Love Bugs: How Probiotics Can Better Romance

It's not uncommon to see reports about probiotics and how they can help stomach and gut troubles, but probiotics also are being researched as a way to help out your love life.

While it may seem odd to think of beneficial bacteria in relationship to improving your romantic life, some new research has shown the potential that probiotics have to help.

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In Psychology Today, Eric Haseltine Ph.D. wrote about new research that showed your gut bacteria may be a source of increased (and natural) testosterone production.

Haseltine pointed out that artificially elevating levels of testosterone, progesterone, and estrogen has worked to "restore sexual desire and satisfaction in people who have lost it."

But for some people, testosterone treatments don't work. It's theorized that this is related to artificially administered testosterone, so it may work to restore sex drive in both men and women by increasing testosterone that is naturally produced, Psychology Today reported.

Haseltine said some research from Virginia Commonwealth University has found that a gut bacteria, Clostridium scindens, "manufactures male sex hormones including testosterone." Of course, the research is in very initial stages, but at least the question can be asked — could increasing the number of Clostridium scindens in the gut increase testosterone levels?

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In other research, reported by The Huffington Post, some scientists discovered a link between probiotic yogurt and sexual desire in mice.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, scientists looking at the connection between probiotics and obesity discovered that while the mice became slimmer, they also had "more swagger," the Post said.

"We knew there was something different in the males, but we weren’t sure what it was at first,” researcher Susan Erdman told ABC News. “You know when someone’s at the top of their game, how they carry themselves differently? Well, imagine that in a mouse.”

In addition, those scientists found that mice taking probiotics also had larger testicles, which may have accounted for that "swagger," ABC said.

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