The Bliss Molecule Nobody Told You About and 3 Positions That Release It

There are forty-five thousand nerve fibers in your skin that exist only to tell your brain you are safe, held, and worthy of desire. Nobody told you they were there. Nobody told you they have been starving. That is what we are fixing in this episode.

If you have been living with low desire and have tried the usual answers, communication, hormones, date nights, and come up empty, it is because the usual answers are addressing the wrong system.

Dr. Juls introduces you to CT afferents, the class of skin nerve fibers specifically designed for affective touch and social bonding, and explains why their chronic under-activation is one of the most underdiagnosed drivers of desire loss in women over fifty. Drawing on cutting-edge research from neuroscientist Francis McGlone, the endocannabinoid science of Dr. Raphael Mechoulam and Ethan Russo, and Lisa Feldman Barrett's predictive processing model of emotion, this episode offers a framework for desire that is more precise, more actionable, and more honest than anything you have heard before.

In this episode you will learn:

Why the touch you are receiving, even from a partner, may be actively starving your desire rather than nourishing it, and the neurophysiological reason that functional touch and affective touch are processed completely differently by the brain.

How anandamide, the brain's own bliss molecule, is produced through slow, non-goal-oriented touch and why its depletion in chronically stressed, touch-starved women explains the flat, motions-only quality of sex that so many women over fifty describe.

Why your brain is predicting your lack of desire before you even get into bed, and the evidence-based protocol for changing that prediction at the level of the nervous system rather than the level of willpower.

Three specific positions engineered for CT fiber activation, anandamide priming, and nervous system co-regulation: The Anchor, The Sovereign, and The Melt, with the physiological rationale for why each one works and how to use them as desire infrastructure rather than performance.

The CT Awakening somatic practice and the Touch Ledger integration exercise to take this work from insight to your actual body this week.

What if the reason you've gone from feeling young, passionate, and desirable to feeling disconnected, broken, and like you're living with a roommate instead of a husband…has nothing to do with your age or your hormones?

What if it comes down to a hidden cycle no one talks about - one that keeps women after 50 stuck, waiting for a desire that never seems to return?

That's exactly why I created The Desire Reset Guide.

It's for women after 50, and it reveals the real reason you feel broken - plus 3 simple practices you do over 3 days to finally reconnect with your pleasure, your desire, and your partner. 👉 juliemerrimanphd.com/desire

Have you quietly wondered if you're broken…you're not. The science says so. Listen to Episode 29: Your Body Isn't Broken, The Truth About Desire After 50. 

New episodes Wednesdays & Fridays, 5am CST

This podcast is for women after 50 navigating low desire, sexual disconnection, and body changes who want nervous-system-informed insight into libido, aliveness, intimacy, and embodied pleasure so they can move from tamed to alive and unapologetically hungry.

 No part of this content may be used for AI or machine learning training.

Transcript

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In this episode, you'll learn that there are 45,000 nerve fibers in your skin that exist for one purpose to tell your brain you are safe, desired, and alive. Nobody told you they were there or that they were starving. We're fixing that today. Improve sex and intimacy by healing your nervous system so you finally feel turned on and confident. We're waking up what never left. Desire and fire. I'm Dr. Jules. Let's get to it. Three reasons. I need you to stay to the end and welcome back. I'm glad you're here. So first, I'm going to hand you a piece of science that is so new and so practical that most gynecologists and sex therapists have never even heard of it. And it reframes everything about why desire has gone quiet in your body. Second, I'm going to tell you exactly what your brain is doing before desire ever arrives and why that means the problem is not what you think it is, and the solution is not what anyone has told you before. And third, I'm going to give you three specific positions to try embed that are engineered from actual neurophysiology to activate the exact system that lets desire come back online. So, sweet soul, if that stays good, stay with me. I've got you. This one's good. Okay, so the thing nobody named. I want to start with a word you probably have never used in a conversation. CT afferents. C T afferents. C T stands for C tactile. These are a class of unmillionated nerve fibers that live in your skin, believe it or not. They live just all over your skin, if you will. The skin of your palms, your fingertips, those are the fibers built for grip and precision. And the soft skin of your arms, your back, your belly, your inner thighs, the skin that gets touched when someone holds you, strokes you, presses their body against yours. These fibers were identified and characterized by neuroscientist Francis McLone and his colleagues, whose work published in the journal Neuron back in 2014 established something I think is really remarkable. CT afferents aren't built to detect pressure or texture or even temperature. They, the way most touch receptors are built. These are built specifically and only to transmit what researchers call effective touch, meaning touch that is emotionally meaningful. They respond to a very specific velocity of stroking, somewhere between one and ten centimeters per second. And y'all, it's not coincidentally. That's exactly the speed of a slow, deliberate caress. They fire most powerfully at skin temperature, meaning the warmth of a hand, and they project directly to your insula, the brain's center of interception and self-awareness, bypassing sensory cortex almost entirely. Pretty interesting, I thought. When I ran across this research, I was like, I have got to get this to y'all. So here's what McLone's team found. CT afferents are not a byproduct of touch, they are a dedicated biological system for social bonding and feeling safety. They are the reason a slow touch from someone you trust feels fundamentally different from a fast one. They're the pathway through which your body translates physical contact into neurological experience of being safe, held, and seen. And don't we love that feeling? I mean, really, you know, to be to feel safe and seen and heard. Well, here's the part that I need you to sit with. Research from Tiffany Field's Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami has documented what happens to the body when this system goes chronically under-stimulated. She calls it the touch starvation. And it's not a metaphor. The physiological consequences include elevated cortisol, increased inflammatory markers, disrupted sleep, heightened anxiety, and directly relevant to this conversation, significant suppression of arousal response. Does that just describe the symptoms how you might be living? I know it was for me for a long time. Had no idea. Not because no one's touching them, though that is often also true, but it's because the touch that they are receiving is not the right kind of touch. It's a functional touch, transactional touch, a touch that asks something of them rather than simply landing. And the body, it knows the difference. The fibers know the difference. And when they have been starving long enough, desire does not just go quiet, it goes completely underground, pulling the door shut behind it. Girl, you are not broken, you are undertouched, and that is a problem we can actually solve. Woo-hoo! So I want to introduce you to something that has been in your body your entire life and that you may never have been told the name of or even told it was there. Okay, so it's one of those words that y'all love me through because it's big and I'm probably gonna slaughter it, but it's called anandomide. A-N-A-N-D-A-M-I-D-E, anandemide. It comes from the Sanskrit word anata, which means bliss. Researchers named it very deliberately because they discovered this neurotransmitter back in 1992, Dr. Raphael Mekalam and his team at Hebrew University were essentially watching the brain produce its own version of pleasure from the inside. I mean, that's a lot to take in, and I slaughtered a word there, but ladies, we have this bliss neurotransmitter in us. We need to find out how to access it and take good care of it. So stick with me. Anana anandamide is the primary endogenous ligand of the cannabinoid system. So for those of us that aren't neuroscientists, just hang with me. This is important. It is what your brain makes when you exercise, okay? When you are in flow, when you feel genuinely safe, and crucially when your CT afferents are being activated through slow, affectionate touch. A 2016 paper by Rousseau in cannabis and cannabinoid research introduced the clinical concept of endocannabinoid deficiency. It's mouthful. While his primary focus was on specific conditions. Yeah, the implications for desire in chronically stressed touch-deprived women are really significant here. When your endocannabinoid tone is low, meaning when your body is not producing or responding normally to anadamide, the sensory experience of sex becomes flat. Touch does not translate into pleasure. The body goes through the motions without feeling the sense of aliveness underneath them. Well, this matters because it gives us a mechanism that hormones alone do not explain. Two women can have identical estrogen levels and have completely different experiences of desire. Because their endocannabinoid tone is different. Hell, I didn't even know that was a thing until I did the research for this episode. And then I was like, Shazam, we've got to talk about this. See, when CT fiber activation histories are different, like at these two women, same estrogen levels, different expressions, your body's capacity to produce anandomide is different. Get that? The conditions that most reliably increase endocannabinoid tone are slow, sustained, aerobic movement, deliberate, non-goal-oriented touch, states of felt safety, and what researchers describe as positive hedonic experience, meaning genuine pleasure without agenda. And notice that none of those conditions are common in the lives of high-functioning women over fifty who are managing households, relationships, aging parents, careers, while also holding and carrying the ambient message from the culture that their sexual aliveness is past its expiration date. We're calling BS on that, ladies, right? This bliss molecule is still there. Your system for making it is still intact, while what is missing is the input. And that is not a hormone problem. That is a life architecture problem. And it is one you have more control over than you have ever been told. So let's look at this piece. It's here's the piece I think that will rearrange something for you. Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, we've had her on the program before in research. We like her research. And her work at Northeastern University on predictive processing model of emotion has quietly become one of the most important frameworks in contemporary neuroscience. And she argues in her research that the brain does not simply receive experience, it predicts it. At every moment, based on prior experience, current body state, and context, your brain is generating a best guess about what is about to happen and what it means. The emotional and sensory experience you then feel is largely the output of that prediction, not a fresh response to reality. And what this means for desire is almost unbearably precise. If your brain has been generating predictions about sex for years that include obligation, performance, physical discomfort, emotional disconnection, or low grade threat of not being desired in return, then when a sexual context arises, what's your brain gonna do? Well, your brain's gonna predict those experiences before anything has even happened. The arousal system will not fire. Not because you're broken, because your brain is doing exactly what it is built to do, which is to protect you from a predicted negative experience. And Baird's research, along with work from interceptive predictive coding framework developed by Carl Friston, suggests that changing desire requires changing the prediction, and you change the prediction by generating enough new embodied evidence that this context, this body, this moment is safe and pleasurable rather than threatening. This is why the women that I work with, that I'm talking to, that I was once, who tried to push through and just have sex to see if they get into it, are not necessarily wrong in their strategy, but they are applying it without the necessary preparation. If the body's prediction of the encounter is threat, the encounter confirms the threat and the prediction calcifies. We've got to focus on systems in our body. So if this calcifies, that just hardens it in the system, right? So what you need first is a pattern of experiences that teaches the predictive machinery something new. Small, safe, pleasurable body experiences that do not carry performance demand. Slow touch that activates the CT afference. And it's also activating the anandomide without asking for anything in return. The brain needs evidence, so give it evidence. So I want to give you something concrete because this is not just a neuroscience lecture. I know it must feel like it because there's giant words that I've slaughtered, and thank you for staying with me. I hope you're getting the essence of the research. This I come to you as a somatic and chakra therapist. So we want to get you into your body. So what this is about is your actual body in your actual bedroom with your actual desire trying to find its way back. The positions I'm going to describe are not about technique. And I want you to flow and have fun with this. These positions are about creating a neurological condition for CT fiber activation, anandemide release, and the nervous system evidence of safety that Barrett's productive processing model requires. These are positions for women whose desire is responsive rather than spontaneous. And that's probably about 90% of us, y'all. And research from Mary Basson's circular model confirms that the most common pattern in women over 50 is responsive. And really, research shows I don't care if you're 20, most women have a responsive pattern rather than spontaneous pattern. So these positions are for the body that needs safety before sensation, connection before arousal. The first I call the anchor. And this is a spooning position, but with specific intention behind it. You are the small spoon. Your partner's front is fully against your back, their arm across your chest or belly. Your legs are intertwined. The distinguishing instruction is this: you do not move, neither does your partner. For the first 10 to 15 minutes, there's no thrusting, no performance, no agenda. There is only full body pressure contact and breath synchrony. What is happening is that maximum skin surfaces area is activating your CT afferents simultaneously. The proprietive weight of your of another body against yours is sending the nervous system the most fundamental signal. It knows you're held, you are not alone, you are safe. Oxytocin begins to release from the hypothalamus, and the anandomide tone begins to rise. The prediction your brain is generating shifts from performance context to safety context. From this place, whatever is genuine, whatever does not emerge is also data worth honoring. This is a woman on top, but again, the instruction transforms its meaning. You are seated astride your partner who is also seated or reclined at about a 45-degree angle, so that your chests are close together or even touching, and eye contact is possible and invited. The key distinction from standard woman on top is that the movement is minimal and unhurried. You are not performing, you are regulating. Your own weight is grounded through your own pelvis. Your control pressure, depth, and tempo that's controlled completely by you. The neurological significance of this is considerable. Research on agency and nervous system state from the work of Peter Levine on somatic experiencing confirms that the capacity to control the terms of a physical experience is itself a co-regulator of the autonomic nervous system. See, you're not performing desire, you're reclaiming authorship of it. The eye contact, girl, that's going to activate what neuroscientists call the social engagement system. The specific neural circuitry that your face, voice, and gaze are part of, which in turn signals to your body that this is connection rather than threat, that's big. The heart proximity activates additional CT fiber fields across the chests and your inner arms. You can be in this position doing almost nothing. And your nervous system will be doing an enormous amount. And y'all are co-regulating while you're doing this, any of these positions. This is good for both partners. There's a co-regulation that's going on here that's important for connection. To witness each other, to be with each other, to soften into each other. So this third position I call the mount. And this is the face-to-face sideline, fully clothed or not. I include the fully clothed option deliberately because some of the most important desire work your body can do right now does not require intercourse. You're lying on your sides facing each other. Your bodies are touching at the chest, belly, and legs. Your breath is slow without any agenda. The specific instruction is to synchronize your exhale with your partners. Which research on respiratory entrainment and interpersonal co-regulation published in The Frontiers in Psychology, and this article was by Feldman and colleagues, shows produces measurable synchrony in heart rate variability between two people. And that's the respiratory entrainment in interpersonal co-regulation that we know is so important in our relationships, and we get so damn busy in life, we just don't take time for it. So while you're lying here together, you're literally physiologically in rhythm with another nervous system. The CT fibers running along the entire front of the body are receiving continuous effective touch. There's no performance possible in this position. There is only presence. And presence is where desire is born. These are not the positions that will end up on the cover of a magazine. And that is worth more than we can put money on. So I want to give you one more practice that you can do solo before any partnered encounter. And maybe even give it to your partner and have them try it solo as well. Because your CT fibers do not require partner, they require intention. So I want you to sit or lie somewhere comfy and warm and begin with both hands on your own forearms and slowly stroke from elbow to wrist. And I want you to clock the speed, and this should feel almost comically slow, about five seconds per stroke. This is the CT optimal velocity that McGlone's research identified. Slower than you think, unhurried in a way that feels like it is saying something very special to you. Notice the quality of sensation beneath your hands, you might feel warmth, a faint aliveness, a tingling. That is not pressure, but something softer. That is your CT afference responding. That is your body beginning to understand that slow, deliberate, non-goal-oriented touch is available to it. Move to your upper arms, your shoulders, the back of your neck if you can reach. Stay in the CT optimal speed the entire time. I want you to spend at least three minutes here because research on CT fiber response curves show that sustained activation over several minutes begins to produce changes in insula activity rather than just a momentary sensory signal. When you've done this, I then want you to put both hands on your lower belly and breathe slowly, extending that exhale. You have just told your nervous system something true. You're safe, you're present, and your body is worth tending to with deliberateness. Do this before sex. Maybe both of you sit together cross-legged, or however you want to say it, and do it individually together. You can do this instead of sex when sex feels unavailable. Do this simply because you are a body that deserves it. So this week I want you to keep what I call a touch ledger. And it's a simple running record of the touch you received, gave or withheld across seven days. Not sexual touch specifically, all touch. The hug you rushed through, the handshake that was your only skin contact on Tuesday, the evening you ached for your partner just to hold you and said nothing. At the end of seven days, you're going to have a map of your CT fiber diet. You're going to be able to see clearly, without judgment, whether your body is receiving the quality of effective touch. A nervous system requires to remain open to desire. Or if it's been in a state of touch starvation and no amount of wanting to want sex is going to be able to override that. So I think that is very important information for you to map. See, from this map, you get to make a request, not a complaint, not a confrontation, a specific embodied request. You know, I just need 20 minutes of kind, sweet touch before anything else. Your nervous system is not asking for more, it is asking for different. And you know exactly what different looks like now. Okay, so let's land this plane. Here's what you took in today. And I know there was some heavy stuff. I want to take a big deep breath. Bring in a giggle and lighten it up a bit. This is important shit. This is important information. I need y'all to have this information. That's why I research it. That's why I put these things together. Your desire is not gone. You're not broken. There's lots of yummy ways to approach this stuff. Meanwhile, run out and buy my book or hop over to Amazon or my website, grab my book. Are we going to have sex or what? I have got a whole plethora of things in there for you. But to today's episode, let's land this. Here's the things you took in. One, CTFerins are a dedicated biological system in your skin built for effective touch and chronic underactivation of the system is one of the most underdiagnosed drivers of low desire in us gals over 50. Two, anandemide, your body's own bliss molecule. Get that, we got a bliss molecule, is produced in direct response to slow, deliberate, non-goal-oriented touch when your CT system is starving or your endocannabinoid tone drops. That felt sense of pleasure flattens. Girl, this is chemistry. It has nothing to do with your character. And three, good old Barrett's predictive processing research tells us the brain generates desire based on prior experience. To change desire, you gotta change the prediction. You have to change the prediction by accumulating new embodied evidence of safety and pleasure without performance demand. And I gave you three positions the anchor, the sovereign, the melt. Those are positions designed not for performance, but for nervous system co-regulation, CT activation, and the creation of the exact physiological conditions desire requires to come back online. As I said, this conversation goes deeper in my book, Are We Gonna Have Sex or What? Over on my website, grab it there. I give you the full architecture of desire, and we take it apart and we put it back together again in a way you can work with your body, your relationship, your actual life right here, right now. Okay, girl. Until next time, I want you to stay dangerous. Ciao. They told you the fire dies at 50. They lied. Tap the show notes to download reignite your fire and desire. Your free 72-hour erotic reboot. Unlock the arousal pathway buried in your nervous system. Reclaim the raw hunger you were taught to suppress. And rewire your body to crave pleasure again. Not because you're broken, but because you're ready to burn. Move from invisible to incredible. I'm Dr. Jules Keeper. They told you the fire dies at 50. They lied. Tap the show notes to download Reignite Your Fire and Desire. Your free 72-hour erotic reboot. Unlock the arousal pathway buried in your nervous system. Reclaim the raw hunger you were taught to suppress. And rewire your body to crave pleasure again. Not because you're broken, but because you're ready to burn. Move from invisible to incredible. I'm Dr. Jules Keeper.