One of the reasons why some animals are being hunted to death is the idea their body parts will be able to restore sexual power. In this we include the rhino for its horn and male tigers for their private parts. It's sad some species are being driven to extinction because of myths and a belief in magic. The way it's supposed to work is that, if you eat the right parts of an animal, you will come to possess that animal's strengths. Hence, if you want to be fierce in bed, you eat the powdered penis of a tiger. This is sympathetic magic and, in the strictly scientific sense, it doesn't work. However, so strong is their belief, the men who take these substances report fabulous results. This is the placebo effect. The stronger the belief in the chemicals derived from the animal, the better the effect they have.

There's some new metaresearch by the University of Guelph. For once, the Canadians are in the forefront of work on sexual performance. The team has been analyzing all the major studies into the properties of plants and animal products to find out whether there are any observable trends. These studies are all based on animal testing. Humans are too easily influenced by their belief and enthusiasms. Extracting scientific measurements is difficult. But if you feed extracts from all the different substances to animals, it's quite easy to measure what happens to their behavior. Hence, these Canadians have been reading up on everything from chemicals derived from the sperm of whales (not to be confused with extracts from sperm whales, you understand), the dried and crushed bodies of the Spanish fly (again a curious name given that these are beetles not found in Spain), spices like ginseng, and the bark of trees like yohimbe. The problem with yohimbe and the Spanish fly is that, in the wrong concentration, the result is the stiffness we usually call rigor mortis, i.e. many of these substances are actually poisonous. This leaves us with ginseng which has tested both safe and moderately effective. Some foods like oysters can increase the levels of testosterone and chocolate does stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain. But none of these competing products comes anywhere near the actual performance of Viagra.

While there's nothing wrong with improving your diet and maintaining a reasonable level of physical fitness, the Canadian study found no evidence that any of the exotic substances tested were effective in the scientific sense. Although the placebo effect gives men better self-confidence which enhances sexual performance, there's no evidence of any therapeutic chemical effect. Indeed, some of the new street drugs like ecstasy actually damaged libido in the medium- to long-term. So if you want to avoid the risk of side effects and enjoy a good sex life, save your money when you see ads for natural enhancement products. None of them are effective. Indeed, some of them may be actively dangerous to your health if you take too much. While you may think the whole point of these articles is merely to sell Viagra, this is one of the cases in which the advice is real. Avoid the fake and stay with the real stuff!