As most people now realize, smoking can be very damaging to your overall health, increasing your risk of heart disease in particular. Smoking’s damage to the cardiovascular system comes primarily from its effects on blood flow.
The chemicals in tobacco smoke damage the delicate endothelial cells that line the inner walls of your arteries, which in turn restricts blood flow. And to achieve and sustain an erection, it is essential that your penis receives strong blood flow.
Several years back, a team of Iranian researchers studied the effects of smoking cessation on former smokers who were able to quit through the use of nicotine replacement therapy or NRT. The research team recruited 281 smokers who expressed a desire to quit through the use of NRT.
Only 118 of the study participants successfully gave up smoking, while 163 were unable to quit that habit. Among those who were successful in quitting, 25 percent reported significant improvement in their erectile function a year after quitting smoking.