The 5 Reasons Your ED Isn't Getting Better

Hello there, modern man. In the last 25 years, I've sat across from more than 7,000 men with ED. Executive, veteran, teacher, husband, fathers, men, and sometimes even in their 20s and men in their 80s. Men who have been to 3 different doctors before they even get to me. Men who spent 10 years, 20 years, even 40 years telling themselves that it was just temporary and maybe it was stress. And I noticed something, almost every one of them had made the same 5 mistakes before they walk into my clinic, the same 5. These 5 mistakes are the reason most men with ED never fix it because the condition is treatable, but they don't know how. Not because they are too old, not because their body is broken, because they were given the wrong map and they follow it for years.

This podcast is for you, the modern man. I'm Dr. Anne Truong MD, your host. I'm an Intimate Health medical doctor and bestselling 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 at sexualhealthformenpodcast.com for more information and resources from the show. See you on the inside.

I'm Dr. Anne Truong MD. I'm a board-certified sexual health specialist Anne Truong MD, and I've treated over 7,000 men with ED. And if you're a man who has been quietly struggling with this, or if you love someone who is, this is the video to watch to the end. Before I name the mistakes, I need to tell you the truth about ED because everything that follows hinges on this at this point. ED is not a mood. It is not an embarrassment. It is not a character flaw. There's nothing wrong with you. ED is just a medical warning signal. The blood vessels in the penis are smaller than the blood vessels in the heart. So that means when the body has a circulation problem, the first place it shows up is the penis, years before the heart is, even a whole decade. So study after study has shown that untreated ED predicts a heart event in the next 7 to 10 years. Not might, pre-dip. So when a man ignores his ED, he is not just ignoring his sex life, he is ignoring his check engine light. And that is why these 5 mistakes are so costly. They do not just cost a man his confidence, but it can also cost him his life. Let that sink in for a minute. Okay, so mistake number 1, believing ED is an old man's problem. The first mistake every man makes is that thinking ED sometimes only happens to other men, older men, men in nursing home, men in their 80s. It's not him, not yet. When the first signs start, maybe an erection's not as firm as it used to be. Maybe it doesn't last as long. Maybe morning wood is not as often. He may tell himself, well, temporary, maybe stress, maybe the wine, and maybe it is the wine, maybe it's the liquor. Oh, maybe it's just a bad night. But let me tell you this. The data actually says 50% of men between the age of 40 to 70 have ED. 25% of men between 20 to 40 have ED. 90% of ED is physical and only 10% is psychological. It's due to stress, anxiety, depression. So 1 out of 4 men in his 20s or 30s is already struggling. Half of all men over 40 is already struggling with ED. So most of them are silent. So I have treated men in their 20s who first symptom started like in college, and I've also treated men in their 80s as well too. So here's the rule I want you to remember. Moderate ED today becomes severe ED in 18 months without intervention. Mild ED today in 18 months will become moderate, and in 18 months to 2 years will become severe. Why is that important? The more severe it is, the more the decreased blood flow it is, and the more aggressive treatment that is required. So it does not wait for you to feel old. It does not wait for you to be ready. It gets worse. And the younger you are when you catch it, ED, then the faster and more completely you can reverse it. Age is not what caused your ED. Time is what makes it worse. Mistake number 2: thinking Viagra or Cialis is the only answer. The second mistake is believing the little blue pill or the generic version of it, which is Sildenafil or Tadalafil for, uh, Cialis, is a treatment for ED. Because it's so easy to get, right? It's so easy to get. And I want you to be clear that these medicines are under a group called PDE5 inhibitors. They are not the treatment for ED. Let me say it again. Viagra and Cialis are not treatment for ED. They are a chemical crutch that props up the blood flow for a few hours. They do not repair the blood vessel. They do not repair the blood flow problem. They do not regenerate nerve. They do not correct hormone imbalance. They do not put you in the mood. They do not get you into more arousal. They do not rebuild your pelvic floor. So they don't fix anything. It's just a temporary band-aid that get more blood flow down there. That's it. But over time, it's going to get worse. But here's what no one will tell you and why the medication fail. They work best in men actually with psychogenic ED, which accounts for only 10% of cases. And for the other 90%, you're fighting against damaged plumbing, damaged wiring like nerve and blood vessels and damaged hormones. So in 2 to 3 years, most men find these pills stop working. Not because they built tolerance, but because the underlying damage is getting worse and the medication was never treating it. And erection is a 4-step event. And so it starts actually in the brain and then it sends messages to the nerve and then to the blood vessel and then to the penis muscle, right? So, and it's the 6 systems that I always talk about, the Get Hard System. So if any of those system is broken, a pill cannot fix that. So if you have diabetes, your nerves may be damaged. No pills fixes that. If you have prostate surgery, your nerves may be damaged. No pill fixes that either. If you have atherosclerosis, which is plaques that are in the blood vessel, your arteries are narrow, no pill will rebuild that as well. So if you have a venous leak, the veins cannot hold the blood, no pills closes them either. So taking Viagra for ED is like taking oxycodone for a broken bone. It may dull the pain, but will not heal the fracture. And while you are busy being comfortable, the damage underneath is getting worse. So the most successful ED treatment addresses the root cause of the problem in the sick system, not masking the symptom. Period. Mistake number 3, hoping it will just go away. The third mistake is the most dangerous of all, and almost every man fix this for a while. He tells himself it's just a phase, bad season, maybe the stress from work, maybe the weight he's been meaning to lose. He convinces himself that if he just wait it out, it will come back on his own. It will not come back on his own. So what do you think? The definition you need to know is that erectile dysfunction is an ongoing inability to achieve or maintain an erection. Sufficient for satisfactory sexual performance occurring more than half the time. Not once, not now and then, but more than half the time. So if you are there, it is not a phase, it is a condition, and condition do not wait. So there was a national health survey over, uh, that look at 1,000 men with at least one risk factor for ED, like high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, smoking, or even being overweight. They gave every man a clinical questionnaire. 86% of them already had ED, and they did not even know they have it. So they have been calling it stress. They've been calling it age. They've been calling it a bad week for years. But here's what I want you to understand about ignoring ED. Here's the cardiac truth. ED is a check engine light for your body. The arteries in the penis are more narrow than the arteries in the heart. So the vascular damage shows up there first in your penis, 3 to 5 years before the heart attack. 67% of men with untreated ED will end up having a heart attack within 7 to 10 years. And that's 6 to 7% of those are fatal. That means death. All right. So ignoring your ED is not a private decision. It is a heart decision. It is a decision you and your partner and your children will have to live with. So I want to tell you about a patient of mine named Randy. Randy is 78 years old. He's had ED for 40 years. He tried everything on the internet, multiple doctors, nothing worked. His wife left him. He was by himself. He was at the low peak of his life. He was ashamed. And after he— and he came to see me in the pits and he said, you know, I'm still young. I still want to live. I still want to have a sex life. And I said, well, Randy, let's try the best we can to get you restored again. He underwent the Get Hard System protocol. And within about 3 months or so following the protocol that involved restoring all the 6 systems of the brain, of the emotion, of the hormone, the blood vessels, right? The nerve and also the penis muscle. He now can have an erection again after 3 months. He's able to maintain it. He's able to keep it without medication. And he's now dating again. And he knows now that he can perform. So 40 years of no ED come back on its own because we're treating the cause of the problem. 40 years of shame and silence and watching his marriage end. At 78, with the right help, he got back in the game again. So I'm glad he came to see me at 78. I wish he'd come to see me at 40. So do not wait like Randy had. Waited. Mistake number 4, using an online dispensary to get your ED pills. The fourth mistake is that one of the fastest growing mistake I see because it feels modern, it feels private, and it's easy. It feels smart, but none of those things are, are working well. So let's say if you notice your erection is a little bit weaker, you're embarrassed to go talk to your doctor, or maybe you just don't have time. To go to the office. He goes on Google and he type in maybe, you know, treatment for ED. And guess what? One of the online clinics shows up and it's a telehealth company that advertises. He fills out a 5-minute questionnaire of provider he will never meet in person, glances at it. 30 minutes later, you know, he gets sent a chewable mint or a little pill And then he only see the provider maybe 5 minutes online. No exam, no blood work, no ultrasound, no real evaluation. Let me say this as clearly as I can. Treating your ED with an online pill dispensary is like ignoring chest pain and going online to treat your chest pain. ED is a symptom, not a diagnosis. And a symptom tells you something is wrong underneath. And does not tell you what. This is what a physical exam is for. This is what blood work is for. This is what imaging is for. What a real sexual health specialist will actually look like when a man walk into my clinic. Here's what happened. We do comprehensive blood work. We do a complete medical history. We do a complete physical exam. Look at it from, from the head. All the way down to the feet. We use standardized questionnaire to measure your ED, measure your testosterone level, measure your energy level. And then we look at the hormones that are being released from head to toe, make sure that they interact properly. And then sometimes, depending on the situation, we'll look at the blood flow in the penis as well too. That's called Doppler ultrasound exam. So this is the evaluation, what it looks like, looking at you comprehensively from the inside out and giving you a good examination. This is the difference between a physician that specializes in sexual health and a pill vending machine. Here's the hidden risk. Men that are on nitrate for angina cannot take these ED medication. Men on alpha blockers for blood pressure can have dangerous drop in the blood pressure when they take ED medication. An online form will not catch this. A real doctor will, and men had died from shortcuts before. Do not take this one. Mistake number 5: Ignoring the lifestyle that's feeding your ED. The fifth and final mistake is the one men most reluctant to hear because it asks them to look in the mirror. You cannot opt out pill, you cannot out injection, and you cannot out treat, and you cannot out pump a lifestyle actively creating your ED every day. Here's the lifestyle factor that quietly destroy your erection, and almost every man has at least 3 of them, right? What are the lifestyle driver of ED? Number 1, lack of exercise, smoking, even including vaping, prolonged stress, have eating a poor diet, diet full of processed food. What's processed food? Anything that's in a bag or anything in a, in a box, right, or anything that's in a can. And then drinking more than 14 alcoholic drinks a week, having sex less than once a week, because the penis muscle needs to be exercised like any other muscle. But we can combat that with the penis pump, right? Let's say if you're only having sex once a week, you can probably do the penis pump twice a week. The par is really 3 times a week. What, what other drivers for that will make ED worse? Poor sleep, right? Less than 7 hours of sleep. Sitting more than 2 hours at a time. Being overweight, especially around the waist. My rule of thumb is that if you have a lot of, a lot of waist and you can't see your penis, you'll probably have to worry about that. All right. And a diet high in processed food. We talked about that as well. Here's the thing is that you could also have medication can contribute to this as well. Like antidepressant, antihistamine, blood pressure pills sometimes will do that. Now what I don't want you to do is stop your medication. What I want you to do is talk with your doctor first about this and how it may affect your erection. But another thing to think about as a medication is opioid painkillers, such as codeine, morphine, or oxycodone. Can really dampen that erection. Don't forget nicotine and marijuana as well. But the good news is that many of these lifestyle drivers are the things you can change. You can stop doing the bad things. You can start doing the Mediterranean diet. It's packed with food that open up your blood vessel, lower inflammation, and fuel your hormone naturally. I've seen men notice real improvement in both energy and erection within weeks when they shift to this style of eating. So check out the Mediterranean diet link right here below and get that as soon as you can. You can start doing daily walk. You can have better sleep, drink less alcohol. It can be reversed. So you don't have to live with it. So listen, so why does most men never fix this? Here's the thread that ties all 5 mistakes together. The reason most men never fix their ED, every one of these mistakes come from the same belief. The ED is a symptom that is a nuisance. It's a single problem with a single solution. It is not. An erection's an orchestra of 6 systems playing in symphony, synchrony together. The 6 systems is the brain, the emotion, the hormones, the nerve, the blood vessels, and the penis muscle. If even one of this is out of tune, the whole symphony falls apart. So the pill only addresses one note, right? The online clinic addresses one hormone. The supplement addresses one pathway. Waiting it out addresses nothing. So the men who fix their ED, and I have watched thousands of men do it, are the one who stop looking for one magic fix and start measuring all 6 systems. This is the Get Hard System Protocol. This is why we built it to reverse ED. This is what we have been doing for a long time, and we have seen that it works. It is the difference between hoping and healing. So if this sounds like something that you want to explore to see if the Get Hard System will help you or not, and if you're making one of these mistakes, don't feel bad. Everybody makes it. But I have— I want you to know something. You are not behind. You are not broken. You are not a lost cause. You are just one decision away from getting real help. And that's a decision, is to decide whether you want to talk with our team to see if the Get Hard system and the protocol is right for you. Click the link below here, or you can just go to renewwithdranne.com to schedule a discovery call with us to see if the Get Hard System will get you back in the game again. So if you're not ready for a call yet, start here. Drop a comment right here. Follow what I just said that the erection killers are. Let me know how you're doing. But just know that you are not alone. You are not broken. And there are alternatives. And that, Modern Man, I will see you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the Sexual Health for Men podcast. If you love this episode, then Please take a screenshot on your phone and post it on Facebook, Instagram, or wherever you post. And be sure to tag me and let me know why you like this episode and what you'd like to hear in the future. That will help me know what's great for you. And I would love to give you the most incredible free gift designed to help you improve performance quickly. Go to my website at sexualhealthformenpodcast.com to get the book, The 5 Common Costly Mistakes Men Make When Facing ED. I would appreciate if you subscribe, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, and just know that you can have sexual vitality for life. I appreciate you. Until next time.