All Entries Tagged With: "stress"

MEN: Nutrition for Impotence

In terms of preventative health measures, here are a few tips from celebrity personal trainer Lucas James and nutrition expert Jason Apfel that may help augment your lifestyle and current quality of life!

For a start, if you smoke, quit.  Smoking reduces blood flow by causing thickening and loss of elasticity in our arteries.  Aside from the obvious health detriments of smoking, it can actually reduce ones penis size by up to one centimeter in the long term.

Second, if you’re inactive, exercise.  Incorporating regular physical activity can help increase flood flow, but also help with weight loss. Being overweight can cause, or worsen, erectile dysfunction.  Exercise can help with the underlying problems that play a part in promoting erectile dysfunction by.  Aside form the physical benefits, exercise will help reduce stress and mitigate the emotional ties associated with E.D.

Third, eat healthy foods that promote better blood flow.  Some specific foods to avoid are foods high in sodium, which can lead to high blood pressure and cause problems with circulation.  Also stay away from foods that contain trans-fats, which clog arteries and cause heart disease.  These cardiovascular generally translate to insufficient or diminished blood flow, which contribute to erectile dysfunction. Foods that are high in cholesterol also cause clogged arteries and heart disease, similar to trans-fats.  As discussed previously, cardiovascular disease can lead to insufficient flood flow, a primary cause of erectile dysfunction. Watch out for foods that are high in sugar.  A diet high in sugar can lead to weight gain, obesity and diabetes. Weight gain puts pressure on the heart and vital organs making it more difficult to function properly and ultimately increases one’s blood pressure.  The added physiological stress due to diet can significantly decrease blood flow to the penis.

Some specific foods that can help reduce the severity of E.D. are fruits and vegetables, including tomatoes, bananas, strawberries, cantaloupe, oranges and watermelon which help to both reduce body fat and overall weight. The Lycopene from tomatoes also helps to relax blood vessels and increase flow. Dark green vegetables such as spinach and kale are a good source of zinc, which has been proven to improve blood flow to the major organs, as well as the penis.

Pistachio nuts are relatively high in the non-essential amino acid arginine, which helps to maintain elasticity in arteries. It also is believed to enhance blood flow by boosting endogenous nitric oxide levels, a compound that relaxes blood vessels.  One recent study published in the International Journal of Impotence Research: The Journal of Sexual Medicine showed improvements in men for erectile function, sexual intercourse satisfaction, orgasmic function, overall satisfaction and sexual desire in men who ate a diet high in pistachios.  It also reported increased blood flow to the penis by 22 percent, as measured by ultrasound.

Eating foods high in Omega-3 fatty acids is essential to controlling heart disease, hypertension, rheumatoid arthritis, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and more.  Since heart disease and hypertension are leading causes of sexual dysfunction, foods high in Omega-3 such as fish, flaxseed, walnuts, and eggs can help mitigate these factors in a preventative manner.

Stress Management Tips

Stress is a normal psychological and physical reaction our bodies employ in order to deal with the daily demands of life.  While some levels of stress are necessary to keep us on track to accomplish our goals, too much can be detrimental to our overall mental and physiological health.

In identifying the causes of stress, our brain and bodies come hard-wired with a neurological stress highway that serves to power an internal, protective ‘alarm system’.  When we perceive a threat or identify a potentially harmful situation, this pathway signals our bodies to release a burst of hormones known as catecholamines, such as adrenaline, to fuel a unique response. This reaction is commonly referred to as the “fight-or-flight” response.

According to the Mayo Clinic, current studies suggest most Americans experience challenges with stress at some point during the year.  More so, the nonstop pressures of today’s fast pace environment means our stress highways are constantly overloaded, running at a ‘rush-hour’ pace.

That is why stress management is so important in maintaining normalcy within our lives. Stress management gives us set of tools or road-blocks for the traffic of stress on our neurological highway.  Without stress management our bodies are constantly bombarded by these stress traffic alerts, which over time can lead to serious health issues.

Here are a few techniques and things to consider to better deal with stress: