Want to have more sex? Who doesn’t? The problem is that in our stressful lives, it’s hard to find the energy to have as much sex as you’d like. Your diet isn’t doing you any favors either. (Photo: Getty Images)
In my research for the Bulletproof Diet, I discovered that there are four things you’re probably eating that are killing your energy and your sex drive.
Performance-Sapping Sugar
Most people are familiar with the term “sugar crash,” but many don’t know where this term comes from. After you eat sugar, it’s not only your focus and energy that crashes, but also your actual blood sugar levels, too.
When you eat sugar, blood sugars naturally rise, causing the pancreas to secrete insulin. But the pancreas isn’t great at estimating how much insulin to release and usually overdoes it, secreting large amounts of insulin that cause your blood sugar to drop dramatically. This is the famous crash that causes brain fog, sluggishness, and food cravings. Eliminating sugar is one of the very best things you can do for your health, weight, and overall performance.
Vegetable Oils That Don’t Come From Vegetables
The Bulletproof Diet is all about fat, but the type of fat you consume is key. The most stable fats are saturated, while the most unstable, easily oxidized, and therefore inflammatory fats are polyunsaturated fats. Eating excess polyunsaturated fats will not improve your health, longevity, or performance and is likely to contribute to cancer and metabolic problems. The most common polyunsaturated oils that you should avoid include canola, corn, cottonseed, peanut, safflower, soybean, and sunflower oils.
The main problems with these oils are that most are genetically modified and many contain toxic solvents used in their production. It’s not easy to squeeze oil out of something like corn, so in order to maximize production, these solvents are needed. These kryptonite oils also provide unhealthy amounts of omega 6 polyunsaturated fats. Oxidized omega 6 fats do damage to your DNA, inflame your heart tissues, and raise your risk of several types of cancer, including breast cancer. But perhaps worst of all, your brain pays the price — oxidized omega 6 fats don’t support optimal brain metabolism.
Gut-Destroying Grains
Gluten-containing grains are addictive and break down in the gut into opioid compounds called gluteomorphins that trigger the same receptors in your brain as other opiate drugs like heroin. If allow your brain to get “addicted” to the opiates formed by grain digestion, you’re going to experience that as insatiable hunger and cravings that last for days after you last ate grains.
There is plenty of research to show that eating gluten also has negative health consequences. It causes inflammation and gastrointestinal distress and contributes to autoimmune diseases and a host of other issues. The trick is to give it up completely and go gluten-free. This will dramatically increase your ability to live up to your full potential and you’ll undoubtedly feel an immediate difference in your body and your brain.
Dubious Dairy
The final category of foods to avoid on the Bulletproof Diet is conventional dairy. One of the main problems with dairy is the harmful process of pasteurization. While this process does reduce the small risk of milk contamination, it kills off the beneficial probiotics in the milk, denatures milk proteins, and basically transforms milk from a source of nutrition into a source of many health problems. Pasteurization also turns milk’s lactose sugars into beta-lactose sugars that the body absorbs faster, causing blood sugar spikes.
