Is Your Sex Life Trying to Tell You Something About Your Health? | Susan Bratton

​​​​​​​SPEAKER_01 0:00

What if changes in your sex life aren't just about getting older, but an early signal about your heart, hormones, brain, or even your nervous system? Our guest, Susan Bratton, has spent decades studying intimacy, sexual health, longevity, and after more than a thousand interviews, we wanted to take her somewhere different. Susan, is our sex life actually a vital sign?

SPEAKER_03 0:27

Spencer, I'm gonna go wherever you want to go, darling. This is so handsome. Are you kidding me? Let's go. Hi, Terry. Hi, Dr. Terry.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Oh boy, I'm glad you threw that one out with Spencer right off the bat. Yeah, I'll just sit here and be quiet. There you go.

SPEAKER_03 0:43

Oh no, you won't.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Right out of the starting blocks. There you go.

SPEAKER_03 0:47

You got the sex lady on the show. We're gonna have some fun.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Let me ask you this then. So when a man notices an erection, changes in erections, or a woman notices changes in sensation, lubrication, or arousal, how how do we know if it's simply a sexual aging thing or an early warning sign that something deeper is changing in the heart, blood, blood vessels, hormones, metabolism, or even the nervous system?

SPEAKER_03 1:14

Yeah. So your first question about um longevity and overall health. I I call, and I'm very, very specific about this. I call orgasmic intimacy the fourth factor of longevity. And I do that number one, because I think that it that it lives in the same level of importance as sleep, nutrition, and movement. And yet because of our cultural mores, our lack of sex education, repression and censorship of pleasure-based sexual education content, all of the things that are in our world as it is today, we're often, and and often because doctors don't get any training around sexuality, even in the medical books, genital anatomy is not even depicted correctly for the female urogenital system. And um so we just don't have these conversations about sex, quote unquote. And why don't I call, why don't I say sex is the fourth factor of longevity? Why do I say, why do I do the tortured and somewhat challenging phrase of orgasmic intimacy? For two reasons. Number one, when I say sex, people think it's intercourse. And for a lot of people, this goes to your second question, Spencer, you know, is it a is it the canary in the coal mine, as we've heard, especially for men's health when they begin to lose erectile function? Is that, you know, indicative of of atherosclerosis or diabetes or other things? Yes, it is. But it happens equally in women. Men have outies and women have innies, but we have the same amount of erectile tissue, which is what that function is. It's a blood flow-reliant function. So when your blood flow begins to not go into the genital structures, you have lack of function, you have lack of sense, loss of sensation, atrophy of tissue, all of those kinds of things. So that's one thing. The myth is that that's a natural part of aging, and it does not have to be, especially in the modern 21st century. There are so many what I would call regenerative intimacy treatments, practices, things you can do, DIY at home, do it for me, treatments, it's at regenerative, sexual regenerative health centers and things like that. But when I say orgasmic intimacy, it it needs me to explain it because we have these things that have muddied our thinking and our culture as well. The work of Dr. Lori Mintz is fantastic, where she identified this orgasm gap. Everybody's heard about it. But what people think is that that's the norm or the truth, that it's so much easier for men to have orgasms from intimacy than women. You know, it's like the 59 cents on the dollar of our wages. It's, you know, 59% of us women can have orgasms, and then the other 40%, eh, well, good luck. You're still gonna have to have sex if you're in a monogamous relationship and you're committed to it. It's like, that's your job, right? And this is where all the problems come in because we have all of these preconceived notions that sex is intercourse, that we're going to atrophy, that it's our job to continue to do it, even if it's not pleasurable for us or it's painful for us, or our parts don't work, or that we just give it up. And that if you can't orgasm, well, I guess you're just not the kind of person who can. All of those things are so wrong, and yet they are the standard of mentality in our world as we find it today. So thank goodness we have the sage wisdom that comes from the deeper conversations on podcasts like Kraken Backs. Um, so thanks for having me here. I appreciate that, and I'd be happy to unwind all of those things, but I'll leave it with all orgasms are learned skills. The body has infinite pathways to orgasm, the male and female body across the gender expression, the expression of our genitals. We humans are built to have orgasms, but we never see how to do it because of our censorship. I am so censored. I have to use eggplant emojis and the word seggs and things like that. I can't buy advertising to the I'm working on my 35th book about yoni massage, which I think is one of the most important educational things we can teach people in the world today to solve a lot of these problems that came from the cultural morays in which under which we labor and struggle. So there are over 20 kinds of orgasms the human body can have. There's three types of orgasms. Every one of them is a learned pathway. You can have them all. I've had all but one. One does not appeal to me. Um, and so when we get rid of the notion that sex is intercourse, we get rid of the notion that we age out of it, we get rid of the notion that we can or cannot orgasm and realize that that we can, I still put a huge emphasis on the orgasmic aspect of intimacy because you can pet your damn dog and make oxytocin. But when you make love with a person or even just with yourself and solo pleasuring, you and you have orgasmic experiences, you're getting an entire floodgate opens of beneficial body-based physiologic positive benefits of doing so. So it's like, yes, you can. It doesn't have to be your intercourse, but I can teach you how to have orgasmic intercourse because what you see in porn is not that. It's all just learned skills. Give the vagina what she wants for God's sakes, right? She's dying over here. Give her what she wants. And every man in the world is like, I will do that. Tell me what to do. I will do that, right? And so if we're a lot closer than we think, it's a lot easier to get where we need to go. But you have to leap the hurdle of the cultural mores that we we definitely struggle with.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Suze, that was great. Let me ask you. We always talk about blood flow to the heart and the brain and the muscles and all that, but rarely to sexual tissues. I mean, how much is that change? How much can changes in sexual response tell us about that vascular system? Is that like a if somebody came to you with something like that, would that be a sign like, hey, maybe you should get your cardiovascular system checked or what have you?

SPEAKER_03 8:06

For sure. Um, by the time we are 40, 50, somewhere in there, mid-life-ish, we produce about half the nitric oxide that we used to win our 20s. And nitric oxide is what PDE5 inhibitors work on Viagra, Levitra, Cialis, etc. They keep they keep that smooth muscle tissue working and allowing the blood to flow into the erectile tissue chambers. So when you start to have loss of firmness, loss of innervation, when you can't see your penis is no longer veiny, right?

SPEAKER_04 8:44

It's become kind of like almost just monochromatic.

SPEAKER_03 8:50

You don't see the blood, you don't see the vascularization in it. Uh when you get a little bendy, when you have trouble holding the blood that goes in and and and stay, it doesn't stay and you've got venous leak, very the most common issue of ED. You uh you are now in a vascular event. You already have some sort of either a diabetic issue or some kind of vascular retraction. The blood, there's not enough capillary system to force enough blood to get in there. And often that's we only have a certain volume of blood in our body. And it has to move around depending on what we're doing. It goes to your brain when you're thinking, it goes to your muscles when you're exercising, and it goes to your pelvic bowl when you begin to enter the arousal states. But if it can't all get in there and flow down, because that endothelial system, the muscle tissue around the veins and arteries, can't squeeze the blood and go into the pelvic bowl and get it all in there to fully inflate. Over time, as you learn, as you lose uh nighttime erections, you're no longer getting morning wood, all of that retraction means that not only is the tissue atrophying, the blood flow is not working, but the nerves also retract. So you're beginning to get sensation loss. It's you struggle to condemn the old the biggest thing old guys deal with, even if they can take Viagra and get erect, is they lose sensation. They can't, they have to try really the extra stimulation to get there. The wives, the girlfriends, the female-bodied partners are eating the same thing, probably doing the same amount of exercise. And they have that too, only they don't necessarily see it because they don't have that external erectile tissue structure, the penis. All of that same erectile tissue, that spongy tissue that's in the penis, is in the clitoral urethral vaginal complex, the C UV. And it doesn't get the blood flow either because she has nitric oxide production issues. So the very first thing to do is to, of course, tell your doctor. Second thing is not to just start taking Viagra, but in instead to do things like top up your nitric oxide system, stop taking antibiotic mouthwash, stop taking acid blockers and fix your gut. Use a vacuum erection device two to three times a week to restore the blood carrying capacity. You know, and take a nitric oxide supplement. And the data shows all of the clinical data on nitric oxide, which was a 1998 Nobel Prize-winning discovery. Um, when you eat leafy greens and beetroot, you really, you're really restoring your function. But the problem is that our soils are nitrogen depleted from agribusiness. And so we're not even able to completely do it. So I recommend taking a citrulline-based supplement. That's what I make. I have a supplement company for sexual vitality supplements because I think libido botanicals and nitric oxide are very important, not only for our passion and our sexual function, but our lust for life, our energy. Energy is longevity. Without it, you ain't, you ain't gonna do anything, you're gonna die. So being able to get that blood flow where you need it and keeping your systems topped up with citrulline-based rather than arginine-based supplementation is a really, really good strategy. So, yeah, eat your greens, drink your beetroots, you know, cook your beets. They're good. People say, I don't like beets. Well, you have to cook them, right? You can't just buy those floppy things in the grocery store. Those are disgusting. The the beets are all going, we don't know those beets. Those beets are not us, you know. Like, beets are fantastic and they're so good for you.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Funny, I just read an article on are beets really all that they're cracked up to be as far as nutrition. And I just read about how how uh robust they are in nitric oxide. So incredible.

SPEAKER_03 13:09

And interestingly, citrus citrulline is from the citrellus vulgaris, the the watermelon rind. Watermelon rind. So it just comes from that. That's what I make my nitric oxide supplement out of. I make it out of organic watermelon rind, organic spinach, uh, a little bit of bitter cherry that gives you vitamin C that helps actually integrate it and absorb it, and a little pine bark for the tannins, which help with blood flow. People get their systems topped up, they stop taking those acid blockers, fix their gut, they've got good, good oral hygiene without eradicating the bacteria that convert the nitrates into nitrites that turn into nitric oxide. And all of a sudden, they've got their boner back, their lady boner back.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

That's great. So I guess the bedroom is a uh cardiovascular stress test that nobody really ordered, right? So that could tell you a lot.

SPEAKER_03 14:13

Yes. In addition to a stress test, what it's doing every time, every time you make love and have an orgasm, the orgasm actually happens in your brain. Everybody feels like, you know, it's genital focused, but it's actually all the corpuscles and the mechanoreceptors and the nerves that are carrying a signal to your somatosensory cortex, as Dr. Nan Wise calls it, the crotch of your brain. She's the woman who with Barry Komisoric, Dr. Barry Komisoric and Beverly Whipple, put all of the couples, uh put the women in the MRI machines and stimulated their genitals and looked at and their breasts and looked at where it lit the brain up. And it lights the brain up in all different places when you stimulate different areas, which helps with orgasmic function as well. But what it does is it floods the brain with, of course, all the healing and growth factors that come from your blood supply. And so it bathes the brain in that great healing blood, which improves cognitive function. You know that post-love making burst of creative thinking that you get. You guys have experienced that, right? Once. Like you just have you have. Terry's had it one time. Spencer's like, oh yeah, I have that all the time. Oh, now we know. But but what it what it's really doing is it's oxygening, oxygenating your brain. And also there's a lot of relaxation that comes with the orgasm, a lot of nervous system calming oxytocin production that modulates that stress response. And, you know, there's a whole host of benefits. There's a cascade of beneficial benefits, but one of them is cognitive function and creativity.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

You know, Susan, you brought up the brain, and I kind of want to go there because I I'm brains are fascinating. And what happens when the brain works, but the brain isn't interested? Are we are we being oversimiled with the phone, internet, porn, uh, stress, substances, poor sleep, and and how do we train our brains to make real intimacy when we when sometimes the brain is less rewarding?

SPEAKER_03 16:23

Yeah, well, one of the good things about orgasmic intimacy is that um it it f it really it releases oxytocin. And oxytocin actually helps with this kind of neuroplasticity. It helps with um, you know, it it bathes the amygdala and the hippocampus with blood flow and all of that helps improve. And it also has a big interaction with dopamine. And so it it's a reward. It literally is part of your reward system. Good sex and orgasms are a reward. So the rewards that you're getting for the social media scrolling addiction, which I mean, honestly, it's very hard not to be on social media right now, in all honesty, with everything that's going on in our world, we'd probably be more stressed out not knowing all the crazy stuff that's happening than actually knowing the crazy stuff that's happening. For me, I find it actually calming to just be like, okay, what do they do today? What's going on now? What's happening in the world? Then I don't worry as much. And I can be like, okay, well, it's all still a shit show, but now I'm gonna have some orgasms. So the brain function has a it it it has not only that kind of like the vascular event of the contractive nature, which by the way, oxytocin is the thing that generates the contractions for orgasm. So though your prostate as a muscle, for for the men, as a prost, your prostate's both a muscle and a gland. It makes the seminal fluid, but it also squeezes the ejaculation out, which is the part that makes orgasms feel good. I don't know if you've read any of my longevity wins articles, but some of the favorites are when I write about nutmaxing. Have you guys heard about nut maxing?

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Please tell us.

SPEAKER_03 18:15

You're like, we knew this was gonna be interesting when Suze came, but we didn't know we were gonna learn about nutmaxing.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

Nut maxing. That's great.

SPEAKER_03 18:24

It's essentially that as men age, they also have reduced seminal volume, seminal fluid volume, due to all kinds of things that happen to the prostate, hydration, any number of things. And so I I essentially create a stack that and and it's kind of particular and specific because there are specific kinds of, and I I can't even, I'd have to literally pull up the formula that I wrote because the it's on, it's at uh longevitywins.substack.com. Um, for those of us who are like, I need to nutmax. My boyfriend loves to nutmax. He's nutmax. He's like, man, it just feels so good. The more fluid volume you have, the more orgasmic response and sensation you have, right? The bigger the load, the more pleasure. So that's another thing that feeds into this kind of loss of pleasure during intimacy. There's many factors, including that one.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Well, you you brought that up, but I still want to talk about I'm seeing in my office, I'm seeing a lot of we we talk sex, we talk intimacy, but I'm seeing a lot of loss of intimacy. I'm seeing where the couples are, one partner may be into it, but the other partner is being drawn by the internet by this. And and it seems like it's changing the brain. And and and we're seeing this loss of intimacy. And are you seeing this a lot with the stress of society, the porn addiction to this and this, and and the like I said, the body may be still willing, but when the brain is not because they're getting it somewhere else, how we how we forget the sex, because you even talked about incourse is not a big a thing as much as the intimacy orgasm. How do we get this intimacy back?

SPEAKER_03 20:14

Well, I would say the orgasms are important, intercourse is important, but it's important to learn the skills of making it pleasurable. What mostly happens, and this is probably the number one issue that I deal with, though most of what I do is I write passionate love making techniques and bedroom communication skills and intimate wellness information because I'm not a therapist, I don't sit in an office and solve people's problems. But for people, so so I'm like, whenever you have issues, you have to figure out what's wrong and you have to solve those problems and heal that trauma. But then you also have to learn new ways of doing things. And that's where I really come in. And the learning new ways of doing things, what most often happens is there's some kind of a health issue with one of the partners. It could be emotional, it could be physical, it's usually a combination of things. About 20% of the time it's betrayal or something that's happened in the relationship outside the bedroom. About 80% is all the health issues that you guys deal with all the time. We know what they all are. And so when you don't feel good, your libido is the other side of the same coin as your overall health. Libido is a marker of health. When you start feeling better, your libido comes back. You've probably experienced this yourself in your lifetime, um, where your libido has dropped because your health has not been solid. You guys are healers, so I know that you're in this because you like to bring people back to full health and energy, full mitochondrial function, loss of chronic disease. So that's one thing. Libido can be down in one person. The second thing Is that because we have this cultural mindset that sex means intercourse? And for many couples, one or the other of them has functional issues, often both at the same time, where there's smoke, there's fire. And so, you know, hormone replacement therapy, nitric oxide, um, regenerative therapies, you know, um, all of those kinds of things are very important. There's a whole stack of things that can be done that fix all that kind of multivariate atrophy of the genital structures. But because this is really an emotional thing where you don't want to be bothered to get started often because you think it's because it feels performative, because it's like, I need to have intercourse and I don't feel like having intercourse. And it happens more often in the female body because in the male body, there are a couple of like competitive benefits of being in the masculine body, in the testosterone-dominant, penis-owning Homo sapien, right? Like, let's just take it down to the science. This is not a blame game of the man versus the woman. But generally, if he's healthy, he's getting nighttime erections, he's waking up with a nice big old boner, he's horny, he looks at her body and he's like, I'd have that. That's oh yeah, she looked good to me. She's, on the other hand, in an estrogen-dominant female body with a vulvovaginal system, where he's got fast acting hemodynamics. He's got really good blood flow to the penis. It takes a whoosh of blood flow into that member so that it can expand the endothelial tissue and then lock off to hold the blood in for a firm erection. So he needs that who right down those three chambers, those three spongy chambers in the penis. Those three spongy chambers are in the vulva, but they're in all these nooks and crannies, the little clitoral shaft and the little arms, the corora, and the vestibular bulbs, the big legs, and the back of the clitoral body and the G spot, which is not a spot. It's called the urethral sponge. It's a long tube that's that butts up against the back of the clitoris, but goes all the way up to the urethra, up to the up to the bladder. Then there's the perineal sponge that's underneath between the vaginal floor and the rectal area. And then all inside that vaginal pocket, it's not an inside-out tube. It's not, it's not an opposite of the penis. It's a flat pocket or a little cavern that will expand and tent with arousal, but it's it's sitting there, flaccid as can be. So is all that other tissue until she gets stimulation. And the problem is that for most people, their idea of sex is intercourse. We even have the terms foreplay and sex. And so we even think about everything else as like the appetizer you have to get to to get to the main course. And the problem is that we suck up the appetizer so fast that we're jumping into the main course before she's gotten enough blood flow into all of her erectile tissue. Kissing helps, breastplate helps, manual genital massage, I call yoni massage. Y-O-N-I, my favorite four-letter word. It's a tantric love-making word for the entire female genital system, the vulva, the vagina, the mons, all of the parts, including all that erectile tissue, with kind of a spiritual adoration and respect for that tissue. And so I like the word yoni. And so the women, we take a lot longer to get to full arousal. Our guys are there in a minute or two, we're there in 10 or 20. By the time we've gotten, by the time we've gotten into a normal sex experience, we're not even fully aroused and it's over. You guys are off eating a sandwich, and we're just like, okay, well, check that off my list because, you know, I had to do it, or he'd be the grumpiest grandpa in town, and I'd rather shut him up and make him happy, but it wasn't that great for me. So how many times is she going to do it? Is she going to do that for five years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, 30 years, 50? No wonder she's opting out of it. It's not that pleasurable for her because she's literally, it's the blind leading the blind behind closed doors. We have we don't see feminine-oriented, pleasurable, oral manual, intercourse, anal course depictions. What do we have? You mentioned it earlier. I think it was Spencer that's like, it's porn out there. Maybe it maybe it was you, Terry. You know, the pornography is all for masturbatory male gaze. So it's not sex education, it's sex utainment, masturbatory sex utainment. And so nobody really knows what to do. So it's not her fault that she's like avoiding because he wants sex. He wants to ejaculate inside her vagina. And she's like, I don't, I I don't know that. So what I teach couples is how to make small offers, how to just slow down, learn full body touch, hold and be held, give unlimited yoni massages to your woman on demand. Whenever she wants one, be there for her. Because once you start giving her pleasure and engorgement of manually massaging all of the yoni, and she knows that you're not gonna expect sex after. She won't ask you for it if you have to if you expect sex after. If you're just like, let's just see what happens. Let's just hit the bed and see what happens. If you want more, I am here for you, my damn. And if you do not, I will tuck you in and kiss you goodnight. And that is fine with me. And I will not be pissed off. I will masturbate. Like if we could get to that in our male-female relationships where the man wants more than the woman does, it will let her body slowly acclimate and catch up to where he is. Guys always say to me, What's the number one thing you can tell me about? What's the number one sex technique? Like if it were only that easy. But here it is. Turn around, slow down, come back and get us. Because we want it. We're great when we get our motor purring, but it's a lot of heavy lifting for us together to get up the female arousal ladder. We are responsive in nature generally, versus spontaneous, like guys are, with all that great testosterone you have humming through you. And does testosterone replacement work? I mean, I take a ton of testosterone. I gotta donate blood because I take so much testosterone. I gotta get some blood out of my system. Um, I love testosterone. It makes me focused, it makes me confident. I like the base timber of my voice. It's commanding and sexy, and I like it. It's me, it feels good. I like all of that benefit of testosterone, but does it make me hornier? No, I am very responsive in my desire, and I come like crazy. I learned all 19 of the 20 kinds of orgasms because um I just thought to myself, okay, if they're, I didn't, I used to not be able to come. 42 years old, almost lost my marriage because we thought I had a problem. Well, it turns out we just didn't know what we were doing. And that's what it is for everybody. That's why going back to the orgasm gap, the orgasm gap is just a temporary situation you can remedy with the right recipes for orgasms. Everybody's multi-orgasmic, even people who had female genital mutilation, they can come without a clitoris. So it is just creating the pathways from body to brain and knowing the steps and believing you can. And you just become more and more orgasmic as you age. Old people have the best sex because we have maturation, experience, we're over our body image issues, and we're willing to slow down and we have a growth mindset. When we have all those things, we are the hot lovers. People are sleeping on us, old people. They should be sleeping with us, old people.

SPEAKER_00 30:53

All right, I got it. Why, you know, conversations like this, why are they in our culture so uh taboo? If if if uh this its intimacy is the fourth vital sign, why are some countries very open about it? And why is our country and the way we teach so closed about it? What in all your experience, why do you think that is?

SPEAKER_04 31:16

Religious repression. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 31:22

But why are some countries that have very that are very re um religious are very open about it? What's it what's up about our country? Why do you think our country is so tight?

SPEAKER_03 31:34

I think it's um a 50-year insidious dumbing down of the American mind, the law the lack of quality education, the uh suppression of sex ed in the beginning of childhood where we don't even learn uh anything other than abstinence, uh the oppression of uh birth control, um, the lack of easily accessible STI testing, full STI testing. Um, I'm the chief advocacy officer of a company called Pro DX Health. They make at-home STI testing kits. You have the kit mailed to you, you put a little tasso blood collector. You guys know those little tasso collectors that collect the blood so nice, doesn't hurt. You don't have to have a blood draw or anything. Pop it on, pulls out a little sample, you mail it in, and in 24 to 48 hours, you've got a full panel of tests. I mean, everything like MGen, mycoplasma, genitalium, all the stuff that's out there that people are like, I just keep getting this UTI and I don't know why, and it really hurts. And it's like, oh, it turns out it's it's not a bacterial infection, it's it's a a mycoplasma infection. And so all of the shame, the oppression, the control, the um, the lack of knowledge, um, the purity culture, all of this creates fear and shame. Lack of knowledge. The output of lack of knowledge is fear. So it is not pleasurable to have shitty procreative sex for more than you know, a few times in your 20s. And then you're like, is that all there is? This is it. He just sticks it in me and he pumps away and he's done. Like, I don't ever want to do that again. I feel used. This is traumatizing, right? Because nobody knows what to do. And what's worse is the censorship is worse and worse and worse lately. Censorship is spiraling now up instead of the pleasure. It's the censorship because why? We can be controlled when we are miserable. If I don't even know what to do, then what do I do? I sit around scrolling, shopping, and streaming. Now we're plugged into the capitalist borg and we don't have our own pleasure-filled life. What happens? We take antibiotics and our oxytocin production crashes. We're not touching each other because of that. And so our guts are destroyed, our brains are destroyed, our happiness is decimated, and now we are just plugged in as an object of capitalistic and religiously repressed pursuits, which are all control mechanisms to deplete us of our life and enslave us to their vision. Which is not good for us.

SPEAKER_01 34:39

Hey, Suze, uh, hang on, Terry. I I wanted to ask Susan, do you do you remember a book by Cherie Height called The Height Report? Of course.

SPEAKER_03 34:49

She was like a leader in realizing how women were so like disillusioned by their sexuality.

SPEAKER_01 34:57

She covered so much information that even back, you know, what was it 40, 45 years ago when I when I read it, it was it was so enlightening back then that people should resurrect that book and start reading it again.

SPEAKER_03 35:13

There's some I see I stand on the shoulders of giants, I am telling you. I really do. I'm so glad to have everybody from Kinsey and Sherry and uh Barry Kommissaric and Beverly Whipple and uh Beverly Sassoon who did the responsive and uh spontaneous desire. And, you know, oh, there's God, there's just like so many incredible people out there who've given us such a foundation of knowledge. Um, but boy, is it really hard to get it out there. It's really hard to get it out there.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

We had a podcast with uh two podcasts with two different women of physical therapists. Uh she was called the vagina coach and helped with uh pelvic floor strengthening. Uh she referred her techniques as the uh to the buff muff. And we thought it was very catchy.

SPEAKER_03 36:09

That's uh Vopney.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

Um you know Kim Kim Vapney. I know Kim.

SPEAKER_03 36:14

I know Kim Vopney, yeah. I know all the medical experts in the regenerative and sexual wellness world. I most of them anyway. I'm you know, I go to A4M and my crossover is longevity and sexuality. Nice.

SPEAKER_00 36:28

So how do you get Terry? Yeah, how do you get if somebody has grown apart and that and now they're like they're like more roommates than they are partners, what you know, you're not gonna go from a where they've gone, the chasm has gotten so big to uh a v uh an intimate massage, yeah, yoni massage. What is the uh initial step to start heading back toward the intimacy? What would be an initial tip for you just to start that pathway back for these people listening that have just grown apart and think that there's no hope? What is something they can start doing to get just get slowly back?

SPEAKER_03 37:05

Yeah, also, Terry, not only the people who intimacy has become a chasm, but also the people who are like, it's just kind of boring. Like, we do it, but it could be better. That's a lot of people too. And it's probably more of those people listening to this episode because the people who have given up aren't gonna listen to this episode.

SPEAKER_00 37:24

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_03 37:24

So we're really talking to the people who are still holding out hope. For all of you hopeful people, here we are. This is the answer. So very interesting. Um, Dossi Easton, who uh I took a course from one time and uh a workshop, and she wrote the book, The Ethical Slut, which I think is one of the best names of any um book that's ever been written. As a matter of fact, I'm working on a design for a t-shirt that's that says SLUT for science, which I just think is so cute because I'm such a science nerd about sexuality. So Dossie explained that that desire, so desire comes from a combination of two things that both need to be available in a relationship where the sex keeps getting better and better over time. One is the trust and the safety. And usually partners who have chosen each other as bedmates, that they feel safe with each other. They feel safe expressing their pleasures and desires and things like that, at least a bit. And there's always room for improvement on that. But what they miss out on is the variety and the novelty. And that's really what it takes to get things going again in the bedroom. And now I've been married for 35 years. And our sex life has had ebbs and flows and ebbs and flows and ebbs and flows, and we have had some incredible renaissance in our sex life. And at 65, I'm having the best sex of my life, the most orgasmic, most pleasurable sex of my life. So it ain't ever over, right? No matter where you are, how sick your partner's been or you've been, or any of those things, you can get it back and baby make it better. So the variety and novelty, there's two ways to approach this. There's two camps. And we talked, we just talked about Ontario. The first one was the, you know, lack of libido of one part partner. There's bait, you're basically in a sexless marriage. Can you get it back? Let's just call that, you know, group A. And then group B is, it's okay, but not great. I wish it was better. I don't really know what to do about that. That's going to be our group B. So group A, for them, often there's been uh some kind of health experience, you know, health event that has prevented them from doing something and, you know, to make it better. And um when they have those issues, you have to kind of get back to base because you can't grow, you you're not gonna grow from a negative. So you got to get back to baseline. And for that, I have a process called the magic pill method. Like if I could hand you a magic pill that would automatically fix your sex life, this is it. And it's it's at magicpillmethod.com. But briefly, what it is, and you can download it, it's just a PDF, it's free. And briefly, what it is is a way for couples to get back in a conversation about wanting to be intimate again and doing essentially like a needs analysis, if you will, to create a list of what did we used to do that I liked? What can I still do? And what can I really do anymore? And what are my issues that are holding me back from the things I can't do anymore? Could those be resolved? Like, could I start taking nitric oxide, use a penis pump, get acoustic wave therapy, get some exosm and stem cell injections? You know, like like there's just like so many things you can do to fix broken things. Can I get um, you know, vaginal vulval rejuvenation? You know, all of those kinds of things are available. And there's always like budget, intermediate, and luxury. And then who's the person in the relationship who's good at making the appointments and finding the practitioners? And who's the good person who's good at driving us there? And who's the person who's good at like keeping track of what I'm supposed to be doing to fix all this stuff? Like who's gonna be the nag? Did you bump your penis today? You know, like clearing the space for regenerative therapy. So that's the magic pill method, and and that's for people who have had a good sex life, but don't anymore due to issues. Then there's the crew who's just bored, like the monotony of monogamy. Like, I just I don't know. It's not that great. I mean, I'll do it, but yeah, if when I'm in the mood, you know, like that kind of thing. And for those people, it's a different route. And that's my sex life bucket list. So, and it's at sexlifebucketlist.com. I hope you'll put these URLs in the show notes for people who are like, I didn't try that thing. Um, the Sex Life Bucket list is we're just bored. We want, how do we have all those orgasms Susan Bratton's having? You know, I want what she's having, like that kind of thing. And that is 48 what I call erotic play dates. You get a PDF with 48 erotic play dates on it. And then a video where I walk you through what they all are, and you're like, I did not even know that was a thing, and it sounds really cool, right? So often when we think about not wanting sex, it's because we're thinking, oh God, this is gonna be a heavy frickin' list lift. I don't even feel like it. I just want to watch Sandrington and go to fold the underwear and the tea towels and go to sleep, you know? Like, yeah, Spencer's laughing because he's like literally that's what happens with us sometimes, right? I mean, it's just like so relatable. You guys know how relatable it is, right? And so the Sex Life Bucket list is really fun. If you have an adventurous-minded partner who's willing to like learn about sex with you, you can watch the video together in bed. Crack your laptop open in bed, print your little things out, grab an old album cover, and for your clipboard.

SPEAKER_04 43:52

You grab your Carol King album or your James Taylor album and rate it all.

SPEAKER_01 43:58

I got 'em right here. Actually.

SPEAKER_03 44:02

You got one right there?

SPEAKER_01 44:03

Yeah. Jethro Jethro Tall. I'm looking at it right now.

SPEAKER_03 44:07

This is how we this is what we use for clipboards, right? This is what we use. So um, and you watch it together and the the PDF has little lines next to each one and you mark them in A, a B, or C. So you're both doing this separately while you watch the video. The A's are, oh hell yeah, that's gone on my bucket list. You know, I always want to do that. We tried that one time and it was fun. Why don't we ever do it again? Or I didn't even know that was a thing. And I totally like, I want to try PT141 one weekend, you know, or like whatever it is that you're interested in. That's a that's a um what's the word that people are using instead of the P word now so that things don't get flagged? I don't know. Uh biologics, uh amino acid chain-based biologics. There you go. So so um the A's are like, I'm game for this. The B's are, well, I wouldn't do it, but if you want to do it, I would totally do it with you. Like if you would like to try a prostate pleasuring device while we're making love to get some extra stimulation and and good blood flow to your prostate while we're at it, let's do it because prostate issues run in your family. So let's let's like figure that out. Let's explore your back door. Okay. And then C's are it's not for me right now. And I say right now because never say never. You start working that sex life bucket list, you start gaining sexual confidence, you start making jokes and having laughs. Everything's not so freaking serious anymore. You're not all grumpy, you're trying new things, you got new relationship energy going now, new sexual energy going now. You're not thinking about I gotta I gotta have sex with him this week or he's gonna be grumpy. You're thinking, oh, Thursday night, we're gonna practice yoni massage for the first time. I'm really shy. But it's gonna be challenging and I'm gonna push through it and it's gonna be interesting. And he wants me to try lingam massage on him. Lingham, L-I-N-G-A-M is the analog for yoni in the tantric lovemaking world. That's the word for penis, the penis prostate testicle situation. And I like it too. It's a nice word. These are nicer words than anatomy words or slang words to me, which is why I kind of socialize them and normalize them. And so now you've got your bucket list. I want to find my G spot. I want to explore female ejaculation. I want to have this thing or that thing or role play or photo shoots or, you know, try her come full circle sex position or try these orgasmic intercourse techniques. I want to try heart tongue method, I want to try glissando, I want to try crouching tiger, bouncing dragon. Okay, you're a good one. You got some thigh muscles. Go, girl, right? Like that once you start having a list of things you want to do, it makes, it takes you out of sex and into erotic adventure. Like, I'm down to get on that train. Give me a give me a lifetime pass, not just a season pass, a lifetime pass to the erotic adventure train. I'm gonna need to be riding that a lot. Right. So when you have that mindset, growth mindset, exploration, discovery, learning, oh, we don't know, we don't know, let's fucking find out. Um, I think it makes it really fun for people. So you're in one camp or the other. I love you no matter where you are. These will both help you. If you've never had good sex, ever, it's always been a struggle, see a therapist.

SPEAKER_04 47:32

Go back to step one and two, because this is step three.

SPEAKER_01 47:39

Well, I do have one question before I have another question for you.

SPEAKER_03 47:44

There's a Oh, I was prepared for your question, Spencer.

SPEAKER_01 47:48

Oh, yeah. Many years ago, actually in chiropractic college, one of my three roommates had said to me, He goes, You know, I'm really trying. He was very ethereal guy, and he would say, Uh, I am trying something that's never been done before, and that is without touching myself, mentally stimulating myself that I can have an orgasm without doing Have you ever heard of the this happening before? Yeah, of course. For real?

unknown 48:16

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:17

So no physical stimulation, it was just all mental.

SPEAKER_03 48:21

Yeah, you don't need it. It's a big aspect of so one of the programs that I have, I publish, so I've written 34 books and programs, but I published the work of some of my mentors. One of my mentors is Dr. Patty Taylor. She's it created the expanded orgasm practice, which is a clitoral stroking technique that takes people from uh individual orgasms to multiple orgasms to extended orgasms to expanded orgasms. I like to call expanded orgasms like quantum gasms. They just keep getting bigger and deeper and wider and longer and more intense. They just have this like, you know, like this way of radiating out radiating out into the universe. They use a lot of theta brainwave state uh connection, which is meditation and, you know, it's the same orgasm and meditation are the same brainwave state. So she's one of my mentors, and another one of my mentors is Jim Benson. He's he is a train the trainer, trainer of Tantra teachers. He's a global phenomenon, and he teaches a program that teaches men how to become multi-orgasmic men. And it's essentially a technique that first it allows you to have more stamina, because the number one issue guys have is premature ejaculation. They come before they want to, they ejaculate before they want to. They don't even understand that ejaculation and orgasm are separate functions, that you can have tons of orgasms without ejaculating. But they've been conflated, especially in porn with the money shots and all that, you know, that stuff that it pervades our culture. That um, now those guys do nutmaxing, the that it that men don't even know that they can separate those things. So now a man starts to be able to have full-body energy orgasms without ejaculation. And that same process of learning, which uses a combination, it's called the me breath, and it uses a combination of a specific pelvic rocking technique, very subtle but relaxing, with a specific kind of a breath that comes from ancient Taoist practices that they called the cool draw. Montak Chia writes a lot about this, but this is really modernized for today's, today's man. And um a little bit of a pubo coxegious muscle squeeze. It's not a Kegel. It's a little different. When you combine those things, kind of like a golf swing, you know, first you gotta, you gotta get the grip right, you gotta get the stance right, you gotta get the pullback, you gotta get the swing through, you know, all of the all the way around, you know, that kind of thing. At first, when you start learning how to swing a golf club, you're you're like, oh my God, I feel so like a spaz. And then after a while, it gets wired into your body, it's in your muscle memory, and you get that mind-body control. And it it and you can learn this Mibra through your masturbatory practice, and then you can use it during intercourse, and it gives you what's called ejaculatory choice. You can decide to ejaculate if and when you want to, or you can refrain from ejaculation. For some men, it drains them. For other men, they need a lot of ejaculatory expression. Different ages and stages of your life, you kind of ebb and flow with that. And so then they learn how to connect their heart to their penis, then they learn how to connect it up into their head, then they can move that energy out through their head. That's very that's a very tantric cashier chyvis kind of a uh structure. It's Taoists and the cash, it's they all the Asian and Indian lineages both found these pathways. So this is another reason why sex is suppressed. If you're if you're having the quality of orgasm that I'm having, I'm actually feeling my connection, my palpable connection to choose your word, source, Gaia, God, consciousness, life, whatever it might be. You've you actually are like, whoa, my God, we are all connected. Whoa. Like I'm literally getting goosebumps just having the experience of reliving my connection to source through my orgasm. You can get that through prayer and meditation as well. But the problem is that if we have sex that is so good, if we if we had all these skills, if you had all the skills I have, and you're like feeling God in your sex, what do you need to go to church for and tithe? Their systems would crumble. We wouldn't need them. We'd feel the the true connection to each other that we live. And so when you learn this pathway, you can become a very multi-orgasmic man. And what's really hot about having sex with a male, a guy that can have male multiple orgasms is that most guys, when you have sex with them, they're very quiet. They're focused on giving you orgasms. So now you feel this performative need and this pressure because they're putting pressure on themselves. Because you guys, it sucks, but you guys, you in our culture, you're you're all in a pecking order. Like at least as a woman, I'm in like a group kumbaya with the other chicks in the world, where you guys are all just like one upping each other, amogging each other. If if I if you lose, I win. It's this zero-sum game that's very oppressive for you. So you get into the bedroom and you feel like if you're a loser, if you've done something wrong, if if she's like, it doesn't really feel good. And then you get like you crash out emotionally and you check out, or you're so busy trying to like give us incredible pleasure that you don't take your pleasure, it's useless to us. We want what do what do women want? Top two things cleanliness. Jesus, trim those Shrek toenails, groom that stuff. Like we we need a sweet smelling dude showing up. We don't want Shrek in the bed. Two, emotional connection. Get out of your head, get into your body, moan, have a loud orgasms, be scream like a Neanderthal when you come. Let me know. It was great. Take breaks if you're coming too close, right? Like practice these skills. It really, really, really helps when it the the tech the technique that the analogy that Jim and I use when we do this education is the tuning fork technique. If you want to learn more about it, it's at tuningforktips.com. And it's essentially how do you, you know how when you have two tuning forks and you whack one against something and then you bring the one fork next to the other one and your first one's reverberating from the beating you just gave it, and then you bring it next to the still one and the still one starts to reverberate. That's the energetic flow state of super hot sexes. You're showing your pleasure. I'm feeling your pleasure. That's giving me pleasure. I'm showing you that pleasure, that's giving you more pleasure. You're in this, what I like to think about as the the DNA helix. You can imagine the DNA helix twisting around and rising up to the peaks of connection to source, right? That's what we are as lovers. We're just we're just getting each other going with our energy, all that mitochondrial function and turn on. That's just like woo, taking us to God and back. But you can't do that if you're worried about coming too fast. So, how do you fix that? Use the me breath, then learn to become a multi-orgasmic man, then learn how how to have energy orgasms without even ejaculating, without even touching your penis if you don't want to.

SPEAKER_01 56:14

Wow. You know, we we actually have a load of other questions that we wanted to ask, but you have been very entertaining today. Terry, where do you want to go with this? Because do you want me to start asking rapid fire or continue with some of these educational questions?

SPEAKER_00 56:30

I'll let you know.

SPEAKER_03 56:31

You guys made me feel so comfortable to be myself. Um and I could see the joy in your faces as I was speaking. Um, and that really encouraged me too. So thank you. Women, we need encouragement and adoration as much as you need respect and to win.

SPEAKER_00 56:48

There you go. I always say I always say if you want to feel like a king, treat your woman like a queen. I thought it was interesting.

SPEAKER_01 56:54

Some of the the metaphor I used to tell my uh some whether it'd be my associates or interns at the office or even my weight training partner, I go, if you want to know how somebody is during sex, watch how they are while they're lifting heavyweight or when you're adjusting them, whether they yell out or they're very vocal or they're real quiet, or they're that's how they are in the bedroom. Interesting. It was a perfect metaphor to watch.

SPEAKER_00 57:18

Or how they or dancing. Or dancing.

SPEAKER_02 57:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:22

There you go. Or if or if they listen to Jethro Tall. Oh. Hey, wait a minute. I got Def Leopard down here too.

SPEAKER_02 57:29

Hold on a second.

SPEAKER_00 57:32

I got Kiss Black Sabbath. Does that help any? Yeah, not really.

SPEAKER_03 57:39

Well, I'm thinking Lance needs to get give us a good musical intro and outro on this episode, right?

SPEAKER_02 57:44

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:45

Lance, what's your what's your weightlifting uh regimen right now? What are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 57:51

Five days a week, Monday through Friday. Uh weight train at 5 a.m. in the morning. Uh the you know, typical weight training. And then Saturday is a day of rest, and Sunday I do a long distance run on the beach because I'm in South Florida. So it's very nice.

SPEAKER_03 58:05

Yeah. Yeah. So that sounds so good. Yeah, I work out about three to five days a week in the gym. Um, and I love to lift heavy. I am a beast in the gym. I just freaking love it. And I take a little growth hormone and I take um, of course, I take uh creatine and um testosterone, which helps a lot. But I also do vasper um and ARX. Do you know about those? Vasper, it stands for vascular performance. It's kind of like an elliptical Xer bike that uses katsu, the blood flow restriction, and you sit on cooling pads on your back and your butt. So it keeps, and you do a series of hit sprints. It's like a 21-minute program. You do these hit sprints, that high-intensity interval training, that push and then you rest, push and then you rest, push and then you rest. And what's really interesting is that when you start doing that training, you look at your thighs before, and then like a few weeks and months into using vasper two or three times a week, and you get this web of vascularization. I like it appears on your thighs. It appears, I can see it across the, you know, like the sides of my breasts, my trunk of my body, uh, my forearms and arms get very vascular. It really pumps up the vascular system. And then and it releases growth hormone and more testosterone production, which is really nice. It helps you sleep at night too, which is great. And then the other one I do is ARX, adaptive resistance. And it's a machine that does many different uh upper and lower body um techniques. But what it's modeled on is eccentric and concentric movement. So you're essentially like if you're doing a chest press, right? You start and you pull and then it pushes against you, and you have to resist it pulling back. So you're constantly in eccentric, concentric, slow strength movements. That thing pops your muscles all over. It takes every muscle you have. And so you don't just do, I like the weightlifting for, you know, I'm gonna work my biceps, I'm gonna work my, you know, and sometimes I like, I like as many like um multi, multi blasty movements as I can because our sh our fast twitch muscles start to fade first as we age. So I like anything I can do that's more explosive, also. I've kind of started working that in in my 60s, but the ARX, boy, it it hulks you out. And that's what I'm focused on. I want to be, I want to be slabbed in muscle. I don't mind if there's fat on top of it. I like a little fat because I don't want to be a super lean woman. Because if there's any health issues you have, you need a, you need a little bit of fat investment. I like that. I like cur I like the curviness, but underneath the fat, it's slab. And that's what I feel like is a really good combination for me. But the ARX and the Vasper, those are very much like regenerative longevity tools. We have in where I live here in Mill Valley, we have a place called Jaizen that's a longevity center. And a big part of what they do are equip is equipment like that VO2 Max equipment and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So I figured since you're working out so much, that would be of interest to you, and I'm sure interesting to your listeners who are very longevity focused. What's your number one longevity strategy?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:41

It it's muscle.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:45

Okay, I gotta say, we if she's open to it, we got we had so many other things to ask her. Yeah, ask me some more stuff. That's fine. You can always turn it into a few parts.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:54

Yeah, if we can. We'll we'll do another one. You know, I'm I'm looking at time for coming up. So let's just do, let's go right into our rapid fires. For real.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:02

Okay, I'm in. All right. Suze, this is gonna be a real challenge for you because we need brief answers.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:09

Okay, I'll guess I'll just be brief.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:11

They're rapid fire questions, and if you're and there's five of them. If you're ready for number one, Susan, you spend your life encouraging people to be adventurous. So what's something completely ordinary that you are absolutely terrified of? Did you see her face change with that? Wow.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:36

I don't think I'm afraid of anything.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:40

Not spiders, snakes, crap. No?

SPEAKER_04 1:02:42

Wow, what a beast.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:45

I do.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:46

No.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:47

Awesome. All right. Question number two. Your husband Tim is analytical. And you've described yourself as uh intuitive and a pretty powerful force, but what does Tim know about Susan outside the bedroom that the rest of the world gets completely wrong?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:07

Oh yeah. Uh I would say the number one thing is that people think I'm fake or I'm like acting or dramatizing or something like that. That's what people are like. She's so fake. Um, and and he knows it's just how I is like the real me. I don't filter anything. I'm just myself. So people think it's an act when it's just really me. That's because they're jealous.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:29

That's all I'm question number three. You've built companies, written dozens of books, traveled the world, and become the intimacy expert to millions. What are you still terrible at that you wish you rocked?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:46

Oh God. Uh, business agreements, negotiating terms and business deals, um, uh uh writing agreements, all that kind of stuff. The the financial end of things, I'm not the I'm the moneymaker, not the money manager. I'm not good at all the analytical stuff. That's why my husband's so perfect for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:04

There you go.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:05

I was just He cannot match his clothes. I dress him. He does all my contracts for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:11

I love that. Love that. Question number four, Suze. If I asked your daughter what she's most proud of about her mom, and she wasn't allowed to mention your career, what do you hope she would say?

SPEAKER_04 1:04:28

Honesty.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:30

That's nice.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:31

That we have a completely 110% truthy relationship in our entire family. Um we always speak our truth, and we're really good at holding space for the process around that.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:45

That's important. In fact, that's more important nowadays than ever that the the child trusts the parent with anything they could talk about.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:53

I'm her first phone call always.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:55

Right on.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:56

So I don't worry about her.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:58

Good job. Yeah, beautiful. Fifth and last question, Susan. So far you've done really well. So here we go. Suze, someday there will be a last chapter to this incredible life. When the books, the businesses, the interviews, and Susan Brattan, when that persona is gone, what do you hope the people you love say you gave them?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:25

Courage. Do you love this woman?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:30

Is she just the coolest? Nice. Excellent. I love it. Great. Oh, wait, just I just got goosebumps.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:38

Good.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:39

Susan, thank you so much for being on the show. And I gotta tell you, we need to have you back because you I'd love to come back. I'm sure you're a storehouse.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:47

Can we have a second date, you guys? Yeah. We can. Yay! Well, the first day went really, really well, I'd say. I'd say so.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:59

I love that. Thanks, Suze. Thank you. Thank you guys so much, Susan. You're awesome.