By Kennedy Shelley
ED (erectile dysfunction) affects 30 million men, which means nearly 10% of all couples experience this frustration.
The causes of ED can be many fold. From direct injury and trauma to stress and psychological reasons can be the root cause of the problem.
But scientists are now hypothesizing that there may be a link to high cholesterol. But does the real data show that is the problem, or is it metabolic syndrome?
Metabolic syndrome is actually one of the greatest killers on the planet because it leads to heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, diabetes, and even Alzheimer’s disease.
According to the American Heart Association, here are the biggest risk factors of having metabolic syndrome:
Waist Size – Over 40” for men, and 35” for women
High Triglycerides – 150 mg per ML
High Blood Pressure – blood pressure of 130/85 mm Hg or greater
High Blood Sugar – 100 mg/dL or higher fasted
Low “Good Cholesterol” (HDL) (Less than 40 mg/DL)
Three or more of these puts you at very high risk.
This is going to affect the health of your arteries and blood vessels, and if they are damaged that can lead to ED.
As a matter of fact, most men find out they have metabolic syndrome and are at risk of a heart attack because they suddenly develop ED.
It looks like the cholesterol ED correlation is not the one you want to pay attention to.
Instead, looking at the bigger picture, you should use ED as a barometer of your overall metabolic health.
The veins and arteries to the male member are very small and need to be highly elastic in order to function properly. These may be one of the first parts of your body damaged by the chronic inflammation of metabolic syndrome.
When you look at all the possible causes of ED, you see:
obesity, high blood pressure medicines, depression, and other issues that relate directly back to metabolic syndrome, not high cholesterol.
The blockbuster ED drug Viagra was actually discovered when it was being studied as a heart medicine.
The hope was it would increase the amount of nitric oxide to the heart. It turns out that it does it to other parts of the body and gives many men the boost they need.
But Viagra only affects the symptoms of damage to the arteries, it doesn’t actually treat the root cause which is metabolic syndrome.
The popular press is pushing the idea that high bad cholesterol causes:
diabetes, heart disease, blood vessel disease, atherosclerosis, high blood pressure or Peyronie’s disease, but this ignores the fact that people with normal or low cholesterol are just as likely to have these conditions.
Some articles on the subject push statin drugs to reduce cholesterol, but statins are known to lower testosterone and libido which is why most doctors do not prescribe statins to treat ED.
Scientists like to say, “Correlation does not mean causation.” In this case just because some men with ED have high cholesterol they must be linked. But that ignores men with low cholesterol and still have ED.
If you want to actually solve the ED problem, take a look at this article in Freedom Health News and see if solving the root problem takes care of your ED symptoms.
