BISER: How is taking the herb damiana different from hormone balancing?

SCHULZE: First of all, nobody wants to really talk about the herbs like damiana that are sexual stimulants any more than they want to discuss sexuality in any fashion.

          But, there are many herbs that are quite famous throughout history for women to stimulate sexuality. One is called damiana tunera aphrodisiaca.

          In some of my older pharmacy books, from around the turn of the century, or the late 1800's in the Victorian era, I found a lot of damiana potions. They included damiana and kola nut, damiana and saw palmetto. The English were on top of it. They made a lot of formulas with damiana. Damiana was the base in all the old English aphrodisiacs for men and women. I saw that kola nut, or saw palmetto, or these types of herbs were usually mixed with it. Sometimes even oat seed.

BISER: I thought because it was so famous that it was useless.

SCHULZE: No. A lot of people don't know what it does or why it does, but in men and women it's used as a sexual stimulant. One of the reasons I like it is because it's very safe. In other words, it's not something that people overdose on, or has possible toxic side effects, like Yohimbe, for instance.

          Damiana seems to have a similar effect for both men and women. It is very safe to use large doses for short-term, and smaller doses for long-term, and it works well.

          I have had many patients who had lost their sexual excitement or interest because of ill health. When their health came back, their fertility or potency came back, but they still didn't have that start-up. We might say the pump still needed to be primed once or twice to get that person going.

          There's a category of herbs that seem to work well for that. Sometimes they are referred to aphrodisiacs but damiana is the classic. I have used it with many women and men who got healthy, even got fertile, but still didn't have that sex drive. It didn't come back - but damiana brought it back.

BISER: What is it, a genital irritant?

SCHULZE: No. Nobody really knows, or wants to discuss it or talk about it and very little research has been done on it. But it just seems to bring the glow back.

          Sometimes I gave it to women by themselves. If I had them for a long time on the female corrective herbs, and their hormones were balanced and I felt everything was fine, but they just needed that spark, I would use damiana by itself.

          I've had hundreds of people who had their sexual stimulation come back with it. I have also had many women who just started making big pots of damiana and giving it to their husbands. It works for men, too.

          But, this has to go along with a health program. You just can't give it to your husband instead of coffee in the morning and not make any other changes. People have to start looking at themselves, and looking where they've lost the love in their relationship, and also where they are stressed-out with their partners, and make some changes in the house and environment.

BISER: Did any of your former clients tell you how it had changed their sex life?

SCHULZE: Absolutely. In fact, I've had many women have to back off on it because they were getting too orgasmic and too easily aroused.

          I had this one lady who rode a motorcycle and she was starting to have orgasms from riding from the vibration of the motorcycle. I had another woman who was having orgasms when she was at lunch with her boss, and she found that she was getting stimulated sexually when she didn't want to be.

BISER: Do you mean she was making love, or just having lunch?

SCHULZE: No, she was just having lunch. The next thing she knew is that she was having an orgasm, and very sexually aroused - which wasn't a normal thing to happen for this person.

BISER: With damiana, what are they taking? The root?

SCHULZE: Some people have used the root; most use the leaves, and the tops, but you can use any part of the damiana plant.

BISER: What dosage were you using of it?

SCHULZE: A cup of tea three times a day is a good place to start and then go up to two cups of tea three times a day. A replacement for that would be one or two dropperfuls of tincture three times a day.

          Some frigidity is physical where women feel sexual but they don't actually excrete any fluids or get lubricated - and when that is a problem, that's when we use the female energy-balancing herbs, the three that we mentioned before. And that works there.

          Then, if you use that along with the damiana, you not only will get the vagina lubricated but also the sexual spark will come back. So that's why sometimes you would use the damiana by itself; other times you would put it with other herbs.

BISER: Would commercial damiana preparations work, or not likely?

SCHULZE: I have not found the commercial products of that particular herb to be effective at all.

          There could always be an exception, but I've had my patients swallow thousands of capsules of it and never have anything happen and then you use some good damiana and look out! It's powerful.

          People need to look for "Damiana turneria aphrodisiaca". There are other species of damiana and similar plants that contain no sexual stimulant activity. If you are not careful, this is what you can get. [More on where to get this herb at the end of this book.]

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