There are two basic types of research. There’s the scene where guys in white coats and impressive laboratories do cool things with test tubes and microscopes. They gather human volunteers together and do stuff. This is the scientific method in action when experiments test whether there’s evidence a hypothesis is right. Then there’s the meta-research. One set of results involving a few hundred people might not tell us very much. But if you take the results of, say, twenty research trials, an analysis can often tell more accurately whether there are significant trends. So this September has seen the publication of a new piece of meta-research on lifestyles and whether healthy changes can put you back in sexual action.

The headline news is very encouraging or not, depending on your point of view. Let’s say you have erectile dysfunction, but are also overweight, drink large quantities of alcohol, smoke and rarely exercise more than leaving the couch to fire up another bag of popcorn in the kitchen. The new research confirms your worst fears. If you lose 10% of your body weight, drink a lot less alcohol, quit smoking and exercise for about 30 minutes three to five days a week, your sexual performance will quickly return in full strength. OK, so we must keep this real. The biggest improvements come in the men whose erectile dysfunction is only mild. If the dysfunction is moderate to severe, the differences may not be so obvious. However, in combination with the little blue pills, the results tend to be dramatic. More importantly, improving your diet and losing weight lift your mood and general help you feel better. This will be so even if your doctor is not prescribing one of the statins to reduce the levels of carbohydrates. You can save money on the drugs and still feel better.

Erectile dysfunction is a major blight on the quality of life for millions of men in our great country. Although the pharmaceutical industry has, for once, produced a highly effective and safe treatment in an oral medication – you can’t get more convenient than that – the retail price of these medications in our drugstores remains remarkably high. Although you can buy online and keep the cost down, these drugs eat into your budgets. So if you can restore sexual function by natural means, this gives you a double benefit. You get to look and feel good in all aspects of your life, and you have money in hand to enjoy life.

Use the onset of erectile dysfunction to do the things you’ve been putting off. In your heart, you know it’s always made sense to quit smoking. It’s not just all the health risks. Think about all the money you’re burning. Drinking and eating less also saves you money. Getting together with some of the guys for some exercise on a regular basis is fun and gets the job done. Sure there’s Viagra. It will get the job done too. But why pay a drug company to do something you can do for yourself. More to the point, if you only rely on Viagra and make no effort to change your lifestyle, you could find your life shortened. There’s clear evidence showing erectile dysfunction as a risk factor in heart disease.

Once scientists understand how one part of the body works, it’s quite easy how to predict what will happen in another part. This is particularly straightforward when you are dealing with something like blood vessels. A vein is a vein no matter where it is found in the body. So if you establish that eating a diet containing too much carbohydrate will cause a deposit of platelets on the walls of your blood vessels, this will apply throughout the body. You can’t pick and choose which vessels will be affected. Once the layer of platelets builds up, this is the start of the disease called artherosclerosis. If this goes untreated, the vessels will slowly lose their flexibility and the flow of blood will slow. Blood pressure will rise and there’s an increasing risk of stroke or heart attack.

One of the smallest arteries in the body is found in the penis. If this does not dilate and contract when instructed to do so by the brain, erectile dysfunction is the result. What affects the penile artery today, affects the blood vessels leading into and out of the heart within three to five years. So doctors are now calling erectile dysfunction in younger men the canary in the mine. It’s the warning the man affected should take immediate action. Now let’s be straightforward about this. There are a number of different possible causes for erectile dysfunction. Some are evidence of serious medical conditions. Others are less serious. With the exception of physical injuries to the spine or the groin area, all these underlying causes respond well to early treatment. So you have a direct incentive to consult a doctor for a full set of tests.

As the law currently stands, these tests may not be covered in your health plan or, if they are, there may be quite high co-payments. Nevertheless, it’s worth paying. As from 2012, the Affordable Care Act requires insurance companies to pay for preventative treatment. The intention is to spend a little money in the early stages to avoid paying a large amount if conditions are allowed to become serious. Thus, tests to eliminate the serious underlying conditions like artherosclerosis should be covered as from next year. If treatable problems are discovered, you can receive the treatment needed to prevent them from becoming serious. This not only saves your life but also restores your quality of life as the use of the erectile dysfunction drugs will enable the resumption of sexual activity. Perhaps this is not yet one of the features of Obamacare you have picked up on but it should start saving lives soon.

Nothing here forces you to have a medical wellness check-up. If money is in short supply and you don’t have a health plan, the cheap solution is to buy Cialis online through one of the pharmacies offering a generic version of the drug. In the majority of cases, this will resolve the problem in the short term. However, don’t deceive yourself all is well. The fact Cialis is able to restore your sexual function doesn’t mean a heart condition is also cured. The erectile dysfunction drugs only treat one problem. It’s for a doctor to diagnose and treat the underlying cause.

In the good old days when men sold their souls to the company store for sixteen tons and even then only got deeper in debt, there was no technology to warn the miners if gas was building up. The first they might know is an explosion bringing down the roof. Being careful men, they experimented with different ways of testing the air for gas and canaries were the most reliable indicator they found. All they had to do was keep the birds in the mine. If they fell off their perches, there was too much gas around and it was time to evacuate. So much for the history lesson.

Every year, modern medicine directs a lot of money into basic research to look for ways of detecting serious health problems in their early stages. Sometimes, technology is the answer. So many women who go for regular mammograms detect breast cancer early and the treatment is more likely to save the breast and guarantee a long life. In other cases, there are early symptoms that may not, at first sight, have any connection to the more serious condition that appears later. In the case of heart disease, there’s now very clear evidence that erectile dysfunction in younger men is a very clear warning of a possible stroke or heart attack within the next five years.

The explanation for this is slightly complicated. Various types of cells line the walls of our blood vessels. The most sensitive of these are called endothelial. For reasons no one can explain, there are more of these cells in the penis than anywhere else in the body so anything that affects them is going to show up in erectile dysfunction. If you eat a diet containing too much fat, there’s likely to be a build up of plaque on the walls of the arteries. This hardens the cells and prevents the arteries from dilating and contracting. Since the formation of an erection depends on dilation, anything preventing it in younger men signals high risk the same problem will spread to other blood vessels in the body.

If you’re under the age of 50 and you experience a consistent pattern of erectile dysfunction, you should ask a doctor for a full cardiology workup. Indeed, the younger you are, the more urgent it is you have the tests done. But if you’re older, there are fewer risks. It’s reasonably safe to buy Viagra online and rely on that to solve the problem. That said, we’re all aware of the so-called epidemic of obesity. That’s too many men carrying too much weight. No matter what your age, you should think about changing your diet. One of the most common causes of a plaque build-up is eating too much carbohydrate in your food. The evidence shows men find erectile dysfunction is less of a problem if they lose weight. This should not be a big deal. It’s just a matter of eating a low-fat diet in smaller portions. If you can add in a little exercise, so much the better. If this is too much of a challenge, there’s always Viagra but, if your weight does continue increasing, it may only be a short-term fix. Losing weight is better.