The Underlying Cause

By Author: Steven Johnson
Total Articles: 494
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Because the effect of erectile dysfunction is so emotionally devastating to the men it affects, most focus on restoring natural service without stopping to ask why the erections have failed. While this is understandable, it's not sensible. There are a number of potentially serious physical conditions that can produce erectile dysfunction as a symptom. If you have a full check-up and these conditions are diagnosed early, preventative treatment can keep you alive for many extra years. The price of ignoring the risks and hoping for the best may be an increasingly severe health problem and life cut short. Why is this?

The actual cause of erectile dysfunction is the failure of the walls in the penile artery to dilate when expected. Or, if the erection forms, the early contraction of the artery which cuts off the erection. Ask a doctor about arteries and the most common word you will hear in the answer is artherosclerosis. This is a slow build-up of platelets on the walls of blood vessels. It most often happens when you have an excess of fats in the bloodstream. Over time, these platelets harden. There are two results. First, ...
... the muscles cannot dilate and contract the blood vessels. Second, it produces a slow but steady increase in blood pressure as the deposits block the vessels. Now a simple proportion sum. The penile artery is about one-quarter the size of the arteries passing through the lungs into the heart. So, what you see first in the penile artery is what you are likely to see in the heart in the future. How far ahead?

The statistics show clearly that if the erectile dysfunction affects you under the age of 40 years, you have about three years before you will show symptoms of heart disease and five years before you can expect a heart attack. So, to quote from a famous movie, ". . .you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya?"

To some extent, the decision has been taken out of your hands. If you do go consult your regular doctor or some other primary care physician, and admit erectile dysfunction, the expected response is to treat you as a potential victim of heart disease. Without you having to ask, your doctor should perform all the usual tests to detect any possible problems in your blood vessels. With preventative treatment cheap and trouble free, this should protect your health. More importantly, with a proper diagnosis, the treatment for the erectile dysfunction can also be far better targeted. If all you do is order Cialis online, hoping that will cure your problems, this may work for a few months. But this drug is not treating the artherosclerosis and, no matter how many pills you take, the blockage in your penile artery is going to accelerate. Six to twelve months after you start taking the Cialis, it will stop working and, by then, it may be too late to produce an overall cure for the problem. Although there are some experimental procedures to insert a stent into the penis, once the damage is done to the arterial walls, it is too late.