i am menopausal at 53. I live with a 32 year old man. We do fine. Sex has many dimensions. First see what vitamins you need. Sometimes lack of energy is the problem. I do ten hour shifts at times, and I sleep a lot when that happens. Sex? I tell him to go do some porn. So jobs can just mess things up. Porn, by the by, can turn you on too if you take time to find what you like to hear and see. Trust me, its out there. Take time to get turned on if he won't do it. If he won't then maybe you need someone else. If he will, experiment. You are sex researcher Dr. Cocktease, and you are going to see what gets the nights hot. Play. make up stories. Fun is something that does wonders for everyone. Do different places. Do you have a yard or go camping? Tents can be fun. We set up one in our living room and played camping like kids once and had a great time. Consider that while the body might have problems (I have serious hip arthritis, for instance), the mind is the most important sex organ there is. Think about what made sex good in the past. Think about stuff you are intrigued by but never did. Imagine these things, find pics of them, watch videos if those are good. Read stories on the web or write ones of what you think would be the best sex night (a great candlelit bath with flowers, a nice night taking turns doing rubs, whipped cream on parts being licked off, pretend meeting for the first time somewhere, dirty talk, whatever) and make time to do them. Get with yout man and talk about it. If you have hope of seeing results, this can turn things around.

As I understand it, the word adaptogen refers to the normalizing of body conditions that are out of balance. I gave the example before of a dry condition being brought into moisture or a damp condition being made more dry. The word adaptogen is of modern Russian origin, so I would not personally blame the Chinese for it. And I don't find many people saying that adaptogens are cure-alls. I sure don't. I save that for snake oil. In regard to the descriptions used in Traditional Chinese Medicine, e.g. dampness-dry, yin-yang, excess-deficiency, cold-heat, I would not expect to find much in Western Clinical Trials. I did make reference to some current activity in preclinicals, so you may just be able to find some Western clinical trials in the next 20 years if anything pans out. In the mean time, you may have to learn from those who actually have studied it in human beings, the Chinese. And their literature is sometimes translated into English. You may find articles in various Materia Medica of the TCM herbs. I found four citations on liver benefits in one volume of my library. Ko, K.M. et al., Planta Medica, 61, 134, 1995 Lin, G.T. in Advances in Chinese Medical Materials Research, Chang, H.M. et al. Eds. 1985, World Scientific Publishing, Singapore, pp. 257-268 Mazumber, A. et al. Biochem. Pharmacol., 49, 1165, 1995 Nishiyama,, N. et al. Biol. Pharm. Bull., 18, 1498, 1995. One of the typical approaches in TCM is to use combinations of herbs for their synergistic benefits. This is typical of the use of schizandra. Western medicines often are centered on one molecule. It is easier to study in pharmacology that way. We find the liver clearing time, blood levels, the reactions with other drugs, etc. But with plants and plant medicines like schizandra, the whole bunch of interesting molecules gets mixed with other bunches from the other combining species. And then we have a real mess not suitable for much HPLC work. So it is hard to plan any study of that type of thing. You will not see much published also for that reason. And then there is the intellectual property issue as well. I am here to discuss herbal medicine. We have to look at what is available to discuss, not just affirm that everything that is not published in peer-reviewed journals is not able to be discussed until it is. Richard

for daily health maintenance an herbal tea blend will likely work better than a tincture. include nutritive herbs like nettles, red clover, alfalfa, chamomile, etc. along with any herbs that you specifically need or want to include for health or flavor. fatamorgana's suggestion to learn more about herbal actions is a good one, with that information you can better formulate your own teas or tinctures. 'the way of herbs' by michael tierra is a great book for beginner's (and others) as it explains all this and more. good luck and have fun with it!

Does anyone know if groundhogs will eat schizandra? It was very slow-growing where I had it (& where nothing ever got bothered by the groundhogs) so I moved it to the veggie garden where it will get better sun & food, but which is regularly raided. Wrong move?