Being intimate with our spouses or significant others can affect our lives profoundly outside of just the bedroom.  Simply put, we enjoy great sex, right?

But 70 million men and women are having problems in the bedroom - and we're not referring to the inability to pick up their dirty clothes.

With that many Americans having sex-related problems, no wonder designer drugs like Viagra, Levitra and Cialis are in high demand. However, more health experts say we can start looking beyond our medicine cabinet to the kitchen cabinet to help end the problems in the bedroom.

According to Great Food, Great Sex, great nutrition is the real secret to great sex - and the only side effects are a higher energy level, weight loss, and lower cholesterol and blood pressure.

Health psychologists Dr. Robert Fried and Dr. Lynn Edlen-Nezin say in their new book that an inadequate diet affects your sexual functioning by not providing enough nitric oxide, the "miracle molecule"  necessary for sexual arousal. In addition, atherosclerosis, or "hardening of the arteries," which comes partly from high-fat diets, may impede the flow of blood to sexual organs, thus resulting in impotency.

Luckily, many common foods are excellent sources of nitric oxide, but the typical American diet of highly processed, preserved, low-fiber foods, high in refined carbohydrates and saturated fats is not nitric-oxide friendly, the authors say.

But Great Food, Great Sex includes simple recipes that Fried and Edlen-Nezin say serve up an array of sumptuous foods packed with key nutrients that will supply you with ample nitric oxide.

'A pleasant experience'

They call their plan the Peak Sexual Performance Diet.

"Let us be perfectly clear: the Peak Sexual Performance Diet does not claim to make you want more sex, but it will help you to have better sex when you do want it," the authors write. "In terms of human behavior, a pleasant experience is more rewarding than an unpleasant one - the more often you have pleasurable sex, the more likely you will be to want to repeat the experience."

Fried and Edlen-Nezin's book focuses on three types of foods:

•  Nitrogen-rich vegetables and legumes;

•  Proteins high in the amino acid L-arginine, another source of nitric oxide;

•  Brightly colored super-antioxidants that combat the destructive effects of free radicals on your body's cells.

That means a typical day on the Peak Sexual Performance Diet may look like this:

•  Breakfast - one mushroom-and-spinach omelette; one slice of whole-wheat toast; one teaspoon of apple butter; one fresh melon wedge.

•  Snack - one cup of fresh strawberries.

•  Lunch - one tuna sandwich made with 3.5 ounces of fish, one teaspoon of mayonnaise, and whole-wheat pita bread, accompanied by one celery stick, half of an apple, carrot sticks, iced green tea and one square of dark chocolate.

•  Snack - a half-cup of toasted almonds.

•  Dinner - a three-ounce baked pork chop; one medium baked sweet potato; one mixed green salad with olive oil and balsamic vinegar; a half-cup of string beans tossed with seasoned olive oil; and one to two glasses of red wine.

Great Food, Great Sex offers some pretty creative ideas for meals, such as:

•  Frisky Veggie Frittata

•  Scrumptious Meat Loaf

•  African Spiced Broccoli Salad

•  Black Bean and Onion Soup

•  Finger-Licking Curried Chicken

•  Baked Trout Ole

Pointing to medical science 

To Fried and Edlen-Nezin, medical science has made enormous strides in finally unraveling the mechanisms of sexual arousal and response - and also what causes damage to it.  One of the principal culprits is an elevated level of LDL "bad" cholesterol and its frequent result, atherosclerosis, they say.

University of South Carolina scientists said men with low levels of "bad" cholesterol and higher levels of HDL "good" cholesterol are less likely to develop erectile dysfunction. The researchers concluded that atherosclerosis, by impeding blood flow, constitutes a primary cause of impotence in men.

Clogged arteries also blocks the flow of blood from women's sexual organs, the researchers said.

"The real story is that the body is connected above and below the waist by the same circulatory system," Fried and Edlen-Nezin write. "Therefore, the same diet that clogs the vessels of your heart can ultimately impair blood flow to your sexual organs. This is why we like to refer our internal plumbing as the cardiosexual system."

Source: Good Food, Good Sex

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