A blow to male pride

RIGA - The most frequent misfortune in a man’s life – this is what the well-known psychotherapist Sigmund Freud called impotence. Since that time, medicine has achieved a lot - technologies of diagnostics and treatment of sexual impotence were perfected in every detail. But still even nowadays the problem with potency is a heavy blow to male pride.
For a long time the main explanation for impotence was the notion that impotence starts in the head and that it is caused by an inappropriate emotional state. Now, the weakness of men most often is explained by all sorts of malfunctions in the internal organs, because the mechanism of erection is initiated with the participation of virtually all body systems.

Some statistics
Two out of ten men suffer from erection disorders. Only every tenth man who suffers from sexual disorders, contacts a specialist.
In 90% of cases the erection can be restored.
In 80% of male impotence cases, the cause has a physiological origin and it is a warning about some troubles in the body.

Why does it happen?
Symptoms of impotence are well known: incomplete, short-term erection or complete absence of it. But you can consider impotence as a disease only when facing total inability to lead a sexual life for a long period of time, and all the other cases should be attributed to functional disorders. Before you treat impotence, it is necessary to find out what are the causes of it. Perhaps it would be enough to neutralize them to get rid of the disease. Experts point out a number of causes of the disease.

The leaders on the list of causes for men at the age of 30 are some troubles with the psyche, which have become chronic - neurotic disorders, depressions. In this case, the erection depends on the emotional state. Sometimes full sexual intercourse is possible only given certain conditions. For example, a man is “doing well” only with a specific partner, at a certain time of day, etc.

For men after the age of 40 sexual failures are often connected with inflammatory diseases of the prostate gland. At this age, the risk of prostate cancer is very high, so all men without exception, after the age of 40 should visit a urologist once in a year and take a blood test for a special analysis – tumor marker (PSA).
After the age of 55 a vascular form of erectile dysfunction (ED) comes to the forefront. Atherosclerosis, birth defects and other diseases of blood vessels may cause impotence, because such disorders impede the normal flow of blood to the cavernous bodies of the penis.

Frequent causes of sexual disorders are diabetes, alcoholism, drug addiction, intoxication, metabolic disorders. Because of these diseases the transmission of impulses along sensory and motor fibers is disrupted, and thus the reflex arc, which provides an erection, also suffers.

Potency problems sometimes occur after trauma or diseases of the spinal cord and brain. It is quite often that erectile dysfunction is the first symptom of an infectious lesion, trauma, tumors, epilepsy or Parkinson’s disease.
Sexual desire decreases noticeably when there are hormonal disorders. Typically, this happens against the background of a lack of male sex hormones or excess female hormones.
Impotence can occur as a side effect of taking medications such as antidepressants, antipsychotics, tranquilizers, which decrease gastric secretion and drugs that treat hypertension. Generally, any chronic disease, nervous and physical exhaustion don’t have a good effect on sexual potency.

What to do next
To exclude urogenital diseases, you need a consultation from a urologist, followed by ultrasound examination, taking blood and semen tests and by taking bacteriological swabs.
If the urologist suspects that your problem is connected with hormonal disorders, he will advise you to turn to an endocrinologist. You may need an ultrasound scan of the endocrine glands and computer tomography. Laboratory diagnosis can help to determine the level of any hormone in the blood.

Vascular disorders can be detected by Doppler ultrasound. Modern techniques allow determining the quantitative and qualitative indicators of the blood supply to the penis.
A neurologist can help to exclude the diseases of brain, spinal cord and peripheral nerves. Sometimes, in order to do that, several complicated examinations are assigned, such as tomography of the brain and spinal cord, electroencephalography, electromyography, rheoencephalography.
To assess the psychological component of sexual dysfunction you should visit a psychotherapist, sex therapist or a psychiatrist. The main diagnostic technique used by these specialists is a conversation with the patient, various methods of psychological testing.

As you can see, modern medicine believes that impotence can be successfully treated, but it should be noted - at an early stage. You shouldn’t postpone the visit to the doctor, because at a later stage of the disease there will be no way to avoid surgical intervention!

The benefits of vitamin E

The deficiency of vitamin E is bad for sexual function, it can lead to muscle cramps, anemia, degenerative changes in the muscles, etc. After 2-4 weeks of taking synthetic vitamin E (tocopherol acetate) you can observe a burst of vitality, increase of sexual desire, potency, in short, you feel younger and more active. Vitamin E is especially beneficial for older people. No wonder that it is called “the elixir of longevity”.

There is a lot of this valuable vitamin in sprouts and grains of wheat, in the green parts of plants, vegetable oils (sunflower, cotton, sea buckthorn, soy, etc.). The content of vitamin E in rye bread is 4 times greater than in white. Not without reason it is called “the bread of love.” It is healthy to include grains of wheat seedlings in the meal. They contain not only vitamin E, but also have a lot of ascorbic acid and B vitamins, as well as a set of other substances of high biological value.

For this purpose, take 50 grams of wheat (after some time it will be possible to increase the amount up to 100 g), rinse with warm water and place on a dish, cover with damp linen (cotton) cloth. Then cover them with another damp cloth (make sure that it does not become dry). After a day the sprouts arise. Rinse them, and mince. You should eat this mush in the mornings before breakfast, carefully chewing. Regular usage of seedlings contributes to the normalization of the metabolism.

Cigarettes and alcohol

As the scientists in the United States always say, even a completely healthy man who smokes is at risk of ED, and the more and longer a man smokes cigarettes, the higher the risk of impotence. In the course of medical examinations of more than four thousand men aged 35 to 75, doctors have noticed a certain connection between cigarettes smoked and the possibility of impotence. Among men-smokers, even among those who do not complain about health, the average possibility of ED is higher by around 41%, than among non-smokers. Moreover, the scientists found a strong correlation: men who have smoked more cigarettes, are at significantly more risk of ED.

If we compare the men who have never smoked (at the time of the experiment), and those men who smoked up to ten cigarettes per day, the smokers’ chances of becoming impotent are higher by 27%. For those who smoke 11 to 20 cigarettes per day the risk of impotence is increased by 45%, and for those men who smoke more than a pack of cigarettes per day, the risk of impotence rises up to 65%.
According to the doctors who carried out the experiment 22,7% of all cases of ED among healthy men were caused by smoking.

Also those who think that alcohol raises potency are mistaken. It can only happen in the initial period of alcohol consumption. But, firstly, the signs of increasing potency have short duration, and secondly, in the future they inevitably give way to a decrease of sexual desire, erection, and to some serious sexual disorders.