Impotence Is Serious Business The Solution Could Not Be Simpler Any idea why we are all being bombarded with ubiquitous ads on TV and the Internet featuring cures for erectile dysfunction (E.D.) in men?  It's because there is a huge market out there.  For just as the Standard American Diet (S.A.D.) causes heart disease, it also causes E.D.  It's really very simple, animal foods in our diet cause the build-up of plaque in our arteries, restricting the flow of blood and leading to high blood pressure and heart disease.  As we all learned while still fairly young boys, erections are all about blood flow to the penis.  Restricted blood flow equals E.D.  It's that simple. Neal Barnard, M.D., weighs in on this topic in his book Eat Right Live Longer...Jim Hicks. Many men don't think about their health very often.  We are not too concerned about our coronary arteries.  We don't worry about future heart attacks or high blood pressure.  For a lot of us, the only health problems we worry about are pulled hamstrings on our favorite quarterback. But there is one aspect of health that men do worry about, and that is virility.  As men get older, their virility is threatened.  By age 60, one in four American men is impotent.  The older they get, the more common it is.  It may surprise them to learn that foods pay a vital role in potency.  Foods are not the aphrodisiacs or fertility enhancers.  Rather, the right foods can help keep a man's sexual apparatus in working order and can help get things back in order if they have gone a bit askew. Impotence is not caused by old age.  In fact, there is no reason why sexual functioning should be lost at any age.  Impotence is preventable in the vast majority of cases and often reversible. Erections depend on blood flow.  Just as blockages in the arteries can cause a heart attack and choked off blood to the brain can lead to a stroke, when the arteries to the genitals are blocked, that part of the body will not work so well either.  Other factors, including medications, diabetes, and psychological factors, can add to the problem. Doctors can actually measure the loss of blood flow by taking the blood pressure in the arm and the penis simultaneously, using a special monitor.  If your arm is getting a lot more blood flow than your genitals, you may be a great arm wrestler, but your lovemaking will suffer. When the arteries are blocked only slightly, it takes longer to get an erection.  Sometimes blood flow stays normal until sexual thrusting begins and the muscles of the legs and buttocks drain blood from the arteries.  The annoying result of this "pelvic steal" syndrome in an erection that disappears just when it is needed most.  As the blockage worsens, complete impotence occurs. Researchers have long known that there was a link between artery problems and impotence.  Men who have heart attacks very often have difficulty getting an erection.  At first this was thought to be an emotional response to the heart attack or some type of physical incapacitation that the heart attack caused.  However, it is now clear that impotency precedes the heart attack in 40 to 70 percent of the cases.  The reason, of course is that blocked arteries in one part of the body often mean blocked arteries elsewhere. Men with high blood pressure are more likely to be impotent to begin with and when they are put on drugs, the impotence rate goes up still higher.   The solution is simple.  The combination of four factors--a vegetarian diet, mild exercise, smoking cessation and reducing stress--has a powerful effect on blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol and impotence.  Within a few weeks, men feel like their body is beginning to transform itself, which is exactly what is happening. Of course, the usual treatments for impotence are very different, ranging from penile injections to various prosthetic implants.  Changing one's menu is much easier.  And its benefits are so dramatic and so numerous that, one day, it may eclipse all other treatments in popularity.