Erectile dysfunction
Erectile dysfunction (impotence), or ED, is when you cannot get or maintain a sufficient erection firm enough for sexual intercourse. It’s a guy’s worse nightmare and fear of owning up to it makes it difficult to estimate how many men are affected by this.
What causes it?
Most men will have experienced ED at some point, whether as a one-off or an ongoing condition. Many things can cause this, most are psychological, but sometimes it can be down to physiological reasons, such as physical trauma (damage to the nerves and arteries near the penis which can occur during surgery, particularly for prostate or bladder cancer) or disease (diabetes, kidney disease, chronic alcoholism, MS and cardiovascular disease).
ED can also be a side effect of some medications, including blood pressure drugs, antihistamines, antidepressants, tranquillisers and of course many recreational drugs.
Psychological causes
Many causes can be psychological. Just because you can’t get it up, doesn’t mean you are crackers, we tend to put a lot of pressure on ourselves to live up to this virile ready-for-sex-at-any-moment image perpetuated by mainstream media. It could be as simple as fancying someone so much that when we are with them, we want everything to be like a Hollywood movie and –bang! (or not) we can’t rise to the occasion.
A good way to tell if this is the case is whether you can masturbate on your own. If you can masturbate, maintaining an erection and ejaculating, but then can’t “perform” in the company of another person, it's likely you're being put under pressure and as a result you are experiencing “performance anxiety”.
Of course there may be other more profound reasons, and if you are concerned, you should definitely talk about it with a trained professional.
What can be done?
If you have experienced or are experiencing the physcial signs of erectile dysfunction and are concerned, a check up by your friendly GP should be able to establish whether this is physiological or not.
Your local GUM (sexual health) clinic will be able to help too. They can refer you to a psycho-sexual therapist (counsellor who knows all about the physical and mental functions of sex), and you can explore in confidence what the issue may be and ways to overcome this barrier.
Treatments
Yes… it can be treated!
If the cause is more psychological, talking with a trained psycho-sexual counsellor will help resolve the issue.
If the issue is more physiological, there are many “remedies” available to help, such as drugs, vacuum devices and surgery.
The most common is Viagra or vacuum devices, surgery is usually only preferred in extreme cases when either of these two options don’t work effectively
