How To Spice Up Your Sex Life

Since the dawn of time, people have looked toward elixirs and potions to
improve their sex lives. Why else, after all, would one consume ground tiger
penis, horny goat weed and Spanish Fly?

Perhaps because nearly one in five men in the U.S. suffer from erectile
dysfunction, according to a recent study in the American Journal of
Medicine. Some researchers have estimated that as many as 40% of U.S. women
have low libido or inability to reach orgasm. Most quick fixes simply don't
work, and some, like Spanish Fly, a supposed aphrodisiac derived from beetles
that can cause kidney damage, are harmful.

In Pictures: Thirteen Steps To Better Sex

But modern medicine has found ways--both proven and experimental--to improve
your sex life. One place to start: old-fashioned remedies, which some say work
best. Regular exercise can actually improve erectile function in
most men, says Andrew McCullough, a urologist at New York University Medical
Center--and we're talking jogging, not the acrobatic feats found in the back of
a magazine. Not particularly athletic? Therapists say that paying attention to
your feelings is as important as any pill, nose spray or cream.

"Have a really wonderful role-play with your partner, have a really great
dinner out or watch a romantic movie together," says Robert Dunlap, who has
researched aphrodisiacs at the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality
in San Francisco. "The greatest aphrodisiac is your mind."

Hope In A Bottle

But that's not stopping the $600
billion global pharmaceutical industry from trying to think up new sex drugs.
Viagra, the little blue pill Pfizer launched a decade ago, brings in $1.7
billion in sales every year. Cialis, the longer-acting imitator made by Eli
Lilly, rakes in another $1 billion, with several hundred million more for
Levitra, from Bayer and Schering-Plough. Other remedies increase blood flow,
like the penis injection Caverject, and bring in $30 million more.

A product that could improve women's sexual function might bring in even more
money, if it were truly effective. So far, though, companies have been
unsuccessful. Viagra failed in tests on women. Procter & Gamble tried to
push a testosterone patch for female sexual dysfunction through the Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) but in 2004 the agency balked, citing a lack of
long-term safety data.

Now the idea of using testosterone as a sex-booster for women is being pushed
by Lincolnshire, Ill.-based BioSante Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Its LibiGel is rubbed
on the upper arm daily, delivering testosterone, which is thought to increase
libido, to the bloodstream over time. The company just began late-stage trials,
and, after discussions with the FDA, will start a big safety trial before
submitting data to regulators in 2009.

Palatin Technologies, of Cranbury, N.J., is trying to get in on the game,
developing a nose spray, called bremelanotide, to treat men and women with
sexual dysfunction. Applied 10 to 15 minutes prior to sex, it travels through
the central nervous system to increase blood flow in the penile or vaginal
tissue. The company hopes to get FDA approval for men in 2009 and women around
2011. "On the female front, we've got a chance to be first to market," says CEO
Carl Spana. "People wonder how many women will come in for treatment, but my gut
tells me they will come in."

What Really Works
Right now, the treatment available for
women with female sexual dysfunction that has been reviewed by the FDA is a
handheld vacuum that can be used with a doctor's prescription to increase blood
flow to the clitoris. Called Eros Therapy, it is made by NuGyn of Minnesota.
Devices such as this go through fewer hurdles than drugs; the Eros device has
been tested in several dozen people, compared with hundreds for a pill such as
Viagra.

Joy Davidson, a Manhattan-based certified sex therapist, worries that all
this technology may cause some people to ignore important cultural factors that
can cause sexual dysfunction. "There are agendas here that are not health-based,
they're profit-based," she says. "If you're not looking at these elements--the
emotional, psychological and cultural--then giving somebody a so-called magic
pill is not going to solve the problem."

Future Fixes
Meanwhile, drug researchers keep coming up
with even more out-there approaches. For instance, a gene therapy, which seeks
to fix erectile function by altering the DNA of cells in the penis, then
injecting them back in to the patient. It should work for six months, according
to inventor Arnold Melman, the researcher at New York's Albert Einstein College
of Medicine. He has co-founded a tiny biotech, Ion Channel Innovations, to
develop the product, which even he doesn't expect to reach the market before
2012. No gene therapy has ever been approved.

"People always say gene therapy doesn't work, but at one point it will," says
Melman. "We think this is the one."