Give Erectile Dysfunction the Cold Shoulder

As we age, a healthy sex life continues to bring joy. Mature love, wisdom, and respect can make it sweeter than the sex you experienced as a 25 or 30 year old. But that’s only if you and your partner are also physically healthy and responsive.

In Let’s Take Care of Our Men Part I, we looked at general prostate health and avoiding prostate cancer. In Part II we’ll focus on keeping the prostate and genitals naturally healthy for sex.

Some 30 million men in the U.S. suffer from erectile dysfunction. There can be many reasons for it, including high blood pressure, diabetes, drinking too much alcohol or taking recreational drugs, and prostate cancer.

Current treatments range from counseling to hormonal replacement, penile implants, and vascular surgery.

And there are the oral medications — with their ads featuring twin bathtubs, pulling trucks out of the mud, and mid-life flirting on the porch swing. While such medications are enticing quick fixes, they don’t necessarily get to the root of the problem—or offer long-term solutions.

If your partner has erectile dysfunction, start with an open discussion. You’ll need to lend your support and love: Join him on doctor visits. Stay patient and positive. Find alternative ways to physically enjoy and appreciate one another.

And try a natural approach: Over time, studies consistently show that a healthy lifestyle can prevent and even reverse erectile dysfunction. And that while you’re boosting your ability to have sex, you’re also enhancing your heart, nerves, vascular system, and psyche.

A recent report from Harvard reveals that men who exercise 30 minutes daily are 40 percent less likely to develop ED than couch potatoes. And there’s more. The report’s five natural tips have seen consistently strong results:

Walk 30 minutes a day.
Eat a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.
Keep your blood pressure in check (through lifestyle change and/or medications).
Stay slim. (A man with a 42-inch waistline is more likely to have ED than one with a measure of 32!)
Make your pelvic floor superman strong through Kegel exercises. (A 2005 British study showed that combining lifestyle changes with Kegels had amazing results—far more than lifestyle changes alone.)

We feature the time-honored Kegel in our book 500 Time-Tested Home Remedies and the Science Behind Them. The exercise ensures that during an erection the pelvic floor stays rigid and presses on an important vein, keeping blood in the penis.

First, locate the pelvic floor muscles, below the bladder; do this during urination. (You use the same mus­cles to stop yourself from passing gas.)

Partway through urination, contract those muscles to stop the urine flow. Don’t hold your breath or tense other muscles in your abdomen, legs, or buttocks. When you interrupt the flow, you’ve located the correct muscles. Also, the contraction causes your testicles and base of your penis to rise.

From now on, perform Kegels when you’re not urinat­ing. (Over time that weakens rather than strengthens pelvic floor muscles.)

Next: With an empty bladder, lie on your back on a firm surface.

Count to five, slowly contracting the pelvic floor muscles you located above.

Counting to five again, slowly relax the pelvic floor muscles.

Repeat this pair of movements ten times for one full set. Do three sets daily.

Work up to counting to ten and doing five sets daily.

As your muscles become stronger, do the exercise while standing—to increase muscle control. If you’re unsure how to locate the muscles, ask your doctor to help you.

Stay happy, healthy, and sexy,