The same medical literature shows that weight loss and physical activity improve erectile dysfunction, that they are key actions you can take to improve your arteries. The Prescription for Life plan not only helps prevent heart disease but also helps prevent erectile dysfunction. And equally important, it can help prevent further worsening of your heart disease as well as further worsening of your erectile dysfunction.
One very interesting study done in England took two groups of men, one from a clinic that was treating men with known disease of their cardiac arteries. They had had heart attacks or chest pain or had to have stents placed in their heart arteries. Everyone in this first group was in a cardiac rehab program, being educated and treated for heart disease. The men in the second group were similar in age to those in the first group, but were being seen for illness other than with their hearts.
So group one had known disease of the arteries in their hearts, and group two did not have any history of heart problems. Both groups were asked if they had erectile dysfunction and, if so, how severe it was.
The finding showed that the group with known heart disease had the most erectile dysfunction. The unique part of this study is that they found out why group one had more dysfunction than the men who didn’t have heart problems.
Here are the numbers. Sixty-six percent of group one with known blockage of their arteries in their hearts reported that they had erectile dysfunction. In group two, the ones who had no heart problems, only 37 percent had erectile dysfunction. Both groups had erectile dysfunction, but almost twice as many had it in the group with the known bad heart arteries than in the group without heart problems.
The interesting part of the study is that they compared the duration of the erectile dysfunction within the two groups. In the group with known heart problems, the erectile dysfunction had begun five years before they had their heart symptoms. And on top of that, they reported that once they had their heart attack or angina, the erectile dysfunction became significantly worse. The dysfunction went from moderate to severe, as reported in the study.
The conclusion of the study, which was titled “The Temporal Relationship between Erectile Dysfunction and Cardiovascular Disease,” showed that erectile dysfunction may precede a heart event by as much as five years. That is a great warning statistic to implant in your mind: if you have erectile dysfunction, potentially something could happen to your heart within five years down the road.
Anyone who has erectile dysfunction should begin developing strategies for eating the proper food, getting to an ideal weight, and having a personal exercise program. The reason I say “anyone who has erectile dysfunction” rather than “anyone who has erectile dysfunction plus has any of the risk factors recently mentioned for cardiac disease” is that this study predicts that a significant number of the men in the second group who had the dysfunction but no known cardiac disease will develop cardiac problems within the next five years.
One step further: this study should awaken you to the realization that if you don’t have erectile dysfunction or cardiac problems and do not want to have them in the future, you should get started on preventing either from happening.
Erectile Dysfunction and Heart Attacks
Someone with erectile dysfunction is almost twice as likely to die from a heart attack as someone without the problem. I’ll give you the actual numbers.
A medical study focused on fifteen hundred men who had no heart problems when the study began. They were divided into two groups, one with men who already had erectile dysfunction when the study began, and one with men who did not. The death rate of the men who had erectile dysfunction was 11.3 percent compared to only 5.6 percent for the men who had only mild or no erectile problems when the study began. This is why you need to realize you are not just talking about a sex problem but are talking about life and death—arterial problems. It’s not just about the penile artery not being able to get enough blood flow into tissue to cause an erection; the problem can be a red flag, warning there could be partial blockage in the arteries of your heart.
So often the first symptom of any heart disease is a heart attack, which many times proves fatal. It would be helpful if some alarm could go off to warn of the attack—especially if the person could do something to prevent the heart attack completely. Erectile dysfunction is that alarm in a significant number of men. It is an alarm that informs them they can change their lifestyle to help prevent that initial heart attack from ever taking place.
Many studies show that the more severe the erectile dysfunction, the worse the cardiovascular disease. They show a stepwise increase in risk of heart arterial disease in direct proportion to the severity of the erectile dysfunction. In other words, the worse the erectile dysfunction, the worse the arteries of the heart were.
Erectile dysfunction plus known heart risk factors equals an urgency for a lifestyle change to the Prescription for Life plan. Anyone with such a combination should visit a cardiologist for a complete evaluation of your coronary arteries. I say that in all earnestness, because if evidence of arterial blockage is detected early and treated aggressively with lifestyle changes and possibly even medication as an adjunct, many vivacious years can be added to your life. I like to reason that men with erectile dysfunction plus the risk factors of smoking, obesity with a sedentary lifestyle, diabetes, elevated cholesterol numbers, or elevated blood pressure should be considered as having coronary artery problems until proven otherwise.