Dr. Sunyatta Amen, a fifth-generation master herbalist, naturopathic doctor, vegan chef, witch, and the entrepreneur behind Calabash Tea & Tonic, knows how to get your libido going.
In this clip, she walks Karen Hunter through the sexiest herbs on the market to give your drive the kick-start it needs.
Ginseng
“I am a super big fan of ginseng in general. One of my first herbal teachers, beyond my great-grandmother, was a very elderly Chinese man in the neighborhood where I grew up in New York. He didn’t speak that much English. I didn’t have that much command of Chinese, which means almost zero. But we had hand gestures between us, and he must’ve seen something in me and he agreed to answer questions whenever I would go into this herb shop with jars of all kinds of wild stuff in there. And the one thing he emphasized a lot was ginseng. It was pivotal for men. The women’s ginseng is called Dong, or he would call it Tang Kwei, so dong is awesome. When we talk about aphrodisiacs, these sexy herbs, we’re talking about making sure that all of those plumbings in our body, all of the juicy spots, everything in working order. This is not about having sex per se; it’s about making sure that our hormones are balanced, that it comes across in our skin, it comes across in our hair, our nails, our body fat, balance, everything that we need in order to feel great. And when our hormones are off our sexual hormones, our thyroid then gets thrown off. The dong quai is one of those cornerstone herbs. Kind of like ginger. So we use it in our Yoniverse tea. We use it in the punani powered tonic. It has a very earthy ground flavor. So, when you talked about decolonizing our tongues, this hits right in there. And if you tasted ginseng, it’s that same earthy root flavor,” — Dr. Sunyatta Amen
Shatavari
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“The beautiful girl from down the street with a nice ponytail and she knows how to double dutch… That’s Shatavari. Shatavari is a really beautiful herb in the asparagus family. Believe it or not, the name Shatavari is an ancient Sanskrit word which means “woman with a thousand husbands.” That’s how potent the lady is. Who takes Shatavari could handle a hundred husbands. You see a glow to your skin if you’re still at that point in your life where your cycle [comes]. This helps regulate that cycle. So it’s more timed. So you’re not like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on.’ Less blood flow. Less days in the cycle. I want to see everybody get to that two days in and out on a cycle. None of this, 5, 6, 7 days, that’s not normal. And having you be anemic is definitely going to happen if you’re cycling that long or that heavily. So Avari lets you keep your resources instead of losing them monthly or in any phase of your life, whether you are in menopause or perimenopause. It brings the beauty and the blush back to your cheeks. Now, people should be careful because it minimizes water weight. So those of us who get bloated during that time of the month, this can help with the bloating,” — Dr. Sunyetta Amen
Ashwagandha
“It’s an adaptogen. Adaptogens are going to be herbs that help us manage stress. Not that any of us have stress in our lives. Now. Have you ever been under stress and your libido or function or performance or any of it went down? Ashwagandha means ‘smells like a horse.’ It is the kind of thing that helps to balance the hormones, but also it quiets the nervous system. Anytime our nervous systems are calmer or more placid, our performance, whether we’re being intimate with somebody else or ourselves or just our libido, is going to be on fire,” — Dr. Sunyatta Amen
Cardamom
“It’s, yeah, it’s in all in that, in all of our chai’s. Cardamom is pivotal. And when I was growing up, my great-grandmother would open the cardamom, give you one to eat like a sunflower seed, and you just pull out the little black seeds and chew on them, and it freshens the breath and it also balances hormones. Cardamom is known as the queen of spices, as we have cardamom, especially for women. But it also is good for men because it helps to balance the hormones out. And that’s what has us feeling sexy. When our hormones are off, we’re growing hair in weird places. We feel lumpy, bumpy in the body. They’re swelling, et cetera. So we want to be swollen in the right places, not the wrong places,” — Dr. Sunyatta Amen
Maca
“Maca. It’s a root. What I love about maca is its hormone-balancing ability, but also the ability to help bring more oxygen to large muscle tissues in the body. And that is about performance —baby — you better get it together if you want to perform like a stallion and you got to bring your a game! and Maca is beautiful in that capacity. Look — the runners in Peru, these men who run across the mountains in these high altitudes — 20 miles at a time at a cliff drink, maca. It’s part of their everyday thing. And they can run at these altitudes and not get cramps and not feel any kind of way. And that’s what we have to do is look at these high-performing people all over the world and say, ‘well, what indigenous food are they indulging in that allows this to happen?’ I find that, typically, people take too much of a thing. It’s like, oh, if this is good, then this is really going to bring it on. Especially if we say it’s sexy, right? It’s going to help your sexual function and your libido and your hormones. Then we just take too much. That’s why I like to mix it,” — Dr. Sunyatta Amen
