EXERCISING and eating a vegan diet can fire up your sex drive, research suggests.
An experiment on identical twins found the two simple lifestyle changes can have a viagra-like effect on libidos.
GettyTwo lifestyle changes can increase arousal levels in women, research suggests[/caption]
Experts from Netflix’s docuseries “You Are What You Eat” tracked four sets of twins over eight weeks to see how the daily tweaks affected their health.
They found women were more than twice as turned on while watching porn after switching to the diet and exercise plan.
Dr Irwin Goldstein, of San Diego Sexual Medicine, said the results were “remarkable”.
Previous studies have suggested eating a vegan diet might improve erections in men, although more research is needed.
Others show walking is nearly as good as Viagra for treating erectile dysfunction.
The latest research looked at how the diet and exercising affects arousal in women.
It was based on a study published in JAMA Network Open that tracked 22 healthy, adult, identical twins to see how veganism affected their health after eight weeks.
The study showed those who followed a healthy vegan diet had lower cholesterol, better blood sugar control and lost more weight than those on a healthy diet that also included animal products.
Four sets of the twins did further tests across the eight weeks on the new TV show, including about their brain power, microbiome and sex drive.
Four women were asked to watch different videos at the start and end of the study while lab equipment measured the temperature of their genitals — a measure of arousal.
First they were shown a neutral documentary to calculate their baseline temperature, and then they were shown porn to see how it increased.
One twin in each pair then went on a vegan diet for eight weeks, while the other also had meat products, and all started exercise.
All four saw their arousal levels while watching porn more than double by the end of the study.
The vegan twins saw theirs increase even more – by 300 per cent.
Dr Goldstein said finding a link between the diet and arousal could have bigger implications for overall health as well.
He told Business Insider: “We call the blood vessels of the genitals, which are less than a millimetre, the canary in the coal mine.
“It can help us paint a bigger picture of the person’s overall blood-flow health.”