Category: Erectile Dysfunction

By now, it’s pretty much established that there is no miracle food that is capable of staving off erectile dysfunction single handedly. ED experts have combed the Earth in search of a naturally occurring food that can keep erectile issues at bay, only to come up empty handed time and time again. But that’s not to say that there aren’t certain foods that can help turn the tides against erectile dysfunction.

Case in point: Leafy greens. No, that doesn’t mean you can eat all the iceberg lettuce wedges you want and hold onto your erection. This refers to leafy green veggies such as celery and spinach. This little wonder foods are chock full of nitrates, which have been found to facilitate a healthy erection.

This is because the nitrates found in leafy greens are vasodilators. Vasodilators have been found to open up the blood vessels within the body, which helps to improve blood flow. When these vasodilators go to work, they tend to affect the smallest arteries in the body first, which includes the bundle of arteries that lead into the penis and are responsible for providing the blood necessary for an erection. Thus, the more leafy greens you incorporate into your diet, the better your blood flow, thus improving your chance of avoiding erectile dysfunction.

That’s not to say that subsisting entirely off of spinach will ensure that you’ll never have to worry about ED. Be active, avoid vices such as cigarettes, and eat plenty of the leafy greens, and your erection should be safe for years to come.

For many, this is the most wonderful time of the year. For others… not so much. While many associate November and December with happy memories and beloved traditions, there are plenty of people that find the holiday season a big downer. But it isn’t the cold weather that gets these people down; it’s actually a diagnosable mood disorder known as “Seasonal Affective Disorder.” SAD, as its appropriately known, causes the affected to become depressed around this time of the year. Unfortunately, as is often the case with depression, the feelings you can’t shake can often creep into other aspects of your life, including your love life.

Experts believe that SAD is tied the lack of sunlight associated with this time of year. As the sun begins to appear less and less, the body increases the production of the body chemical melatonin, which regulates your sleep cycle and can cause symptoms of depression. When the melatonin levels within the body are in flux, your body will struggle to focus on completing other tasks, including producing an erection.

Depression can hold sway over the brain, causing other important signals to get lost in the rabble. The erection is dependent upon the brain giving it the word on just when its time to get to work. If SAD is directing your thoughts elsewhere, these signals get missed, your erection doesn’t get directions to spring to life, and you find yourself wondering why you can’t achieve an erection.

So, yes, SAD-associated ED is very real. Speak to a mental health expert about how SAD is affecting other aspects of your life, and together you can work up a solution to make sure your love life doesn’t get affected by your feelings for these next couple of months.

Whenever you’ve looked at an attractive person and pictured what a night together might be like, or whenever you’ve waited until you’ve had the house to yourself and then fired up the computer for some “personal time,” it was your testosterone that was responsible. This little hormone plays a vital role in a man’s body by helping to regulate the sex drive. The testicles secrete it, and it helps to keep everything relating to sex within the body working and in check.

But your testosterone levels aren’t always going to be through the roof. Inevitably your testosterone levels will begin to falter, and your sex drive will feel the effect. The testosterone levels within the body begin drop at 40, with experts finding that a man’s testosterone tends to drop about 1.3% every year after 40.

If you find that sex has suddenly become less interesting, or that you often feel tired, or if your moods have been all over the place, this might be a result of low testosterone levels. In addition to throwing moods and sexual feelings into flux, low testosterone levels can also make it difficult for the body to achieve an erection.

The erection depends upon testosterone, with the hormone alerting the penis when it’s time to get to work. But if your testosterone levels dip, your penis might get the wake up call it needs, which translates into missed erections.

If you’re dealing with low testosterone levels, talk to your doctor about how this issue can properly be addressed. With medication, you should be able to get your testosterone back to a normal level, your sex drive should return, and your erection will be ready to get back to work.

After a long day at work, sometimes the best solution is to plop down in your favorite chair, throw up your feet, and enjoy a frosty beer. Other times, after plodding through a long weekend, it’s perfectly understandable to want to go out with friends and have a drink or four. Drinking can be a stress reliever, it can be a social activity, but if done too much, it can also spell trouble for your erection.

Like all good things in life, consuming alcohol should be done in moderation. But an overreliance on booze can lead to issues within the sheets. While men have certainly heard of temporary erectile issues developing from having one too many to drink, consistently drinking too much can move that ED from “temporary” to “permanent.”

This is due to the fact that constant drinking reeks havoc on your liver. The liver is a power organ within the body, playing a vital role in the metabolic process of the body. This means the liver helps to regulate blood clotting, along with being responsible for getting rid of old or damaged blood cells to clear the way for new, healthy cells.

But when damaged by alcohol, the liver’s functions go into flux, which negatively affects the blood cells of the body, allowing damaged blood cells to hang around and impede the flow of blood. Additionally, a damaged liver can lead to hormone distribution within the body getting thrown into whack. These hormones help to alert the brain when its time to put the sexual organs to work, and when they are affected, the brain ends up not getting the proper signals, leading to missed erections.

This isn’t an issue that only a small amount of heavy drinkers suffer from, either. Surveys have found that alcohol dependent men have a 60 to 70 percent chance of suffering from sexual issues.

Either cut down or the drinking or cut out the drinking all together, and your sexual prowess should recover. But depending upon alcohol will only lead to issues down the line.

While your body may function like a well oiled machine, there a plenty of outside forces that help it to stay that way. If you’ve ever been to a doctor, you may have been questioned on your vitamin D levels. This isn’t just a throwaway question, designed to leave you wondering just how much Vitamin D you get. Health experts agree that a healthy intake of Vitamin D helps to promote calcium absorption, bone growth, and artery health. It’s that last point that ties into erectile dysfunction. If you suffer from a vitamin D deficiency, you are putting your body at risk of developing ED.

You see, when the body is getting the vitamin D it needs, this keeps your arteries strong and hard working, allowing blood to efficiently reach the various parts of the body that depend on it. But when your vitamin D levels drop, you can develop atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is a process in which the arteries in the body begin to build up with plaque, leading to the artery walls hardening. This build up essentially halves the workable space in your arteries, causing blood output to slow, which translates into blood struggling to reach your extremities, including your penis.

Thus, without this little fat-soluble vitamin, your body will struggle to produce erections, and will begin to encounter other, possibly more deadly issues relating to the heart and blood flow. Thankfully, vitamin D deficiency is easy to overcome. Simply speak to your doctor about your issue, and work together to determine which vitamin D supplements would work best for you. By sticking to a daily vitamin D regiment, your arteries should clear up, blood flow should get back to normal, and your erection should be back in fighting shape in no time.

When you find yourself in a long-term relationship, it’s easy to think of your significant other as both a friend and a partner. This means plenty of nights alone snuggled up on the couch or quite nights of reading books in bed, finding happiness in just the two of you. But even the strongest of relationships need some time apart, and this means getting out and about and getting together with friends. But this apart time can sometimes lead to feelings of jealousy developing. One partner may feel as though the other partner is losing commitment to the relationship, or perhaps they might feel that the partner is spending too much time with a flirty friend. Whatever the case may be, this jealousy can bubble up and can actually lead to the development of erectile issues.

This isn’t just a coincidental connection, either. The erection is dependent upon signals from the brain on when its time to wake up and get to work. If these signals should get lost in a jumble of feelings of jealousy and thoughts of possible infidelity, your erection won’t get its cue, leading to a missed erection. When your mind is preoccupied with jealousy, your erection will pay the price.

In fact, even spending too much time with your partners friends can lead to problems in the bedroom. A study of 3,000 men between the ages of 57 to 85 polled them on how much time their significant other spent with friends they considered “theirs.” The higher the amount of time spent translated into rising chances of erectile dysfunction, with the study finding that men who considered their partner too close to their friends were 92 percent more likely to develop erectile issues.

If you feel as though jealousy is to blame for your recent erectile woes, get to the root of the issue. Talk to your partner, approach the problem as a couple, and you should be able to stamp out these feelings and regain your erection.

Everyone wants to look their best, but sometimes life gets in the way. Maybe you’ve been opting for sweets more often, or maybe you just haven’t had time to hit the gym. Whatever the case may be, these little bumps in the road have translated into an expanding waistline. Sure, it’s made you a little body conscious, but it’s nothing to panic over. That is, until you find yourself struggling in the bedroom. Suddenly, your little guy doesn’t want to stand at attention. Besides the recent weight, you live a healthy life and make good decisions. Could it be that your newfound weight is responsible for your erectile woes?

Odds are, if you’ve packed on some pounds and you’re struggling in bed, your weight gain is the culprit. Extensive research has found that as your body weight rises, so too does your chances of developing ED. If your weight should reach “obese” levels, experts say that you are now two and a half times more likely to develop erectile dysfunction than a man with normal weight.

But just how is your weight connected to your erection? It boils down to two aspects: cholesterol and testosterone. As your weight climbs, so too does your cholesterol. As your cholesterol rises, it begins to set up shop on the walls of your blood vessels. These cholesterol deposits will then impede blood flow, making it harder for the body to supply blood to your organs, including your penis. Additionally, weight gain is tied to a drop in testosterone. As your waist grows, your testosterone levels shrink, and testosterone is a vital hormone for regulating sexual function. With low testosterone, your body will struggle to get invested in sex and you’ll struggle to produce an erection.

The connection between weight gain and erectile issues is very real. Thankfully, it is an issue that can be overcome by making positive life choices. Lose the weight, eat health, and get active, and you should drop a pants size and regain your sex life at the same time.

When it finally comes time to introduce a little support into your sex life, it can be worrying. If you invest in erectile dysfunction medication, you want to make sure that you take it correctly, lest the whole thing fall apart and you and your partner are left disappointed. Worry not; while there is certainly some criteria to follow, taking Cialis isn’t a process. If you want to ensure that your Cialis works perfectly, follow these steps.

For men that have never taken erectile dysfunction medication before, it is common for the doctor to start off with a 10mg prescription. This is the smallest dosage that Cialis is issued in, and it’s advised that you start with this low dosage so that you can test the waters first before diving in. If you’re hesitant to jump in at 10mg, halve a pill and stick to 5mg. This will likely still produce results, and you can simply work your way up to a whole pill when you’re ready.

When it’s time to get down to business, you want to make sure that the dosage you ingested has time to get to work. No matter what the size of the dosage you have taken, Cialis tends to take around 30 minutes to an hour to get to work. If you want quicker results, take the pill on an empty stomach. If taken on a full stomach, you can expect to take on another 30 minutes to an hour of waiting before the pill kicks in.

Make sure to take your pill with water. Avoid alcohol, and don’t take it with food unless you’re looking to delay the results. It would also be wise to avoid taking multiple pills. If the dosage you ingested doesn’t work, chalk it up to a swing and a miss, and then try again the next night with a higher dosage. If you take multiple pills on the same night, you run the risk of heart issues.

So, at the end of the day, it’s just important to take the right amount and take the pill at the right time. Follow these steps and you should be good to go when it’s time to get to work.

The hazards associated with regular smoking are well documented, but they don’t seem to dissuade people from picking up the habit. When you tell a man that daily cigarettes can lead to cancer and early death, they’ll offer a shrug and rationalize that everyone dies one day. But men might be less likely to light up if they knew that smoking can oftentimes lead to potentially irreversible erectile dysfunction.

This isn’t an old wives tale, either. The connection between smoking and erectile dysfunction is well documented, and there’s plenty of science to back it up. While you might wonder how smoking could possibly tie to your ability to perform in bed, the connection is easy to explain.

You see, regular smoking narrows the blood vessels within the body, which hampers the flow of blood. When blood vessels begin to narrow, it’s always the smallest vessels within the body that get affected first. One of the smallest collections of blood vessels within the body are responsible for providing blood to the penis. When this vessel cluster narrows, the body struggles to provide adequate blood to the penis to produce an erection. If the penis cannot get the blood it requires, it cannot produce an erection, and you’re left disappointed.

And this narrowing of the vessels won’t only affect your penis. If your heart cannot properly provide the necessary blood to various parts of the body, your body will struggle to keep up with your demands. Furthermore, regular smoking weakens the heart, slowing blood output and putting you on the fast track for heart problems.

So while kicking cigarettes to the curb can feel downright impossible, it’s something you need to do to preserve your sex life and avoid an early grave. Speak with a health professional about the best way to quit smoking, and together you can work to get your body back in fighting shape.

When a man notices his hairline is beginning to shrink, so do not opt to go quietly into that good hair night. Instead, they enlist the aid of various medications and applications that are said to encourage hair growth, in an attempt to stop the steady march of time. While not wanting to lose your hair is certainly understandable, medications designed to battle hair loss have been found to cause issues elsewhere in the body, essentially trading a full head of hair for other, more embarrassing issues. Case in point: Extensive studies have found that male pattern hair loss medications can cause erectile dysfunction.

While hair growth and erectile health may seem like the most unrelated issues your body could possibly have, the connection is very real. This is because hair loss medications such as dutasteride (better known by its brand name Avodart) and finasteride (which you may know as Proscar and Propecia) work by reducing dihydrotestosterone in the body.

Dihydrotestosterone is found within the blood stream of the body, and research has found that reducing the dihydrotestosterone levels of the body can encourage hair growth. But it’s not like dihydrotestosterone is just staying in your body doing nothing; in fact, dihydrotestosterone is primarily responsible for regulating your sex drive.

Yep, dihydrotestosterone is a male sex hormone, and its job is alerting the body when it’s time to get down to business between the sheets. While lessening its presence in the blood stream can help hair to grow back, it can also lead to a loss in sex drive, which translates into an inability to achieve an erection.

If you’re looking to combat hair loss, it might be wise to explore alternative avenues. Taking these aforementioned medications certainly might help, but your erection could end up paying the price.