HEALTH PLUS MED­ICAL COR­RE­SPON­DENT

Men de­vel­op heart dis­ease 10 years ear­li­er, on av­er­age, than women do. They al­so have an ear­ly warn­ing sign that few can miss: Erec­tile Dys­func­tion(ED). “It’s the ca­nary in the coal mine,” says a Johns Hop­kins ex­pert. “Sex­u­al prob­lems of­ten fore­tell heart prob­lems.”

On the plus side, any risk fac­tor, even ED that gets your at­ten­tion can put you on a path to bet­ter pre­ven­tive care.

Heart Risk Fac­tor: Erec­tile Dys­func­tion

“A lot of peo­ple think erec­tile dys­func­tion is the in­abil­i­ty to get an erec­tion at all, but an ear­ly sign of the con­di­tion is not be­ing able to main­tain an erec­tion long enough to have sat­is­fac­to­ry sex­u­al in­ter­course,” says a Johns Hop­kins ex­pert. Erec­tile prob­lems are not a nor­mal part of get­ting old­er as many peo­ple think; rather, they al­most al­ways in­di­cate a phys­i­cal prob­lem.

A key rea­son erec­tile dys­func­tion is con­sid­ered a barom­e­ter for over­all car­dio­vas­cu­lar health is that the pe­nis, like the heart, is a vas­cu­lar or­gan. Be­cause its ar­ter­ies are much small­er than the heart’s, ar­te­r­i­al dam­age shows up there first—of­ten years ahead of heart dis­ease symp­toms. Men in their 40s who have erec­tion prob­lems (but no oth­er risk fac­tors for car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease) run an 80 per­cent risk of de­vel­op­ing heart prob­lems with­in 10 years.

Treat­ment tends to be suc­cess­ful when start­ed as soon as you no­tice erec­tion prob­lems over more than a cou­ple of months. An ED workup by your health care physi­cian will ad­dress heart dis­ease risk fac­tors, such as pre­di­a­betes, high blood pres­sure or ex­cess weight, hope­ful­ly, long be­fore they re­sult in a heart at­tack or stroke.

Heart Risk Fac­tor: Stress

Stress, anger and anx­i­ety raise lev­els of blood pres­sure and stress hor­mones, and they can re­strict blood flow to the heart. Some dam­age can be im­me­di­ate. In the two hours af­ter an an­gry out­burst, for ex­am­ple, your risk of a heart at­tack is near­ly five times greater and your risk of stroke three times high­er, re­search has shown.

What is more, the ef­fects of chron­ic stress can build over time, dam­ag­ing ar­ter­ies. Men who have an­gry or hos­tile per­son­al­i­ties have a high­er risk of de­vel­op­ing heart dis­ease. Sex­u­al prob­lems re­lat­ed to heart dis­ease can cause added anx­i­ety or re­la­tion­ship stress. Stress can al­so af­fect sleep, which in turn af­fects heart health.

“Phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal fac­tors are all re­lat­ed when it comes to heart health,” says a Johns Hop­kins ex­pert. “When some­one has chron­ic stress, de­pres­sion or anx­i­ety, they should have a ba­sic eval­u­a­tion of all of the risk fac­tors for heart dis­ease.”

Heart Risk Fac­tor: Low Testos­terone

Hav­ing a low testos­terone lev­el is of­ten thought of as just a di­min­ished sex dri­ve, but it is in­creas­ing­ly seen as be­ing linked to heart dis­ease and type 2 di­a­betes, the ex­pert says. He notes that a grow­ing body of re­search in­di­cates that “low T” can be con­sid­ered a car­dio­vas­cu­lar and meta­bol­ic risk fac­tor.

“These ideas are still be­ing stud­ied, but we know, for ex­am­ple, that peo­ple with ab­dom­i­nal obe­si­ty [so-called ‘bel­ly fat’] or Meta­bol­ic Syn­drome have low testos­terone,” the ex­pert says. Meta­bol­ic syn­drome (which in­cludes high blood sug­ar lev­els, un­healthy cho­les­terol lev­els, and too much weight in the mid­sec­tion) and di­a­betes are lead­ing risk fac­tors for heart dis­ease.

Low testos­terone is sim­ply one part of an over­all pic­ture of heart risk, the John Hop­kins ex­pert shares. But it can be mo­ti­vat­ing, even life­sav­ing, to know that changes in your sex­u­al func­tion are close­ly in­ter­re­lat­ed to the rest of your body. It is worth­while to get your­self checked out when some­thing does not seem right.

“Men of­ten don’t con­nect this prob­lem to or get eval­u­at­ed for stroke or heart at­tack risk un­til it hap­pens,” he says. “But sex­u­al prob­lems are a mes­sage they lis­ten to.”

Im­prov­ing your Testos­terone

The sin­gle best thing you can do to im­prove your lev­el is be health­i­er. Avoid stress, get more sleep, and lose weight, Think­ing of T strict­ly as “the male sex hor­mone” over­sim­pli­fies the com­plex hor­mon­al in­ter­ac­tions that make our bod­ies work.

Eat well

Don’t just chow down on testos­terone pills and ex­pect your work to be done. Cut­ting your calo­rie in­take when crash di­et­ing is one of the worst things you can do. When you do this, your brain goes in­to star­va­tion mode and shuts down testos­terone pro­duc­tion un­til the famine is over. This is be­cause high lev­els of testos­terone burn more fat – and fast. Your body re­quires a steady sup­ply of calo­ries to pro­duce testos­terone, so reg­u­lar­ly skip­ping meals may cause lev­els to nose-dive.

Re­duce your body fat

Ex­cess body fat in­creas­es the pro­duc­tion of the fe­male sex hor­mone oe­stro­gen, which can cause testos­terone lev­els to dip. Lose the chub, in­cor­po­rat­ing core ex­er­cis­es such as planks, burn­ing body fat and build­ing mus­cle. The best way to burn body fat is through car­dio ex­er­cis­es such as run­ning, walk­ing, el­lip­ti­cal train­ing, and bi­cy­cling. With these ex­er­cis­es, burn­ing stom­ach fat, shed­ding love han­dles, and build­ing a six pack is com­plete­ly do-able.

Go easy on the al­co­hol

Ever won­dered why ex­cess drink­ing caus­es you to go limp at the mo­ment of truth? Binge drink­ing kills testos­terone, so give your­self a two-drink lim­it, and stick to it. Stay nat­ur­al and get all the ben­e­fits with­out the risks.