When you are young, it’s difficult to keep everything in proportion. Emotions run fast and hot. One minute you can be feeling great, the next it’s despair. In fact, it’s remarkable how often you hear a teen suffering some embarrassment or humiliation voice the thought, “I wish I was dead!” Fortunately, very few act on the wish. We all come through these torrid times, hopefully calmer if not wiser. Yet, there are some humiliations men of all ages find it difficult to confront without fear. Erectile dysfunction is one of the more severe tests of calmness. For better or worse, Western culture is strongly “male”. Yes, feminism assumed some importance and equality laws have followed, but the mainstream of behavior still expects the man to be dominant, not just in business but also in the bedroom. If something goes wrong with the ability to deliver erections when they are expected, this undermines a key plank in the structure holding up male self-confidence. Suddenly the man is not quite so macho. He is somehow less than a man.
For some time, the volume of evidence has been growing to prove a link between erectile dysfunction and heart disease. Indeed, the medical profession now view all men presenting with erectile dysfunction as potential heart patients until the contrary is proved. Read more…
It’s a sad fact of modern life that rheumatism in all its many forms is increasingly common. As an inflammatory disease, it’s most likely to affect the joints and connective tissue, and it resists most forms of treatment, i.e. it slowly reduces mobility and causes chronic pain. In some forms such as Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA), the damage goes beyond the joints with organs affected as well. It’s estimated that RA affects about 1% of the world’s population and it most often appears between the ages of 40 and 50. You will understand that 1% is about 670 million people and then you reduce that number to favor older people. Under normal circumstances, we would just tolerate the loss of mobility but there is a more serious problem. RA accelerates the onset of artherosclerosis, and there is very clear evidence to show a significant increase in the rate of people affected by strokes and heart attacks. Even with the full range of modern medicine brought to bear, RA reduces life expectancy. Worse, in its earliest phase, it is most likely to cause erectile dysfunction. With the damage to the arteries apparent in the smaller vessels first, the failure to produce an erection often demonstrates the presence of artherosclerosis.
In the Annual Scientific Meeting run by the American College of Rheumatology this year, a research team from St. James’s Hospital, Dublin reported their findings of a very strong link between RA and erectile dysfunction. The recommendation is that the use of erectile dysfunction as a harbinger should be expanded. Read more…