Getting older isn't easy. It comes with all sorts of problems and challenges.
One of the most common challenges faced by men as they age is the need to perform sexually.
We know that in most relationships, the man is seen as the instigator of sex. While a woman can easily be desperate for sex one day and disinterested the next, it's expected that a man will always be 'ready to go' whenever the opportunity presents itself. This isn't true of course - some men have low sex drives for their entire lives, and some women have a more ferocious appetite than most men. But in general, it's always assumed that the man is the most eager for sex for much of a couple's life.
So, when a man's sex drive starts to wane as he ages - a completely natural and to some extent unavoidable process - it can be a real problem. Many men feel as though they are losing an important part of themselves, and they worry that their wives will resent them for it (pretty much never the case).
Unfortunately, the way some men deal with this stage of their life is to turn to synthetic sexual performance enhancing drugs, such as Viagra. We're not going to talk much about drugs like Viagra in this article, but we will say that they are not without drawbacks. Almost all pharmaceuticals designed to boost sexual performance cause side effects, including headaches, nausea, back pain, flushing, and so on. There is some concern that taking them regularly may contribute to an elevated risk of heart disease.
Lucky for us, there are plenty of ways to naturally increase your libido.
By employing these methods, you can significantly enhance your sexual appetite - and performance - in a very short space of time. No need to spend good money on costly pharmaceuticals, and no need to expose yourself to risks. If you feel like your sex drive could do with a boost, then start with the least invasive, natural remedies before considering pharmaceutical interventions.
Consume Mucuna Pruriens
One herbal extract which has proven extremely effective at revitalizing the libido of older men is mucuna pruriens.
Several rat studies, such as this one, have found that administration of mucuna pruriens leads to a significant improvement in sexual appetite: "The extract administered PO significantly increased the mounting frequency, intromission frequency and ejaculation latency, and decreased the mounting latency, intromission latency, post-ejaculatory interval and inter-intromission interval. The potency test significantly increased erections, quick flips, long flips and total reflex. Therefore, the results indicated that the ethanolic extracts of Mucuna pruriens Linn. seed produced a significant and sustained increase in the sexual activity of normal male rats".
Other studies, carried out on human subjects, have found that Mucuna Pruriens increases Luteinizing Hormone, Testosterone, and Follicle Stimulating Hormone levels in the blood. The same studies (see the main one here) usually find that sperm motility and volume increase with mucuna pruriens administration too. It isn't difficult to see how these effects would be accompanied by an increase in sexual appetite.
If there's one way to improve sexual appetite, it's increasing testosterone levels!
Consume Fenugreek
There's no need for joining up the dots here; we have plenty of studies showing that fenugreek consumption directly improves sexual appetite in both healthy and infertile men.
In this paper researchers explain how they gave 60 healthy men aged between 25 and 52 either a high potency fenugreek extract or placebo for 6 weeks. They found that the participants consuming the fenugreek extract reported a major increase in sexual activity, sexual desire, and an improvement in sexual performance.
They said: "It was concluded that Testofen demonstrated a significant positive effect on physiological aspects of libido and may assist to maintain normal healthy testosterone levels."
Get More Sleep
The simplest change you can make also happens to be the one with the biggest potential impact on libido.
We now know that poor sleeping patterns are directly linked to having a low sex drive. The two are closely correlated; so closely that it is clear there is a causal link.
This paper, published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine in 2015, found that "longer sleep duration was related to greater next-day sexual desire (b = 0.32, P = 0.02), and that a 1-hour increase in sleep length corresponded to a 14% increase in odds of engaging in partnered sexual activity (odds ratio = 1.14, P < 0.05)".
If that strikes you as pretty amazing, that's because it is; a single extra hour of sleep leads to a significant enough increase in sexual desire to increase the odds of having sex the following day.