The Biology Of Sexuality And Penises From Around The World

Kevin Anthony 0:11
Welcome to the Love Lab podcast a safe place to get real about sex. Whether you’re a man or woman single or a couple, this is the show for you.

Céline Remy 0:20
We are your hosts, Kevin Anthony and Céline Remy and we are here to guide you to go from good to amazing in the bedroom and beyond.

Kevin Anthony 0:28
All right, welcome back to the Love Lab podcast. This is episode 235. And it is titled The Biology of sexuality and penises from around the world. Okay, I know those things don’t really sound like they go together. But let me just explain. So I am experimenting with something new on this show, which is having guest hosts. So it’s a little different than doing straight interviews, as we have done on this show for many years, I really wanted to bring some people on from time to time just to get that dynamic going between two people. And it helps to have different points of view and different areas of expertise to share on the show.

And so this is the first episode where we are attempting that, and the person that will be co-hosting with me today, who will introduce herself in a moment has a really interesting background. And you know, when we were discussing what are we going to talk about on this show. She mentioned something about penises from around the world. Apparently, she’s seen quite a few of them. And it was just too interesting to not talk about since we have her on the show. So we’re gonna save that towards the end. We’ve got a lot more to talk about before we get there. But it was just too interesting not to talk about.

So what are we talking about? today? We are talking about the biology of sexuality. And what do we mean by that? Well, what we really mean is, so many people think that their sexuality, their desire for sex, how they show up during sex, really is sort of a product of their personality, more so than realizing that it is more about more, but it is largely driven by their biology. And so we’re gonna dig into that and unpack that a little bit. But before we do that, a short word from our sponsor, do you want to join the secret club of men who are great in bed and then check out power and mastery, it is the most complete sexual mastery training for men. Whether you want to have harder erections, last longer, or increase your sexual skills, there is something for you at power and mastery.com. So as you know, those are the online men’s sexual mastery courses that Céline And I created. And they will teach you a ton of stuff a little bit about biology, but mostly about what to really do when you show up in your relationship and in the bedroom. So go check out powerandmastery.com powerandmastery.com. Okay, so today I have a guest host, her name is Elicia. And I’m going to let her introduce herself and tell you all a little bit about her and her background.

Elicia Deva 3:20
Hi, I’m Alicia Deva. And I apologize for fanning myself, I’m in Mexico, and it’s hot as hell here. We don’t really I don’t have AC or anything. I, I’m a multidisciplinary researcher and thinker. I consider myself to have a science background, although I’m something of a scientific heretic because I dropped out of academia. Neuroscience, I was, I graduated from Stanford, with a human biology major, which was an interdisciplinary major with psychology, biology, animal behavior, and cognitive science. And so I, I called it a consciousness. So I really have studied consciousness from a lot of different angles, archeology, anthropology, basically, the human animal, as an animal, because it’s been clear to me that we are actually animals and that we’d like to think of ourselves as rational beings, but that we’re actually walking around like, big bags of hormones that are driven by our biological urges. So that’s been

Kevin Anthony 4:24
You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel. If you remember that song. That’s what you reminded. Well, I think, based on what you just told the audience that you are the right person to be talking about this subject with. Alright, so let’s just dive in. I mean, I give kind of a little bit of an explanation at the beginning of the show about what we’re talking about when we say the biology of sexuality, but maybe you could expand on that a little bit and maybe give a little bit clearer. Your explanation about like, what are we really talking about here when we’re talking about the biology of our sexuality?

Elicia Deva 5:07
So, you know, we’re human beings driven by our, by our instincts, but we kind of one thing I learned working with split-brain patients in the lab is that we tend to kind of put logic around it and justify our behavior. But actually, we’re driven by both our hormones and our neurotransmitters. So we both have estrogen and testosterone. And of course, men have more testosterone and women have more estrogen. And testosterone really controls to a large degree, our sense of horniness, and estrogen to a large degree, our sense of sort of female lushness, this kind of soft skin, feeling, feeling juicy, you know, juices in the vagina, all of these things. So those are controlled by those things.

And then there’s oxytocin, which is all about us, as are sort of like, love and affection for each other for our children, for our partners. So those are sort of the major hormones. And then there are the neurotransmitters, which are my research, I found that in the first, let’s say, six months of meeting someone, it’s the dopamine phase. So that’s like, it’s like basically a coke binge. It’s chemically identical to a coke binge, where you’re just over the moon, you feel good all the time, you feel really motivated, you have tons of energy, and you’re bait, you’re basically obsessing about this other person, and they’re incredible.

And at a certain point that shifts like maybe around six months, it’s different for him every couple, where if, if you decide the other person is basically not an Axe Murderer and is kind of compatible with you, your body shifts into serotonin mode, which is kind of the in love as opposed to the in infatuation mode. And this can last a couple of years, depending on whether or not you live together, which, if you live together, things tend to progress a lot faster, the more space and time you have, the slower things go, I actually have something that I like to say, which is that every couple has kind of a finite number of ejaculations. And you can either like blow your water really quickly, or you can make it last a lifetime, you know, depending on how you sort of spin that, that, that energy.

And then at a certain point, if you’ve been living together for a long time, let’s say you’ve had children, you sleep together every night, you shift into oxytocin mode, where you feel like a family like now there’s this it’s more of an affection and less of an in-love feeling. This is different for everybody. And I think every couple has a different destiny. And I think we can sort of maintain these these different phases. But I think it’s it’s nature’s way of getting us to breed. So the dopamine, you kind of are so infatuated with each other that you can’t look at anybody else. And so that’s why I think a lot of people get pregnant at that phase. Because nature wants you to get pregnant and have children while you still have, this feeling of juiciness with each other. But I think it can be elongated with certain forms of intimacy and kind of vital distance and constantly recreating ourselves.

Kevin Anthony 8:50
Yeah, so, okay, you’ve covered a lot of ground there. I’d like to go back and maybe unpack a few of those things a little bit more. Let’s go back to the beginning and talk about sort of the role of the hormone. So you mentioned that each of the major hormones has an effect, let’s start with estrogen and really talk about you kind of mentioned it’s what brings sort of the juiciness and the flow. But a lot of women don’t realize, really until they start hitting menopause or even perimenopause, just how much their estrogen level really affects how they show up as a woman.

And so like one of the things that you know, you’ll see if you work with a lot of women who are in that, you know, we use the term menopause, but the reality is, once you’re menopause, you’re already done. So the correct term is technically perimenopause. But just I don’t want to confuse the audience do much. But this idea that when you are going through what we call many menopause, which is really perimenopause, and your estrogen levels start to drop suddenly You know, you’ll see things like thinning of the vaginal wall, women will start to experience more pain during sex, they’ll be less motivated for sex because of that. So maybe you could add a little bit more to that discussion about like, hey, throughout your life, your estrogen levels will vary, and how is that really affecting how you show up as a woman?

Elicia Deva 10:22
Yeah, I would say, you know, I have I guess, maybe perhaps what is called estrogen dominance, which, which means that I had high levels of estrogen, as did my mother and her twin sister, which meant that I had very intense PMS, like very intense irritability with my at the beginning of my period, and had really intense sexual desire that did sort of wax and wane with my cycles. And then I’m unconsciously child-free, so I didn’t have children. And perhaps I’d love to see more research on this, I feel like, you know, this is kind of a taboo subject for scientists to research.

But it would be, you know, especially around female sexuality, which is sort of so taboo. But I feel like perhaps because I didn’t have children, at the end of my fertile period, which, of course, we never know that we’re nearing the end of our fertile period, I became extremely needful of sex, and especially for young men. And I’ve been in a relationship for 10 years, with a man my age, and we built a house together, which was incredibly intense, like, became this huge art project, this temple. And then we found that we were like brother and sister. And meanwhile, I was having such intense attractions to young guys, because it seems that around the age of 32, men transition unless they’re extremely vital, or they eat goat balls, or they do tantric practices or something, they tend to transition to not being quite as, as horny all the time, which must be a big relief for them, I would imagine. But it’s such a dastardly trick of nature, because that’s around the same time that women are become really coming into their whole sexuality. Perhaps out of a certain body is kind of desperately let’s, you know, let’s make use of these last years and breed all we can phase. So that did me really good.

Kevin Anthony 12:33
Yeah, I just wanted to interject there for a second. Because the way that has been described to me from several doctors that we’ve had on the show, this idea that women get hornier, as they get older, and men get less money as they get older, is that for women, generally, their estrogen levels will drop, but that leaves their testosterone levels pretty much the same. And so the ratio of estrogen to testosterone is different. So women become more testosterone-driven as they get older, whereas men, it’s the opposite, their testosterone levels are dropping, but their estrogen levels are staying the same, which is leaving them, you know, less dominated by their testosterone. So what I find interesting about that is, in your case, though, you were estrogen dominant, and yet you were still experiencing that shift. I find that interesting.

Elicia Deva 13:25
Yeah, I mean, I never tested my hormones until after menopause. So then, I did, I think, that contributed to the demise of my relationship, which is extremely traumatic, because we have built this whole thing together. And I went to Thailand, and I spent three months at Tantra school at ADAMA, this really major, huge Tantra institution. And I was trained in Lincoln massage, and I ended up experiencing a lot of, of, it’s a very international island with people from all over the world. So had young lovers and really got to live that out. And it was a little bit unsatisfying, honestly.

In some ways, I wish I could go back to myself that was so horny at that time and say, you know what, in three years, you’re actually not going to care that much. And you’re kind of going to miss your partner that you had all of this stuff to talk about with. But it was what happened and that happened and then I went into perimenopause, and I, you know, got very depressed and started to lose my sex drive a little bit, but at the same time, it was still pretty intense, and then finally stopped bleeding. And everything stayed the same for about two years and then two years after my last period. All of my health issues arthritis, body pain, anxiety, depression, thyroid issues surfaced, it’s like estrogen, and as this water that flows over you, and when it goes away like the sharp rocks of whatever are your ancestral health issues kind of poke to the surface. And so I decided to go on bioidentical hormones. And I tell it, you know, that I want to. Yeah, go ahead.

Kevin Anthony 15:23
So I want to save that for a little bit further in the show. But so far, I’m really loving hearing your story about what your personal experience was, as we go through the show, you know, we’re going to talk about like, you know, a little bit more about what happens when things get out of balance, and what can you do about it. And so then, that’s when I want to really bring in, like, how you handled that what you did, and how that made a difference. So don’t want to jump too far ahead just yet. But it is very interesting, your experience in how those shifts in your hormones really changed how you showed up.

And by the way, if you were listening, audience, if you were paying attention, I should say, notice, she mentioned going to Tantra school and getting trained in Liga massage, hence the penises from around the world, which we will get to a little bit later. Because that’s going to be a hysterical conversation, I think. But I wanted to share it. Since you were talking a little bit about your personal experience. I’m going to share a little bit about mine as well. So I am approaching 50 Well, I have another year and three months, but I’m getting pretty close to 50 now and so yeah, you know, I’ve been experiencing shifts myself. And you know, they say that for men once you hit 30, your testosterone levels start dropping about 1% every year since then.

And kind of like I said earlier, that whole idea of women’s estrogen levels dropping, leaving them more testosterone dominant men’s testosterone levels dropping, leaving them more estrogen dominant. Something and I did a show a while back called something along the lines of she wants a quickie and he wants to cuddle and the point of that was talking about that very shift that happens where all of a sudden, she’s just like, Okay, I finally I just want to fuck, right? And then he’s like, No, but I just want to talk it’d be really nice to connect for a little while for whereas, you know, when we’re younger as men, we’re just like, take your clothes off, penetrate right away. Let’s fuck right? Like, that’s, that’s basically what we want to do. And you said something also earlier about, it must be such a relief for men. And to some extent, that’s right, I have to say, I’m so far past that point in my life, where everything was just about like trying to get laid, that I have a little bit of a hard time remembering what it was like, to be honest.

But I do remember being young, you know, you’re talking like maybe 18 to 30 ish, roughly, where Yeah, as a guy, your thoughts are pretty much consumed. I mean, when you’re not busy, like at school, or work or whatever you’re doing, pretty much everything else you’re doing is trying to figure out how you can get a woman into bed. And, you know, men get a bad rap for that. And I think part of what’s interesting about it is, I think you could have more compassion for men, if you understood that, that wasn’t necessarily just their personality or toxic masculinity or anything like that. But really just being driven by their hormones. The perfect example of that is, I have a long, longtime friend, who is a woman, she’s always identified as kind of non-binary long before non binary was even a thing.

You know, I mean, she, she, she shows up in the world as a female, but she’s, you know, been sort of 5050 between having female lovers and male lovers. And about a year ago, I want to say it is for whatever reason, she decided that she wanted to go on testosterone. And she will talk openly about how since she’s been on it, she just wants to fuck, like, that’s what she’s just like, and you know, she’s almost the same age as I am. Right? So, but she’s just like, she just wants lovers and she just wants to fuck and she clearly states that she feels an absolute difference after having been on the testosterone. And so I just think it’s really interesting when we’re talking about our sexuality and how we show up in the world and what we want, what our desires are, how much of that really is driven by the levels that are flowing through our body And he said how those levels change hence change what we want out of sex and relationships throughout our lives.

Elicia Deva 20:06
I definitely acquired a lot of compassion for men at that last phase of my cycle before I stopped bleeding completely when that’s all I wanted to do. That’s I thought about sex every five minutes, every five seconds literally. It was like, I’d walk down the street and I could feel my Yoni with every step. It was like I was when Yoni was like driving me forward, and like, men could like smell me from their cars, like they were shouting like it was emanating pheromones. And then, that same thing happened when I started on the hormones. So and then I thought, gosh, is this what 18-year-old boys deal with? Like, I have so much compassion for them.

Kevin Anthony 20:45
Now you know why the average 18-year-old boy masturbates four times a day.

Elicia Deva 20:53
And it was so unsatisfying. I felt like I wanted to like, bite my arm, you know, it wasn’t. That’s not what I needed.

Kevin Anthony 21:00
Yeah, it’s definitely you know, which, which is something that you’ll often hear certain groups say, who don’t want young people to have sex when they’re young? They’ll say, Oh, well, I mean, a lot of them are against masturbation also, but the ones that aren’t will say, well just masturbate and it’s like, now, you know, that doesn’t really do it, it’s just not the same. So stepping away from you know, the estrogen, testosterone, and we didn’t really get into progesterone. But that’s okay. We’ve talked about that on the show many times, you also were talking about some of the neurotransmitters that have effects. And that’s another thing that I wanted to get into because we haven’t talked a ton on this show about neurotransmitters. So maybe we could just revisit that for a moment. And you could kind of talk a little bit more about oxytocin. And, after you do that, I want to also talk a little bit about a pattern that something that I had recognized in relationships and how long they tend to last, and then we’re going to match it up with what you’re going to tell us about the neurotransmitters because there’s a connection there.

Elicia Deva 22:11
Totally. And just to mention the progesterone, just to say real quick about that, you know, that is part of my hormone regimen. And that was the first thing I noticed when I started taking it is that I could sleep through the night. Because that is, you know, a huge part of, of the stage of life is waking up in the middle of the night, which maybe is nature’s way of having grandmother’s take care of toddlers so parents could sleep and get work done. But so just a little note about progesterone and the effects of that. And

Kevin Anthony 22:39
Dr. Platt, we had on the show, who is a hormone specialist talked a lot about that. And he is a big proponent of putting pretty much all men and women over the age of 50, on progesterone, and one of the big reasons is that sleep and, he ties it all in with the blood sugar cycle of how that works, and how the progesterone actually helps lower the blood sugar and prevent crashes. And as a whole thing, we did a whole episode on it if people are interested in it, but yeah, that that is definitely an effect that it has is helping you sleep through the night and not wake up.

Elicia Deva 23:16
So when my relationship fell apart, it was the most dramatic thing that ever happened because first of all, he was the love of my life. We talked all day long about things. But also we had moved from California to North Carolina and built this epic homestead on raw land it was, you know, so, so intense. And then. So it led me on this discovery about relationships like, like, did we fail, and I discovered that right around four and a half years of cohabitation it’s really about the cohabitation is when most people reported feeling like brother and sister and not really having the urge to kiss not really feeling like massaging each other, needing more space in bed. And I believe that’s the time that the serotonin transitions to the oxytocin dominant phase. So you become more like, like family, and it’s a very comfortable feeling, and you still love them. It’s just that there’s not this desire to touch them.

Yeah, you know so my hypothesis is that four and a half years is basically the time that if if you so I know tons of people who got pregnant right at six months before, six months after meeting each other, so that’s like the dopamine phase and it seems like that’s when your body’s most primed to get pregnant because by six months, you definitely know that the person is not, you know, is basically coming audible, but you aren’t already sick of them and annoyed with them. So you still have plenty of like, juice. And then if you did get pregnant in six months, it would basically be four years your child is four years old. And that’s the time when you would naturally the child is in our sort of evolutionary environment running around the village being taken care of, by the older kids, like that was our natural state in the village not like, you know, everyone has their kid up under them all the time, and you have to play with them, entertain them. So but by for, they’re sort of running around by themselves and don’t need to be carried. And at that point, your body’s like, Okay, time to mix your genes with another person.

Kevin Anthony 25:44
Yeah, I love this discussion, because so you know, Céline, and I, having coached a lot of people over the years, plus our own personal experience, plus, you know, all of our friends watching them bounce in and out of relationships, there is a definite pattern that we recognized over all of that time. And that pattern goes something like this. And it’s, you know, timing is not exactly in every relationship, but it follows this rough pattern, which is, people, get together. And it’s amazing for about the first year and a half to two years. So, you know, that’s when you’re in that, you know, addicting chemical phase, right, that’s where the serotonin is flowing.

And you guys can’t get enough of each other, and you just want to fuck everywhere all the time, and everything’s great, and they can do no wrong, and they’re the most amazing person you’ve ever met, right? What they call the honeymoon phase in any relationship. Then after that dies down, after roughly one and a half to two years, then things start to change in the relationship. And then most people spend about the next two years ish, trying to make it work. Right. And this is where a lot of people come to us right now they’re in this we’re trying to make it work.

We’re trying to figure out how to keep this going, and how to get back what we had in the beginning. And so then usually, somewhere between year four and year, the beginning of year five, they end up breaking up. And that is because they realize that they’re not actually compatible. But why didn’t they break up sooner? Well, because for the first two years, they were under the guidance of the chemicals. For the next few years, they were trying to figure out what the hell to do. And then at some point, one of the two gives up. And it’s just like, that’s it. And you know, this was a pattern that we certainly didn’t I had noticed even in our own lives, because prior to us being together, neither of us had ever had a relationship lasts longer than five years.

We both each had one or two that got to that mark before it fell apart. But it never, we never made it past five years. So when we made it past the five-year mark, we actually did a big celebration, we’re like, yeah, we broke the pattern, something’s different in this relationship. But you know, in our case, we never lost that honeymoon phase and seven years and never went away, which was amazing. And we kind of looked at, you know, well, what can we do? Like, how are we able to do it where other people aren’t able to do it? And we use that as the pattern to create a lot of what we teach couples now.

And so, you know, listeners who have been listening to the show for a long time, you’ve heard us talk a lot about what we call the constant state of arousal and how to keep that intimacy going and, and how to keep like, keep stoking that fire throughout, so that you never, you never lose it. But that doesn’t work for everybody simply because some people are so blinded by the chemicals, that they’re not in a relationship that is healthy for both parties. And you’re never going to be able to fix that no matter no matter how hard you try. If you chose badly to begin with because you were so blinded by the chemicals in the attraction, the only way that’s ever going to end up is crash and burn.

Elicia Deva 29:19
I almost believe in some kind of destiny, where some people are just like are meant to find each I know it sounds really cheesy, but like there’s some work to do together like you and Céline had this coaching work, and these podcasts and maybe that’s why you were able to maintain it is that that was really what one of the reasons that you came into life for. You know, maybe that’s what enables some couples to do it but some people maybe are actually wired differently, like there are different genes that are turned on and people who tend to be more monogamous and they’re actually finding Now surprisingly, this book called, What do women want the new science of female desire that men are actually more able to maintain monogamy than women Contrary to popular belief, maybe because men have slightly more sexual desire in the first place. But that’s Yeah, I think some people are. Yeah, that was the finding of that.

Kevin Anthony 30:24
Check out that book, because I’m curious to read that research. Because basically, you know, what, what they usually say when you’re talking about the biology of men and women is they’ll say this, they’ll say that, because women have a bigger investment in raising children, right? So basically, they need the help of a man. And they also have this genetic predisposition towards finding the best DNA they can get from a man, right? That, that you’ll often see, women will go out and have sex with the big, muscular, badass guy, but then they’ll tell the, the other guy who’s not really quite as attractive, but who will stick with them and provide for them that he’s the father, right? So that’s, they’ll tell you that that’s women’s main drive and desire. And then they’ll say on the other side, that men’s man, driving desire is spread your seat as far and wide as you can have sex and impregnate as many women as you can. But don’t stick around to take care of them because you need to go out and impregnate other women. That’s the general narrative. So I’d be really curious to know if they have some new research that maybe counters that a little bit.

Elicia Deva 31:31
Yes, and, and I want to just interject about that story is that it’s important to note that while that is valid within a patriarchal culture, like ours, ours is sort of a reformed, feminized feminist patriarchy. But that’s the patriarchal narrative of evolutionary biology. It really is only relevant within patriarchy. And that wasn’t relevant within our evolutionary environment, please excuse the parents. Because, of my research, I’ve written a book called before war. It’s about the origins of marriage, male dominance, oppression, social hierarchy, and European people, which are all stories that are tied in.

We weren’t monogamous in our evolutionary past. The evidence for that is a book called sex at dawn, of course, which goes into that about I’m sure we’ve all read about the the way the penis is shaped. And the way that there’s the sperm is designed for sperm competition, indicates that in our primeval environment, women were having sex with multiple males within one menstrual cycle. And that male biology is intended to actually kill rival sperm and remove viable sperm from her reproductive tract. So and from my research, you know, in hunter-gatherer times as well as agricultural times, women were at the center of society.

And they didn’t need men to provide for them the whole clan provided for the whole clan. Women raised children remained with their sisters and mothers and grandmothers and that and as well, their brothers were huge play a huge role in raising the children, fatherhood was actually not recognized as a promiscuous environment in which there was no concept, of who was fathering the children. And so therefore, this whole narrative around providing is really a modern thing modern as in the last 5000 years, which hasn’t really affected our biology, except that balls have gotten a little smaller. Because of all of this, monogamy. Ball size is really related to promiscuity. So bone and bone males, bonobos, you know, are extremely promiscuous animals. So they have very big balls, whereas gorillas have very small balls, because male gorillas, they fight it out in the physical as opposed to on the sperm level, and the athletics all so all of that narrative is, is really not relevant. And part of the problem beneath it is that like if men are going out spreading their seed, who are they doing it with,

Kevin Anthony 34:20
That’s always the other end of it. Right? You know, it’s like so, you know, a slightly different narrative, right? But when they’re like, Oh, these women, they’re all slots, right? Well, they can’t be slots unless they’re having sex with guys, right? You know, somebody else. So does that mean that they’re not slots? Right. So this is a funny aside, right? Yeah. It’s like, yeah, obviously, if they’re spreading their seed far and wide, they have to be spreading it with somebody.

Elicia Deva 34:49
Right? So, you know, people are cheating. And, and, I mean, yeah, this book basically says that you know, women get really tired of it. And it makes sense that if we only have a couple of shots to have children, that our bodies might be urging us to mix it up with different men. Yeah, so that’s kind of the idea behind that.

Kevin Anthony 35:14
So it’s a whole other fascinating discussion because now we’re leaving so much, we’re starting to depart a little bit from the, here’s what our, our biology is driving us to, and we’re getting a little bit into, here’s how the societal structures that we create influence how we behave sexually because there is a big influence there. There’s, I don’t know if it was in sex at dawn, it might have been in I’ve read so many of these books over the years, I can’t remember which one said which. But one of them was basically saying that men are as faithful as their opportunities allow.

So like, in some cultures, they didn’t have very many opportunities. And so hey, this one woman here, and I’m going to be monogamous with her, whereas in others, especially if they were prominent, wealthy, you know, some sort of ruling class, you know, king, or something like that. They had far more opportunities. And so, therefore, they had sex with a lot more women. And that’s just the societal structure dictating what’s possible. And you’re right, there have been societies that were far more matriarchal, where the women really banded together, there was no such thing as fatherhood. So, you know, all of that really shaped or at least shaped back then how people showed up.

And it’s a fascinating story, I got to hang out with the author of sex at dawn for a while and have some really cool, personal conversations about him and his work. And you know, he never set out to write a book that proved that polyamory was actually a thing. That was not his goal, at all. Wow. So in the poly community, people think that this is like one of the Bible’s of poly because there’s science behind the fact that we want to have sex with multiple people. Therefore, look, we’re legit, you know. But that was never his intention in writing it. And in fact, he wrote it, the first version of it originally as a thesis paper, and only turned it into a book quite a bit further down the road when people were like, You got to turn this into a book. So yeah, it’s a fascinating story. It’s a great book, it’s worth a read, and it’ll probably shift most people’s perspective, especially if, if all they’re really used to is the monogamous perspective.

But since today’s show is mostly about biology, and less about culture, I want to shift a little bit. Because we got a couple of things to get in before the show finishes up. I want to talk a little bit about what kind of changes can people expect when their hormones shift, and then I want to talk a little bit about what we can do about these changes because I love to leave people with solutions, like, you know, here are things that you can do. And that’s where you can really talk about your experience with your hormone replacement therapy. And then we’re gonna leave about five minutes at the end to talk about penises because it’s just fun. Okay, so let’s start with, you know, what, what types of things can people expect both men and women as their hormones start shifting, like, for whatever reason, I mean, generally, the big shifts are due to aging, but they can be due to other things that can be due to health problems, they can be due to the environment that we live in nowadays, I mean, that’s also causing testicles to shrink, and testosterone levels to go down and all that so, but so prescription drugs are a huge one, right? Yep, that’s another one. So like, what could people expect to experience when that happens?

Elicia Deva 38:56
I mean, I haven’t been on this journey with a man while it’s been happening to me since my relationship did split up. I’ve had some short relationships since then. But I mean, for myself, it was there was just this huge plummeting of desire, to the point where I didn’t even want to masturbate, and I was almost afraid to masturbate because I was, it was dry, and I almost couldn’t even reach orgasm. And normally, I can reach orgasm within literally five seconds if it’s been a couple of days.

So I was sort of dreading it. And I noticed that I became really uptight about sex because I didn’t desire it. I felt disgusted by sexual scenes in movies. And I kind of came to this point of like, okay, so maybe this is it like I had sex for the last time I don’t even really remember when that was, was that my last time ever? Like, am I just going to be alone now? And, then I started having these thyroid problems. If and I noticed wrinkles appearing on my hands. I’m sure they’re on my face too. But I didn’t spend a lot of time looking at my face, but I could look at my hands and I thought I wasn’t going to be vain. And still, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a moment to look at yourself aging, even if you want to tell yourself intellectually that you’re more than just your youth and your beauty which I do believe. But I wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t for the thyroid problems, heart palpitations, and things like that. And that’s what really drove me and all that went away. And within three weeks of taking my first pellet, I was pointing like, beyond what it was like, in the last days with my fertility, it was so intense, that I made a fool of myself, like,

Kevin Anthony 40:47
Oh, do tell a story or two.

Elicia Deva 40:52
I mean, well, okay, so it was sort of like just post-lockdown. And so there wasn’t a lot going on socially. And here, I was locked down at home, like, Oh, my God, I’m gonna jump out of my skin. So all the people that I could tell the guys I could think of that I was attracted to, I basically messaged like, Hey, what are you doing? Like, I want you. And that’s what I discovered, I have a theory that while men might say like they want to be pursued, and it would be really nice not to have to do the approaching and they want to be approached, that’s worked for me 0% of the time.

Kevin Anthony 41:34
Oh, I know why that is. It’s a polarity thing. So in when women so when women start really pursuing men, that’s because they’re more in their masculine, right? And so there’s, you get a lack of polarity there because you get to masculines together instead of one feminine, one masculine, I don’t want to go down that road too deeply. But, that is, then that’s, that’s a big problem that you see when these hormone shifts happen, because women when they start being more dominated by testosterone, they get more into their masculine hence the I want to fuck I want to get shit done. I’m focusing on my career like that. And then the guys, when their testosterone levels are dropping, they’re like, oh, you know, I just, I want to cuddle more, I want to get to know women more, I want to take it slower, blah, blah, blah, and then you end up with no polarity between the two of them because they’re both kind of almost in the same zone. And that just wrecks there that you see a lot of relationships break up when, you know, they’ve been married for 25 years, because they hit that point, and there’s no polarity anymore.

Elicia Deva 42:39
Yes, but I had so much energy, I felt like a million bucks. I felt like I climb mountains. And you know, all my thyroid problems went away, like my body pain went away, I just felt amazing, a lot more body hair, I noticed which. And so, you know, I think I kind of ruined some of those friendships. I live in kind of a small town, Asheville, North Carolina. And I think it’s still awkward with some of those guys that I reached out to. And then around two and a half months later, it started to subside. And I noticed I stopped thinking about sex every couple of seconds and stop being as wet stop masturbating so much. And, the same cycle repeated itself. You know you take a pellet every three months. And the same thing happened. Luckily, the second time I was traveling in Europe. And I love European guys. And I was using Bumble and I had a really good ratio of right-swiping. And that was a lot of fun.

Kevin Anthony 43:47
I imagine, I don’t know what the average age of the guys in the town where you live that you’re reaching out to is, but I imagine if they were say somewhere in their 20s they wouldn’t have had a problem with it. They probably got offended because they were older.

Elicia Deva 44:04
I think they’re just there’s so much conditioning around that. The odd thing is it’s like guys who are right about 22 I can feel their lust towards me even at my age like it’s almost like nature wants us to get together at that polarity of older woman and younger man. It’s the same thing with older men and younger women who also have kind of matched sex drives. I think it’s nature’s way of allowing us to trade sort of wisdom and experience for that those youthful hormones because I realized that like sometimes I don’t even in order to maintain my youth and my sexual desire. I don’t even need to have sex.

Even if I just get together with a guy and I’m within eight inches of him. I can feel that sort of if I’m attracted to him, and he’s still sort of youthful and has or has his testosterone If I can feel all of that juice, and that’s something that what’s his name that the Indian guy who fought for, fought for Indian independence. He talked about how he would just wanted to lay next to young women. And that was how he maintained his youth. So there is our, our pheromones are actually interacting with our hormones in this way that we don’t even recognize or understand. I think if we just have compassion for ourselves, and we understand that then we can sort of work with that like, like not get down on ourselves with that relationship downturn that happens with oxytocin when we lose our sense of desire, if we understand that that’s a possibility, we can, instead of like, getting down on ourselves and saying, What’s wrong with ourselves? You know, we follow some of those guidelines that Republicans and that kind of spiral bound. Knowledge is power.

Kevin Anthony 46:05
Yeah, absolutely. You gotta love Mexico, there’s Paris in the background dogs barking, I apologize to the audience who asked to listen to dogs barking, I know, that really does not make for easy listening. But some things in some places are just a little out of our control. But yeah, so that whole idea of being able to be satisfied without actually even having sex, that’s like a super advanced skill, definitely something they teach you in Tantra.

How to move that energy and how to feel really like satisfied without ever having an orgasm, or even possibly any sort of penetration, that that’s a super advanced skill, but totally possible just for those listening out there that that is indeed possible. So let’s shift gears for a little bit because we are getting very close to the end of this show, I want to leave the listeners with some things that they can do to help them if they are experiencing these changes. And so I have a short list here, I’m gonna go through, feel free to add anything you want to add to this list. But the first thing is, you really need to learn how to take care of yourself, right? So number one, you got to get enough sleep, not sleeping really massively throws off your hormone levels, right? Because that sleep time is super critical for your body to readjust and repair, and rest and all of those things that you need in order to have, you know, a healthy functioning body with proper hormone levels. So you got to make sure that you’re sleeping enough.

You got to make sure that you’re exercising. And this is a big one for I mean, it’s big for both men and women. But it’s a huge one for men when their testosterone levels are dropping. Yes, they’re going to drop when you get older no matter what. But another big reason why they drop is that as you get older, you tend to be less active. And this is a thing that I try to help men with all the time, which is like, Look, you think that a lot of what you’re experiencing is simply because you’re older. But half the time I’m the same age as you I don’t experience those things, right? But I am physically active I weight train five days a week, I mountain bike, I rock climb, I do martial arts, right? So I’m moving a lot and I’m doing strength training, and all of those things will actually stimulate your body to produce more testosterone. So you want to make sure that you exercise. By the way, also men. If you have that sort of classic spare tire around the middle, you know that a lot of you know 40 Plus men have, do you know what, that’s a sign of excess estrogen.

That is why you ended up with that spare tire because your testosterone levels are dropping, and your estrogen levels are probably not only you know, where they used to be but potentially higher because of all the exposure to phyto estrogens and Xeno estrogens in your food and in your environment. Right. So that’s a whole nother topic. We don’t have time to go into today but that’s artificially pumping your estrogen levels up right so now you want to cuddle a lot you’re not as interested in sex and you got a spare tire. I guess maybe it’s okay because with that spare tire, less women want to have sex with you anyway, so sorry, guys, but it’s true. All right, next one, eat a balanced diet. And this is also super important.

The foods you eat will massively affect the hormones in your body, especially staying away from so when we say Xeno estrogens, we’re talking about chemical estrogens things found in plastics, right that are going to bump up your estrogen levels. And then when we say phytoestrogens, we’re talking about estrogens in certain foods like naturally occurring plant-based estrogens. Alright, here’s another one guys. Like soy actually, I Absolutely, and another one that guys don’t want to hear beer. Oh, sorry, guys, you drink a lot of beer, you’re, you’re exposing yourselves to Extra, extra phytoestrogens. So, you know, of course, obviously beer drinkers tend to have that, that gut that excess spare tire around the gut to so get enough sleep exercise eat a balanced diet and then we were just talking about this remove the environmental hormone disruptors, you would be amazed if you really looked into everything from the deodorant you’re using to the skincare products you’re using to the foods that you’re eating to the containers, the plastic containers, your food comes in or the or the plastic, you’re storing your food in your your plastic, you know, Ziploc this that saran wrap that, you know all that stuff is literally leaching Xeno estrogens into your food and water, which are affecting your hormone balance.

So you want to make sure that you try to remove as much of that as possible. This is true for both men and women, by the way, these things will affect I mean, especially imagine, right, you’re a woman who has estrogen dominance, which is genetic, and now you’re also adding all these extra estrogens on top of that, think about how much that’s gonna whack you out. Right? So, and then lastly is hormone replacement therapy. And that’s something that you personally have experience with. I don’t at this point yet. This is interesting for me, in my point of view, the last time that I had my testosterone levels checked, they were actually considerably low. And I was really quite surprised about that, based on how one how physical I am, and to how I mean, like, you know, one of the things that Céline always loved, you know, in our relationship, she would laugh about it all the time, she’s like, all I have to do is suggest the idea of sex or like, just shake my asset, you and you immediately have interaction and you’re ready to go, you know?

And I’m like, Yeah, and it’s always been that way my entire life. It’s never been an issue. It’s like, ooh, hot woman. Yeah. And I’m up and ready to go. So I don’t know, maybe I should probably have that test done again because they’re not always that accurate to begin with. But anyway, from my point of view, regardless of what the test said, I figured, like, you know, I feel good, I’m feeling strong, I’m still super active, still plenty horny, and I can fuck anytime I want for as long as I want. So I’m feeling like, I don’t really need it. The only thing that sometimes would be nice is you know, like me, because I’m involved in the fitness world a bit too. Like, I see all these guys, all these guys over 40 that have big muscle, they are all either on hormone replacement therapy or flat-out illegal steroids. And they admit it, they admit it but now that you can actually get hormone replacement therapy, a lot of these guys are going to their doctors and getting their doctors to give them the largest dose that the doctor can legally give them. And they are packing on tons of muscle you know, it’s never been easy for me to put on a lot of muscle. But sometimes I’d look at that. And I’m like, I wish I could make the gains that those guys make. But without that chemical help. I’m not sure that’s ever going to happen. But anyway,

Elicia Deva 53:29
By the way, that’s a turn-off if that helps.

Kevin Anthony 53:32
Well, I don’t want giant but you know, a little extra would be nice. Yeah, yeah, some of those guys. It’s kind of ridiculous. It’s like you can’t even scratch your own ask because you’re just stuck. So anyway, I haven’t felt the need to go there yet. One of the things they do say and I don’t know if this is true about women, you might know better than I do. But I have been told that doctor’s basically tell these guys that once they go on testosterone replacement therapy, they’re pretty much going to be on it for the rest of their life.

Elicia Deva 54:10
Because they lose the ability to produce it for themselves?

Kevin Anthony 54:13
Yeah, that’s what they say. Now, there are some people that dispute that, but that is pretty much what the medical literature says. And that’s why when some of these guys go to the doctor and the doctor, you know, their levels are borderline. The doctor a lot of times if they’re good doctor doesn’t want to put them on testosterone replacement therapy for that exact reason. So because like well, like if I do that, you know, because the body’s body looks at it and basically says, Okay, I got enough, why do I need to produce it? Right? And people think that it’s going to continue to produce whatever it’s producing. And then this is just going to be on top of that. And apparently, that’s not the case. I don’t know if it’s the same for women or not. That’s an interesting question.

Elicia Deva 54:59
Well, I will say that after the first two cycles, I didn’t have those effects anymore of becoming extremely horny and having tons of energy unfortunately, that’s kind of a temporary result.

Kevin Anthony 55:12
Well, that’s probably good. It’s probably not super sustainable. Yeah, especially I mean, especially if your goals in life are more than just a whole bunch of one-night stands, which, you know, I mean, if you’ve listened to this show for any amount of time, you know that the real magic of life happens when you get into a really deep, deep, amazing relationship. That’s where the real magic happens. And so the one that stands can be fun, but they are never as fulfilling as a deeply connected relationship. Okay, anything you want to add real quick about what people could do if they’re experiencing any of these hormone things, and then we’re gonna give a couple of minutes to penises.

Elicia Deva 55:57
Um, I liked everything that you’ve said, I haven’t really deeply researched it, but like I was saying about, about just being like in close contact with somebody that you have an attraction to, like, if that’s something that could be okay with your, your relationship, not even you know, being polyamorous or something, but just allowing yourself to have that little flirtation or just leaning into that person and feeling that that dynamic polarity, I think just that alone really sparks the hormones and it’s harmless, you know, you’re not exchanging fluids, it’s, it’s just it. In some sense, your body doesn’t even know the difference. Although, you know, sexes, actual penetration is a difference. So I think just that dynamic flirting and allowing yourself to fantasize, it’s just natural. And then sublimating that energy bringing it you know, using Dallas techniques, of microcosmic orbit, you’re sort of moving that energy throughout your body. And then bringing that energy to your partner, you know,

Kevin Anthony 57:02
yeah, so that is a really great point. So, just super quick on that, you know, a lot of times couples are like, I don’t want you flirting with that woman or that man, or doing this or doing that. And one of the things that Selena and I always used to say is like, as long as they’re not acting on it behind your back. I mean, obviously, if you have an arrangement, and there are agreements, that’s fine, but as long as they’re not acting on it, why wouldn’t you want them to do that? And then bring all of that energy back to you? Right, like, imagine, you know, your man is out somewhere. And you know, he gets all charged up by this, you know, beautiful woman that he meets that day, and then he comes home and fucks the shit out of you. Wouldn’t you want that?

Yeah. Yeah, of course.

But it does require a certain amount of trust.

Elicia Deva 57:51
Right? So we are also naturally jealous. But I think that can also kind of response the spark to if you see your partner flirting with someone, and that other person is giving them a lot of juice. You’re like, Oh, my partner’s hot. And that helps. Yeah,

Kevin Anthony 58:10
Absolutely. Everybody well, I don’t know about everybody, but most people I think would want their partner to be seen as hot like, yeah, of course, I look at my partner, you know. Okay, we are definitely running out of time. And I do want to give a few moments because, you know, we told the listeners we’re going to talk about it. We can’t not talk about it. So you got into doing Lingam, massage and you know, our audience should be somewhat familiar with this, but just in case you’re not lingam is a term for penis. And so apparently, you have seen quite a few penises. You were doing this in a place that was very international. What did you learn about penises from around the world? Come on, spill it.

Elicia Deva 58:55
And then I traveled through Europe with it. And just noticing the differences in different countries. Well, I mean, tantra has it has different words like animal words for different sized penises like the giraffe, I forget which ones they are, you know, different sizes and it’s they’re meant to fit with different size Yonis as they say in the Kashmiri tradition, the female Yoni so it’s not really about like, just a big cock. It’s about the one that actually is suited for your size. And I noticed that girth makes a lot more difference than length in a certain sense. And then the way you know some really curved left some really curve, right?

Those make a really big difference. There’s, you know, like in, in the Netherlands, for example, met there’s it’s such an open-minded culture or you know, everything’s legal and there just kind of like have a very practical approach toward it. They just seemed like completely unembarrassed by the situation. Gotten erection was, you know, they’re very straightforward about it. Whereas, like, Greek men, you know, they have a lot of, they seem to have a lot of like, shame around and they wouldn’t get an erection right away.

And so what I do is, is work on the belly, I do chin at Sun, which is a Chinese abdominal massage, and it can be very painful, you’re releasing deep blocks in the abdomen, and sort of in the organs, and then sort of been, the penis will get soft on the back to the penis, and to even work on the balls. And there are these sort of stretching techniques and these therapeutic methods of working with it. But then, I noticed that you know, most guys get hard just with those methods of manipulation. But then older men who had had a lot of different pharmaceuticals and stuff, they actually needed some type of turn-on. And usually, I was in a very professional state, I didn’t let them touch me, but occasionally, it was a guy that really couldn’t get hard.

And he was obviously very depressed, like, I would turn around and like, slap my butt, and, you know, kind of would find ways of figuring out how to make it hard, while at the same time telling them it’s not about being hard, but you can actually have a totally relaxing therapy session, with you being totally soft. And that was part of what I was doing was allowing them to break the conditioning in their mind around. This is an erection that leads to ejaculation, and instead, flows from different states of hard to stop. But of course, the biggest difference is around circumcision. Unfortunately, the foreskin does play a role in lubrication. So I noticed that with European men that were circumcised, I didn’t need as much coconut oil, and I didn’t need as much stimulation, they were, it was sort of easy to bring them to ejaculation if that was the goal, which wasn’t always the goal. Sometimes it was sublimation, but it’s just, it’s just beautiful to see all the variety. That member you know, I think they’re all beautiful.

Kevin Anthony 1:02:29
So, some of that, you know, with older men needing more of a turn-on, basically, that ties into everything we were talking about today, which is, you know, with the lower testosterone levels, they’re not instantly getting hard like they were when they were young. So they need more mental stimulation to help out. So that’s interesting that that ties into what we were talking about. But also Okay, now I’m going to put you on the spot. I’m going to ask you some questions. And I understand that these are only your personal preferences. But having seen penises from all around the world, favorite country of penises, which is it?

Elicia Deva 1:03:10
Well, I like hybrid ones, like my favorite one was like he was half German and half Palestinian. It was really long and skinny. I wanted German. Something about German guys.

Kevin Anthony 1:03:27
All right. All right. So German or potentially mixed great. So penises, sometimes they point left, sometimes they point right, sometimes they point up, which was your favorite tilt.

Elicia Deva 1:03:42
I think for the ones that are the kind of really go straight instead of up. And no work for me.

Kevin Anthony 1:03:48
Okay, straight up. See, and this is why it’s great. So like, you know, Céline would always say that she loves penises that curved up a little bit because they would just hit her in just the right spot. Those were her favorite. So you’d like ones that are more straight?

Elicia Deva 1:04:03
Maybe that’s the cervix, and I’m kind of trying to get to that cervical orgasm, that holy grail of you know, orgasm.

Kevin Anthony 1:04:10
Yeah, you could. So I know. So for, for us. And again, you are totally right before when you were saying that, you know, different penises are meant to fit with different vaginas. And that’s absolutely true. And so sexual compatibility is really important, which is why you shouldn’t wait until you get married to have sex because then you don’t know if you’re sexually compatible, but that’s a whole nother story. But for Celine and I so I tend to point up, but I’m also long enough that I can reach her cervix and so depending on different positions, I could pretty much hit any spot in her that she wanted. I could, you know hit the G spot just right and you know, hit her cervix, especially at a certain time a month, depending on I mean, it just worked. We were very sexually compatible that way. All right. So Oh, favorite size as far as length and girth.

Elicia Deva 1:05:03
I’ve never measured.

Kevin Anthony 1:05:06
Ok, but you can say things like some women will say they don’t like them too long like it because it hits the cervix all the time throughout their entire cycle and it’s uncomfortable. Some women will say, oh, I prefer a bit more girth, like I don’t know.

Elicia Deva 1:05:25
I prefer some girth, but it could definitely be too thick, too thick can definitely be prom too thick and too long, can make it a little overwhelming and uncomfortable. So maybe I think that’s eight inches and kind of like this.

Kevin Anthony 1:05:40
Okay, well, so just so you know, I’m sure you already know this. But eight inches is a very long penis when the average male penis is five inches long. Oh, eight inches is like, yeah, you’re talking probably top 1% of men out there. That would be eight inches long.

Elicia Deva 1:05:58
I was thinking that I was thinking at night. Yeah, no, I actually haven’t thought about this for a long time.

Kevin Anthony 1:06:04
I’m sort of putting you on the spot about it. Let’s see what else? Oh, by the way. So I mean, first of all, a lot of guys think it’s great to have a big penis. I have talked with numerous men who have large penises. And honestly, most of them will tell you it’s a burden. Because there are women that don’t want to have sex with them. Because it’s too big. They can’t have really like vigorous sex, they can’t penetrate the, you know, fully be like, you know, they still got an inch or two of their penis that can’t go any further.

You know, women end up sometimes in pain, and it’s just, it’s not all that it’s cracked up to me. So then the other thing is, sometimes guys say, well, doesn’t need to be that long, but girth I need some girth now. Okay, a little bit of girth. But I’m going to challenge you on that one, two men because the reality is if the woman has strong toned, vaginal wall muscles if her muscles are toned, it doesn’t matter how girthy it is. She’s just going to squeeze those muscles and she will squeeze you tight no matter what. Any other questions I can ask you about penises? Here’s a question for you about penises. Did you notice any difference in testicle size in different countries?

Elicia Deva 1:07:23
Now I think it’s sort of an individual variation. And, you know, I didn’t I didn’t experience very many African or Asian penises. So that’s probably a whole,

Kevin Anthony 1:07:39
You might have to schedule some tours in Asian tour and African. Wait until you get another hormone replacement palette and then maybe schedule the door. Just teasing you. All right. Well, we are actually about 10 minutes over the time. I tried to keep these podcasts about an hour. But I just really wanted to talk about that peanut stuff at the end because I thought it would be really fun. I want to thank you for being on the show and sharing your own personal experience and your knowledge.

Elicia Deva 1:08:17
Thank you for having me. It was really fun.

Kevin Anthony 1:08:19
And All right, everybody. That’s all we have for this episode. You know, as I do these episodes with guest hosts if you like the guest host let me know say something in the comments. Send me a message via the website. And maybe we will have them back on the show. All right, everybody. That’s all the time we have for this episode. And I will see you next week.

We hope you liked this episode of the Love Lab podcast. If you enjoy this show, subscribe. Leave us a review and share it with your friends.

Céline Remy 1:08:57
And for more free exclusive content. Join us in the passion vault at Célineremy.com/vault. That’s Célineremy.com/vault. Thanks for listening. And remember you’re amazing.