“Hard” Questions About Seniors and Erections: Erectile Dysfunction, Peyronie’s Disease, and the Best Sex of Your (Later) Life
Speaker 1:
Welcome back to the Armour men’s health hour with dr. Mystery and Donna Lee. Hello,
Speaker 2:
Welcome to the Armour men’s health hour. I’m dr. Mystery, your host here as always with my cohost, my office manager and partner in crime here, Donald Lee. That’s right. Hello, everybody. Happy day. Happy day. I’m a board certified urologist. My name is dr. Mystery, M I S T R Y. That’s right. And despite, despite being called gimmicky in the past, it wasn’t gimmicky after was gimmicky. Yeah, I guess the main email. So that’s good. As long as I have been kind of mentioning what I’m, what my name really is, right? I’m a board certified urologist and this show is brought to you by NAU urology specialists. It is the practice that I started here in Austin in 2007. We’ve had the pleasure of treating patients for their urologic complaints for over a decade,
Speaker 3:
A long time to talk about penises, tell you don’t you ever get tired? I never get tired. No, no, not every one day you wake up and go. I just,
Speaker 2:
No, I never say that. I never say that helping people with their private parts that are most private moments in their most personal problems is a real pleasure for me. We had a listener come in, uh, this week and, um, talk about that, you know, my willingness to openly discuss really sensitive topics on the radio has made it so it’s easier for him to talk about these problems with his friends, and then it made it easier for him to come in and talk to us about his medical condition. And I’m sure that we’re going to be able to drastically improve his sex life, his urinary life, and his overall health, maybe miscommunication. Sometimes we really appreciate all of the listeners out there and really appreciate your questions and your feedback. We constantly say that those of you that listen to us in the car and then go home and remember that our email addresses is…
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armormenshealth@gmail.com.
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…and then get on and then send us a message. It really means a lot to us. It suggests a very high degree of engagement and something that we’re very happy with, but, uh, we could always use some more help with the marketing, what the show and, and the podcast. I think we have a group, even my own friends don’t even know that I have this podcast.
Speaker 3:
I think I’m going to make it. I’m going to make it mandatory for our employees to listen every now and again, we should,
Speaker 2:
There’s gotta be some kind of benefit of being the boss,
Speaker 3:
Right.
Speaker 2:
That’s right. That’s right. Oh, why don’t you tell people about our practice?
Speaker 3:
I wanted to say you look especially handsome in your face mask today, so.
Speaker 2:
There you go. I appreciate that. You sound great. Socially that’s distancing
Speaker 3:
Phone number during the week is (512) 238-0762. Our email addresses are women’s health@gmail.com. I know that’s, everybody’s memorized that by now. I hope our website is armor men’s health.com, where you can send an inquiry or a question through the website. And we are located in round rock, North Austin, South Austin, and dripping Springs, Texas
Speaker 2:
Roofing Springs, Texas. And so we really, uh, enjoy seeing you guys, uh, as patients in our clinic. If you hear something on the radio that tweaks your interest and want to be seen for us, please just let us know by email we’ll reach out to you and get you an appointment. Or we have four providers in the office. That’s four physician providers. Then in addition, we have four physician assistant and nurse practitioner providers, all of whom have been specifically trained by myself to deliver extremely high quality care. We really strive to see you ASAP. We don’t take a lot of pride in having long wait lists. We want to see you right away so that we can address your concerns. You’re going to have immediate access to both Donna and myself for your concerns and make sure your care is maximized and you get a free tee shirt. Well, I dunno while supplies, while supplies,
Speaker 3:
Supplies will last. Trust me, I have three boxes in my office. So hit me up and I’ll give you a tee shirt. You ready for a question? I should have done it. Oh my gosh. I was so excited to see this one. Cause this is your, your gig, your jam. “I am 72 and a half year old male in good physical condition. I would like to achieve harder, more firm erections. To that end, I would like to schedule a visit for evaluation, diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment plan.” So we’re here for you, but dr. Mystery is going to go into detail.
Speaker 2:
I think it’s a wonderful, um, uh, thing to bring up and to discuss erectile dysfunction is a major topic, both in our clinic, as well as, as a radio show topic and something that we take, what I think is a very unique approach to. Your erections and how hard they are, is really the end effect of a number of different medical conditions that can affect your vascularity, your neurologic system, hormonal system, and even some degree, your psychology. We actually have something called the erectile hardness scale. It’s a real funny model. If you ever want to see it in our office.
Speaker 2:
Oh, I do.
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And it’s a big reason or a big, um, a supporting argument for why these medicines called PD five inhibitors like Viagra, Cialis and Levitra, and I guess Stendra is another one is on the market, improving penile hardness or rigidity, erectile rigidity, and hardness is a good early sign of erectile dysfunction. At that point, we think that lifestyle modification, the use of supplements, the use of antiinflammatories making sure that your hormones, your testosterone level and other hormones are normal and intact and beginning the use of very low dose medications like tadalafil or Cialis are things that we’re going to do
Speaker 3:
Grunts to Del Phil is,
Speaker 2:
Is that sildenafil is Viagra. And to Dalla, Phil is silence. That’s right. And we’re going to teach you enough. You know, an interesting side effect of having a less rigid penis is the second most common topic we talk about here, which is Peyronie’s disease, which is an abnormal curvature of the penis. And many urologists have a theory that early softening of erections leads to more bending of the penis during intercourse. And that little bit of bending causes something called microtrauma. And that microtrauma ultimately leads to a bending of the penis called Peyronie’s disease. So we get lots of questions about erectile dysfunction and a lot of questions about Peyronie’s disease. That’s how they, the two can be related is a lack of rigidity of the penis. Our approach to it is going to include blood test to look at your hormones. We often will do some neurologic testing. We’ll make sure that you have good sensory function of the skin, of the head of the penis and the shaft of the penis. We’re going to make sure that you have good blood flow. That’s what these medicines that are popularized are really doing is increasing blood flow. And we’ll make sure that performance anxiety isn’t playing a really big role. So when you’re 72, performance anxiety, maybe playing a less of a role, but not zero role, but if you’re 32 and having a rectal dysfunction, then you can imagine that performance anxiety is probably playing a much bigger role. And that’s why in our practice, not only are we going to treat those underlying conditions that are directly related, but we also have sex therapists in the office that can help you with the psychology of getting out of that mindset that causes performance anxiety. And for those of you that have a condition that is not fixed with just medication or lifestyle modification or diet, nutrition, or supplements, we have advanced treatments for erectile dysfunction. There are injections that we can give you called intracavernosal injections that can increase the blood flow into your penis. We have gels that you put into your urethra that can increase blood flow into your penis. We have something called a vacuum erection device, which we use also for Peyroni’s disease, but can also give you a much more rigid erection. And then for those of you kind of at the end of your rope, we have something called the inflatable penile prosthesis. And did you know Donna that we have one of our practitioners spend an entire year learning how to put these in?
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I did know that.
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Yes.
Speaker 3:
I did, because we talked about it for the last year on the radio.
Speaker 2:
It’s one of the few things that you can do that pleases to people, right? Hey, maybe more depending on how popular you are, the nursing home that’s right. The insertion of the inflatable penile prosthesis is not something for the faint of heart. It’s a complex device that is placed by a specialist in prosthetic urology. And I’ll tell you, it has a very high satisfaction rate over 90% satisfaction rate it’s covered by insurance, which is amazing.
Speaker 3:
So frustrating for women. And if they want boobs, well, you know, it’s not covered, but everything man related junk related is covered by insurance. I don’t get it.
Speaker 2:
Don’t get it. Well, you know, a lot of senators are men.
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Touche.
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They make a lot of rules.
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There you go.
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It’s a fun, it reminds me of the argument of how many pills the VA would give vets when they had a right to help us function. And someone come up with six, I guess, six a month. So can you imagine there’s, there’s a group of senators sitting in a room somewhere going, “Okay, how many times can we let these guys have sex a month?”
Speaker 3:
These guys have sex about six sounds good. Six seems like, you know, something, you know, some guys like six, that’s not enough. You know, that’s only, you know,
Speaker 2:
A week and the other, guy’s like six that’s for six months. Why do you need so many pills? And somehow they came up with six a month. Wow. It makes me, it makes me giggle the thought that somehow some, some, some decision making was made to decide how often a veteran would have sex. And then they, they took that and made it for all insurances. So everybody got six. Cialis is a month and there you go. You know, that’s how those numbers came about. Somebody decided that was enough, right? It’s probably excessive force, not enough. So let’s go with six, seven, seven seems weird. It’s not an even number. And then when you took it, you couldn’t get your, your partner mad or else the bill would get wasted. So you need to be on your best behavior six times a month. Oh, well, Donna. Well, what a great segment. Thank you so much for that question. And we would love to give you a second opinion on your erectile dysfunction. We never even discussed shockwave therapy, um, uh, which we do for a rejuvenation of erectile tissue. And, uh, we offer that would love to give you some advice on that.
Speaker 3:
I don’t want to call it penis, penile, pulsing,
Speaker 2:
Listen, we need a marketing person to give us a better name. We’re not going to come with this night soft wave, but then they say that we can’t say erection and soft in the same sentence. So who knows anyway, tell people how to get ahold of it.
Speaker 3:
You get a political group together to decide this five one two two three eight zero seven 62 is our phone number. During the week. You can ask for me, if you’d like our email addresses Armour men’s health@gmail.com. Our website is, you know, in our men’s health.com. The armor men’s health hour is brought to you by urology specialist for questions, or to schedule an appointment, please call (512) 238-0762 or online at Armour men’s health.com.