Age Has Only Left Him With One Complaint

Here's an active man who has been blessed with good health, and earned physical fitness, well into his 70th year. His happiness in his golden years is marred by only one thing: impotence. Read on, get the facts, and find out what you can do if you find yourself in this gentleman's enviable position of an active, if marred, sex life over many years.

Case #: 1331

Concern：

I am 70 years young. And when you get to my age, your bones hurt; your eyesight fails you; and even your hearing starts to diminish. But heck, I don’t fight aging—I embrace it. When most people find out my age, they look bewildered by my youthful appearance. And thanks to my mother and father’s genes, I am still here: happy, healthy and fit. As healthy as I look and feel, one problem exists: slight impotence. What can I do to improve my vigor where it matters most?

Discussion：

Many aspects of life in the 21st century might be nothing less than jaw-dropping miracles to those who lived even as recently as a hundred years ago. Cell phones, satellite television and the Internet would take a bit of work for the average American citizen to explain to his or her great-grandparents, let alone the more esoteric changes like H.M.O.s and gene sequencing.

How Far We've Come

But perhaps the most amazing change is not only the increased lifespan, but increased productivity and vigor that we enjoy. An American man in the year 1913 could expect to live a little longer than 50 years, while his wife might survive him by an additional five years. The most recent data suggests that an American man may reasonably look forward to blowing out 76 candles on his birthday cake, while his wife might still fondly remember the horny old goat for another five years afterward. And even more importantly, many people are capable of performing their jobs with competence and even distinction for most of those years.

Senior Moments... Down There?

Still, increased lifespan has also granted us additional problems. Aside from far greater numbers of people living long enough to exhibit various kinds of senility, those who have retained their physical and mental faculties well into their 6th or 7th decade of life face the challenge of how to maintain a sex life. One significant contributing factor in such a challenge, for both men and women, is declining levels of hormones: for example, Human Growth Hormones (HGH) are what allow the body to re-grow cells, while didehydroepiandrosterone (or DHEA for short) assists in building memories and physical strength. Insufficient HGH can lead to any number of complaints, ranging from back pain to impotence. Not enough DHEA can result in impotence, or even decreased desire for sex in the first place.

Not Going Gently!

Your health-care provider has probably spoken to you at length about how various organs and glands are changing as you age. Your adrenal glands are producing less of the hormones you want (like DHEA and HGH), and more of the ones you'd rather keep at lower levels, like cortisol and epinephrine. Your liver is having more and more trouble filtering out the bad stuff and even metabolizing the excess good stuff. And, of course, your testosterone levels are quite likely dropping.

For what it may be worth, your actual testosterone levels might remain relatively high, but when your body's production of sex-hormone-binding globulin (SHBG), your effective testosterone levels may be quite low. SHBG functions like the plastic wrap on many items you buy at the store: a protective layer designed to make sure the contents get from the factory to their destination with a minimum of damage or degradation. Too much, however, makes it difficult for the recipient to get at the goods before they spoil; stretching the metaphor slightly, if the package is too difficult to open the recipient may simply send it back.

There are many things you can do to address these challenges, though we recommend keeping your health-care provider in the loop with any and all of the ones you explore. You may experiment with various exercise regimens to increase your testosterone; Harmonic Qui Gong comes highly recommended for that purpose. Changes in diet will help, like cutting down your processed-sugar intake and choosing instead to nosh on handfuls of almonds, bananas, cashews or pumpkin seeds (to increase your body's supply of zinc, which assists with testosterone production). And, of course, you should consider taking an herbal supplement designed specifically to help with the challenges presented by advancing years. (TRY: Anti-Aging Remedy for Erectile Problems)

Growing old is not for sissies, as the bumper sticker reminds us. Fortunately, with modern science and ancient wisdom, growing old does not have to leave you celibate.