Yohimbe and Muira Puama

By Serge Kreutz

Try any ordinary search engine with a query for "muira puama" and all you normally get as result is one sales pitch after the other. This is not specific to muira puama, of course. The same will happen if you try a query for saw palmetto, or bee pollen, or potassium.

Quackery is alive and kicking, in the US and anywhere around the world, as it was some 150 years ago. The only difference is that before quacks had to travel from town to town (if for no other reason than to avoid the guns of those who have tried their potions and found them to be worthless), and that now, they can spam the Internet (safely out of reach).

For those in the herbs business, the extraordinary success of Viagra surely came as no surprise. After all, Viagra does work for almost all men, though the stiff price of the Pfizer product for many men puts limitations on the frequency of that other Pfizer-caused stiffness. On the other hand, Indian sildenafil citrate can now be purchased over the Internet at prices below 2 US dollars a dose. No prescription needed, and they do ship to all countries, including the US.

No, muira puama is no substitute for Viagra, and it does not work as an aphrodisiac. Maybe it works as a general tonic. But in the arena of tonics, it competes with a wide range of other products, from green tea to red ginseng. Tonics are no miracle medicines, and the sales potential for just one more tonic is of course much lower than it would be for a so-called herbal Viagra.

It is our intention to set the record straight and slow down a little bit the moneymaking machines of those who promise you that you don't need Viagra if only you take your muira puama diligently (and purchase a generous supply from them).

You can buy your muira puama and feel good about having contributed to the preservation of the plant's habitat, the Amazon basin. There will probably also be some rather indistinct tonic effect. But the bottom line is that muira puama will do nothing to enhance your sexual function and performance.

In no way are we against tapping into the knowledge of traditional medicine's use of plants. But not every herb, Mongolian shamans or South American medicine men have been using, actually will work. This is especially true when it concerns herbs that allegedly improve male sexual performance.

Shamans and medicine men have found many a good herb against indigestion, or to induce sleep, or to treat nausea. But what their best clients, elderly tribal chieftains, always requested more than anything else, they were never able to deliver: a herb that would restore their sexual prowess. A notable exception: traditional healers in West Africa did have something at hand: the bark of the tree Corynanthe yohimbe.

Yohimbe is one of only two herbal remedies that indeed have the power to enhance sexual desire, function, and performance (and no, we do not sell any yohimbe). The other one is tongkat ali.

The active ingredient of yohimbe, yohimbine, has been isolated decades ago, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of scientific studies that attest to the power of yohimbine in the treatment of erectile dysfunction or impotence, and in enhancing sexual parameters in healthy individuals.

You can check Medline, the huge database of scientific medical research, and you won't find a single document coming to the result that muira puama were to improve sexual function. Actually, you will have a hard time finding any scientific study on muira puama at all. If indeed, muira puama would work as aphrodisiac, this would hardly have escaped the medical profession, at least not in Brazil and other countries were muira puama is sold by quacks as ingredient of potency pills.

But there are thousands of scientific studies on the Medline database that attest to the aphrodisiac qualities of yohimbine, and there are some scientific studies that prove the sexual enhancement qualities of tongkat ali (scientific name: eurycoma longifolia). You can access Medline abstracts free of charge on www.infotrieve.com.

I am not prejudiced. I have tried a bottle of muira puama myself. Taking muira puama alone, I haven't noticed any effect. In combination with yohimbine, muira puama didn't add to the yohimbine's power.

If the effect of muira puama probably is that of a general tonic, and if it were advertised as such, there would be nothing wrong with it. The nuisance is that anywhere it is sold as aphrodisiac because as aphrodisiac, the marketing potential is so much better.

Of course, those selling other herbal products often also cannot resist the temptation to drive up sales by ascribing some pro-sexual effects to the herbal they carry. The bluntest attempt in that direction, we have seen on a web site dedicated to saw palmetto. Saw palmetto capsules were advertised there as "the sex pills of the nineties". My God, saw palmetto is an anti-androgen, it interferes with dihydrotestosterone, and if anything, then it will make erections more difficult to achieve.

Muira puama isn't that bad. But it's also not an aphrodisiac.

If, after all of the above information, you still want to buy muira puama, or decided to give yohimbe a try, check here for a low-price source for either herbal. See www.yohimbine.net for sites that sell pharmaceutical yohimbine without prescription.

While I do not know of other herbals (apart from yohimbe and tongkat ali), which would clearly support sexual function or sexual pleasure, there are still a number of options.

Dostinex, for example. It’s not a herbal, but, like Viagra, a synthetic medication.

The following is what the BBC, on April 24, 2002, had to report on Dostinex (generic name: cabergoline):

Sex drug could aid male stamina

The drug could enhance men's sexual pleasure.

Scientists believe they are close to developing a pill to boost male stamina, which could become as popular as Viagra.

The drug, used to treat Parkinson's disease, has been found to raise a man's chances of sustaining multiple orgasms during sex.

In trials, the drug cabergoline was prescribed to minimize the effects of the hormone prolactin, which is produced by men at the point of orgasm.

The hormone has the effect of reducing a man's desire for more sex by preventing new erections.

Normally, the 60 test people, all healthy males, between the ages of 22 and 31, needed a break of 19 minutes between lovemaking.

However, after taking Cabergoline, they were able to have several orgasms within a few minutes.

Medical psychologist Manfred Schedlowski, who was involved in the trials at Essen in Germany, said the drug raised the libido to enable the male to orgasm again more quickly.

He said: "We saw that prolactin rises after orgasm and then thought maybe prolactin is a negative feedback system.

"Subjects who took this drug had decreased prolactin levels, and reported their orgasm was better and there was a shorter refractory period. New developments

"We interviewed these subjects and found they were able to have multiple orgasms in very rapid succession.

"This is sitting very nicely with our hypothesis that orgasms and sexual drive are steered by prolactin and dopamine in the brain."

Cabergoline has been on the market in Germany for several months and is used to treat Parkinson's disease and prevent women producing milk when they want to stop breastfeeding.

The drug had no side effects on men during the tests, according to an article to be published in the International Journal of Impotence Research.

The researchers now plan to carry out trials to investigate whether cabergoline will have the same effect on women.

The market for drugs like Viagra has swelled and is thought to be worth about £1bn.

It is thought cabergoline could have similar potential.

I have tried Dostinex, and it works very well. But its effect is different from the one of Viagra. Viagra works purely on the erectile plumbing. Dostinex works on the wiring. Its effect is in the head, where it raises libido and sexual excitement, which in turn helps erections.

Apart from yohimbe, tongkat ali, Viagra, and Dostinex, there is still another option to which I can attribute a clear effect: the penis exercise program at MensPride.net. Its primary aim is to enlarge penis size through a specific set of tissue stretching and muscle conditioning exercises, and it clearly works to that end. However, a welcome side effect is that going through a daily exercise routine will also allow a man more erection and orgasm control.