Losing weight may help men improve sexual health

By Neelam Goswami

Losing weight may help men improve sexual health

New York, United States, January 3: Men, stick to your New Year resolution of losing weight if you want to stave off sexual dysfunction and improve your sexual health, suggests a new study.

Officials at the American Urological Association advise that erectile dysfunction, which often occurs in morbidly obese men, improves after weight loss surgery.

"Sexual dysfunction should be considered one of the numerous potentially reversible complications of obesity," they said.

In America, losing weight is one of the most popular New Year's Resolutions. Now, the novel research advises that shedding extra pounds may help resolve erectile dysfunction in obese men.

The new research by Dr. Ramsey M. Dallal, from Albert Einstein Healthcare Network, Philadelphia, and colleagues suggest that for men who have vowed to lose weight this year, it will help them cure their erectile dysfunction.

Morbid obesity as well as other conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and smoking can adversely impact sexual dysfunction. In this study, sexual function was restored in men who underwent gastricdefine bypass surgery for weight loss.

For the study, researchers first measured the degree to which 97 morbidly obese men suffered from sexual dysfunction and then analyzed the change in sexual function after substantial weight loss following gastric bypass surgery.

The findings, presented at the 2008 annual scientific meeting of the American Urological Association, showed that the morbidly obese men’s sexual function was significantly lower before surgery, relative to that of a previously published reference control group of men before surgery.

Study investigators found that men’s sexual function was significantly improved after the loss of an average of two thirds of their excess weight, with the amount of weight loss predicting the degree of improvement.

"We estimate that a man who is morbidly obese has the same degree of sexual dysfunction as a nonobese man about 20 years older," the investigators report. "Sexual function improves substantially after gastric bypass surgery to a level that reaches or approaches age-based norms."

"Sexual function is an important aspect to quality of life and is now well documented to be a reversible condition," Dallal explained.

"We are interested in examining sexual function in females, as well as understanding the mechanism of obesity-related sexual dysfunction," he added.

Erectile dysfunction (ED) or male impotence is a sexual dysfunction characterized by the inability to develop or maintain an erection of the penis sufficient for satisfactory sexual performance.

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