long time. We spent most of that period looking for ways to do this sex more fun.
Aphrodisiacs are foods or other substances intended to increase our libido and improve our sexual pleasure and performance. Named after the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite, aphrodisiacs have been described, urged and ingested for thousands of years. Suggested aphrodisiacs include grocery store essentials like strawberries, luxury options like raw oysters, and traditional extracts like yohimbine, derived from the bark of a West African evergreen plant.
But do these compounds work?
The perfect aphrodisiac
The perfect aphrodisiac would increase both the desire for sex and the pleasure you get from sex. The challenge is that these two traits are controlled by separate brain circuits, says Kent Berridgeprofessor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan.
Berridge says that for more than fifty years, scientists thought that the neural origin of pleasure was the mesolimbic pathway, which transports the neurotransmitter dopamine throughout the brain. “We all thought the dopamine system was pleasure, that turning on dopamine would generate pleasure,” says Berridge.
This assumption made perfect sense: the dopamine system is activated by pleasurable stimuli in our environment. Behavioral studies showed signals that predict pleasure also activated these dopamine pathways. Next research has suggested instead that dopamine regulates the desire for pleasure, rather than the pleasure itself. Increasing dopamine in laboratory animals did not make them enjoy pleasurable stimuli more.
Instead, pleasure could be increased by activating the brain’s opioid and endocannabinoid systems, which use neurotransmitters that act like the brain’s “natural heroin” and “natural marijuana,” says Berridge.
This combination—dopamine to prompt us to seek pleasurable behaviors, and opioids and endocannabinoids to make those behaviors feel good—appears to be a multifunctional brain mechanism that controls many external stimuli, Berridge says. “It seems like there might be a common currency that generates all these different pleasures,” he adds.
This shared mechanism could confirm the idea that foods and drugs can increase cravings. “There’s no doubt that things like cocaine and methamphetamine can promote cravings in this way. And some people use drugs before sex to enhance the experience,” says Berridge. A small one study found that cocaine could increase sexual desire – an effect that increased as more of the drug was consumed.
The evidence behind aphrodisiacs
But aside from illegal drugs, the evidence behind aphrodisiacs is patchy. A 2015 judgement Of the 50 studies that analyzed potential aphrodisiacs, some products found that the risks outweighed the benefits. Crazy honey, which contains nectar from plants of the genus Rhododendronyohimbine and Spanish fly all fall into this category. For example, yohimbine can cause mania, palpitations and insomnia. The authors said other extracts, including maca, ginseng and ginkgo, had “emerging but limited” data supporting their use. Although some of this evidence comes from placebo-controlled trials, these often have small sample sizes, which limits their value. Another complicating factor is the difficulty in separating changes in sexual desire from those in general mood.
The simplest evidence for an aphrodisiac supports the action of “performance enhancing” drugs such as sildenafil – brand name Viagra. Infamously discovered during the search for a treatment for angina, this drug works by increasing blood flow to the penis, thus relieving erectile dysfunction. This physiological aphrodisiac, which has no effect on desire or increases pleasure, has proven immensely popular. In 2022, there were almost 3.5 million prescriptions for the drug written in the US alone. Ginkgo is also increasing blood flow to peripheral tissues, representing a potential mechanism of action for the compound.
But Viagra only works for half the population. Hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) – an absence of sexual desire that causes discomfort for more than six months – affects 1 in 10 women in the US. Flibanserin – initially used as an antidepressant – is approved for the treatment of HSDD in premenopausal women. Several clinical studies have done that suggested This compound, administered orally, improves sexual desire. It is thought to work by acting on neurotransmitters in the brain. Patients in these studies reported side effects including drowsiness, nausea, and dizziness. Another option is bremelanotide, which activates brain receptors for the hormone melanocortin. Administered intranasally or as an injection before sexual activity, the drug has been shown to stimulate sexual desire and pleasure from sex. Like flibanserin, bremelanotide can also cause nausea.
Both drugs also appear to work in men. A case study described a man who achieved his very first orgasm at the age of 28 after receiving about 30 doses over a month.
But that perfect aphrodisiac that boosts desire and performance in bed remains elusive. More funding is needed to investigate alleged aphrodisiacs in large-scale studies. Sexual desire strikes a delicate balance in our brains, and tipping the balance can have unexpected side effects. Berridge points out that many people with Parkinson’s disease, whose brains lack the cells needed to produce dopamine, may be prescribed medications called dopamine agonists. These act like “fake dopamine,” he adds. Several studies to have shown that these drugs can cause hypersexuality in patients – a condition in which the need for sex makes people feel out of control and anxious. These agonists, which act on a multifunctional dopamine system, can also cause other forms of addiction. Thousands of years of searching for aphrodisiacs may not end anytime soon, but the consequences of finding them have become clearer.
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