Exercise and erectile dysfunction.

Lifestyle vs magic pills.

Pic: Ad for magic pills.
I was downtown a couple days ago and saw light-blue pfizer ads for viagra on all the buses and trams. Heavily disguised, of course, cos it's illegal to advertise prescription drugs to the general public, over here ("pfizer" "you can talk about erection." "certainerections.fi").

It's like, argh.

Given these ads, guys have even more performance pressure, which is sure to affect their performance.

Let's think about the idea of magic pills for all our troubles for a while. Viagra for floppy guys is a very good example of this sort of non-thinking.

Most men who have trouble getting it up are elderly, don't exercise all that much, and either are already on heart meds or are getting there.

It's precisely these folks who'll die when they overstrain, having sex with the help of viagra. Not the best of strategies, Pfizer, where your customers suddenly stop buying your products - sudden death, ahhah, I kill myself, ahhah again, I'm so funny.

If you're not elderly, and if you exercise, sleep enough, make sure you're not overstressed, eat well and regularly, don't booze too much, and still can't get it up, get help. And no, I don't mean viagra.

I've seen mentions of 1.5 hours of exercise 2-3 times a week being more effective than viagra, but couldn't find the article. (Any of you know details for that study?)

Instead, I found this German study, very nice, that measured the effects of pelvic floor -specific exercise (kegels are good for guys, too) vs. the effects of Viagra vs. the effects of placebo. Now I realize that most of you don't read German, but for those who do, the study is here, as a pdf, or here, as a google-cache html.
Executive summary: exercise the pelvic area regularly (daily? 2-3 times a week? They didn't specify in the study report) (specifically, exercise the muscle between the testes and the anus) and your erectile performance is up by 80 % (74 % for viagra, 16 % for placebo). And your hardness is improved (48 % of exercisers, 0 for the others).

That's quite interesting. See, exercise actually gets to the cause of the problem, while popping a pill will lead to long-term trouble as you make the underlying problem worse.

And that's why herbalists dislike magic pills, no matter what the color. No, we prefer powdered reindeer horn any day. At least that won't kill you.

... on another note, never say that researchers don't have a sense of humor.