Contents
What worries men most when they think about sex is not what they believe
Sexuality
Erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation are the main pathologies that affect the well-being of male sexuality
The echoes of the confinement continue to resonate almost a year after the first state of alarm was decreed in Spain. The months of confinement and the news around the successive waves of the pandemic have taken a psychological toll both individually and collectively. In fact, both psychologists and sexologists have been experiencing an increase in patients for months, which is striking in the case of consultations on male sexuality. “It is likely that such a stressful year as the one we have experienced has led to the appearance of sexual pathologies derived from stress, although this increase in consultations may also be a consequence of the exceptional daily coexistence experienced by many couples. Perhaps at that time issues came to light that were previously unimportant or that had been masked by day-to-day life and it is now that they have decided to ask for help “, argues Dr. Eduard García Cruz, urologist and expert in sexuality.
The main pathologies that affect male sexuality are, according to Dr. García Cruz, the erectile dysfunction, which affects approximately 10% of men under 50 years of age and 50% of men from 50 years of age; and the premature ejaculation, which affects one in 10 men.
Erection problems
In the case of erectile dysfunction, the urologist affirms that it is usual for erection problems in those under 50 years of age to have a psychological origin (stress, anxiety, problems with the partner …) while from that age they begin to occur more frequently organic causes. In this sense, the expert refers to the influence or the effects of what he calls the 7 ‘killers’ of the erection: hypertension, diabetes, cholesterol, Smoking, obesity, Sedentary lifestyle y prostate problems.
At the time of going to the consultation, extreme cases can occur. Thus, while some ask for help after having suffered from this pathology for several years without giving it much importance, others worry after having had a bad day or having experienced a couple of frustrated attempts. For this reason, Dr. García Cruz invites us to measure concern by adjusting it to self-observation and to reasonable time limits: «To define that there is erectile dysfunction, this problem would have to occur over a period of approximately six months. However, it is true that when it comes to ask for medical help what prevails is common sense. If it is something that is out of the ordinary, if the person sees that it gets worse over time or if he does not know how to get out of there, the reasonable thing is to consult. And if after three months you have tried it on your own and have not obtained results, it is advisable to go to a professional, “he explains.
Addition Stress and / or the anxiety, which lead the list of psychological causes of erectile dysfunction, can also affect the Couple troubles that, in some cases, as explained by Dr. García Cruz, are partly a consequence of ‘phallocentrism’, ‘coitocentrism’ and ‘orgasmocentrism’ prevailing in the male sphere. «While in their case the privacy it is an objective and something positive in itself, usually they understand that it is something that happens before having sex. Therefore, if they judge themselves and the possibility of failure in execution generates anxiety, they stop promoting those encounters or moments of intimacy. And this leads to some women who come to the consultation with their partners with erectile dysfunction to actually show frustrated by not having intimacy and not by not having penetrative sex (“when I touch him he stiffens” or “as soon as I I approach to kiss him, the situation is tense »). In fact, most of them find it difficult to understand why they assign much more value than they do to everything related to the penis, “he reveals.
Companies that sex therapies can contribute to improving the situation in cases in which erectile dysfunction has a psychological origin, but if the causes are organic, it is usual for professionals to use different Treatments such as hormone supplementation (testosterone), shock waves to regenerate blood vessels (if there are signs that they are not working well), use of drugs to promote erection, or, when other treatments have failed, prosthetic surgery .
Types of premature ejaculation
Although cases of erectile dysfunction are more frequent, premature ejaculation is also a concern, which affects between 5 and 10% of men. This can be of the primary type, which is more frequent among young people and which can be solved without too much difficulty; or secondary type, which occurs more frequently after the age of 40 and can coincide with issues such as a change of partner, stress at work, prostate problems or even urine infections.
Some of the treatments that work in secondary ejaculation are the pelvic floor training sex therapy, the anxiety control, medicines that help reduce sensitivity in the genital area or the use of technology that allow train the ‘start-stop’ of sexual therapy through, for example, mobile applications such as MyHixel, which allows to standardize, train and gamify this cognitive behavioral therapy for the control of ejaculation because, depending on the progress of the person, technology adapts the difficulty. “What these systems do is, instead of training the muscles, they help train the brain to understand the body’s signals and learn to manage them,” explains Dr. García Cruz.