Posts Tagged ‘ Dilation ’

Let’s start this off with a simple definition. Diabetes is a metabolic disease where the human body cannot use the natural sugar in the blood as energy. The cause is the failure of the pancreas to produce enough insulin. It comes in two different forms. In Type 1, the body fails to make any insulin. In Type 2, the body makes some insulin but fails to use it properly. It’s estimated that about 57 million people in the US are in the slide into diabetes, i.e. their blood sugar levels are already too high because their bodies are resisting the effect of insulin. This can only be described as an epidemic in the making. Why should we care? After all, both forms of diabetes are treatable. Well, the answer comes in two steps. Many people do not realize their danger in time. As a result, the diabetes begins to damage the body. Untreated, it can cause heart disease, kidney failure and blindness. In extreme cases, the feet and legs can develop gangrene and they have to be amputated. The second problem lies in the nature of Type 2 diabetes. This is largely a lifestyle issue. People eat and drink excessively, their weight rises and their body’s metabolism is thrown out of balance. Effective treatment requires change. An extreme measure is gastric bypass surgery to bring down the weight fast. Without this, it depends on people sticking with a diet and exercising regularly.

Erectile dysfunction is one of the first symptoms of Type 2 diabetes in men. The arteries leading into the penis are among the smallest in the body. To achieve an erection, the smooth muscle walls must be able to dilate. Unfortunately, as the blood sugar level rises, the walls of all blood vessels begin to harden. This slows down the dilation and the ability to achieve an erection gradually disappears. This disappearance is what drives men into seeking help. In turn, this prompts the diagnosis of the underlying problem.

Then, it’s all up to the man to change. Everything that can be done to prevent the spread of the disease must be done. This means following the treatment program laid down by your doctor and removing all the factors contributing to the erectile dysfunction. So you have to remove all the major causes of stress from your life. Try to be more laid back for all the right reasons. Quit smoking and stop excessive drinking. Some alcohol is OK but not a lot. And then lose some weight. Change your diet and, most importantly, start exercising. Raising your fitness and stamina levels improves the circulation of your blood and gives better erections. This is a high priority. As your blood sugar levels come under control, the damage to your body will slow. You can use viagra as needed to maintain the hardness of your erection but, as your weight drops, you should find erections improve naturally. Congratulations! You brought diabetes under control before all the major health disasters hit you and restored your erections. If you do not take effective action, buy viagra online. This will keep you going for a year or so but note the warnings given above. The point of the diagnosis is giving you the chance to prevent a disease from making you seriously ill in a few years time. The longer you delay effective action, the greater the risk of heart disease, blindness and amputations.

Is it safe for men with high blood pressure to take viagra?

As men getting older, their arteries become less flexible and blood pressure rises. This problem is aggravated by obesity, too much cholesterol in the blood, diabetes, kidney disease, and so on. Viagra works by allowing arteries to dilate. For those with erectile dysfunction, this is a good thing because dilation allows more blood to flow into the penis and creates an erection. But if more arteries are affected, blood flows more rapidly around the body and this causes a drop in blood pressure. Viagra is designed to be reasonably specific, i.e. only to affect the penis. But if you are also taking one of the drugs designed to reduce blood pressure, e.g. ACE inhibitors, diuretics, alphablockers, etc., it was suggested the interaction could produce a more rapid drop in pressure which might be dangerous.

The question, obviously, is short: “how dangerous?” In 2002, the drug companies ran a full clinical trial to find out. Men with high blood pressure were invited to participate and took both Viagra and one of the other medications used to treat hypertension. Over time, less than 3% of the participants stopped taking the viagra. Indeed, some 75% found their erections improved without any side effect. The problem with a clinical trial is that this is one group of participants asked to report how they feel on a sensitive issue. It does not mean that viagra is safe for every man. So, if you have high blood pressure, viagra is probably safe and, more importantly, the improvement in sexual performance makes any actual side effects acceptable. But you should monitor the situation and, if you do experience problems, discuss them with your doctor. Remember, there is clear evidence that combining viagra with a nitrate is dangerous. This drug is usually prescribed to treat heart disease. Finally, you should take life easy for six months after a stroke or heart attack.

Can diabetics take viagra?

Diabetes can damage the nerve endings in different parts of the body. This interferes with the way in the body feels things and can cause erectile dysfunction. There have been a number of trials to measure the effectiveness of viagra among men with diabetes. To ensure a scientific result, the men were not told whether they were using viagra or a placebo. Some were allowed to change the dosage up or down from the standard 50 mg.

Taking all the trials together, none of the men reduced the dosage. The majority taking the standard or a higher dosage reported an improvement in their ability to achieve penetration and maintained the erection over time. Some 60% achieved significantly better levels of sexual satisfaction. This is a good performance from a group suffering nerve damage that cannot be cured. Only about 2% of the participants stopped using cheap viagra because of adverse side effects. The most common problem was feeling thirsty which was easily resolved by drinking water. More serious side effects were rare. A few suffered hypo- or hyperglycemic events, and one or two found their eyesight was affected.

Here comes another of those, “Why you should quit smoking” pieces, this time adding in the bonus of erectile dysfunction. You might think all the news about tobacco could not get any worse. . . Well, let’s run that by you again. Of all the deaths from cancer in the US, the biggest killer is lung cancer. But the evidence now proves that 30% of all the deaths from cancer are triggered by smoking. So wherever you breathe, the risk took off to include cancer of the mouth, gums, larynx and throat. And because the chemicals from the smoke are dissolved into your saliva, everything travels down the esophagus and into the stomach. From there, the effects spread through the body because the chemicals are not discriminating. Down into the colon and bladder. But more seriously into the blood stream where you can trigger leukemia and heart disease. Did you know benzene can cause DNA damage so, among other things, guess what happens to your sperm.

Anyway, let’s not lose our focus here. Once this happy band of chemicals gets into your blood, the key problem is damage to the blood vessels. The walls slowly begin to harden and narrow. In all the detailed explanations of the mechanics of an erection, you might remember the first step is a chemical messenger sent to the smooth muscles in the walls of the arteries leading into your penis. This instructs the arteries to dilate and allow more blood to flow inside where it is trapped to form the erection. If anything prevents the arteries from fully dilating, the erection is weak. If there is no dilation, there is no erection. Why should the arteries into the penis be affected? Because although the tobacco affects all blood vessels, the first effects show up in the smallest vessels which are in the “extremities”, the parts of the body furthest from the heart like the hands, feet and penis. That’s why the fact of erectile dysfunction is taken as a first sign of possible heart disease.

So first, the good news. If you quit smoking early enough in this cycle into disease, the source of the damage is removed and your health does not get any worse. In fact, if you start a program of physical exercise to improve the way your cardiovascular system works, the circulation of the blood speeds up and the quality of your erections can return naturally. But if you quit after the damage is too great, you will need help to return your your winning sexual ways. Viagra has a good history of restoring lost power by encouraging the dilation of arteries – not just those leading into the penis, but in other parts of the body as well. But then comes the bad news. If you cannot quit or lapse back into smoking after a short break, the blood vessels will continue to degrade. At some point you will find even the little blue pill cannot restore you to life. You will have lost out altogether. So if you are a smoker, learn this lesson well. The threat of death from cancer is years away. In fact, some smokers are lucky and avoid the Big C. But the threat to your erections is more common. So do not delay. Quit today and buy viagra to ensure you keep on enjoying your sex for years to come.

Somewhere in the depths of Wake Forest, something is stirring. For once, it’s a really happy bunny. For some reason, rabbits have been appointed the title of “species of greatest sexual prowess”. When we say, “breed like bunnies”, we recognize the reality long known by farmers. When it comes to filling a field with an eating machine, there’s nothing so productive as a couple of bunnies. They enjoy frequent sex and are healthily fertile. That being so, the boffins of Wake Forest University’s Institute of Regenerative Medicine, have been playing a cruel game with their laboratory rabbits. They have been sexually disabling them and then trying to rebuild the damaged organs. Imagine a long line of strong and lusty bunnies, specially bred for use in laboratories. These white-coated fiends then take scalpels to their penises and render them impotent. Just one slash and sexual desire is abruptly terminated. The reason for this vicious assault? Every year, men with growths in their prostate go under the knife. Regardless whether this is benign or cancerous, the growth must be removed. Once a surgeon cuts through muscles in “that” part of the body, they do not simply grow back. The men may live longer but they live without sexual ability.

You may have seen documentaries about the new science of regeneration. Scientists are now developing the art of growing new organs for implantation into humans. In fact, Wake Forest is in the forefront of this work and has already a program to grow bladders for human implantation. They are now experimenting to see whether the same technique may produce the smooth muscle walls of arteries. An erection is formed when the arteries dilate and allow more blood into the penis. If there is no dilation, there is no erection. There are several possible causes from surgery to the damage resulting from diabetes. The researchers harvest endothelial cells from the muscles and seed the cell culture in a bath of nutrients. As new tissue is formed, it is shaped over a scaffold. Repeated tests prove that muscles, nerve endings and arterial walls can be created and implanted into the castrated bunnies. In 85% of cases, the bunnies then resumed full sexual activity.

Why should we care? As it stands, the current level of technology cannot repair damage to the human penis. The use of cialis can slow the loss of function, but there comes a point when no drug can bridge the gap, i.e. the level of damage is too great. When this happens, the man has no choice but to accept impotence. This consequence deters many men from accepting prostate surgery. They prefer to risk dying from cancer rather than loss of sexual activity. In men over the age of seventy, this is not unreasonable. They are likely to die of natural causes before the cancer gets them. But younger men are gambling with their lives. If this technique can rebuild damaged arterial walls, sexual activity may be restored in many different cases. This is a good justification for continuing with this research. Until the work is proven safe, the best you can do is buy cialis – the best of the drugs used to treat erectile dysfunction, no matter what the cause.