Prescription for Men: Walk for Sexual Health

Daily Walking, not Viagra!
A brisk 2 mile walk each day can reduce men’s risk of impotence according to Dr. Irwin Goldstein, from Boston University School of Medicine in a study published in Urology.

His 9-year study of 600 men who at the start of the study had no impotence problems found that those who kept exercising or took up exercising at middle age reduced their risk of impotence. Taking other healthy actions at mid-life such as quitting smoking, losing weight or cutting back on drinking did not reduce the risk of impotence.

Message to Men
Two miles a day, even if you start at mid-life, can maintain your sexual health without drugs.

How Does Walking Help Men’s Sexual Health?
Exercise improves blood flow through your blood vessels and keeps things clear. The penile blood vessels give early warning signs of heart artery disease when impotence shows up due to a slow-down of the blood flow. Exercise keeps the blood flowing and prevents impotence in the same way it prevents heart attacks.

Why Men Should Walk
The activity level needed to improve the blood flow amounts to two miles of walking at a brisk pace per day – about a half hour walk a day. Or a jog or other exercise that burns 200 calories and increases the heart rate. Biking is not recommended as it has been shown in some studies to increase the risk of impotence due to blood flow restriction from the bike seat.

Women: Get the Men in Your Life Walking
You couldn’t get him to come along on your daily walk before, maybe this will get him moving!

A study of more than 4,000 Danish men indicates that regular joggers are not only unlikely to experience a fatal heart attack during their runs, they also are less likely than non-runners to die of any cause.

During the last 30 years, jogging has become a popular form of aerobic exercise, and many runners train for races as long as a marathon (26.2 miles). Danish researchers, led by Peter Schnohr, M.D., of the University Hospital in Copenhagen, decided to study longevity among regular (persistent) joggers, non-joggers and new joggers following sporadic reports of deaths during jogging.

A total of 4,658 men, ages 20 to 79, were examined twice over 5 years by the researchers. At the first exam, 217 men said they were regular joggers. Of these, 96 were still jogging 5 years later. Between the first and second exam, 106 men started jogging; 4,335 men were non-joggers at the time of both exams.

The authors examined death rates and found that men who jogged at the time of both exams — the persistent jogger group — had a significantly lower risk of dying compared with the non-joggers or those who jogged at the time of only one of the two exams.

The effects of jogging remained strong even after researchers took into account other health factors such as smoking, weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

“Regular jogging is not associated with increased mortality in men, as shown by the significantly lower mortality in joggers than non-joggers,” the authors say in the study, published in the Sept. 9 issue of the British Medical Journal. “The lower mortality of joggers could be an effect of the physical training, but it could also be due to other lifestyle attributes or a combination.”

The authors note that many studies have pointed toward the health benefits of physical activity, but they add that the optimal intensity, frequency and duration have yet to be established.

“Although light exercise has some value, moderate and vigorous exercise is now considered more favorable for health,” the researchers conclude. “Our study supports this by showing that even a vigorous activity such as jogging is associated with a beneficial effect on mortality.”

Edward R. Laskowski, M.D., a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist and co-director of the Sports Medicine Center at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn., says frequency is important when it comes to exercise.

“This study provides more evidence that regular ‘doses’ of a consistent physical activity like jogging can make a significant difference in overall health and may contribute to a longer life span,” says Dr. Laskowski.