If you’re from the West, chances are you’ve never encountered black ginger extract before. If, however, you’re from the East, and in particular Thailand, the legendary reputation of this spice precedes itself. Also known as kaempferia parviflora, black ginger is touted for its effects on male sexuality; increasing libido, endurance, and of course, sexual prowess.

How Does Black Ginger Work?

If you’ve ever researched or used Viagra before you would have discovered that it works via a mechanism known as phosphodiesterase inhibition. Phosphodiesterase (PDE), and in particular phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE-5) is an enzyme which cleaves a bond in the compound cAMP, known to mediate vasodilation in blood vessels via nitric oxide synthesis.

Upon breakage of these bonds, the compound loses its action and vasodilation subsides. By inhibiting the cleaving of these bonds, the compound persists longer in blood and is able to exert effects. Most notably is the dilation of the cavernosal artery found in the penis, translating to much firmer and longer lasting erections. Black ginger extract works via this same mechanism—PDE-5 inhibition.¹

However, it is important to set realistic expectations when using black ginger as a pro-erectile supplement, as it is not as potent as the synthetic PDE-5 inhibitors. Pharmaceuticals such as Viagra and Cialis are much stronger inhibitors, but are also more likely to cause undesirable effects, ranging from severe headaches (migraines are believed to be caused by dilation of blood vessels under the scalp), nasal congestion, dizziness, and priapism (a never-ending erection that you absolutely do not want to experience).

You may be wondering, is there any other reason black ginger trumps Viagra as a better option for treatment of ED?

In addition to its PDE-5 inhibiting effects, black ginger also acts on the dopaminergic system, boosting levels of this neurotransmitter² (by inhibiting its breakdown) which plays an important role in normal sexual function. In persons who exhibit reduced dopamine sensitivity or levels, sexual dysfunction is very common and will not be fixed by use of mere vasodilators.

Its ability to increase dopamine levels also improves your mood in the process and can help combat depressive illness. In this sense, black ginger is considered superior to pharmaceuticals such as Viagra since it tackles both the issue of diminished penile blood flow and your arousal to sexual stimulus thanks to upregulation of dopamine receptors.

But wait there’s even more.

In addition to its amazing effects on your erectile health and sexual well-being, black ginger extract also possesses several other functions that you are likely to benefit from whether you are a man or woman. These include those from the impressive list below:

• Decreases the period of erectile latency (in simple terms, the time it takes for you to attain an erection after exposed to sexual stimuli).
• Said to increase both length and girth of the flaccid penis.
• May promote lifespan via activation of sirtuin 1 gene.³
• Improves symptoms of BPH; an enlarged/enlarging prostate.⁴
• Improves brain function and possesses anticholinesterase activity (which may offset Alzheimer’s and dementia).

Using Black Ginger In Poor Health

In general, using anything that affects the function of the heart (via vasodilation, or blood flow alterations) is not ideal if you are in sub-par health. While the heart is an extremely resilient organ, there is just so much it can take.

But black ginger should not be scratched off your list of promising supplements just because of a little extra fat. Why? It has the ability to increase caloric expenditure. Unknown to many is the fact that a higher metabolic rate does not just increase the rate of calorie burning, but also boosts recovery, your resistance to stress along with improved sleep patterns, and energy production.

Black ginger is able to boost energy production via stimulation of AMPK (or AMP-activated protein kinase). This is an enzyme which increases the rate of calorie burning in the mitochondria of muscle cells, resulting in greater energy production. Also worth mentioning is the fact that black ginger activates brown adipose tissue (BAT) which is a good type of body fat that possesses thermogenic properties and is frequently found in the mitochondria itself.⁵

How To Use Black Ginger For Best Results

Of note is the fact that there is little to no evidence of adverse effects experienced while using black ginger, as it has been recommended by the Thai Traditional Medicine Institute as a safe supplement with centuries of proven use behind it.

A dose of between 1000 to 1500mg daily is normal, with 1200mg being the average dose. It does not adversely affect blood pressure, nor does it affect hormonal balance, making it safe for use while on hormone replacement therapy. The only time black ginger should not be used is if you suffer from pre-existing arrhythmias as it may exacerbate the condition even more.

When you look at black ginger from an overall perspective, you can see that it is much more than a one-hit wonder in terms of boosting sexual prowess. It is something that also works to address issues of sexual sensitivity dysfunction and boosts your energy levels in the process.

References:

The basics may not seem like the sexiest thing to think about when it comes to training, especially in our world of fads, hacks, tips, and tricks. But a solid mastery of fundamentals gives you something far juicier and more desirable than your wildest magic-bullet fantasies ever could: actual results. For that reason alone, the basics of training deserve a little more love and a lot more attention. So in that spirit, here are nine strategies you can use to inoculate yourself against the fitness fads and sheer information overload the plague us from checkout line to facebook feed.

Taken together, these strategies form a powerful, foundational mindset for massive, long-term gains, whatever your personal goals happen to be. Some of these might seem little too basic, almost offensively simple. But most opportunities for huge growth are rarely “secrets.” They’re usually hidden in plain sight, and while plenty of people “know” them, few actually put them into persistent practice, leveraging their power across time to attain genuine mastery.

1. Establish a Rhythm

There’s nothing more powerful than getting into a rhythm and sticking to it. That means deciding exactly when you’re going to train and treating it as an inviolable appointment you’ve made with yourself. Once you establish a schedule, you won’t have to waste brain power wondering when you’ll find time for your next workout, or how you’re going to sustain your efforts over time. You know—it’s there, in your calendar. And though it may take a while to condition yourself to a rhythm, once you’ve established it, it starts to carry you along. It becomes automatic. That’s especially helpful during stressful or lazy times where all you have to fall back on is habit. We’ve all got our bad habits to contend with, but the tendency for the mind to go into autopilot is not inherently bad, as long as you’ve programmed that autopilot to be positive and productive.

2. Be Realistic

People often sabotage their efforts by forcing unrealistic expectations onto themselves, and the people with the most grandiose plans tend to accomplish the least. Don’t try to become Captain America by this time tomorrow (especially if it involves a serum). Work with the reality of your situation rather than against it. If you know you only have twenty minutes to train on Wednesdays, then train for twenty minutes on Wednesdays instead of lamenting how little time you have. Whether in terms of duration or intensity, a light day is usually way better than a day off, especially when you’re establishing your rhythm. If you think in terms of “all or nothing,” then too often, you’re going to end up with nothing. Take the middle path. Integrate your training into your overall life and goals instead of pitting it against them.

3. Know Your Motivations

What are you training for? If you know, you’ll succeed; if you don’t, you won’t. The key here is to be honest with yourself. Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to get huge? Do you want to compete in a specific sport? Do you just want to be less likely to die at 50 from a massive coronary? Don’t be embarrassed if your true motivations feel a little vain. If they get you to train, the result is the same as if you were training for the sake of the pure good-in-itself. And while they may evolve over time, no one else can tell you what your true, genuine motivations are or should be. Once you tap into them, you’ll find not only a golden thread through the labyrinth of possible training advice but also an endless source of raw, forceful energy and desire to achieve your true goals.

4. Be Nice to Yourself

Remember, the overall point of training is to do something positive for yourself. It’s not to please anyone else or impress anyone else, whether inside or outside your own head. You’re training because you recognize that by making some sacrifices in the present moment, and by putting in some real effort, you’re giving your future self a profound gift: not only better health and fitness, but hard evidence that you consider yourself worth taking care of. That’s a beautiful thing, and you should celebrate it. Positive reinforcement tends to build on itself and accelerate progress much more effectively than negative reinforcement. So instead of punishing yourself when you make a mistake or miss a training session, try rewarding yourself when you do something that moves you closer to your goals. See what happens.

5. But Don’t Be Too Nice to Yourself

No matter how motivated you are to reach your goals, no matter how much you love your training, most of what it takes to accomplish anything worthwhile is pure, old-fashioned grunt work and repetition. You’re going to have to do things that you just don’t want to do. That means wrangling the lesser parts of yourself, which would rather stay in bed, eat a carton of ice cream, and watch other people work out on YouTube as “research.”

The key here is to remember that self-discipline isn’t a necessary evil that you have to submit to; it’s a superpower that can make the world submit to you. Just think of the people you know or know of who have an iron grasp on self-discipline. Think of how you think of them. Wouldn’t you rather have that kind of power, respect, and magnetism? Isn’t that better than ice cream?

6. Master Something

You may want to experiment with a variety of training approaches or sports before you settle into something, and even once you do, there will likely be a broad spectrum of degrees of mastery. The danger there is becoming a dilettante, dabbling with one thing after another without ever committing to a single approach long enough to experience a real transformation.

To combat that tendency, even as you experiment, try to find something small that you can master. Maybe it’s a series of bodyweight exercises. Maybe it’s a basic kettlebell swing. Maybe it’s a pushup. Whatever it is, however simple it is, make it an anchor in your training, something that you always do and are always getting better at, no matter what else you’re exploring. You’ll be giving your training a solid core throughout your experimentation, and demonstrating to yourself that you’re capable of mastery, that once you find your thing, you’ll be able to take it all the way.

7. Keep Going Back to Basics

Whenever you think you’ve mastered something, especially something basic, assume that you’re wrong and start over as though you were a beginner. You’re almost guaranteed to find blind spots or ways to improve that had been hiding under your nose. Fixing those errors and optimizing those fundamentals will usually provide more overall progress than adding something new, and will help solidify the foundation to build on by adding those additional elements when appropriate.

My first jiu-jitsu coach told me his teachers, after attaining a black belt, would start over at white belt. That kept them humble, kept them sharp, and kept them learning. Once you get the ego of mastery out of the way (not to be conflated with actual mastery itself), and replace it with a perpetual return to “beginner’s mind,” you’ll find a more secure footing for progress, and easily solve problems you otherwise may never have known even existed.

8. Think in Terms of the Long Haul

It’s a cliche but it’s true: you can easily overestimate what you can accomplish in a year, and easily underestimate what you can accomplish in three years. A lot of the tendency to give in to fitness fads comes from feeding the unrealistic fantasy that you can somehow have it all right now if you just find the right shortcut. Sure, there are more and less effective ways to train, depending on your goals, but if you’re too caught up in looking for a shortcut or instant gratification, you’re probably coming from the wrong place, and you’ll likely end up seduced by the ultimate shortcut: doing nothing and then rationalizing it. Worse, you’ll miss the true adventure of growth and transformation that only comes from long-term commitment to a training program that builds over time. You may not get the results you think you want right away, but in a few years, you’ll have achieved things you couldn’t even anticipate from where you are right now.

9. Get Moving and Adjust As You Go

As with most things, the real magic comes from getting moving. You can’t optimize your performance while you’re holding still. You’re going to have to start out by accepting plenty of imperfection, and then make continual adjustments as you go. The Japanese term for this kind of gradual, incremental, but continuous improvement is kaizen, and it’s a critical concept to download and install in your overall training mindset. Kaizen fosters solid, cumulative, and ultimately exponential progress over time. It also proved the conditions for the occasional massive sudden breakthrough. But it only works when you’re in motion.

A lot of people stall out or never start because they think they should somehow already be at the finish line. They get caught up in fantasies of their idealized version of themselves and then punish themselves for not being that ideal. There’s no way to win that game. Instead, drop the fantasy, and develop a mindset cooperates with reality and the basic truths that allow you to move toward mastery and achievement of your goals, gradually but powerfully, over time. Your future self will thank you for it.

High grip strength and your marital state have been found to correlate independently to a healthier life in old age. So, researchers decided to see what the combined effect of a strong marriage and a strong grip would have on the quality of life in older age. Sarcopenia, the loss of muscle as a natural part of aging, does mean a decline in health over time, but research from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health investigates how grip strength relates to being married^[1].

"Our results hint that women may be favoring partners who signal strength and vigor when they marry," said Vegard Skirbekk, PhD, professor, Columbia Aging Center and Mailman School professor of Population and Family Health. "If longer-lived women marry healthier men, then both may avoid or defer the role of caregiver, while less healthy men remain unmarried and must look elsewhere for assistance."

Using a population-based study of 5,009 adults from the Norwegian city of Tromsø, the researchers examined the relationship of marital status to grip strength in two successive groups of people: those born 1923-35 and 1936-48, assessing the association between respondents' marital status and grip strength when respondents were aged 59 to 71. These data were matched with the Norwegian national death registry. Handgrip strength was assessed using a vigorimeter, a device that asks participants to squeeze a rubber balloon.

Grip strength is particularly important for older adults and has implications for a host of health risks -- for heart disease and fractures, physical mobility, the capacity to be socially active and healthy and to enjoy a good quality of life. At the same time, marriage confers many of these same benefits.

The researchers found greater numbers of unmarried men with low grip strength in the second cohort -- those born 1936-48 -- than in the first cohort, reflecting societal trends that have increasingly deemphasized the importance of marriage. "In recent decades, women are less dependent on men economically. At the same time, men have a growing 'health dependence' on women," says Skirbekk. "The fact that many men are alone with a weak grip -- a double burden for these men who lack both strength and a lack of support that comes from being married -- suggests that more attention needs to be given to this group, particularly given their relatively poor health."

Policies to help this population might include housing arrangements that encourage social interaction and counseling to better prepare these individuals for old age and information on how to avoid negative health consequences of independent living.

"New technologies may potentially offset some of the limitations that low grip strength may imply," says Skirbekk. "Social policies could also increasingly target this group by providing financial support for those who suffer the double-burden of low strength and lack of spousal support."

The Limitations of this Study

We've had some fun with this but there are limitations to this kind of research. For one thing, this research shows a relationship between grip strength, martial status and health but it doesn't really offer any direction on causality such as the origin of grip strength earlier in life or, the quality of the marriages in question. This is an analysis of data that shows observable patterns of behavior but can't really say that the secret to a great relationship is for a guy to go and practice his grip strength. Just in case you wanted to know, you might want to take grip advice from legendary Strongman, 68-year old Odd Haugen of Newbury Park, California, and his formula for strengthening your grip.

Reference

1. Vegard Skirbekk, Melissa Hardy, Bjørn Heine Strand. Women’s Spousal Choices and a Man’s Handshake: Evidence from a Norwegian Study of Cohort Differences. SSM - Population Health, 2018