I suffer erectile dysfunction – when my wife and I go to have sex my brain just switches my penis off. Help!
OUR resident specialist and NHS GP, Dr Zoe Williams, shares her expert advice.
Today, Dr Zoe helps a reader who has erectile dysfunction.
Q) I SUFFER from erectile dysfunction.
When me and my wife go to have sex, it feels as if my brain switches off my penis.
It’s like I have got into a vicious cycle. What sort of help can I get for this? I am 58 and have no health issues that I am aware of.
A) We tend to separate erectile dysfunction into two main groups of causes.
Firstly the psychological causes, which are just like you describe – the brain, emotions or stress are responsible for the inability to get or maintain an erection.
The second group is physical causes such as poor blood circulation from cardiovascular disease or diabetes, or in some cases low testosterone, but this tends to have additional symptoms.
To try to differentiate between the two, we often ask if you are still getting normal morning erections.
If these are absent or weaker than before, it could give a clue towards there being a physical cause.
If you feel confident that your issues are psychological, the first thing to do is be open and honest with your partner about what is going on.
Sometimes just the anxiety around not being able to get an erection can be the only factor and the best way to address this is to be honest.
That removes the “power” of the anxiety. If issues run deeper than this, approaches such as cognitive behavioural therapy and counselling would be the next step.
Of course, it is possible to have elements of physical and psychological causes, so it’s generally best to have a check-up, such as an NHS Health Check if you are aged 40 to 74.