We want to start this discussion with a number that may put your mind a little more at ease if you’re dealing with erectile dysfunction (ED): The prevalence of ED in adult males in the United States is 52%. In other words, you’re not struggling alone.
This number is what drives medical researchers to come up with viable solutions, and their efforts have brought us oral medications, implants, and other treatments that help men with ED enjoy active sex lives. If you’ve tried these avenues to no avail, you may be an excellent candidate for extracorporeal shockwave therapy (ESWT).
Here at Male Method, we specialize in health issues that affect the sex lives of our male patients in Pensacola, Florida, and Mobile, Alabama. Through comprehensive diagnostics and the latest treatment protocols, our goal is to help men successfully address their sexual health at any age.
If you’d like to explore whether you might be a candidate for shockwave therapy, here’s a look at how it works.
Behind the scenes of an erection
In order to better understand ED, it’s helpful to look at all that goes into an erection. While an erection may seem simple enough, it’s actually fairly complex and involves several areas, including your:
- Cardiovascular health
- Neurological health
- Mental and emotional health
Physiologically, when you get an erection, the muscles and arteries in your penis relax and open up to allow more blood in. At the same time, your veins are shut off, trapping the blood in your penis and creating the higher pressure that enlarges your penis. Once the muscles in your penis relax again, usually after ejaculation, your blood flow returns to normal and your veins cart off the extra blood.
The primary causes of ED
As we mentioned above, it takes several systems to function properly in order to get an erection. To start, a healthy libido is required for arousal, and there are many things that can interfere with this, such as stress, anxiety, or depression. Men with low testosterone levels also have difficulty with arousal, preventing an erection from even becoming a physical process in the first place.
What we’re concerned with here, however, are problems with your cardiovascular system. There’s a reason why ED becomes more prevalent in men as they age — with age comes problems with blood flow. And if your circulation system is compromised by plaque buildup in your blood vessels, your penis has a tough time getting the blood it needs to get and maintain an erection, even if your libido is on board.
Shockwave therapy as a solution
Shockwave therapy is not a new treatment protocol and has been used in many medical circles, especially orthopedics, to stimulate new blood vessels to speed up healing. Urologists and men’s sexual health experts soon turned to the therapy to see if it would work on ED problems caused by poor blood flow. And the results have been promising.
Shockwave therapy relies on low-intensity sound waves to break up the plaque inside your blood vessels to restore your circulation. The sound waves also encourage new blood vessel growth, which means that ESWT delivers a powerful one-two punch.
The treatments themselves are painless, and most of our clients typically undergo a series of shockwave therapy sessions to successfully address their ED. When you come in, we’ll review your unique situation and come up with an appropriate timeline.
If you’d like to explore shockwave therapy further, please give us a call or use the online scheduling tool on this website to set up an appointment.
