Inhaling pure oxygen is ‘as efficient as Viagra’

• Erectile dysfunction is skilled by round half of males aged 40 to 70

Respiration pure oxygen for 90 minutes a day may be as efficient as Viagra for treating impotence – with not one of the side-effects and doubtlessly longer-lasting outcomes, new analysis exhibits.

Males who had the remedy had a mean 50 per cent enchancment of their erectile perform. And the consequences from one month of remedy lasted as much as 18 months in some circumstances.

Erectile dysfunction (ED), an lack of ability to acquire or preserve an erection, is skilled by round half of males aged 40 to 70, based on the British Affiliation of Urological Surgeons. 

9 out of ten males with ED have at the least one underlying bodily trigger, comparable to coronary heart illness, diabetes or taking sure medicines, together with for hypertension and melancholy (which might trigger the blood vessels supplying the penis to slim, leading to inadequate blood for an erection).

ED is normally handled with phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE5) inhibitor medicine, together with sildenafil (Viagra) and tadalafil (Cialis), which improve blood movement to the penis. 

They are often extremely efficient however aren’t appropriate for all males, together with these taking nitrate medicine for angina and people with a severe coronary heart or liver drawback.

ED medicines and nitrates each trigger blood vessels to dilate – so mixed may cause a pointy drop in blood stress, growing the chance of coronary heart assault or stroke.

Potential PDE5 side-effects embrace indigestion, nasal congestion, backache and muscle ache. Research present a 3rd of males do not reply to the medicine.

The brand new research, by urologists at Izmir Bozyaka Coaching and Analysis Hospital in Turkey, revealed within the journal Worldwide Urology and Nephrology, concerned 100 males. One group have been handled with oxygen; one other group got tadalafil every day, for a month; and a 3rd group had no remedy.

Males within the oxygen group have been seated in hyperbaric chambers (just like these used to deal with divers with decompression illness) and breathed in pure oxygen for 90 minutes a day. (Regular air is 21 per cent oxygen, 78 per cent nitrogen and small quantities of different gases.)

The elevated stress in hyperbaric chambers (2.4 instances that of atmospheric stress) helps lungs and tissues soak up extra oxygen than regular.

The oxygen and the tadalafil group confirmed the identical enchancment – round 50 per cent.

Oxygen labored no matter age or how lengthy the lads had skilled ED. Results lasted for a mean of two months.

This contrasts with medicine comparable to Viagra, that are used on demand with results lasting as much as 4 hours (or 36 hours with tadalafil) and have side-effects that last more.

It isn’t clear how hyperbaric oxygen remedy helps ED. One principle is that additional oxygen encourages new blood vessels to develop, supplying the penis with extra blood. 

One other is that it’d result in a rise in nitric oxide, which relaxes blood vessels, permitting extra blood to movement into penile tissue.

Professor Raj Persad, a marketing consultant urologist at Bristol Urology, described the research as ‘a foundation for future analysis’.

He mentioned: ‘In diabetes and different circumstances, blood provide to delicate tissues could also be impaired, lowering the oxygen provide. This could briefly be improved by respiration hyperbaric oxygen.’

He warned it’s ‘not a everlasting answer’ and that ‘an excessive amount of can result in oxygen poisoning’.

Treating insomnia could decrease the chance of erectile dysfunction (ED), based on a research by Macau College of Science and Expertise, which discovered males with insomnia have been 3.4 instances extra prone to have ED.

Revealed within the journal Andrology, it additionally discovered that stress elevated the chance by round 80 per cent. It’s thought insomnia results in a drop in testosterone, as manufacturing peaks throughout sleep. Excessive ranges of stress may have an effect on sleep.