Nondrug solutions to achieve erections, part II....

Today's Post: Friday, 8-13-2010

This topic is in the health news this week. The supplement, Enzyte, is said to cause a potentially dangerous heart rhythm change.

Wikipedia lists its ingredients. I’ll come back to that at the end of this post.

Most of its ingredients are safe. But to be effective, taking larger amounts of many of them and taking them separately will get better results. But some people already do or don’t need to take some of them. One I’m not sure is safe or needed. Another causes problems for some people if they take too much. And one likely should be avoided if you take the more desirable one that it may have bad interactions with.

In men who have no vascular injury or nerve damage, THE number one cause is that their blood vessels are so narrowed and stiff from cardiovascular disease they simply aren’t getting the blood flow they need.

So, for them to have better erections and NOT get worse, they need to reverse all the causes of cardiovascular disease.

By itself that may not completely do the job, but it will increase blood flow and improve things. And, it definitely will keep the problem from getting even worse.

It’s also worth noting that if you have ED and are taking the drugs and having success using them, your life may be at risk if you do not ALSO do the things we posted about yesterday. That’s because the amount of cardiovascular disease and compromised blood flow it takes to cause ED means that having ED is like have a flashing red light in your car. In the words Olympic athlete, Bob Richards once used, “Your blood vessels are filled up with crud!”

Then too, if you want the drugs to KEEP working, it’s essential you do the things in yesterday’s post so the underlying problem stops getting even worse!

We covered a review of the key lifestyle upgrades that stop or improve this cardiovascular problem yesterday. If you do them all they both work dramatically better than taking statin drugs and the have none of the de-energizing and harmful side effects of statin drugs. Taking statin drugs without doing them has been shown to be very, very weak protection. And, if you do them, you won’t need statin drugs and their costs and side effects.

Today we cover the other key ways to improve or reduce ED.:

2. Stress can cause problems – bad ones for some people. But there are some solutions.

3. There are some foods and supplements that improve blood flow.

4. Besides exercise, there are other ways to increase testosterone and positive feelings. For this, there are supplements that help.

5. Some people know how to cause erections to begin on demand. Some people know what exercises help them occur and be stronger. But many people do not. And these two methods work best when combined!

I believe that most of the men who are otherwise physically undamaged by serious vascular injury or nerve damage can do well with erections by using all 5 of these steps together. Some may still need Viagra or similar medicines. But not many, and those people will still have better erections and much better health if they have been using these 5 steps.

2. Stress can cause problems – bad ones for some people. But there are some solutions.

In fact, if acute stress or chronic stress is excessive, you can fail to get an erection when you have no other form of ED.

There are three general cures for this.

a) Solve or escape the problem or threat that is causing the stress. This is not always possible or cannot be done quickly at times. But it usually is effective when you can do it.

b) Increase your ability to overcome stress and your stress resilience.

See the problem and describe the problem accurately. Something bad happened or might happen. But if you inaccurately expect it or get even worse or continue forever when that evidence is not yet in and the probability is that it will never show up, your stress reaction is WAY greater than the real situation calls for.

For example, if in a situation you tried several things and none of them worked. You now know you need more resources or to try thing that DO work and you know that this time, the methods you tried did not do the job. Note well that you do NOT know no methods exist you can make work. You do NOT know you will always fail at doing that thing. People who become more skilled or get more resources or find effective methods likely do succeed at it. If you assume you’ll always fail, you’ve made a grave and inaccurate conclusion. Worse, you won’t bother looking for ways to get more resources or find and try better methods or work to increase your skills.

Simply put, this kind of mentally shooting yourself in the foot, is inaccurate and extremely limited thinking. And, it tends to make stress that could be temporary stick around when it could have been avoided.

These better ways of thinking when bad things happen psychologist Martin Seligman, PhD found to be part of “Optimistic” thinking skills.

People who do them well are under less stress and succeed at everything they do more often that people who do not. Even when the problems or challenges are the same.

Write down the resources you do have or are likely able to be add.

Then work to find a way to use them or expand them and try it and repeat as needed.

The more you focus on resources, solutions, adding resources, and doing things to see if they work, the less stress you will be under even though the situation has not changed. Even better, you become dramatically more likely to end the threat that has caused you stress.

One study found that thinking of threats, disasters, and problems as “challenges” in their own minds makes people more resistant to stress. Of course, it is an indicator that people use the thinking skills I just described.

Conversely it is a cue they are giving themselves to use these thinking skills.

c) Increase your physical ability to withstand stress and to relieve the physical reactions to stress.

The number one way to do this is to exercise regularly.

If you do and become fit, stress tends to increase your heart rate less and your heart rate tends to return to normal after stress faster and better than it will if you don’t exercise.

Similarly, if your heart rate is increased by stress and you exercise, when your heart rate drops after exercise due to you taking a rest your heart rate often drops the excess rate from the stress too.

Meditation can also help. The slow and graceful forms of Tai Chi are an ideal skill to learn to relieve stress. You get both exercise and a meditative state at the same time.

There is also some evidence that taking 1,000 to 2,000 mg a day of the amino acid tyrosine increases stress resilience. (Since taking tyrosine also boosts dopamine release and does so more safely and at lower cost than the components of Enzyte do, it is a very good supplement indeed for people trying to stop or improve ED. Even better, it tends to help keep your thyroid working properly which boosts your energy and helps avoid or reverse obesity. That too helps with ED.)

The other kind of stress that can cause ED is performance worry.

This one can be nasty. With no worry, you’re fine. But if you worry you won’t be. Even if you are healthy and would have been OK, if you worry about performing, that can easily stress you enough to cause ED.

There are a number of cures for this one.

Boosting your testosterone is one which we cover below. If your testosterone level is high, it tends to overcome this kind of stress mentally and increases your confidence generally. It also makes is much easier to induce an erection and feel pleasure.

There are another couple of ways to keep this from happening over and over.

One is to know other ways to turn on your lover and cause orgasm. (It used to be if you didn’t know how and knew no one who could tell you how, it could be problematic to learn. Today you can find dozens of books on Amazon that can tell you in detail.) That way, if you don’t have an erection today or it happens a bit later, your lover will still enjoy you. Paradoxically, if your testosterone is high you’ll often find that after your lover is turned on or has had a first orgasm, your erection will show up by you being turned by doing the things that pleasure your lover.

The other one is to have a lover who really is loving and cares about you or knows how to turn you on and is willing to do so. This also can make it be OK if you don’t get an erection sometimes or can make one happen even if it was a no show at first.

Three last fixes that can help are * Humor. If you and your lover laugh together it tends to banish stress. *Watching a porn DVD that both of you get turned on by or one that your lover is OK with but VERY effective for you can both take your mind off stress and cause an erection too. *ONE alcoholic drink sometimes reduces stress and lowers inhibition enough to do the job. (As you probably know, more than one can put you to sleep or reduce your ability to get an erection is a BAD idea.)

3. There are some foods and supplements that improve blood flow.

Taking the supplement L-arginine a bit before your love making and the night before that day, particularly on an empty stomach causes nitric acid release which relaxes your blood vessels and makes them more responsive which increases blood flow. Even 1500 mg or three 500 mg capsules will help. Dr Al Sears even once wrote that one way to diagnose if a man can get an erection is to take 8 grams of arginine just before bedtime because he found that in many men, they will wake the next morning with an erection from the effect.

Since taking L-arginine just before bed and just before vigorous exercise also increases the release of growth hormone, doing so helps slow aging, build and maintain muscle mass, release testosterone, and helps prevent or reduce obesity.

I’ve read that taking the similar supplements, grape seed extract or pycnogenol also helps your body release nitric oxide.

Drinking either tea, or green tea or unsweetened cocoa on an empty stomach and NOT with milk or any kind of sweetener --has also been found to increase blood flow just afterwards. (These are also good for your heart and can help turn off high blood pressure.)

Eating very dark chocolate also works. And since many men and the majority of women love chocolate and get a mental mood lift from it, if both you and your lover have some together, this can work well. (Doing so at least once a week has also been found to slash your chances of having a fatal heart attack too!)

Gingko biloba is thought to increase blood flow. But taking more that the smallest daily dose level, 60 mg once a day, may tend to cause bleeding and even hemorrhagic strokes. It may wise to take 60 mg to help avoid heart attacks and obstructive strokes. But avoid taking more than that. And look more to the other things listed here to increase your blood flow for good erections.

4. Besides exercise, there are other ways to increase testosterone and positive feelings. For this, there are supplements that help.

Regular vigorous exercise is the number one way to do this. Taking the supplement tribulus causes testosterone release.

I also found out from Doctor Al Sears that taking the supplement DIM and avoiding plastic food containers and pollutants in your food that contain chemicals that mimic estrogen helps keep your body from turning your testosterone into a form that is NOT effective sexually AND tends to make your prostate grow too much. In short, by avoiding these chemicals and taking DIM your effective or “free” testosterone is higher for any given testosterone release. In short, you get ALL the benefit of your testosterone instead of just part of it.

However, besides avoiding these chemicals, there is a better and safer way to do this than taking DIM. The DIM supplement I was able to find in the health food store was a tablet which means I might get less of the active ingredient than in a capsule. Worse, it smelled like mothballs which likely means some of the unsafe solvents used to extract it are still there in small amounts. So, I’m not sure taking DIM is safe. The much better news is that you can get that much DIM by eating a decent sized serving of raw broccoli sprouts or raw broccoli florets once a day for five to seven days a week. This nonstarchy vegetable helps to prevent or help stop obesity. It helps prevent many kinds of cancer. AND, doing this also has been found to cut the incidence of aggressive prostate cancer in HALF. (It’s been found that cooked broccoli does not have these anti-cancer effects.)

Since increasing testosterone might boost existing prostate cancers, it looks to me as if every man who does so, will get better sexual effects and do so much more safely if they eat raw broccoli or broccoli sprouts often!

Since your body makes testosterone from them, taking DHEA supplements and pregnenolone also increase testosterone. But you don’t need much. 25 mg a day of DHEA and 5 mg a day of pregnenolone are enough to get an effect and may be safer than taking more. (Since the calendar says I’m over 65, I take 75 mg of DHEA. But since the pregnenolone supplement available to me is 10 mg, I only take it three times a week, Monday, Weds, & Friday to come close to averaging 5 mg a day.

Supplements that boost dopamine increase pleasure and sex response. They may also help prevent or stop depression recent research suggests.

There are 3 supplement thought to be effective.

Tyrosine is the best I think. It’s effective and has other health benefits and is quite inexpensive. And it’s safe to take.

Both macuna pruriens and muira puama are though to work. But they cost more than tyrosine and have not been as well tested for purity or safety.

(Maca has people who believe it works and it may do some good; but the research done that I read suggests it’s ineffective at dopamine release.)

(I’m far less impressed with “horny goat weed.” This may be the ingredient in Enzyte that causes the heart rhythm problems because virtually all its other ingredients are safe from what I’ve read. I tried it and found it ineffective at doing any libido boost; but it did give me a headache. It also tends to be expensive and come blended with herbs I know nothing about.)

5. Some people know how to cause erections to begin on demand. Some people know what exercises help them occur and be stronger. But many people do not. And these two methods work best when combined!

(This section borders on being X rated. So skip it if that would bother you to read.)

Did you know that men have a sexual pleasure ON button that works nearly as reliably as a light switch?

The majority of gay men know this and virtually all experienced prostitutes do I found out when I read something one of them wrote. She could give her clients erections even when they were not that horny and even when they didn’t believe her technique would work on them!

I discovered it on my own initially. I read that many of the sexual parts on women and men had some basic similarities. And, I knew that most women get turned on when their nipples are stimulated. So, I tried it on myself.

I was quite literally astounded and continue to be at how reliable, powerful and profound the effect truly is.

Even if I’m totally NOT erect or sexually excited physically, I begin to feel very enjoyable pleasure in that part of me. And, if I’m not stressed I begin within 20 to 30 seconds or even less to get an erection. It really is as if I’d pushed a secret on button for light. The effect feels almost that electric. And, that’s NOT all! Far from it. I begin to feel calm and glad I began stimulating my nipples and even glad to be alive! Wow! (Apparently, doing this directly stimulates strong dopamine, endorphin, and oxytocin release to achieve these effects.)

As long as it’s not severe, this even works if I’m stressed if my wife or I keep doing it for a minute or two.

For the next part of this I am indebted to the late psychologist and sex therapist, Bernie Zibergeld and the book he wrote on helping older men successfully stay sexually competent.

All men have a muscle that is under their conscious control even in an untrained state that acts to increase the firmness and pleasurable sensations in their erection – once they have one at all.

Women who exercise this muscle doing what are called “Kegels, which are repetitions of squeezing the muscle tight have orgasms more easily and often, have easier childbirth if they have kids, and are more likely to avoid urinary incontinence and uterine prolapse when they get older.

The muscle lies underneath a man’s balls and is the same one he uses to hold back or stop urine flow. It’s also connected to the similar muscle around the anus.

Zibergeld found that in his clients with weak erections, if they did these Kegels regularly several times each week, their erections got firmer and continued to be firmer as long as they did the exercises.

The problem is that done by themselves, they are easy to neglect because if you have no erection, they can be pretty boring to do. There’s nothing to see for one thing.

No problem at all!

Simply stimulate your nipples at the same exact time as you squeeze this muscle. Just as you flick or caress the end of the nipple, squeeze the muscle. You’ll find no problem doing the exercises often. Through simple classic conditioning, every squeeze of the muscle happens just as you get a burst of pleasure. Even better, instead of being invisible and feeling as if it doesn’t do that much, you’ll see and feel the effects in your erection.

So, there are quite a list of things you can do to achieve erections or stronger ones that do NOT depend on drugs to work. Most of them also protect your health improve your life in other ways.

That makes them even more beneficial to do!