written by
Anne Truong

The Primary Pathway to Restoring Your Sexual Function

podcast ED performance 9 min read

Erectile dysfunction (ED) is a common issue that affects millions of men worldwide. It can have a significant impact on a man's quality of life, relationships, and self-esteem.

If you are suffering from ED, read on – here is the primary pathway to restoring your sexual function. Also, by following the tips that I’ll enlist so you can enjoy an active sex life once again.

Episode Video

There is one primary pathway to restoring sexual function and what is that? To reverse a condition or problem you have to treat the cause of the problem.

The more you do it, the better you are. So essentially, men that report intercourse less than once a week develop ED at twice the rate of men who report intercourse more than once a week.

You don't use it, you lose it.

Physical and Psychological Causes of ED

The difference between ED, psychological and physical, is that the physical part takes time to develop. They usually present as like you're able to get an erection but you lose it during intercourse or after penetration. Psychological is really more sudden and appears within weeks or months and you're able to get a morning erection or you're able to masturbate, when you're with a partner, you're not able to do that.

Physical Causes

Essentially nerve diseases such as:

  • Spinal cord injury
  • Multiple sclerosis
  • Penile fracture
  • Peyronie's
  • Hormone problems such as hypogonadism, low testosterone, hypothyroidism, and stress
  • Liver disease
  • Kidney disease
  • Sleep apnea
  • Restless leg syndrome
  • Prostate disease
  • Medications such as anti-blood pressure medicine, antidepressants, antipsychotics, recreational drugs, and opioid pain medication.

Psychological Causes

The psychogenic factors such as:

  • Traumatic past experiences
  • Relationship problems
  • General anxiety
  • Depression
  • Stress

ED can also be caused by lifestyle factors such as:

  • Obesity
  • Smoking
  • Spending a lot of time watching TV
  • Not exercising

Risk Factors for ED

But just going over briefly, research on men over 40 for risk factors for ED. This was done by a study in 2001.

The risks is more in African, American, and Hispanic, and then why education is less than the high school you're more at risk for ED.

Next is marital status. Widows and men that are widows are more at risk, then the next is divorced and separated, never been married, and the ones that are married are actually the least at risk.

Also, smoking status, we know that smoking is not good. So if you're a current smoker, you're in the worst shape, followed by former smokers, then who never smoked.

Another is when your body mass index is over 30 BMI, and you can put in your weight and your height on the internet and calculate what your BMI is.

Another is if you have blood pressure and you take medication, you're actually more at risk of getting ED. Because those that have treated blood pressure are more at risk compared to one that's not been treated, and compared to one that doesn't have high blood pressure.

Lastly is high cholesterol. High cholesterol and diabetes which increase it to four times your risk, risk of heart disease as well as a history of heart disease as well as the history of prostate enlargement.

Penis Attack?

ED is a Blood Flow Problem!
Photographer: ANIRUDH | Source: Unsplash

Essentially having the ED in your penis is similar to having a heart attack, a penis attack. You're not getting enough blood flow to your penis. Therefore, ED is a blood flow problem.

It's not good if you have ED. Because if you have ED, the predictor of heart disease is in seven to ten years. Why? Because the blood flow problem still exists, and ED is a sign that your body's inflamed and that tells you why that affects the penis first. The artery in the penis is about 1 to 2 millimeters, the smallest in the body.

So when you have ED it's a sign that you're starting to have a blood vessel problem, a vascular problem. It's a window into your health knowing that is good because you can start reversing it when you start having ED.

The Pathway to Get Your Life Back

So the pathway to get your life back is to treat the causes and poor blood flow that lead to ED. One of that pathways is using the six systems that I mentioned before.

There are six easy steps to get hard to sexual approach to sexual restoration:

Brain

Photographer: Robina Weermeijer | Source: Unsplash

Remember I told you that the brain, the five senses in the brain with what you see, what you smell, what you taste, what you hear, and what you touch. Well, let those stimuli all through your brain. Use the sensory stimulus that you have and you can breathe, relax, and get in the mood. Use your five senses, relax your mind, and calm your mind with breathing.

How do you calm your mind by breathing? You breathe in and out through your nose. So you do Box Breathing. Box breathing is you hold for four seconds, breathe for four seconds through your nose, hold for four seconds, and breathe out for four seconds. So when you want to calm your mind, you do that breathing. This breathing is known to relax people and those who want to be in the moment.

You also want to have at least seven hours of sleep. Because when you have seven hours of sleep, your brain reset, your hormones reset, and your body heals. You also definitely want to have REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. Have at least three hours of REM sleep. How do you know you have REM sleep? It’s when you start dreaming.

Emotion

Photographer: Tengyart | Source: Unsplash

Decrease your stress. Try to decrease your stress as much as you can. I know stress is a part of life, but it's how you perceive stress. Again the breathing, the nasal breathing will help you also actually with premature ejaculation. It will help you with not thinking about performance.

A lot of time when I'm treating my patient with ED they think that "Okay, I'm with my woman. I should be ready to get an erection within a few minutes." but they're not thinking about it. They're stressing about how the penis is gonna be. “Am I gonna get be able to get firm this time or am I gonna lose it?” They're thinking about it so much that they're not relaxing their mind at all.

Hormones

Get your hormone tested. If you have ED, get bloodwork. Go see your doctor, and get blood work, I can't tell you how many times I diagnosed my patient with new onset diabetes, high cholesterol, with severe inflammation. They'll come and their blood sugar's like 200, and the hemoglobin A1C is like 12. They haven't gotten blood work done in a decade. And they've been taking ED medication. That's like the dangerous, most dangerous thing you can do. So first thing, get your hormone measured by bloodwork and get your sleep. Again, sleep restore your hormone, your testosterone is made when you're sleeping. Testosterone is made in your testicle, and that's when you sleep, it's how it makes more.

Nerves

How do we fix the nerve? We fix the nerve with shockwave therapy and platelet-rich plasma, certain supplements, using peptides, and Botox.

You can get inject Botox now into the penis. What it does is it will help with the nerves, it increases blood vessels, restore blood flow, and relax the penis muscle.

Blood Vessels

How do you treat the blood vessel? You treat the blood vessels by increasing your nitric oxide. Remember what I said about how you increase your nitrous oxide? Eat more leafy green, and stop using fluoride toothpaste and mouthwash, and stop taking the antacid. You can also increase nitric oxide by taking supplements, such as beet powder and lozenge.

Using your own stem cell from your blood, platelet-rich plasma, shockwave therapy, Botox, and stopping smoking can treat your blood vessels as well. Drink moderate alcohol because alcohol is very inflammatory to your endothelium. It actually will affect your blood flow because alcohol is toxic. You should moderate that, I would suggest about 10 drinks a week. That includes mainly hard alcohol and beer and wine.

To restore your endothelium again be on a Mediterranean diet. The Mediterranean diet advocates more lean meat like fish and chicken, just red meat only once a month, and eating more vegetables and fruits.

For exercise, do High-Intensity Interval Training or HIIT or you may just do walking, 30 minutes a day is enough.

All those restore the endothelium and your blood vessels again. That will help with increasing the blood flow.

Muscles

The last part is the muscle, the penis muscle. How do we restore that? Remember I talked about how “You don't use it, you lose it”. For a man that has ED, let's say you haven't had an erection in like a year, well the penis muscle, hasn't been expanded. There's no blood flow going into the muscle.

So what happened? Over time, it could be every month, the muscles start to atrophy or get smaller. It starts to get more fibers meaning more scar tissue in the muscle. It gets harder for it to expand and to receive more blood flow.

Shockwave helps to restore muscle elasticity. The platelet-rich plasma restores more muscle tissue. Doing Kegel exercises will also help with your erection and the penis muscle. In addition, using a penis pump creates a negative vacuum that will bring more blood into the penis. The penis muscle expands and the penis muscle actually gets oxygen. Botox increases nitric oxide and also will relax the muscles as well.

The Future of ED Treatment

So shockwave therapy and urology are saying that this is going to change the future of ED? Now I do want to point out that the focus shockwave is a class-A medical device that only medical doctors able to use in the office. It's the only one that had been researched and has been documented through research papers to help with ED, not the radial shock wave. Because the radial shock wave machine is more superficial. It doesn't have as much high energy. Also, there is no research that has said that the radial shockwave helped with ED. All the researches are on the focus shockwave.

Additional Resources

For Nitric Oxide Supplements:

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