Lighting up could be slowing you down in the bedroom, suggests a new study.
Men who successfully stopped smoking improved on lab measurements of sexual health more than those who relapsed after a quit-smoking program. The findings show that smoking may be affecting the sexual health of men who consider themselves perfectly alright in the bedroom — and not just those with impotence, researchers say.“With younger men, the risks of smoking in that population appear more far off. They think, ‘I don’t really need to worry about this until much farther down the road,’” said study author Christopher Harte, from the VA Boston Healthcare System.
The findings, he said, are “still not definitive.” However, “regardless of if this really does apply to all men who smoke or not, (the goal was) just getting the word out that men could be aware of this finding, so it could influence their decisions to start the quitting process,” he told Reuters Health.
While smoking has been linked to a host of other health problems such as cancer and heart disease, the researchers said their finding is a new angle for doctors to use in men who are still reluctant to try quitting. Previous research has shown that long-term smokers are up to twice as likely to have impotence as non-smokers.
“There is a fairly strong body of data that link smoking as a major risk factor for erectile dysfunction,” Dr. Lydia Bazzano, who has studied that topic at the Tulane University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, said in an email.
But, “this doesn’t just apply to men with severe erectile functioning issues,” Harte said. “The take-home point is that even men who don’t have a clinical diagnosis of (erectile dysfunction)... may still benefit from quitting smoking,” he concluded.
Source: Khaleej Times (Reuters Health)
