Age and Sex

The glorious years of college and young adulthood for a man are by far the most sexually vigorous. With good looks, strength and a firm erection ready to spring up at a moment’s notice, the power of a young man’s sexual drive is formidable, to say the least. But what happens when a man gets older? Why does it become more difficult for him to achieve an erection? What is behind this problem that consistently affects today’s mature generation? It turns out that while age does diminish sexual competence there are identifiable reasons as to how this works.

A younger man is much more likely to have higher levels of testosterone and other hormones that serve, along with other functions, as sexually stimulating agents. These are responsible for the younger man’s generally higher performance in bed and in other areas of life as well, including sports, muscular development and the general competitive spirit. Yet as the man grows older, his performance in all these areas tends to decline. Indeed, if a sample is taken of the hormonal content in an average young man versus that of an average old man, a few striking differences will be found. Some scientists have proposed that while testosterone levels stay about the same until age 50, they begin to decline in the following decade. In each decade after that, testosterone levels were reported to go down even further, displaying a dramatic decline in this hormone.

And so it is that one of the most common complaints arising from the mature population of men is of an overwhelming lack of potency in achieving a satisfactory erection. This impotence, or erectile dysfunction, ranges from having an erect penis that lacks rigidity, to having a complete inability to achieve an erection. Recent studies have found that this decrease in healthy erections is directly correlated to age. The older a man gets, the more likely he is to be afflicted by impotence. In fact, at least half of men over the age of forty experience some sort of erectile dysfunction. Many have postulated why impotence affects older men more than it does younger men. Often the findings they come up with are based on medical processes related to the physical make up of an older man versus that of a younger man.

One of the most obvious causes is found by linking the lower testosterone levels in older men, mentioned above, to their decreased libido and erectile functionality. The lack of other hormones, as well, results in the same problems. For example, one hormone involved in inducing sleep demonstrates a deep slide downwards in its level of production, as one gets older. This common inability to get a normal amount of rest is believed to set off other problems, including impotency, in older men. The basis for a good sexual appetite lies in a man’s well-rested and energetic disposition. If this is not achieved, it is less likely that good performance will result.

But on top of these natural hormonal deficiencies, there are other factors that can negatively affect a man’s sexual vitality. Bad eating habits can, for example, leave a man badly nourished, which could result in listlessness, despondency or a general lack of energy. While a younger man might engage in an unhealthy dietary regime, it will not affect him that much, provided the diet is not severely lacking. In most cases, his body’s resilience prohibits the decrease in nutrients from causing a major disruption in his sexual appetite and performance.

Contrary to their younger counterparts, older men are also more likely to experience high cholesterol, which is known to have drastic effects on blood circulation. One of the many dangerous side effects that goes hand in hand with diminished circulation is the decreased capacity to develop a full or even partial erection. In addition to this, a man’s libido can be affected by the weariness that comes along with low circulation. In the same vein, high blood pressure, more common in older men, can have similar effects on the libido and erectile potency.

Some even speculate that age itself might not be a factor, but rather that the wear and tear on a man’s body that accumulates over the years has an effect on his sexual drive and erectile potency. Take, for example, smoking. In certain studies it has been shown that among those who are victims of erectile dysfunction, men who smoke constitute over twice the number of people who do not smoke. On top of this, it has been shown that the longer one smokes, the more likely he is to suffer from smoking-related complications. While smokers typically never become addicted after the age of 18, an older man who has smoked for the majority of his years is many times more susceptible to the vascular and circulatory deficiencies that smoking causes and that are associated with impotence.

And the same can be said for drug abuse, alcohol abuse, stress, fatigue and many other problems that present themselves to certain people. While younger people show more aptitude to plug on through such difficulties, the older generation tends to feel the burden of these lifestyle complications more sharply as they accumulate over the years. On both the psychological and physical levels, being old carries the weight of age as the body begins to fail and a man’s strength begins to falter.