Health and Shopping Blog

You must never think that you’re alone. More new cases arise (or don’t arise!) every day, on the order of 600,000-700,000 new cases each year. That means that almost two thousand American men roll over every night and say, “o, dear, i’m ashamed” Even so, most of these men have not yet sought treatment.

The incidence goes up substantially with age, increasing significantly above the age of sixty-five-which is rapidly approaching for the baby boomers. Although erectile dysfunction becomes more likely with advancing age, there is certainly no age cutoff for a sexually fulfilling life. Some men enjoy sexual activity into their eighties and nineties.

Although hard to document, almost every adult male experiences at least one occasion when he is not satisfied with the outcome. When surveyed, at least 50 percent will complain of difficulties at some point in life about some degree of erectile insufficiency. The definitive research quoted is the Massachusetts Male Aging Study, published in 1994.2 This survey was the first comprehensive look at sexual activity since the Kinsey survey forty years earlier.3 The researchers studied 1,290 men and found that over half of them complained of some degree of erectile dysfunction. This was broken down into those with minimal (17 percent), moderate (25 percent) or severe (10 percent) erectile dysfunction.

The greatest risk factor of all was found to be smoking. Smokers were almost seven times as likely as nonsmokers to be completely unable to achieve an erection. Thus, the incidence of erectile dysfunction is huge, perhaps as high as 150 million men worldwide. Assuming two-thirds of men have at least some trouble by the age of seventy as shown in the Massachusetts Male Aging Study, most men will experience problems if they live long enough. That doesn’t have to be discouraging news, however. Instead, it should let you know that you’re not alone. Be sure to speak up to your physician if there is a problem. Help is readily available, so you are only alone if you choose to be.
Strikingly, almost 40 men had some degree of ED by the age of forty. By the time their subjects reached seventy, two-thirds of them reported erectile dysfunction. These percentages represent huge numbers of men of a similar age in society. Moreover, if you add in cofactors like heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, ulcers, arthritis, and allergies, the percentage of men with erectile dysfunction went up even higher. The same thing was found among men taking medications in several categories. Psychological factors that increased risk or erectile dysfunction included depression, excessive alcohol use, and anger.

If you feel chronic pain that is’t good because of the fact that this can cause changes in your psychics. For less severe pain, you need to block the pain signals and prevent them from reaching the brain. There may still be an active source of pain in the body, but the drug prevents us from becoming aware of it. It is rather the way you distract someone by changing the subject. If pain was the original subject, you produce a different sensation that takes your mind off it. But therein lies the rub (as Hamlet did not quite say). Quite often, the distracting sensation is so pleasant that people prefer that state to any other. They come to crave that level of pleasure all the time.This should emphasize the seriousness of any decision to take pain medication. Physical and psychological dependence is a major danger if you take most of the opiates. It is a less serious problem if you take one of the atypical opioids like ultram or the NSAIDs, because they are not addictive. However, the advice of a doctor who knows your medical history is always a good idea to make sure that you will not be at risk from side effects. Some people do react adversely to medications, particularly when different medications are combined.

Another good idea is to talk to specialist. Ultram does not “cure” the source of the pain. All it does is to change the way you “feel” it. That leaves the doctor with the job of curing whatever the problem is causing the pain, assuming it can be cured. Unfortunately, some illnesses and diseases cannot be cured and will cause you chronic pain, i.e. the pain will last over time. In such cases, the knee-jerk reaction is to take more ultram for longer periods of time.

Taking a lot of pills never seemed to be a good idea. One big reasons is that your body builds up a tolerance for the medication so you are continually forced to increase the dose to get the same painkilling effect. This drives up the cost both physically and in cash terms. So the decisions about how much ultram to take and over what period of time are always a balancing act. You need to weigh up the benefits against the risks.

You must feel the understanding from your family and friends. Your financial situation may be bad. People have different levels of tolerance for pain. The management of your pain is something only you can do. Talking to doctors can give you guidance and advice but, at the end of the day, you are the one who should stay in control, making the decisions about what is best for you. If you must up the strength of the medication to one of the opiates, you will have to deal with the risk of addiction. Some of the NSAIDs also have worrying side effects over time. Make sure you take an informed decision.

If you’ll ask someone with chronic pain, if he want to get release from it, you’ll probably get a positive answer.

But, more often than not, this confuses cause and effect. Most of the time we have a condition that is slowly reducing our mobility. In everyday life, we go about our business without any awareness until there is a single twist or turn that brings the problem to our attention. This is not to deny that some people do have traffic accidents in which their necks and spine are damaged, or play sports and pick up injuries. But, most people have a moment when the minor problem becomes more obvious. It is easy to link the cause of the severe pain with the event and not recognize that the pain has been slowly creeping up on us for months.

What happens then? Well, a lot of money has been spent to convince people that pain is a serious problem. No, really. Even though you might think it is obvious, pharmaceutical companies have to teach you that you solve the problem of pain by buying a medication like ultram. Compaanies sell the idea that science is the panacea and the best treatment for pain. And there is a lot of science that backs up this idea. Thousands of people have been through clinical trials for medications like ultram and have reported reductions in pain with few side effects. This is all intended to reassure the public. “Look”, it says, “you don’t have to walk around like you’re treading on eggshells. We know pain is terrible but you don’t have to be afraid anymore. Just take this pill.”

Now let us be clear. There are some painful conditions like arthritis which so disrupt life that using ultram or an equivalent is entirely appropriate. However, the more quickly you reach for the pills, the less effect they will have over time. Tolerance reduces the effectiveness of almost every medication. So looking at alternatives to painkillers is a good idea if you know that you condition is chronic, i.e. likely to last for some time.

Long time ago people used the opioids to ease the pain. It was notoriously addictive and many would only consider using it when there were no alternatives. The rest of the time, people lived with the pain. This is not what modern capitalism wants us to remember. The pharmaceutical industry needs us to keep refilling the medicine cabinet. But pain management was as much art as science. It varied from relaxation techniques to reduce tension in the muscles and to control fear (when you anticipate pain, fear magnifies the slightest twinge), to religious groups like the Christian Scientists who believed you can transcend pain through prayer.