Men: “Use it or Lose it” is TRUE!

A common joke that we have heard for decades is, “if you don’t use it, you will lose it”. We even watched it play out in the 2005 Steve Carrol comedy hit “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” The reality is that a study out of Finland that followed nearly 1,000 men for a period of 5 years found that this is no joke at all.  The study showed that men who have sex at least once per week, as compared to men who have sex less than once per week, are at a lower risk of developing erectile dysfunction. 

Researchers noted that a lack of morning erections is the early warning sign you are most likely already experiencing disuse atrophy. You see, the male body is designed to produce three to five erections every night. When you are younger you may experience even more than that. You might even remember waking up in the morning with erections and the routine of standing on your tippy toes to get the right angle to pee and still hit the toilet bowl to avoid blasting the top of the toilet and getting yelled at by your parents for the mess. Those bathroom experiences led to many young boys learning about leverage and geometry.

Nighttime erections are mother nature’s way of making sure that you’re ready to go when the time is right. Those 3-5 erections a night provide up to 3 hours of increased blood flow which brings high levels of oxygen to the penis. Think of it as your body’s natural gym routine while you sleep. Your penis isn’t a muscle like your arm or legs that is getting used all the time. If you have lost those nightly erections and you aren’t having sex regularly, your penis simply isn’t getting enough oxygenated blood flow to prepare itself for sex.

What Are The Results of Losing Nighttime Erections?

• The quality of your erections isn’t what it used to be. You aren’t as firm, and you might have trouble penetrating.
• You may not notice it, but you probably have lost some girth and length.
• Many men may develop a slight curvature in their penis. This is from disuse atrophy where scarring and fibrosis happens from not having those nightly erections. Many of our patients aren’t even aware of this curvature developing before they come to see us. Once they experience a full, firm erection for the first time in many years, the curvature presents itself.
• Some men start to experience what they believe to be premature ejaculation. This is their body’s own way of coping with the fact that it cannot maintain an erection for as long as it used to. So, their body has created a coping mechanism to ensure they can ejaculate before losing the erection.