Heart disease is the big killer in the US. According to the American Heart Association and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while the overall death rate is falling slightly (sorry, all that means is people are living longer), the leading cause of death is cardiovascular disease. Put into numbers, it carries off about one-third of us every year. And this is despite all those wonderful drugs to treat high blood pressure, lower those cholesterol levels and keep the heart beating at a steady pace (that’s before they plug in one of those battery-driven pacemakers). However you try and square the circle, we are killing our hearts by refusing to quit smoking, eating too many fatty foods and refusing to exercise. So why drag all these depressing facts in here? Well, the good news for all men is a little known biological fact.

The first symptom of heart disease is a hardening of the arteries. This disease is called atherosclerosis. With high levels of cholesterol in the blood, you get a slow deposit of platelets on the walls of the blood vessels. These harden and gradually obstruct the flow of blood. They also prevent the muscle walls from dilating and contracting. In the early years, the only sign may be a slight increase in blood pressure. But here we come to our little known fact. The artery feeding blood into the penis is one of the smallest in the male body. Who would have thought it. All that blood flowing into the penis to make the erection hard, yet flowing through the smallest artery in the body.

That means the first clear symptom of atherosclerosis is going to be erectile dysfunction. If the muscles walls of the penile artery do not dilate and only permit a slow flow of blood into the penis, any erection that forms is going to be soft. That means you will immediately be treated as a potential heart patient every time you walk into a doctor’s surgery and admit erectile dysfunction. The figures actually show erectile dysfunction appears between two and five years before a stroke or "cardiac event" — a wonderful phrase meaning your heart stopped beating or beat in a way that prevented the blood from supplying oxygen where it was needed.

Now that the online pharmacies are open for business, men have gone back into their closets and refuse to admit their erectile dysfunction to the world. This is very bad news. Cialis is a wonderful drug and will cure most of the early stages of erectile dysfunction caused by atherosclerosis. But there will come a point when the artery will not dilate at all and erections will fail. Cialis is not a treatment for atherosclerosis. Remember those numbers. When the erectile dysfunction really becomes noticeable, you have between 2 and 5 years before the first cardiac event. Your life can be saved if you have early preventative treatment. The drugs required are worth every cent. If you need surgery, say for a stent, the new techniques are fast, safe and do not require your chest opened from top to bottom. Don’t die tomorrow. Avoid heart disease, buy Cialis and enjoy the rest of a long, healthy life with lots of sex.