Rense.com



Impotence Linked To
Heart Attack Risk

By Ed Edelson
HealthDay Reporter
11-12-3


(HealthDayNews) -- Impotence can signal heart trouble in men.
 
The sexual problem, also known as erectile dysfunction, was associated with a more than threefold higher risk of heart attack, a long-running study of more than 2,000 men finds.
 
Lead researcher Dr. Steven J. Jacobsen, a professor of epidemiology at the Mayo Clinic, reported the findings Nov. 11 at the American Heart Association's annual conference in Orlando, Fla.
 
Jacobsen and his colleagues reviewed data on sexual function and cardiovascular disease from a study of the men from Olmsted County, Minn., that covered the years 1979-98.
 
The precise relationship between impotence and heart problems is unclear. The reason: Questions about sexual function were added to the study only in 1996. So the number of heart attacks among men in the group since then was too small to allow definite conclusions, Jacobsen says.
 
"But there is an association," he says. "We can't say that it is cause-and-effect, but erectile dysfunction is a marker for future events of cardiovascular disease."
 
"Overall," Jacobsen adds, "men with a [heart attack] from 1979 to 1995 were 3.5 times more likely to have erectile dysfunction in 1996 than men who did not have" a heart attack.
 
The finding can be put to everyday medical use both by urologists, who treat erectile dysfunction, and cardiologists, he says.
 
"Urologists should ask about cardiovascular disease as well," Jacobsen says. "For physicians seeing men with cardiovascular disease, erectile dysfunction is an issue to be addressed."
 
Dr. Sidney Smith, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina and a spokesman for the American Heart Association, says the new research supplies evidence to support what many physicians have already been doing.
 
"For years we have known about a relationship between vascular disease and erectile dysfunction," Smith says. "This finding should place further emphasis on the need for physicians to think beyond erectile dysfunction and at least assess these patients for cardiovascular risk, asking whether there are symptoms of chest pain, for example."
 
Jacobsen reiterates that the physical mechanism that links erectile dysfunction with heart trouble remains unclear. But Viagra, the popular drug for treatment of impotence, was once considered as a potential therapy for angina, the chest pain caused by narrowed blood vessels, he says.
 
Viagra works against impotence because it enhances the effects of nitric oxide, a chemical that relaxes smooth muscles in the penis and allows increased blood flow.
 
Copyright © 2003 <http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/hsn/SIG=10r2efrkl/
*http://www.healthday.com/>HealthDay. All rights reserved.
 
 
Comment
From Pam Rotella
11-12-3
 
"The precise relationship between impotence and heart problems is
unclear."
 
Not true. This relationship has been studied and understood for decades, if not longer. They're both children of the same condition, the main reason to avoid cholesterol and trans-fats.
 
Arteriosclerosis/atherosclerosis is an equal-opportunity disease. While small arteries supplying blood to the heart are clogging up, so are other arteries in the body. By the time arteriosclerosis reaches this point, the patient is at risk for heart attacks, strokes, impotence, and any other circulatory disease... probably isn't running marathons any more, either, or even around the block.

Comment
Buzz D.
11-12-3

Although Pam is correct, in one diagnostic sense, there is a secondary and more common cause of impotence in men which has nothing to do with blood flow. When an erection occurs, blood not only flows to the penis, but becomes trapped in the penis by constricting/expanding tissues. This is what maintains the rigidity and even resizes the penis in most cases, length and girth. In most cases of impotency, this effect isn't happening, the blood flows in and right back out. There is a hormonal trigger related to Melatonin which decreases in the male as he gets older -- worse for some than others; this trigger is what tells the tissue in the penis to expand and trap the blood for the duration of the erection until ejaculation. This is what viagra changes, it sparks that trigger and turns it on. As many reports indicate, it turns it on and doesn't turn it off for many hours, so a lot of men have painful erections for hours. Ouch. Almost all impotent men still have partial and lasting erections at odd times during naps or in the early morning upon waking -- why? Because that is when the Melatonin is at its highest in the bloodstream. Unfortunately Melatonin taken orally doesn't solve the problem, it just makes you sleepy, though many men report "morning wood" effects from Melatonin. I suppose if ones lover can stand a sleepy sex partner, it beats nothing at all!
 

Disclaimer

 


MainPage
http://www.rense.com

This Site Served by TheHostPros