Did you start smoking as a teenager because you thought it looked ‘cool’? After all, your friends were all doing it and they had no trouble attracting members of the opposite sex. Therefore, you thought having a rebellious streak might be just what you needed to affect your sex life!
As it turns out, you were right on the money in thinking smoking would affect that aspect of your life! Unfortunately though not the way you thought it would. Quite the opposite in fact. Numerous studies now show that smoking adversely affects erectile function, causing a dysfunction commonly referred to as impotency. Whilst impotence is normally thought of as something that affects older guys, it actually has no age boundaries when it comes to men who smoke…. In a nutshell, if you smoke, or you once smoked, you are at far greater risk of suffering from impotence, regardless of your age, than men who have never taken up the habit.
Smoking is linked to a range of other detrimental health problems too! It has long been implicated in coronary artery blockage, but research has found it damages penile blood vessels as well. In fact, the more you smoke, the more you’re clogging not just your coronary arteries but also arteries to other parts of your body. Including your penis. As you know, an erection is caused by increased blood flow to the area. However, if your penile arteries are blocked you’re going to have a bit of trouble with that.
How does that work?
Nicotine contains compounds that restrict blood flow by tightening arteries. These types of substances are called vasoconstrictors. Long term ingestion of vasoconstrictors can wind up causing permanent damage to arterial walls. Incidentally, caffeine is also a vasoconstrictor so if you enjoy a cup of strong coffee with your cigarette, you’re increasing your risk of constricted arteries. Furthermore, the bad news is that you only need to smoke as few as 2 cigarettes a day to notice a detrimental effect on your erectile function. Even more alarming is the fact that even men who have given up the habit STILL have erectile dysfunction issues long after they’ve stopped.
A research review project undertaken in 2001 took a good look at all the previous 2 decades worth of research done on men who suffered from erectile dysfunction. By the end of the review, researchers were able to conclude, based on the results of all the research they’d reviewed, that a whopping 40% of men who suffered from erectile problems were, or had been, smokers. In other words, according to the research, almost one half of ED sufferers are smokers. In non-smokers, that percentage was just 28%.
Smoking doesn’t limit its effects to erectile function either! Research also shows that it adversely affects sperm. For instance, when the semen of smokers was examined under a microscope, researchers found a common theme happening. Smokers invariably have:
- less sperm,
- more malformed sperm, and
- reduced sperm mobility courtesy of nicotine by-products
By now you’ve probably realized that a spontaneous decision made many years ago was not the wisest lifestyle choice you’ve ever made! Whilst products like the Dragons Den erectile dysfunction pill can help, they’ll work even more effectively if you also quit the habit that gave you ED problems in the first place. As for the pills, you may have seen or heard about them via the Dragons Den ED episode.
