The Power of Intimacy: How Pleasure & Connection Transform Health

Introduction to Doctor Talks and Guest Susan Bratton 0:00

So if we rush sacks or we just give our husbands mercy sacks because they need it and they're cranky, then we're shortchanging ourselves. We're putting another brick in the wall of our future sexless marriage. Every time we're penetrated before we're ready. So you have to calm and be patient with yourself and not expect to have the same sexual arousal response as your partner. Welcome to Doctor Talks, the podcast, where every episode leads to a healthier you. Join us as we navigate the world of optimal health, uncovering groundbreaking strategies to conquer chronic disease.

In each episode, we'll bring you the latest insights from leading health experts, medical innovators, and wellness warriors. If you're seeking to transform your health journey, or if you're looking for answers to burning questions, you've come to the right place. Get ready to unlock the secrets of lifelong health and vitality. This is Doctor Talks, real talk from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most. Hello, I am Doctor Monica. Harry. Welcome to the Truly Healthy MD podcast. Today we have a very special guest.

We have Susan Bratten. Susan is a champion and advocate for all of those who desire ageless passion, who does not desire passion. She's a bestselling author and publisher of 44 books and programs, including Sexual Soulmates, Relationship Magic, and many others. I'm sure she'll tell us more about how to find out more about her, but I do have her website here. It's Susan Bratten with two T's dot com and Better Lovers. Com thank you so much Susan, for being here. Hi doctor Monica, so nice to see you today.

Thank you for having me to talk about sexuality because even though you said in my intro, who doesn't want more passion, you'd be surprised how many people let their sexuality go by the wayside because it's challenging. It is. And yet it is so good for longevity and mental health and physical health. There's so many benefits to having not what I would call sex, because if I say sex, people think that means intercourse and I love intercourse, and it's a great part of our intimate pleasure, but it's not the it's not the, you know, the top of the pyramid. It's sexuality and intimacy.

If we think about how our culture has defined sex, it's like foreplay, and sex means intercourse and I want to redefine that to mean

Redefining Sex, Intimacy, and Orgasm 2:51

anything that is pleasurable from holding and being held to kissing the ears and the eyelids and the cheeks to show intimacy. Maybe is another word, I guess that would come to mind for for that. Well, then the distinction is orgasmic intimacy, and there are many paths to orgasm. And if you talk to some sexpert, I'll say, don't be goal oriented orgasm, isn't it? You should just enjoy yourself. And I disagree with that as well, because orgasms are just learned skills that anyone can learn how to do.

And there are over 20 kinds of orgasms the human body can have. And so if you go into it thinking, oh, orgasms aren't that important, or I should just focus, then you miss what I feel are the ultimate health benefits mental, emotional, physical benefits of intimacy. And so what I'm trying to do is get people to think bigger about sex. Sex isn't just intercourse. It's oral pleasuring, manual pleasuring, pleasuring with sex tools. I don't think they're necessarily always just toys. They're tools of pleasure.

And having more types of intimate connection, not just being focused on intercourse. Let intercourse come, is it? Shall, but enjoying the intimacy, the body touching the oxytocin, generating all of those kinds of things. So when you start to think about sex as so much more than the small way we've been thinking about it, not only does it open up opportunity, but it also puts less pressure on women who have a very slow arousal ladder compared to men. Men kind of go in there ready to go relatively where.

Yeah. And they're ready for penetration where women we need 20 or 30 minutes to get to lubrication, to heart connection, to calm relaxation and to full engorgement. So we have our lady erection because we have blood flow that seats in very slowly into our genitals. So we need time. So that's why bringing on to the playing field, the the touch, the massage, the kissing, the hugging, the holding, the the manual pleasuring the oral. But that really helps us get to where our guys are because there's so much further ahead of us, and it makes us more likely to want to have intercourse because we've had the time to achieve full female erectile function.

Excellent. That is so good to know, because knowledge is power. Sometimes we're frustrated with our lack of knowledge. Am I is there something wrong with me? Women think there's something wrong with them? Yeah, yeah. And so this is just such a great conversation for women and for for partners, for everyone to understand and, have that be another part of wellness. It's not just about, pills and nutrition. There's so many other things. So thank you so much for coming on to have this conversation. But I want to start with the basics.

So, yeah. Could you tell me why sex is good for us? Sure I will, if you promise that I will also be able to tell you how to want to have sex more often. Because if I just tell you why, it's good for you, I could be sitting here telling you why high intensity interval training is good for you, and you're not going to do that. I can tell you why a million things are good for you and you're not going to do them. So I don't want to waste anybody's time saying why is good without telling you how to actually have it.

Absolutely. We can link both of those in. Good. That sounds great. Quick question. Yes. Do you hear some noises in the background with me, or is everything pretty good on my audio? Everything sounds good. Okay, good. It's a little noisy here and I just wanted to check. Thank you. Because I think audio quality is so important for a good discussion. Yeah. So sex is good for you for so many reasons. Let's start with some of them. And when I'm talking about sex in this time, I'm not talking about intercourse.

I'm talking about anything that brings you to orgasmic pleasure. Okay. So orgasm is an important part of the benefit of sex. So sex without orgasm is not as beneficial as sex with orgasm, but because you can learn how to have orgasms, even if you haven't yet. There's nothing wrong with you. This is literally what I teach. So don't worry. I'm not leaving anyone behind who hasn't quite gotten there yet. No big deal. We all learn at different times. I didn't have my first orgasm from intercourse until I was 42 and realized there wasn't something wrong with me.

I just hadn't done it yet, and that gave me the courage to try. And I have never looked back. So I really come to this with a compassionate heart around people who do struggle with it. But I want to tell you that it's a learnable skill as all things are. It's kind of like cooking. If someone tells you what to do and you follow the recipe, you can have it too. That's great to know, because I'm sure a lot of people find it hard to talk about this so people won't open up to, their friends to talk about it.

So it's great to have an expert such as yourself, spread the word on telling people it's okay.

Health Benefits of Intimate Pleasure 8:36

Let's teach you how to do this. Yeah. And friends. Well, friends don't know what they're doing either. So, better to talk to this expert. So. Good. I'm glad we're here. All right, so let's talk about the health benefits of sex studies. Have multiple longitudinal studies from all over the world have shown repeatedly that people who have more. And I'm going to call it intimate pleasure, because every time I say sex, people think intercourse. So it's so much more than that intimate pleasure, orgasmic co-creation, so low pleasuring just with yourself.

Any time a person has that three times a week seems to be a good, you know, thing to go for. But life gets in the way. But it's it's generally the studies say that at about three times a week you are going to live ten years longer, you're going to look younger, you're going to have a happier life. So not just a healthier life. So a happier, healthier life, good sex. And I mean orgasmic intimacy leads you to having a number of things. So here they are. Number one, endorphin release mitigates pain.

Number two, neurotransmitter cascades that are mood boosters. You get serotonin, you get dopamine. Number three, you get oxytocin generation with skin to skin contact. Oxytocin is a hormone that is not only does it it's it's the hormone that a mother gets when she feeds her baby or when she bonds with her baby. But it's also the hormone that bonds you to your partner. So you're going to go through the ups and downs of life together, and what's going to help you get through it is a deep and abiding love for your partner, a willingness to fight for the intimacy, the connection and the joy of your relationship.

And oxytocin. So important connection that I love that word connection. Yes. And that oxytocin generates the connection. It also, interestingly whittles your body fat around your waist. It improves the quality of your skin and reduces wrinkles. It also creates a good gut microbiome, and it also helps with glossy hair. And it also helps you like other people more be less annoyed with other people, which helps with mood, anxiety, etc. and it also of course bonds you in love to your partner. So oxytocin from skin to skin contact does a lot to help you cope and feel pretty, which is awesome.

Makes you feel more sexy. Yeah, which is nice. The other thing that having orgasmic pleasure does is it produces more natural killer cells, not NK cells. In longevity. Now they're doing plasmapheresis where they're re injecting, they're cultivating your NK cells and injecting them back inside you. Because what NK cells do is they eat broken and bad cells. You only have, what, 72 trillion cells in your body. It's kind of a fixed pie. And as you age and your cells get degraded, you begin to get the diseases of aging.

And so the more n k cells you produce, the more those cells surround the dead and broken or senescent cells and eat them up and digest them, they are killer cells of your bad cells. And so they keep you healthier. It also generates IGF one and other immune system, cofactors and benefits. So that's important as well. Another thing that's really nice about intimate connection and orgasmic pleasure is this idea that if you are pair bonded male female, your partner's semen has a lot of benefits in it.

It gives you serotonin, testosterone, zinc, luteinizing hormone and sperm adding sperm and putra seen, which are three components of one of the latest longevity supplements on the market, were actually identified originally in semen and then in breast milk. And what they do is they help reverse nine of the 12 hallmarks of aging. These are the kinds of things that are contributing to the longevity that I mentioned in the early studies, you know, the studies that I mentioned earlier. So those are just some of the things that good intimacy help with.

If you like this discussion, please hit the subscribe button and consider leaving us a review. It really helps people find us and we truly appreciate your support. I've heard of people buying, the supplements with sperm, adding that's one of the ones that's all the rage and the most recent conferences I've been to for anti-aging longevity. They talk about a lot of peptides and sperm, adding, but that's where it comes from. It comes from sperm. So, sometimes you can, get this at a lower cost if you're just more intimate with your, with your partner.

So those are great benefits to know. And so as you were telling me all these benefits and how they have been studied, the scientific mind in me says, how did they do those studies? Would you happen to know, like how how do we know that that actually happens? Do are they like questionnaires that we that they give people and then they measure blood markers or how do they do those studies? There's many, many studies on all of the different things that I just mentioned. So there's not one giant study about this that is combination of me studying clinical data for decades.

So I just summed it up in an easy to digest format. But if you go on PubMed and you and you search any one of the things that I said, you'll find the studies. That is so cool. Yep. Because, you know, we definitely want to be practicing evidence based medicine. And it's it's really cool to know that they've actually taken the time to look into those things and document them. And it's a scientific study very, very, very, very cool. Having said that. So what are the steps to making one's sex life get better?

Oh, good. Yeah. You delivered on your promise to me. Didn't thank you very much for that. Good job. So a lot of people are like, oh, God. You know, sex three times a week. Come on. So I don't have time for that. We're not like, that is too much for me. I could never do it. I never even want sex. And that goes back to the very first thing, which is that I said, which is sex is so much more than intercourse. So stop thinking about sex as intercourse and think about it is bids for intimacy begin to do things like mutual masturbation with pleasure toys, playing, having a breast massage, doing erotic or yoni and lingam massage, these kinds of things.

Just even getting a boss, giving you giving and getting massages together. These and holding and being held. One of the techniques that I brought for you today is one of my free gifts is something called the soulmate embrace. This is a technique that comes from my one of my top selling books and I. As I said, I've published 44 books and programs, 34 of which have been my own, ten of which have come from my mentors. Because I've been in this decades. But I have had some absolutely wonderful mentors and Sexual Soulmates is probably one of my top selling books.

Sex, Sexual Soulmates The six Essentials for Connected Sex. After I studied and helped thousands and thousands of couples over the years, I and gave them advice and they reported back how things went, I found that there were six things that really moved the needle for people,

How to Improve Sexual Connection 17:00

and one of them was holding and being held as a way to calm down. Slow down, your nervous system. Relax so arousal can begin, connect your heart with your partner and get that oxytocin flowing and when you do that, it really reboots and calms your nervous system. So you're getting the benefit of being held. And that's generating oxytocin, which is essentially what helps tamp down excess cortisol from stress. It'll lower your nighttime cortisol as well. And when it lowers nighttime cortisol, you sleep more deeply.

If you've had an orgasm before bedtime, you've gotten all this oxygenation to your brain. And then when your brain is doing its regenerative work at night, it's aided by the increase in vascularization and oxytocin, oxytocin in your brain. So just holding and being held can really improve your health. But here's the thing. Most times we have we have our partner hold us, and they do what I would call maybe like a catch and release or a squeeze and release where they hold me and they hug me, and then I go, oh, and they relax and let me go in the soulmate embrace.

And I wrote it mostly for women to give to their partners and say, honey, do this with me. Because what I, what men want is a checklist. Women like stories, I like analogies, I like to hear how it works. Men don't like that as much. Generally, I make I have to make a lot of generalizations because everyone's on a bell curve, right? And I'm always trying to speak to the middle of the curve. You might love stories as a man, or you might, you know, you might love checklists as a woman. That's fine.

Everything I say is always the big middle, and you could be an edge case. No worries with that. I just try to help people out, you know, for the like the majority. And so you give this page out of a little it's a downloadable PDF at Soulmate embrace.com. And if you put that in the show notes with the podcast, that would be great. Thank you. And when you download it, you can read the stories, but then you can take the one page that has the checklist and give it to your partner and say, this is what I want us to do, and it will take you a few times to actually do it well together, because it's a fairly long hold.

And I've had many women say to me, I got like the roaches or sewing machine legs or I got flight. I got the feeling of wanting to run away because I had I was so wound up I couldn't even relax into the hug the first couple times we did it. But you told me, and I trusted you to do it three times, and then you'll start feeling how relaxing it is. It takes a while to settle, but that is, you do it consistently. You settle much more quickly. You get into pleasure more quickly. You get into heart connection, you get into relaxation, and you start to feel the oxytocin flowing and pumping, and that makes all the difference.

And then you'll find that that helps you look at your partner and go, oh, well, I do love them. Oh, I do want to be close. I would like my neck massage or my breast massage, or for him to run his hands on me, or I think I want to kiss his lips now and then. That helps you get into more, even more intimate pleasure. And so it's people think that you need to be like horny. So many women say, oh, my libido is horrible. I don't, I don't have a libido. And I'm like, you do, but you think you're a man.

There's something wrong with you because you're not like your husband running around with an erection, horny and ready to stick it in something that's not the feminine dynamic. I mean, there are some women who are ready to go. There's new relationship energy. That was always nice in the beginning of things, but when you've been with people for a while, you lose that new relationship energy. You have to do very specific things to get it back, which I if you want to talk about that, I'd be happy to, but I know you've got questions for me, but it's like you're if you think you're always going to be ready to go, you're not.

That's not what any of us are like. So being held really helps us relax and consider climbing the arousal ladder to our full feminine clitoral erection, which makes our lovemaking feel good to us. If we rush sex or we just give our husbands mercy sex because they need it and they're cranky, then we're shortchanging ourselves. We're putting another brick in the wall of our future sexless marriage every time we're penetrated before we're ready. So you have to calm and be patient with yourself and not expect to have the same sexual arousal response as your partner. Yep.

So important for women to know. I think society just hasn't taught us those things. So that's my job. So many women feel like they're inadequate, like something's wrong with them. So I'm so glad there are educators like you and thanks for allowing me to be help spread this message. Anything else that you would say? As far as you know, as we age, what other things should we, be paying attention to? Yeah. Women or men first? Who do you want me to address first? Let's talk about women first. Okay, so for women, what happens to us as we age is that we atrophy and our estrogen drops, our testosterone drops, our progesterone drops, all of these things drop.

So I'm a big proponent of hormone replacement therapy. I take testosterone, estrogen and progesterone, all of them myself. And I have been for decades. And I think those things really help. The estrogen loss is a big one for us because it thins our tissue, including our vaginal mucosal lining and all of the tissue, all of the erectile and skin and, you know, body tissue of our vulva and vagina. And when it thins it, the the vagina is a muscle, not a gland. So it's not self lubricating the way that our vaginas get lubricated is through relaxation that allows our blood to flow into our pelvic bowl.

And when it flows into our pelvic bowl, it seeps through the many layers of the vaginal mucosal lining, and it wets our vaginal mucosa. But it also, as it thins, gets more delicate. It can create painful sex, it can tear during intercourse and when you use estrogen, especially in estrogen, the one that I like is made by, Doctor Michelle Sands. It's a biased. So it's both atrial and estradiol. It's over the counter. It's this is a 90 day supply. So it's about $30 less. It's like a dollar a day. And, it's at I'll give you the link to it.

It's get glow below. Just because women always are like what was the link? And, this is very nice vaginal serum and I love this so much. I also use this on my face, neck, back of my hands, arms and my chest. So I use it in the at the top and the bottom of my, you know, little tubes. And I really like that estrogen serum because it's, that has very quality ingredient. It's a very natural because I would never put something in my vagina or on my vulva linings that I wouldn't put in my mouth.

Aging, Hormones, and Vaginal Health 25:18

And so this is a very, very what we would call clean in the world of beauty products. But it's a, it's an estrogen replacement. So I think that's very important in helping us thicken the tissue and also in plumping it up and being having it be able to hold more moisture. But the other thing that is very important is not taking a nitric oxide supplement, you know, Viagra and things like that for men, work on Pde5 inhibitors, which allow more nitric oxide to flow into the penis. Well, women have the same amount of erectile tissue in our vulva as our male body partners do in their penis.

But Viagra doesn't work as well for us. But what nitric oxide does is it's kind of like Lady Viagra, but it also works for your husband. He would probably not have to take Viagra if he took a nitric oxide booster. And the one that I like is called Flo because it's a food derived lived nitric oxide supplement rather than a, you know, synthetic product made in a lab. It's actually comes from freeze dried watermelon rind, organic watermelon, organic spinach, and organic sour cherry, which is the vitamin C that helps with absorption, and pine bark tannins, which are for blood flow, very similar to eating Kakao Coco, which is dark chocolate, which is good for blood flow.

It has the polyphenols, the type of polyphenols that help with blood flow. And as we age, by the time we're 50, we have half the nitric oxide we had when we were 20. And the nitric oxide is what gets the blood to flow into your pelvic bowl to give you lubrication and engorgement or plumping of the tissue so you have more surface area, sending more pleasure signals to your biggest sex organ, your brain. So ground zero is nitric oxide supplementation and potentially your estrogen serum, your topical serums that can seep into the vaginal mucosal lining and soothe the and re plump and hold more moisture if you have incontinence, as well as vaginal laxity and loss of lubrication, I recommend a device.

This is a vagina device. It's a vaginal rejuvenation device that goes inside the vagina. It's at vagina device.com, and it uses red light therapy, warmth and toning or vibration for your Kegels. So you get the warmth for recognition and the red light therapy photo bio modulation for regenerating and stimulating the mitochondria, which are the battery chargers of your cells. So you can get cellular biogenesis, which is, increasing the thickness of the vaginal lining. So when you use nitric oxide booster with a vaginal biased estrogen serum and red light therapy, you can often improve the pelvic musculature to reverse incontinence, improve the vaginal lining, reduce laxity, improve Kegel toning, improve lubrication, all those kinds of things.

If this isn't enough, you do this every other day for 8 to 10 weeks, and you keep it at home so that as you continue to age, you can use it over and over again. You can go to the next step, which is gains waves for her and for him, gains waivers, an outpatient treatment that is not vaginal lasering it is not RF international. I find those two damaging and they don't take care of literal atrophy. When we are having incontinence and loss of lubrication, we are also getting clitoral atrophy. We are losing sensation.

So my go to recommendation and I full disclosure, I am a spokesperson for Gainsbourg because I went to them and said, I need you to teach me everything I need to know everything about this, because this is the vaginal restoration modality that is the creme de la creme. And and it's affordable. You do six treatments and I'll give you a code for the seventh treatment for you. I do have that if you go to Gein's wave.com/susan because I'm Susan Bratten games wavy.com/susan. If you'll put that in the show notes I'd really appreciate it. Yeah.

You get a seventh treatment for free, which is gold. So it's so good because every treatment you do is generating new tissue growth that is giving you more blood flow, more nerve endings are regrowing instead of retracting. And it's re it's basically like anti-aging for your entire female genital system, including the clitoris. And that's why I do gains waves every three years or so I'll go back in and do a round of seven. My husband's going right now and he's doing his gains waves. It's been a few years for him and he's going and getting his gains wave treatments right now.

He also uses a penis pump, which is also a very good thing for our husbands to use. So these are the kinds of things. And then there's one more kind of creme de la creme, maybe like cherry on the top. This is expensive, but it also helps with all of the things I've been talking about. So you've got your nitric oxide, you've got your vaginal estrogen, you've got your red light therapy with your vagina device. You've got your gains way for him and her. You've got your penis pumping for him. And that link is pumps working calm.

So you have that one because they're like, what, penis pump. And I only recommend one. It's it's given out by urologist. It's a very good pump. And then you've got exosomes PRP stem cells injections into. And some people are like no way. But it doesn't work. They use wire cane injections into that tissue of either exosomes, signaling molecules for your growth factor PRP or RF, which is signaling factors from your own blood supply or stem cells, exogenous or and stem cells. And that means that you could get them from your own body, or you can buy them from cultivated, umbilical cord blood.

You can buy them from that as well. And so these are very next generation station biologics that we're using for ageless sexuality, because if you keep your parts in good order, your sex life could keep getting better your whole life long. You can have more kinds of orgasms, more body confidence, more communication skills and sex gets better. I'm 63 and having the best sex of my life by far, because I take care of my body and I learn pleasuring skills so excellent. I love hearing all those all these things because it's not just about the sexual aspects, but there are so many women out there that have, recurrent UTIs that are on antibiotics all the time.

Right. And these modalities are, I'm sure, help with these other aspects, too, because the whole pelvic region gets atrophied with age. And I would love, love, love for less women to be on antibiotics for this UTI, not have those symptoms, not be destroying your microbiome. So it has multiple multiple benefits. And that, you know, red light therapy, like you said, you know, we recommend it for other things, for skin rejuvenation for athletes. So great to know that it's also available for a vaginal health.

That is isn't that such a cool tool? The vagina. So cool. Yeah. Oh my God, I love it so well, it's I like talking to you because you're a doctor, so I can use the, you know, kind of the medical angle. And I think that when people hear, oh, God, this is all science backed, really good stuff, then they feel more confident that it could help them and they don't have to suffer. Yeah, yeah. And I love talking to you because I feel like, when we as doctors, we're really good at prescribing pills. And so obviously in med school, we have a gazillion pharmaceuticals that we give patients.

And then when I started doing integrative medicine, I had a gazillion nutraceutical pills that I would prescribe patients. But the more I learned, the less I prescribe pills, the more I tried other modalities that are, like you said, just being intimate with your partner. This red light therapy, things that are not just pills that really help our, health so much more in a lot of situations than just just the pills. So having more in my toolbox to offer patients really, helps them have much better outcomes than just a pill.

Be a pharmaceutical nutraceutical. So these are the type of conversations that that just. I love to have. And I do want to circle back to the, hormones, obviously. Sure. It's as a physician, I do find that super, super important. And topical hormones are great. For those listening, if you haven't been evaluated for systemic hormones, that's also important because there's receptors not just in the vagina and not just on our skin for estrogen, but also in our brain, in our GI tract everywhere. So going to a physician who's knowledgeable about this and evaluating your hormone status, no matter what age you are, even if you're premenopausal, there are, abnormalities, variations in your hormones and getting those, aligned is just going to do so much for your health from every aspect, you know, preventing dementia, helping your bone health, helping your heart health.

So, it's it's good to know that there's these couple things that are easier to do, but I do want to make sure people understand that it's not just it's not just vaginal health. It's your entire body that needs hormones. You need to understand where your hormones that is, is what the different options are. Taking a birth control pill is not the same as hormone replacement. And so there's more legal practitioners who offer this now. So hopefully there's more awareness in the general population. That yes, there's so much that we can offer.

Yeah. And you want to take progesterone to balance your estrogen intake, but you also want to take testosterone. I would there if I think I think about everything that I do for longevity. And I have a longevity newsletter too. I write a newsletter called longevity Wins on Substack and so I'm talking about ageless sexuality. I'm talking about sexual health and pleasure, bedroom communications. But I'm also talking about anti-aging and longevity because there they go, hand in hand. There are two sides of the same coin.

Your your general health and your libido are direct reflection of each other. You'll feel like you want to have sex when you feel good, and hormones make you feel good. And I if I had to choose between estrogen, progesterone and testosterone, and I could only have one, I think I'd pick testosterone. And the reason that I would is not for libido necessarily, although it definitely helps with that. And I apply my testosterone to my clitoral structures. That's how I get it into my system, through the the the lining of my genital tissue.

You know, men can put it on their testicles or what have you. So you can apply topically as well, because I don't want to do injections and, it keeps that tissue meaty and that's very nice. But what I take it for is confidence, cognitive function, being sure about things, not getting afraid of things, being, adding strength. I do strength training quite a few times a week. As many as I can actually, and I like that it builds muscle, which reverses atrophy. And your muscle is, you know, your number one immune organ as well.

It's the number one predictor of longevity. There are four predictors of longevity. One is grip strength, which is a which is basically an analog for overall strength.

Pleasure Protocols and Final Takeaways 38:00

So strength training standing on one leg which is balance, you've got to have your balance. Another is cognitive function. And the third predictor fourth predictor of longevity is your visual appearance. Do you look old or young compared to others your age? Because the external reflection of you is the inner is what's going on inside as well. So I think having this, you know, focus on testosterone, not just being something for men, but being equally important for women is a very, very important conversation for us to be having today.

So if you're going to your gone ecologist and saying, I want estrogen and I want testosterone and I'm, you know, I'm getting UTIs, all this stuff, estrogen is the number one thing you can do for UTIs if you're if your doctor is like, oh, you don't need hormones. And, you should just take this antibiotic, get a new doctor because they're they're giving you really bad advice. Last thing I'd like to tell you to Monica, and I'll send you some of this is you talked about estrogen receptors in your body, but there's also CBD receptors.

We have the cannabinoid system, endocannabinoid system, CB1 and CB2, and they are part of our pleasure healing pathway. So if you're if you are having any kind of loss of sensation, difficulty, orgasming, dryness during sex, things like this, I recommend this, which is my pleasure protocol. This is three different products that are made for the different parts of the genital system. In women, the melts are a little insert of cocoa butter and botanicals and CBD that goes up inside the vagina and it melts into the vaginal tissue.

It makes it plump and soft and resilient and responsive, and it feels delicious. They even have melts that are double the CBD for menopausal relief. And you can they even have intimacy melts. They have vibrance melts for every day so that when if you're dry every day, you just pop a melt in and it coats that whole vaginal lining. Then there's the awaken arousal oil, which goes on the outer vulva, goes on the labia and the clitoral structures, and that uses CBD to awaken the mind vulva connection.

So you feel more pleasure. And then the third part of it is sex oil. And that's for all the slide and glide that you want. And it's MCT oil and botanicals that are for pleasure. And MCT oil is what our brain needs to function. So the it's an essential it's a it's a fatty acid that our brain uses for energy. But it's. So you could you would literally you know, you I put MCT oil in my morning smoothie. But that's what makes up this sex oil for the slide in the glide. And these three products. It's at pleasure protocol.com.

And, Doctor Monica, after the show, give me your address and I will mail you the pleasure protocol so you can check it out for yourself. Because I love this. Because the problem with lubes is that loops are regulated by the FDA. They're a class two regulated product. They need to be shelf stable. And so the companies put chemicals like potassium sorbate or, you know, various preservatives. But what's happened as well is that where they used to make lubes out of things like aloe vera and stuff like that, now it's like our ultra processed foods where the companies have replaced anything that was natural with chemically generated things that have names so long you can't even pronounce them.

Nope. And I don't want to use that. That's why I just like to use the pleasure protocol, because it's just with refined MCT oil, CBD and there is CBD free for those people who are like, I can't, you know, I can't, I can't, I can't tolerate CBD or what have you. But that's what I like about the pleasure protocol is that it's all natural. It's so nice. It's real whole ingredients. It's like whole foods slip and slide. Awesome. Yeah. So great to know. Yeah. So important to go with more natural products and everything in our skincare what we eat and, and our care of our fuller and our vagina.

So so important. That is so good. Any other tips? Any other practicalities for the aging body? Yes. I have one last thing to leave you all with. And that's, free book that I have called the hot to trot book. It's at hot to trot book.com. And really, if you've like this conversation and you want to remember everything I said and know even other things that can help you feel like you have the, you know, desire that you want in in throughout her life. This is 38 fascinating facts to supercharge your sex drive.

So hot to trot. Baucom was the thing that I wanted to give you at the end of the show. And thank you so much for having me. The only other thing I would say is if your listeners if there was if you had a question for me or you wanted, you know, to get you get more information or even a question that we didn't talk about on the show. If you go to Better lover.com, I have a newsletter that I send out twice a week with lots of this kind of stuff pleasuring techniques, communication skills, sexual health.

And you can if you get that email newsletter from me, you can reply to any email you get from me and, and ask me anything because it goes right to my inbox and I will reply to you. So if you're like, oh, but wait, you didn't talk about this long enough, or I had a question. I'm here at Better lover.com and my name is Susan Bratton. And you can also follow me on Instagram if you'd like to. That's very generous of you, and I hope our listeners take us up on that because this is amazing information.

Things that will improve their health in so many ways. So before we, finish the call, I know this was a ton of information. I know that, this is something probably a podcast that people are going to want to listen to more than once. But if you had to tell our listeners the three top tips, the main takeaways, what would those three top tips be? Number one, take a nitric oxide booster. It's such a simple thing to do. You won't believe the difference in sensation and pleasure that you get. Number two, seriously, consider getting tested for hormone replacement therapy and working with a good functional doctor like Doctor Monica to help you.

Number three slow. Slow your roll around your intimacy so you give your body time to catch up, or give your partner's body time to catch up so that you ultimately net more pleasure and intimate connection, because that's what will give you a longer, healthier, happier life. Wonderful. I love those three takeaways and thank you for all the tips and all the, different websites. Those will be in our show notes. Thank you so much for being here with us. And we'll see you next time. Susan. Thanks, Monica. Thanks.

Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your wellbeing. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website w ww di doctor talk.com. Stay connected, stay healthy and join us next time on Doctor Talks. Real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.