Discover How Your Prostate Is Affecting Your Sexuality

Do you know there's a mysterious organ that is affecting your erection that's near the penis? Stay tuned to find out what that is.

This podcast is for you. The modern man. I'm Dr. Anne Truang, your host. I'm an intimate health medical doctor and best selling author of the book Erectile Dysfunction Fix. I'll do a deep dive into sexual health and performance and how it affects men of all ages and backgrounds. So let's get started and be sure to visit my website@sexualhealthformenpodcast.com for more information and resources from the show. See you on the inside.

Well, hello there. I am so excited to have Dr. Rachel Ross with me today. Hi, Rachel.

Hi, Dr. Ann. I am so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Oh, my God. Well, I feel that Dr. Rachel and I are sisters from a different mother, different father. We have so many things in common. We think alike. We almost have the same personality, honestly, and we hit it off right away. So Dr. Rachel Ross, if you have not heard about her yet, she is famous for men's health and sexuality. She's also a functional medicine doctor as well, which is a rare combination of natural, holistic, functional medicine and then a sex health expert on top of that. And she's also a medical doctor as well, like myself, but she's a lot more functional medicine than me. So I'm so glad to have her here. And we're gonna have a great episode today as well. So I want to start out with focusing on her passion and that is prostate and how the role prostate plays a role in a male sexuality at this point.

So glad to be here. And I think the prostate, even though we talk about how every decade a gentleman's prostate is getting bigger, it's getting larger. I think one thing that we don't talk about is how intricately woven the prostate is with men's health. I actually tend to think of it as I call it air traffic control, because the prostate kind of controls what sex signals get through to the erectile tissue. It actually kind of controls a little bit of blood flow, and as it starts to swell, it actually starts to steal from what should be going to the erection. So what you'll notice in guys who are having some prostate issues, prostate issues and erectile issues go hand in hand together. I rarely see a prostate issue without an erectile issue hanging out somewhere. And honestly, when I see minorities, like people like myself, African American gentlemen, and they're having ed, I always go back to prostate and hypertension as being the Two things that are likely stealing their erectile power from them. So, yeah, I'm very passionate about the prostate. And for me, it goes a little deeper than that. My dad was a physician too, and we worked together in clinic. And I never realized he was struggling with his prostate until later in life when he was in his 80s and I was spending more time with him and just realizing he's like, you know what? I think I need to get surgery. You know, prostate is really enlarged, and it's causing me some issues. But it had been causing him issues for a really long time, and it had gotten so enlarged that he was having urinary symptoms. And to see a guy go from being this powerful ER doc, the man in the community, to really succumbing to prostate issues, where it was trouble urinating, sitting, trying to strain to get the urine out, soiling himself, it was really tough for me. And so I used that as the signal that I needed to go really hard in the prostate space and to see what we can do to curve and to get the knowledge out there so that gentlemen can really start earlier getting control of their prostate health.

So oftentimes, what I find with my patients, that they don't even know what the prostate is or where the prostate is. And it's not an organ that is talked about a lot, not like the heart or the lungs, and it's kind of hidden. So tell us about how the prostate is integral to getting an erection, and how is that? The air traffic controller?

Sure. So the prostate. And it's interesting because guys don't really know it's there, boys don't really know it's there. And doctors seem to act like, hey, well, you know, your prostate's enlarged. Let's just biopsy it. It's treated as if it's no big deal. Kind of like they do with the gallbladder, right? Oh, the gallbladder is not working. Take it out. Well, but the prostate, though, sits at the base of the erectile tissue. And as the nerves, the pudendal bundle in particular, courses through and tries to innervate or go to the erectile tissue to tell it to get an erection, to give it blood flow. There it is. Perfect.

That's the prostate.

That's the prostate. As these things happen, guess what? As the prostate enlarges, the nerve signals, the blood flow actually becomes compromised. I'd like to say that the prostate is stealing the thunder from the erection. So once the prostate gets enlarged, now 2, ejaculate is glorified. It's a thing but not just that. It carries the seed of life. When your prostate is enlarged, it's weak, it's boggy. The pelvic floor is deconditioned. Guess what? You can't ejaculate. Men start to notice. Instead of shooting out like they did in their teenage years, it actually starts to sludge. And just a little bit may come out here. In some guys, nothing comes out. And all of that is because the prostate. Now, the prostate has lymphatic drainage, too. So almost think of the prostate like a sponge. So, Dr. Ann, put your model back up there of your. Where your prostate is. And if you guys look, see where the prostate is sitting? Right behind that is the rectum. Yeah.

So here's the scrotum.

Yeah.

The anus. And the prostate is right here.

Yes. So if you're constipated, you maybe not moving stool properly. Guess what? That poop sits right behind the prostate. So you have a very thin membrane that separates the stool or the poop from the prostate. So the prostate is getting byproduct from your stool is getting toxins. And so over time, what we find is that the prostate is enlarged, it becomes toxic, it becomes sick. And so, for a lot of my gentlemen, one of the first things that we may start with is prostate massage. What prostate massage is designed to do, and particularly in other cultures that practice prostatic massage, is it's designed to help move lymphatic drainage. Help drain. What guys don't realize is that coursing within the prostate is a pathway of duct work. D U c T, not D U C k like pipes. And the ejaculate has to come through the prostate. So if those pipes become clogged or the pipes actually start to become strictures so that they can't get through or there's a stone in them. Now you're blocking the flow of drainage of stuff that actually should come out but actually get stuck there. So the prostate, for me, and how I treat erectile dysfunction really becomes the centerpiece of erectile health.

Wow. Because of its location, it's connecting. The urethra has to go through the prostate. The urethra is where the tube where you pee had to go out of the bladder, go through the prostate, and then go into the corpus spongiosum here. That's where you urinate right here. So the prostate is where you produce sperm. And as you said, if it gets, like, firm and ejaculate, so as it gets enlarged, it clamped down on the urine that needs to come out from the Bladder. So what you're saying also is that the intestine that is sitting on top of the prostate can cause the prostate to be toxic. Is that why prostate hypertrophy, or enlarged prostate, is so common as men get older?

Good question. So, actually, there's a lot of different theories on what's causing this bph, or benign prostatic hypertrophy. And the theory that I adhere strongest to is that guys are exposed to so much inflammation and so many xenobiotics and fake hormones through their diet, through their personal care products, through the plastics the foods are stored in. And so what's happening is those, as endocrine disruptors are actually triggering and causing a rise in unhealthy versions of testosterone that is causing the prostate to swell. Because as time goes by, every decade of life, you lose your body's ability to produce testosterone a little less. Every decade of life, you lose your ability to create nitric oxide. Coast down a little bit. Every decade of life, we start to see the prostate getting larger and larger. And so, unfortunately, as that prostate gets larger, there's more rushing to the bathroom. They're getting up in the middle of the night. So when you're getting up in the middle of the night and your sleep cycle is disrupted, what happens to your testosterone? Your testosterone plummets because testosterone is surging throughout the night. Not if you're getting up to pee, though. You're missing your important REM cycles. So the prostate is not only creating issues with the urine and the ejaculate. So there's fertility, there's urine. It's also stealing your ability to get hard in a lot of cases.

How does the prostate steal your ability to get hard? How does it affect this penis area?

Yes. So if you look at Doc, when you're thinking about the pudendal bundle and it's coming off and it's ducking around the side. So we have nerves that go lateral to the prostate, and then we have some nerves that actually dip through the prostate and head to the erectile tissue. So, like, for instance, if you have a guy who's had a radical prostatectomy or had his prostate removed, typically, even when they do a nerve sparing surgery, typically, some of those nerves are still damaged because they are embedded within the prostatic tissue. And so as that prostate begins swell, we actually start to see circulation issues. But the blood supply to the nerves, because people forget, like, the nerves are living things, too. They need blood to survive, too. So the blood supply to the nerve bundles is compromised. And in some gentlemen that prostate gets so large that now you've got pressure on the nerves. And the nerves, it's kind of like going dead. You know, you sit on your butt too long, you're like, dang, my butt is numb. Well, it's a very similar process. Your, your nerve function actually stop, starts to decrease because of the enlargement of your prostate. And then most of us sit all day long. So you're sitting all day long, then you've got an enlarged prostate. So all of those things interfere with circulation because when it comes to erectile tissue, it is all about circulation. I mean, we could talk about all the things that impact circulation, but if we can't get the blood flow to where it needs to go, well, now we've stolen, so to speak, from the erections.

Right. I love how you say, call it the air traffic controller. And oftentimes when you're looking at ed, you're focusing more on here functionality in the penis area and not really kind of concentrating more on the prostate as another area to treat. And I find that treating prostate with. And treating the pelvic muscle, which are here, the pelvic muscles, which is right below the scrotum and the anus, and also doing shockwave gearing towards the prostate. I have not done the prostate massager yet, but if I have to, I will. But tell us about the prostate massager and how does that help with ed.

Sure. So I feel like I've had plenty of success doing shockwave on the prostate. When you do shockwave on the prostate, though, you just do shorter runs of it. It's not a full cycle on the prostate because you're targeting the prostate that gen mo period, that gen mo point where it's halfway in between the testicles, halfway in between the anus, you feel a little bulge, you put a push on it, a little bit of pressure. That is your prostate. So with prostatic massage, and I always tell guys, listen, in some cultures, they're smacking it around. In some cultures they're doing shockwave. In some cultures, they're pumping. In some cultures, they're sending electrical current through the tissue. But all of it is basically doing the same similar things. Some of it is just doing it quicker. So shockwave is sending it through so that you're actually getting growth factors and healing factors to the area so you can regeneratively get angiogenesis. But when they study pumping, they see angio neogenesis. When we see guys who are jelqing and keeping themselves healthy by smacking their erectile tissue Back and forth. Really, what do they do? They're kind of doing micro damaging or micro tears so that that tissue can heal healthier. But when it comes to prostatic massage, the concept behind prosthetic massage is that there are a couple different ways to massage your prostate. You can reach it internally, like when you come to the doctor and we check and do your prostate exam, you know, we stick a finger in and feel your prost prostate from within, so you can do a massage from the inside. And honestly, that's one of the more direct ways to get to it, particularly if you're sludging or not having great ejaculate. Because what we're doing is the seminal vesicles actually sit on the posterior aspect of the prostate right here. Yes. And so if you want to stimulate the seminal vesicles, which are the place where the semen is actually created. So the semen is created, their sperm is created in the testicles and semen in the seminal vesicles. And then what's happening is as that fluid gets to the prostate, the prostate adds prostatic fluid to it, which is supposed to be the most in volume, and then it's ejected out like snap, like a rubber band. Well, if your prostate is unhealthy or boggy, it can't do the snap. So that's where you start to see the sludging. And everything in the pelvic floor is too weak to contract and give you that snap. But what we find with prostatic massage, whether it's internally from the anus, whether it's using the perineum, that location, that GENMO point that we talked about, that's between the testicles and the anus, or the third way to do the prostatic massage is actually go suprapubically. So we're taking a hand, and right where you feel your pelvic bone, right where that pubic hair is, you're kind of massaging the bladder through that area, and you're getting the top of the prostate. So you're massaging it from the top, the back, and from underneath, depending on which way you're going about it. Yes.

Like right here on top. And then you can go through the anus right here, going to the inferior portion and then the posterior portion. Like right here.

That's right. And what I found is when I was treating Ed in the clinic, and Doc, you've been there, where you're doing the shockwave, you're doing the P shot, and we've all done it, there's a patient where you're like, damn, I don't know, what should I try next? So I remember this with this guy. He was a famous movie star. So I'm practicing there in Los Angeles, and I was like, gosh, I'm sweating. I'm like, I gotta get this guy's stuff back. So I went back through the history, and he was African American. And I said, his prostate. I was like, he is waking up several times a night. And this was the first day I used my prostate massage machine. I have this whole machine that I've gotten from China, because in Asian cultures, prostate massage is just part of the culture. So I have this device, and so I take it out, like, listen, this is going to really change the game. He's just trying to speak life into his erection. So I put the device in and I turned it on. I was like, it's going to take a little getting used to. And I left him there. I said, I'll be back in five minutes. I left him there, and I went back out and I prayed about it. Lord Jesus, please help me help him. Please help me help him. I come back, he's like, okay, Doc. So I gave him my protocol. I'm like, do this, do this, do this. He's like, okay. I get a text message the next day. He's like, doc, he had gone and seen a specialist in New York City, and then he ended up in our clinic. He said, doc, out of all the different things that anyone has done, he's like, for the first time, I woke up with an erection this morning. And so I knew from that point on, I said, I'm onto something with the prostate here. And so going into this deep dive around prostate function, and really, if you want to wipe out a guy's fertility, if you want to make him to the point where he's barely getting hard, he's got to depend on medications. You start with prostate because once the prostate is wiped out or it's boggy, it's enlarged, it's unhealthy, it's weak, it becomes very hard for him to perform. And so he can rely on medications, and medications will help for a little while and this and that. But in my clinical practice, if we don't get the prostate under control, we never get them to the point where they don't have to come back and see me. Prostate evaluation is a big part in my protocols and a big part in helping heal the d. It's like, yeah, I know.

You have a prostate massager that men can use?

Yes.

Oh, do you have that with you there? Sure, yeah.

We have an internal version and an external version. So. External version, which is the one that guys prefer, especially if they're a little squeamish, because gentlemen don't want to necessarily put things into their rectum immediately. But this serves the purpose of they sit and they put it in between the rectum and the testicles, the Genmo point, as we like to call it, the million dollar point. And they turn it on and they actually sit on it. And so the vibrations, the sonic vibrations actually penetrates through the perineum to the underside of the prostate. The other version that we have is call it the internal massager. Now, both of them can be used internal. It's just that my audience is typically heterosexual audience that typically is really squeamish of anal play. But if I can convince them that it's worth giving a try, usually this introductory piece, I saw some benefits, so maybe I will try internally. And then we have an internal version. This is the part that actually goes inside. And the great thing about it is it curves to kind of fit and sit right behind the prostate. And so what people don't realize when you're talking about me putting a finger in and doing an exam or you putting a massager in, is that it does not have to hurt. We put lube on there and you're doing breathing exercises. And all of our massagers come with a free ebook on how to really do it without hurting yourself. And what the protocol should be is that it actually doesn't hurt. I mean, if you think about it, this is about as a little thicker than my thumb. And when you sit on the toilet and do a big old poop. Poop, sometimes the poop is the size of the microphone, so it does not have to hurt.

Yeah.

And then another secret is that sometimes guys can do it. Like, for instance, my truck drivers who are on the road, they could just get a tennis ball and roll back and forth on it, and they're actually massaging the prostate, the pelvic floor muscles. Because I think of the prostate and the pelvic floor muscles as being the same weakened deconditioned system. So that when you're doing a Kegel exercise or you're doing what we call dick ups, that you're actually strengthening the prostatic system because the prostate rests on the pelvic floor. And as everything starts to become deconditioned, it's the pelvic floor and the prostates that's suffering.

Right. Just to clarify, for those audience that can see us on video. So you go through the anus right here, and the massager kind of massages the inferior part of the prostate right here. And then this is the skin you would go to the.

That's the external.

The external right here. But you said that the external can also be used as an internal as well, too.

Sure, it can be. It's a lot bigger in size, but still not bigger than a big old poop. So you can. But we wanted the internal to be as slim line as possible. The slimline comes with a remote control. They're both USB charged. And the best part is getting the feedback from the guys who decide to try it and getting that email saying, doc, I haven't been able to ejaculate for years. This was been amazing. Or now I'm starting to get morning wood. Because actually, what we're doing too, when we're going posteriorly is as those sonic vibration is vibrating the posterior aspect of the prostate, we're actually. Remember the nerve bundles that we just spoke about? We're actually sending that there too. And you know, doc, the research behind vibration therapy and nerve function. So the hypothesis is, is that on top of that, we're regenerating and helping regenerate. Deconditioned NER and nerve damage is particularly useful for guys who are diabetic and already have developed some sort of neuropathy and are dealing with microvascular damage. Yeah. So I'm a huge proponent of prostate massage, but I'm also a huge proponent of starting early and getting on a supplement that's designed to help keep the prostate healthy. We just released Prostate Plus Flow, inspired by my dad's journey, and it's got a proprietary blend that is designed to help with the urological symptoms in terms of the bladder and rushing to the bathroom and getting up at night and all of that, but also to support blood flow within the erectile tissue and to support bladder health. And I think it's revolutionary in the sense that you rarely see a prostate supplement that addresses all three of those.

Absolutely. So that will segue us into where can they find the prostate massager and your new prostate supplement. I love the ingredients, by the way. Tell us where our audience can do that, and then we'll have you come back for part two and we'll discuss about the root cause of ED.

Yes.

I love it.

I love it. Dr. Ann, you're always so much fun. I love the opportunity. I appreciate you so much for having me on. But you can head over to drrachel.com or drrachelinstitute.com and Prostate Plus Flow launches this week, so I'm really excited about that. We've had some great feedback from our focus groups and guys who are using it. So anyone in your life that you know of that either has prostate issues or you feel like prostate issues are coming, I think this is the perfect move for you.

So doctorrachel.com so doctor rachel.com to get the prostate massager and her prostate plus and then we'll be back again to talk about more about Ed. So thank you for being with us today, Dr. Rachel, and I'll talk to you soon.

Thanks for having me.

Dr. Ann, are you struggling and frustrated in finding a solution for ed? Well, I have just the thing for you. It's called the Modern Man Club led by yours truly, Dr. Ann. Together we're redefining male sexuality and embracing a holistic approach to overcoming ED without medication or surgery. I will provide a protective environment for community and proven strategy to overcoming ed. It is a safe place. Expert coaching by me and my team. We provide holistic approach to overcoming ED and an empowering community of men with ED supporting one another and lots and lots of educational resources. Visit mensexualityclub.com at the link link here on my right and connect with us and reclaim control over your sexual health. I'll see you there.

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