Smoking and your Sex Life

[historyteach]

Smoking and Your Sex Life
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Dr. Kim Houde
MD, MS, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and Community Health, UMass Memorial Healthcare

What Every Man Should Know

Well guys, here's the bad news: smoking causes erectile dysfunction. But smoking is a preventable cause of impotence. If you don't want do stop smoking to protect your heart or your lungs, you might want to stop to protect your sex life.

First, in both men and animals, several studies have shown smoking impairs your ability to achieve a full erection. An erection requires normal blood vessels and adequate blood flow. Smoking constricts blood vessels and reduces blood flow to the penis even in healthy subjects. Healthy young men who smoked three high-nicotine cigarettes within one half-hour showed a significant decrease in penile response to erotic stimuli compared to men who either did not smoke or smoked low-nicotine cigarettes. This effect was also seen in animal experiments. In a study of healthy adult dogs in which erection was produced by neurostimulation, most of the dogs were unable to achieve a full erection after inhalation of smoke from two to three cigarettes. The same phenomenon was observed with intravenous injection of nicotine into the dogs.

Secondly, smoking damages blood vessels. Just as cardiac catheterization can visualize damaged blood vessels of the heart, damage to blood vessels caused by smoking can be seen in arteriograms (dye studies of the blood vessels) of the penis. In a study of impotent men examining such damage, smoking was an independent risk factor for penile atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). The more men smoked, the more atherosclerosis was seen. Thus, the damage caused by smoking could actually be visualized.

Third, smoking may effect the quality of a man's semen. Nicotine and components of cigarette smoke are found in the semen of men who smoke. Smokers have a lower volume of ejaculate, a lower sperm density (a lower concentration of spermatazoa in the semen), lower sperm motility, and more abnormal sperm than nonsmokers. These changes may cause infertility, spontaneous abortion, and birth defects. If you are having difficulty fathering a child, smoking may be part of the problem.

Fourth, smoking may keep you from having sex at all. Impotence or erectile dysfunction is defined as the persistent inability to attain and maintain a penile erection adequate for sexual performance. Many studies have found a relationship between smoking and impotence. In a study of US Army Vietnam-era veterans, the prevalence of impotence nearly doubled among smokers. And here in Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Male Aging Study followed men prospectively over time. At the start of the study these men were free of erectile dysfunction. The study excluded men with other causes for impotence such as diabetes, heart disease or medications. The study found that cigarette smoking at the start of the study almost doubled the likelihood of erectile dysfunction at follow-up nine years later. Furthermore, cigar smoking and passive exposure to cigarette smoke also strongly increased the chance of impotence. If men were expose to passive smoking both at home and at work, the rate of erectile dysfunction has doubled. Happily, men who were former smokers at the start of the study were no more likely than nonsmokers to report erectile dysfunction. (This may mean it's important to quit while you're young.) Men who were smokers themselves and had passive exposure at both home and work had the highest incidence of erectile dysfunction, over 30%.

So....smoking prevents a full erection, has adverse effects on semen quality, causes atherosclerosis of penile blood vessels and leads to impotence. If you've never smoked, don't start. And if you ARE a smoker , quitting smoking now could greatly improve your sex life!
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"Many studies have found a relationship between smoking and impotence."
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Shalom!

::
:
Yep. I agree. Smoking negatively effects your libido too, as both a direct and indirect result. I must agree 4½ months of nonsmoking has had some particularly positive effects.

[historyteach]

Glad to hear it, Midas!

Shalom!

Thx. Unfortunately, I don't have anyone to share the happiness with. But that's an altogether different issue.