One of the problems for anyone taking an interest in health matters is to keep everything in proportion. Wherever you look, it can look as if there is bad news. It’s easy to get down. So all new information has to be carefully balanced before deciding whether to act on it. Let’s start with a piece in this December’s issue of European Urology. A team in Italy recruited some 350 men aged between 18 and 60 all of whom had been diagnosed with some degree of male infertility which includes a range of sexual problems from erectile dysfunction, failure to ejaculate, low sperm counts, and so on. These men were measured over time against a similar number of fertile men with an active sex life. The results make slightly depressing reading. There is evidence that men who have sexual problems, no matter what the cause, are more likely to encounter serious health problems. The study specifically excluded cancer because the study did not run long enough to determine the odds of men being diagnosed with malignant growths. But, using the Charlson Comorbidity Index, men with fertility problems were more prone to the 22 serious disorders listed in the Index. This research goes further than simply linking infertility to heart disease. It predicts men with infertility problems will die significantly younger than men with full fertility unless they receive fairly aggressive preventative treatment.

Before we all get panicky, we need to understand the significance of the results. This is a small sample study. With a total of less than 700 men participating, this is not sufficiently significant to scale up the results to the whole population. Thousands of participants are required before a statistical link can be made to general trends. But this is a wake-up call to the research community. If large-scale trials confirm this finding, it will require a major rethink about the significance of all types of male infertility as predictors of more serious health problems to come. The current guidelines given to all doctors is to treat all men reporting erectile dysfunction as heart patients until the negative is proved. That means the moment you walk through the door, you will be asked for blood and urine samples, and subjected to a battery of tests to eliminate heart disease. The extent of this testing could become really intensive if the Italians are proved correct.

The moral of this research is simple. Erectile dysfunction can be the first symptom of one of a number of serious disorders and diseases. So, although you could just buy cialis online and self-medicate, the risk is not worth it. You should always go and have a full check-up. If your doctor gives you a clean bill of health, the cialis will cure your immediate problems. But if evidence of potential serious illness is found, you just saved your life. This is your choice. Restore your erections for a short time or extend your life by a decade and more by having early treatment for those otherwise fatal diseases and disorders. Yes, this may well mean spending money — those pesky health insurance policies often exclude consultations and the treatment of erectile dysfunction. But spending money or making those copayments could be the best value-for-money deal you can make.