For a long time, doctors have linked erectile dysfunction with heart disease. As you monitor a person's health over a lifetime, you list the sequence of symptoms and diagnoses. Multiply this over hundreds, thousands, and hundreds of thousands of patients, and trends become obvious. Some years ago, the linkage stopped being a coincidence. Erectile dysfunction (ED) became a definite first symptom of heart disease. What remained uncertain was the strength of the linkage. The question has now been answered by the Mayo Clinic in a piece of research published this February. This work was begun in 1996 and was designed to overcome the problems that led to inadequate results in two studies published in 2005. Those reports predicted a risk of heart disease, but did not have a sufficient timeline to follow through to see how many men developed heart problems. The Mayo study followed a group of 1,400 men for ten years. None of them had heart disease when they started in the program. Every two years, the men's general and sexual health was assessed. When they started, 2.5% of the men aged 40 to 49 had ED; 5.5% of the men aged 50 to 59 had ED; 17% of the men aged 60 to 69 had ED and 38.8% of the men aged 70 plus had ED. This matches the general trend that, as men age, they are more likely to experience some degree of ED.

The evidence is clear. Men who develop ED under the age of 50 are twice as likely to develop heart disease as men who are sexually healthy. Generally, men with ED who are not treated have an 80% chance of going on to experience heart disease. But the linkage is less clear in older men and its use for prognosis is limited. The point is very simple to make. If young men have ED, this is a window of opportunity to prevent heart disease. There are two basic explanations for this. ED and coronary heart disease may be the same basic condition. The build up of plaque that affects the heart may affect the small arteries in the penis first. Alternatively, all arteries may lose their elasticity over time. The inability to dilate the penile arteries is the first sign that the heart is at risk from the same problem.

This means treating a young man on two different levels. For the current problem of ED, the strongest drug on the market, levitra, is probably the best treatment. But there should also be preventative treatment for heart disease. This must be managed carefully because some of the drugs used to treat heart disease can cause ED. Thus, using levitra rather than the other drugs is best for the ED, and moderating the dosages of the heart medications keeps everything working properly. With this prevention and cure, a longer life should result. But if young men ignore the danger and buy ED drugs online without getting a full medical check-up, the chances of an early death increase dramatically.