Erectile dysfunction can be sign of heart problems
Erectile dysfunction sufferers 60% more likely to suffer heart attack or angina
By Tom Keenan, Calgary Herald
Famous New York City publisher Al Goldstein used to rate the erotic appeal of porn flicks on the Peter Meter in his now-defunct Screw magazine. Now, doctors are using the quality of erections to predict something much more serious – the likelihood of a heart attack.
Researchers at the Sax Institute in Sydney, Australia crunched questionnaires and hospital admission data for over 95,000 Australian men aged 45 and over. Their key finding was that erectile dysfunction is a pretty good predictor of future cardiovascular disease.
In fact, they concluded that “risks of (cardiovascular disease) and death increased steadily with severity of erectile dysfunction.”
Comparing men reporting severe erectile dysfunction to those who say they have no erectile problems yielded a risk ratio of 1.6 for ischemic heart disease.
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Statistically, the erectile dysfunction group was 60 per cent more likely to experience a medical condition relating to impaired blood flow to the heart – anything from angina pain to a heart attack.
Other ailments such as heart failure and peripheral vascular disease were also more likely in men with erectile dysfunction.
The authors certainly don’t suggest that erectile dysfunction causes cardiovascular disease. They do, however, consider it a “biomarker” that can help doctors evaluate “the severity of underlying pathological processes such as atherosclerosis and endothelial dysfunction.”
This has been pointed out before, in studies such as the landmark Massachusetts Male Aging study in 2004.
What’s new is the finding that the degree of erectile dysfunction is such a good indicator of poor blood flow in other parts of the body.
Commenting on their results, the researchers suggest that erectile dysfunction may provide an early warning of “silent heart disease” and they urge men to discuss erectile dysfunction openly with their physicians.
Sometimes even those sexy TV ads for uplifting drugs are not enough to persuade a guy to ask what is often called the “hand on the door question” (because it tends to be asked at the end of a visit to the doctor.)
Nipping a possibly fatal heart problem while its still treatable may provide further incentive to overcome the natural embarrassment.
The erectile dysfunction data gathered in this survey was all self-reported, so there could be some fudging or wishful thinking.
Still, it’s such a large sample size that the numbers bear quoting.
But first, we need to understand what the degrees of erectile dysfunction actually mean.
Fortunately, there’s a single question for that.
Are you (always, usually, sometimes, never) able to get an erection good enough for sexual intercourse? Those four choices map into the erectile dysfunction categories of none, mild, moderate, and severe.
The Australian investigators found the rates of severe erectile dysfunction among study participants were 2.2 per cent for men aged 45 to 54 years, 6.8 per cent for men aged 55 to 64 years, 20.2 per cent for men aged 65 to 74 years, 50 per cent for men aged 75 to 84 years, and 75.4 per cent for men aged 85 years and over.
There are technological ways to measure tumescence, often on an overnight basis, to see if a man is capable of achieving an erection.
Real-life Peter Meters have ranged from the simple expedient of attaching postage stamps to see if the perforations get broken to high-tech mercury filled gizmos called plethysmographs.
In fact, there’s a whole, if somewhat questionable, science around penile plethysmography. The device was first developed in the 1950s in Czechoslovakia, and used on men seeking military exemptions on the grounds of homosexuality.
In 2010, it came to light that Youth Forensic Services in Burnaby, B.C., had been using the plethysmography for years – on adolescent boys in their custody who were suspected of sexual misconduct, as a sort of genital lie detector.
Supposedly in the interest of planning their treatment, staffers exposed young males to provocative images and suggestive audiotapes, while measuring their degree of arousal.
Aside from the inherent creepiness of all this, These devices are notoriously unreliable, and subject to operator error and faking by the subject.
For these reasons, plethysmography results are generally not admissible in court as evidence.
When the story broke, the B.C. Ministry of Children and Family Development decided to permanently cancel the use of phallometric testing.
In 2011, a panel of experts reviewed the practice and concluded that it is not possible to come to a definitive finding about the effectiveness of plethysmography testing in terms of the treatment of youth sexual offenders. However, they advised against reinstating the program.
We’ve come a long way since the days when Goldstein was rating movies in his magazine, and the Czechs were trying to ferret out non-gay draft dodgers. Still, the good old Peter Meter keeps popping up, for both good and bad reasons.
Dr. Tom Keenan is an award winning journalist, public speaker, and professor in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary.
Category: Health
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