Forget oysters and even Viagra if you want to boost your sexual drive and performance.
For according to one expert the best way for both sexes to get in the mood for romance is to use a variety of plants that simply grow naturally in the wild.
‘Most cultures in history have at least one plant that doubles up as an aphrodisiac and its properties are well know in that culture – but often not outside it,’ says Chris Kilham, an ethno-botanist and Explorer In Residence at the University of Massachusetts.
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List of plants |
| For men |
| Yohimbi (bark of an African tree which has been proven to increase the flow of blood to the penis.) Tonghat Ali (Asian root achieves an improvement in erectile dysfunction in 73% of cases and increases orgasms) Rhodiola Rosea (Root – In mountain villages of Siberia, a bouquet of roots is still given to couples prior to marriage to enhance fertility and assure the birth of healthy children, in men has erectile properties.) Gingseng (Known energy giving characteristics and in 40% of males has erectile properties.) Maca (Sex enhancing properties) |
| For women |
| Rhodiola Rosea (regulates menstruation) Ashwagandha (a root that regulates menstruations and enhance female fertility and sex drive, used extensively in Indian medicine as a tonic and anti-inflammatory) Tonghat Ali (same as above) |
A self-styled ‘medicine hunter’, Kilham has spent 35 years trawling through the libraries and jungles of different cultures, looking for plants and information on their attributes. He says the question he is most frequently asked by people is why they have never heard of the beneficial properties of a particular plant.
‘Then I ask them if they have heard of Milton Nascimiento and they no to that too – and I then point out that to around 170m Brazilians he is the equivalent of Frank Sinatra. It’s the same thing,’ he argues.
Which is why few people outside Asia have heard of Ashwagandha, the most popular plant in Indian herbal medicine and which is used by doctors to regulate female fertility. It has the side effect of increasing a woman’s sex drive.
Kilham claims similar beneficial properties for Maca, a high-altitude Peruvian root that has been dubbed ‘the natural Viagra’ because of its energy and stamina conferring powers.
‘There are a lot of plants out there that you have fun with which is the point that I am making with this list,’ says Kilham, who has been responsible for popularising a particularly potent sex enhancing herbs called Rhodiola.
‘But there’s also a more serious point to this which is that plants can do you an awful lot of good in all parts of your life and the medical community have developed a tendency to turn to the pharmaceutical industry to cure people when plant medicine can often do a better job,’ he says.
He adds: ‘The existing body of literature on plant medicine is much older and much greater than any other body of medical research.
‘My job is to investigate plants, find out what properties they have what scientific research has been done into those plants and then to publicise the results.
‘Plant medicine is the number one category of medicine in the world according to the World Health Organisation,’ he adds.
