Aphrodisiacs that really work    
 
        
 

 The most recent solution, of course, is Pfizer's Viagra. But in ancient India, a young man who
 proved passionless in the sack might have tried goat testicles boiled in milk. Oysters are
 another common turn-on; the Roman satirist Juvenal was the first to note their seductive
 qualities. In medieval times, honeyed mead was the equivalent of Bud Lite for loosening up
 carousing swains.

 Fresh snake blood is still revered as a stimulant in parts of Asia, as are bat blood, reindeer
 penises, shark fins and ground rhino horns. And what sad-sack hasn't at least contemplated
 Spanish Fly? It's not a fly at all, actually, but the dried remains of beetles, which irritate the
 male urogenital tract, causing a prolonged erection-- and potentially causing serious
 discomfort and even death, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

 Beyond their collective exoticism, the only thing the above have in common is that they don't
 work. Named for Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of sex and beauty, an aphrodisiac is just
 about anything that awakens or increases sexual desire —be it your own, or the object of
 your desire's.

 In reality, however, most aphrodisiacs are folklore at best and hazardous to your health at
 worst. As the Food and Drug Administration has declared: "There is no scientific proof that
 any over-the-counter aphrodisiacs work to treat sexual dysfunction."

 But there is still some hope for those seeking a libido boost. The herbal supplement Ginkgo
 Biloba is being studied by the Office of Dietary Supplements, a subsidiary of the National
 Institute of Health, as a treatment for erectile dysfunction. The FDA has called animal studies
 of yohimbine "encouraging." Derived from the bark of an African tree, yohimbe has been used
 as a sexual stimulant for centuries. But the FDA notes that animal studies can't be used to
 prove effectiveness in humans.

 Even when aphrodisiacs do show promise, they don't always work for everybody. Sexual
 desire is rooted in the mind more than the genitals. One person's fantasy could be another's
 turn-off. "We're all unique individuals, and we all respond differently to different things," says
 Beverly Whipple, a professor emerita at Rutgers University and author of, most recently, The
 Science of Orgasm.

 At the root of human sexual desire is the "core erotic personality" — aka "sexual template"—
 which, in a nutshell, is whatever gets you off. "Everyone has in their mind an image of someone
 or thing they find sexually desirous," explains William Granzig, dean of clinical sexology at
 Maimonides University in North Miami Beach and president of the American Board of
 Sexology.

 That image might be a person of specific age, race or hair colour, or it might be every person.

 It could be a fondness for a particular style of dress, objects such as women's shoes or fur-
 lined handcuffs, or behaviour such as cross-dressing or exhibitionism. Whatever it is in
 particular, the sexual template is believed to develop early on during a childhood erotic
 experience —perhaps as early as age three or four — and it sticks with you for life.

 The difficulty of maintaining sexual desire over the long term, of course, is that if your partner
 falls outside of your sexual template — or you fall outside theirs— sooner or later one of you
 could lose interest. "Many people whose template is not, say, age- specific, can have great sex
 throughout their lives," notes Granzig. "But if you're only attracted to 20-year-olds, once your
 partner hits 30, your desire will decrease. Unless, of course, you can figure out some ways to
 spice things up."

 Spicing things up is where sex gets complicated, because men and women sometimes have
 wildly divergent desires. For men, a sexy photo is often enough to get blood flowing in the
 right direction. For women, pornography can be a major turn-off. Orgasms are also less
 central to women, who sometimes need full body stimulation, not to mention mental seduction,
 in order to achieve climax. "There are just so many variables that go beyond the physical in
 sex for women," says Janice Epp, a clinical sexologist at the Institute for Advanced Study of
 Human Sexuality in San Francisco.

 There are also a host of external nuisances that weigh heavily upon sexual desire— and that
 may dampen the mood. Studies routinely rank American culture as one of the most sexually
 repressed in the world thanks to its forbidding Judeo-Christian origins, high incidence of
 sexual problems and dysfunction, and a lingering Puritan discomfort with the very topic of sex.

 And while Europeans take mandatory month-long vacations, Americans routinely work 60-
 hour weeks, and stretch their ten vacation days over the entire year. With the demands of our
 modern day technological society, it's little wonder the search for aphrodisiacs continues.

 "I see a lot of highly evolved, highly skilled people who are losing desire because they have
 such an overriding focus on their profession," says Epp, who works in Silicon Valley. "For
 them, the temptation to believe that there's a magic pill that will make them desirous of sex
 again is very strong."

 Inspired by the phenomenal success of Viagra, which rang up over $1.6 billion in sales for
 Pfizer in 2005, it's perhaps not surprising that there has been a recent push to find more
 pharmaceutical remedies for flagging sexual desire. It's a focus that throws many in the sex
 field into apoplexy. "The idea that you can just give someone a pill,

 In the end, the only truly effective aphrodisiac seems to be that's been working for humans all
 along. "Your biggest sex organ is the one between your ears," says Granzig. "What is desire,
 after all, other than the hope that you can fulfil your sexual fantasies? And that's all in your
 mind."