Impotence Investigation: Do Herbal Sex Supplements Work?

Both men and women experience sexual health problems, which can have a knock-on effect on the rest of your wellness. Your sex life plays an important role in your relationship, not to mention your overall sense of wellbeing, which is why many people turn to all kinds of methods to get their arousal and performance back on track. Herbal supplements are a prime favourite with those wanting to boost their sexual experience without going the medical Viagra route, but do they actually work, and are they safe?

 

According to Marc Bonnard, MD, a psychiatrist specializing in sex therapy and the author of The Viagra Alternative, certain herbs may actually have an advantage over pharmaceutical alternatives. He writes, ‘Herbs work in a more leisurely fashion,’ replacing the balance between your mind and body that is ‘so important for a positive sexual experience.’ Certain physiological functions – such as hormonal imbalances and poor circulation – contribute to sexual dysfunction, and alternative treatments aim to fix these faulty functions. However, even though this supplements are marketed as “all-natural” and you don’t need a prescription, Bonnard, like other experts, warns that these products are potentially potent and can have toxic side effects. That said, let’s take a closer look at some of the herbal ingredients you’ll find in popular sexual supplements:

 

1. Damiana: The leaves and stems of the damiana plant are used as an aphrodisiac in Mexico, but here in the UK you can get the sex-boosting plant in tablet form. You can also prepare the dry leaves in a tea, but the Mayo Clinic does warn that the product has not been tested in humans – so tread with caution.

 

2. DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone): Your adrenal glands produce this hormone naturally, which aids in the production of sex hormones testosterone and oestrogen. In men with low testosterone levels, some small studies have shown promise in helping these participants improve their sexual function. However, you can only blame a small number of impotence problems on low testosterone.

 

3. Ginkgo: Bonnard points out that ginkgo seeds and leaves can help men with erectile dysfunction by getting ‘the blood flowing to the right spots.’ Yet the Mayo Clinic counters that there is not solid evidence to show that ginkgo works effectively against impotence. Moreover, both Bonnard and the Mayo Clinic agree that the plant can be dangerous, especially if you are on prescription blood-thinning medication. This is because gingko can affect the clotting of your blood.

 

4. Ginseng: Used as an aphrodisiac in Asia, this aromatic root is used as and has been shown to have some energy-boosting properties, albeit without any evidence to prove that ginseng has a direct impact on impotence. However, we could all use a little more energy in the bedroom, so use this dried root in powder or liquid form, or prepared as a tea to be sipped slowly.

 

5. Kava: While Bonnard admits that kava probably won’t do the trick for cases of ‘true ED,’ the root has a positive effect on your mood, which may help to resolve your sexual troubles – such as low libido – that are affected by stress and your emotions.

 

6. L-Arginine: This is an amino acid found naturally in fish, peanuts and beans. L-arginine works to increase the amounts of nitric oxide in your bloodstream, which, in turn, increases your blood flow. While little scientific research into this amino acid has been undertaken, L-arginine should work against impotence, theoretically speaking, as an erection requires blood flow to the penis.

 

7. Maca Root. This Peruvian herb has been shown to improve the penis functon in male lab rats, and anecdotal reports from men assert that it can jump-start your sexual systems. However, it is yet to be tested in humans.

Categories: amino acid, Blood, blood flow, bonnard, herbal sex supplements, Impotence, mayo clinic, nbsp, sexual, sexual experience, sexual function

How Blood Flow Problems Impact Your Sexual Arousal

When you think about sexual arousal, you tend to think of it as the same thing as wanting to have sex. However, sexual arousal is actually the second phase of lovemaking. First, you want to have sex and then you become aroused through foreplay and intimacy. This makes it easier to understand how sexual health issues impact on your wellness. If your mind says yes but your body doesn’t listen, your wellbeing may be affected by sexual arousal disorder (SAD). SAD – not to be confused with seasonal affective disorder – is defined, medically speaking, as a persistent or recurring inability to maintain sexual responses during the excitement stage of sexual activity. This means you are unable to maintain adequate genital lubrication, swelling or other responses, such as nipple sensitivity. As you need the blood vessels in your genital region to swell for your vagina to become lubricated, any impediment to blood flow could potentially cause SAD. This includes:

 

1. Pelvic surgery: There are 600,000 hysterectomies performed each year and, according to Drs. Jennifer and Laura Berman, two of the nation’s top experts on sexual health for women and authors of Women Only: A Revolutionary Guide to Overcoming Sexual Dysfunction and Reclaiming Your Sex Life, the research on this procedure is contradictory. The Berman sisters note that while some studies claim that hysterectomies can improve your sex life, others have shown negative results. These include decreased vaginal lubrication and a loss of genital sensation, even if the surgery spares your ovaries. The Bermans point out that having your cervix removed and your nerves injured during surgery can severely compromise your blood flow, thereby setting the stage for SAD to impact your wellbeing.

 

2. Childbirth trauma: If suction or forceps causes vaginal tearing, you might find some nerve and vascular damage to your vagina. This leads to problems with sensation in your vagina and clitoris. If you’re breast-feeding, it’s not uncommon to experience decreased lubrication due to your body’s elevated level of the hormone prolactin.

 

3. Blood flow diseases: If you have coronory heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, or high cholesterol, any one of these diseases can get in the way of the blood flow to your pelvic region and, as a result, reduce your ability to become aroused. You may think that high-blood-pressure medications, such as beta-blockers, can help to address this issue; but you’d be wrong; weirdly and ironically enough, beta-blockers can actually cause sexual dysfunction. Because of this, the Bermans asserts, calcium channel blockers have become more popular as a treatment for heart disease, as they have less of an impact on your sexual function. If you have a blood flow disease and are experiencing loss of sexual function, calcium channel blockers may be a good option for you, so speak to your GP.

 

4. Hormonal changes: As a woman, there are many things in life that can influence the balance of your hormones. Fluctuations can be instigated by the onset of menopause, childbirth or medications. If you take progestin-dominant birth control pills, for example, you might find that you experience a loss of libido and vaginal dryness. This latter side-effect is also a common complaint of women who take medications to prevent recurrence of breast cancer, such as Tamoxifen. However, the biggest and most dramatic change will be from a drop in oestrogen, which occurs when you go through menopause. With less oestrogen in your system, your vagina will lose lubrication, and you’ll also go through a number of other unpleasant symptoms. If you’re going through menopause, or any of the above causes of reduced blood flow, speak to your doctor about your options.

Categories: arousal, Beta Blockers, blood flow, blood pressure, calcium channel, hormonal changes, sex life, sexual arousal, sexual dysfunction, sexual function, sexual health

No Muscle, Energy or Sex Drive? He Must Have Low Oestrogen

As you get older, wellness experts are likely to blame your waning testosterone levels for your loss of muscle, energy and sex drive, but oestrogen might be getting off scot-free as a result. This is according to a new study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, which found that your decrease in oestrogen may play a bigger role in your age-related health concerns than previously thought.

 

The study found that declining levels of oestrogen can have a negative effect on your wellbeing, leading you to accumulate more body fat – which is something that we previously blamed testosterone for. Study researcher Dr. Joel Finkelstein, an endocrinologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, commented, ‘The function of oestrogen in men has largely been ignored,’ as research has largely limited the study of the hormone in men to the role of oestrogen deficiency in bone loss. He added, ‘Men make oestrogen from testosterone, and women do, too,’ which is why your levels of both hormones naturally drop.

 

400 healthy men aged 20 to 50, all of whom had normal testosterone levels, took part in the study. These participants were injected with a drug that drastically lowered their normal production of the hormone, until the testosterone reached pre-puberty levels of production. 198 men were then given a 16-week supply of testosterone gel for their skin, in one of four dosage levels or a placebo. Similar doses of the gel were given to the other 202 volunteers, but these men also took a drug designed to block the conversion of testosterone into oestrogen over the 16-week study.

 

The divvying out of the gel and drug doses was arranged in such a way as to tell the researchers which symptoms – changes in body fat, muscle mass, strength and sexual function – were to do with reductions in testosterone, oestrogen or both. The researchers also arranged the study in this way to determine the level of testosterone at which these physiological effects occur. The results revealed that when oestrogen levels drop, men experience some of the same consequences that women do after menopause; increased bone loss, lowered libido, and more fat around the midsection.

 

While changes in strength and muscle mass and size were closely connected to lower testosterone levels, it was the decline of both testosterone and oestrogen that reduced the men’s sex drive and erectile function. Finkelstein noted, ‘We were surprised at the dramatic effects that low levels of oestrogen had on fat accumulation and sexual function in men. We knew that these effects were seen in studies on mice, and these results very accurately predicted what occurred in humans.’

 

According to Dr. Bradley Anawalt, an endocrinologist and professor of medicine at the University of Washington Medical School in Seattle, who was not involved in the research, ‘This is a beautifully done study that allows physicians to get a little better handle on interpreting testosterone levels, but the real mind-blower of this study is the idea that oestrogen has an important role in male physiology.’ Anawalt went on to say that the study has very important implications for medical practice, as the results clearly show how testosterone has a differential effect on body organs, such as fat, muscle, the penis and the brain.

 

With the results of this study, your doctor will be better able to understand the threshold levels of testosterone in the blood associated with age-related complaints, and at what levels testosterone therapy may benefit you. However, Anawalt warned that the study is limited by the fact that it used the average “normal” level of testosterone in men (300 to 900 nanograms per decilitre) to measure treatment outcomes in the participants, so your doctor needs to be careful about applying these results to you as an individual.

Categories: age related, bone loss, men's health, muscle energy, muscle mass, oestrogen, Research, Sex Drive, sexual function, Testosterone, testosterone levels

Sex After Spine Surgery: Is It Possible?

You might thank of having spinal surgery as a very serious procedure – especially as it is mainly done to people later in life. Indeed, there are certain spinal deformities that come with age that require surgery on them. It doesn’t seem like a great combination, does it? The advancing age along with the clear spinal problems that has necessitated surgery. So it would be easy to believe that after the surgery is completed, there would be no chance of a normal sex life resuming. However, now it seems that these preconceived notions might be wrong, and there may be a happy ending waiting for spinal surgery patients and their sex lives after all.

 

The good news comes in the form of a new study. In this study a team of surgeons from the University of Virginia Health Center in Charlottesville looked into the sexual function of 62 patients who were 50 years and older and who had received extensive spinal surgery to deal with age-related problems – and the results might be surprising. It seems that the team found out that it is indeed highly possible for older people to achieve satisfactory sexual function and enjoy their sex lives despite having this surgery. This is good news, as surgery is often thought of as a drastic procedure that could have lasting damage on your ability to live your life the way you did before the surgery.

 

In the study, the surgery was described as using spinal instrumentation. This instrumentation would be considered a device or a serious of complex devices such as screws, hooks, rods, wires, cables, plates or spinal cage, which is attached to vertebrae of spine to help to deal with or correct some sort of deformity and instability of the spine. These types of instruments and surgery are used in patients who suffer with spinal disorders caused by advanced age, but could also be used for those who suffer from congenital defects, illness, or trauma.

 

It was suggested by the study that it is well known that weakness or deformity of the spine is a fairly common sign of aging and can be seen in many older people. The authors were even able to cite another study that reported that the likelihood of spinal deformity in the elderly might be as high as 68 per cent. This is a truly huge number when you consider that the number of elderly people is always increasing thanks to healthier lifestyles and a better understanding of how to treat our bodies right. Nevertheless, this spinal deformity often appears to be purely a natural symptom of age that we can do nothing about.

 

Indeed, it could be argued that as the baby-boomer section of the population naturally moves toward the status of being ‘elderly’, more and more surgeries will likely need to be performed to correct spinal deformity and improve their quality of life as they inexorably get older. And it is certainly true that sexual function is a very important aspect of health-related quality of life. However, it always appears to have been largely overlooked as an important factor in older adults with spinal instrumentation. The surgeons who are authors of this paper made it their goal to examine whether and how spinal instrumentation affects these patients’ sexual function and contributes in that way to their quality of life.

 

Overall, it is clear that the patients who require spinal surgery can lead a normal and healthy sex life after they have had spinal instrumentation inserted inside them. This is naturally very good news for their quality of life.

Categories: Sex, sex lives, sexual function, spinal deformity, spinal instrumentation, spinal surgery, spine, surgery