Fitness

Many people have told me that, after dietary improvement, their sexual difficulties have disappeared; a few say a contemplated divorce was forestalled. These reports have covered many varieties of sexual problems. Several were cases of impotence; others, of restoration of libido, or sexual desire. A young husband complained one month that his wife had no sex interest and the next that she had too much. A sixty-year-old widower told me that he felt much better when eating an adequate diet but that he could no longer do so; he would gladly follow the diet again as soon as he remarried. Many reports had to do with prostate infections which had interfered with sexual expression; others concerned eczemas on the genitalia or Manila albicans infections in the vagina or penis resulting from the use of aureomycin, streptomycin, or other antibiotics. Whatever the improvement was, it came as a by-product of dietary help sought for other reasons.

Worry over possible inability to express sexual love seems to be a masculine trait. These fears might disappear if men understood more fully the relation of nutrition to sexual function. For example, the pituitary gland, situated at the base of the brain, produces gonadotrophic hormones which in turn stimulate the gonads-testicles or ovaries-to produce other hormones necessary for normal sexual activity. The gonadotrophic hormones are made of protein; the sex hormones, of protein or fat-like substances known as steroids. If the diet is seriously inadequate in protein, fat, the B vitamins, or almost any nutrient, the pituitary and/or the gonads are unable to produce these hormones in adequate quantities. For example, I was amused to find that scientists had studied the vitamin-C content of the pituitary gland before and after male rabbits were bred. When the diet lacks vitamin C, the animals do not care to breed. If the diet is adequate, the pituitary is saturated with vitamin C before breeding but depleted of the vitamin afterward. Anyone who has bred a rabbit will admit that this is rapid utilization of a nutrient.

Studies of men in prison camps, of the conscientious objectors in the starvation experiments at the University of Minnesota, and of numerous clinical investigations show that libido decreases or disappears when the nutrition is inadequate. On the other hand, as long as even an average degree of health is maintained, glands rarely become abnormal. I know of no man who worries about the function of his thyroid, pancreas, or adrenal glands; if they become abnormal, he knows he can obtain thyroxin, insulin, or adrenalin from his physician. Testosterone is also available, but it is probably never needed when the nutrition is adequate.

If neither psychological nor nutritional problems exist, sexual function is probably maintained as long as is health itself. A doctor told me of his Danish grandparents. At the age of eighty-seven, his grandfather, after working in the garden all morning and eating a hearty lunch, had quietly passed away while sitting in his chair. Grandmother, considerably younger, outlived him many years. Once when the women of the family were gathered with their sewing, someone asked the grandmother at what age, in her opinion, men became functionally unable to express love through sexual union. Grandmother answered softly in Danish, “Aldrig”which means never. This same doctor, speaking of the importance of maintaining adequate nutrition in order that the sexual relationships may be fulfilling, then remarked, “It’s putting money in the bank which will be a pleasure to spend.”