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Impotence - A Sign of Heart Disease
What do you associate impotence with? Embarrassment? Frustration? Shame? Old age? If your list
ends here you should think again. More often than not, medical doctors associate it with cardiovascular problems.
If you rush into taking impotence drugs, you are doing a huge mistake, doctors say. Because impotence is not
a disease, but rather a symptom of another disease, which in most cases is a cardiovascular one. In fact,
any erectile dysfunction is, or it should be, a warning sign!
A recent study has shown that the arteries of men who suffered from erectile dysfunction expanded in a less
effective way than those of men without erectile problems. This is exactly a sign of underlying heart disease.
Think of it as a plumbing problem: if your kitchen faucet is turned on, but there's no flow, the faucet must be
broken or the pipes must be clogged. Due to a built up of cholesterol, human arteries resemble a clogged pipe:
there's not enough room for blood to flow normally. But that applies to men who suffer from advanced heart disease.
Many men with erectile dysfunction, especially younger ones aren't anywhere near this stage of cardiovascular
deterioration. In their case, the other explanation holds true: the faucet is broken, that is, the blood vessels
inside the penile tissue do not function properly because of the reduced nitric oxide in the endothelium.
Does it sound like Chinese? Let's explain this.
During an erection, the blood flow demands increase. As a consequence, the endothelium (a layer of cells that
lines blood vessels) releases nitric oxide, a substance that helps the expansion of blood vessels.
This makes nitric oxide very important for a normal erectile function. The same substance is very important as
an anti-atherosclerotic agent, to any artery in the human body. If penile arteries are not able to produce enough
nitric oxide, it means the whole body lacks it, including the heart. This is why, erectile dysfunction is the first
symptom of heart disease.
Considering the above, there's no wonder that impotence treating drugs, like Viagra where first studied as cardiac
disease treatment. But then, scientists discovered that substances contained in Viagra like drugs work better for
some categories of tissues rather than for others and obviously, penile tissue is part of the first category.
Hence, Viagra was released on the market as an impotence treating drug.
Looking at the problem from the other side, statins (a class of cholesterol lowering drugs including simvastatin,
atorvastatin, fluvastatin, lovastatin, and pravastatin) are now under study as possible erectile dysfunction treatment.
By definition, statins improve the function of nitric oxide synthase, an enzyme that produces nitric oxide inside
the blood vessels, preventing arteries from clogging and hardening. Of course statins were meant to treat heart
disease, but if studies succeed they can become an effective treatment for erectile dysfunction.
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