Article 28: Dietary Restrictions and Daily Prevention Measures for Erectile Dysfunction

◇A Guide to Caring for Your Husband's Health as a Good Wife◇

Next chapter: CHANG JIAN BING DE ZHI LIAO YU TIAO YANG

Treatment and recuperation of common diseases

Dietary restrictions for patients with erectile dysfunction

1. Avoid hot and greasy foods: In the early stages of impotence, many people have excessive phlegm and dampness. Combined with a rich diet or excessive alcohol consumption, this leads to internal damp-heat accumulation and downward flow of damp-heat. If one focuses solely on warming and tonifying at this time, excessive consumption of rich and sweet foods will accumulate dampness and generate heat, potentially worsening the condition. For impotence accompanied by symptoms such as reddish and painful urination, dry mouth with a desire to drink, a red tongue with a white or yellow greasy coating, a slippery or wiry pulse, excessive phlegm, chest tightness, and heaviness of the body, it is advisable to avoid oily meats, including mutton, dog meat, chicken, sparrow meat, as well as pungent and warming foods such as chili peppers, onions, leeks, and garlic. If phlegm and dampness are severe, rich and greasy foods such as chicken, duck, meat, and seafood should be avoided. Furthermore, tobacco, alcohol, coffee, and fried or smoked foods should be strictly avoided.

2. Avoid cold and raw foods: Erectile dysfunction, especially in long-term cases, is essentially due to a deficiency of vital energy (yuan yang), resulting in insufficient nourishment of the genitals and a lack of warmth for the reproductive organs. Clinically, this often manifests as lethargy, aversion to cold, cold limbs, lower back and knee weakness, and a weak, thready pulse. At this time, cold and raw foods should be avoided, such as mung beans, winter melon, celery, water chestnuts, and other cold dishes. It is worth noting that some people believe in high-protein diets and therefore consume more tonics such as soft-shelled turtle. These foods are cold in nature, difficult to digest, and hinder the spleen and stomach's function, further aggravating the condition. Therefore, cold and raw foods should generally be avoided.

What should we pay attention to in daily life?

1. Mental well-being, eliminating distracting thoughts, cultivating a tranquil mind and reducing desires are key. During illness, couples should set aside time for emotional exchange to enhance their interest in sex.

2. Avoid excessive mental work, participate in appropriate physical labor and exercise to improve physical fitness.

3. Practice moderation in sexual desire, abstain from masturbation, avoid eating too much at night, wash your feet with warm water before bed, avoid using excessively thick bedding, and avoid wearing overly tight underwear.

4. Try to avoid taking medications that suppress sexual function, such as reserpine, methyldopa, furosemide, spironolactone, atropine, cimetidine, meperidine, nitrazepam, progesterone, etc.

5. After treatment, erectile function has recovered to some extent. However, it is important to avoid rushing into sexual activity, as excessive indulgence can further damage the kidney's qi and yin essence, potentially causing impotence again, which is even more difficult to treat. Therefore, those who have just recovered should sleep separately from their partners and abstain from sexual activity for a period of time.

How to prevent

1. Eliminate psychological factors: It's essential to have a thorough understanding of sexual knowledge and fully recognize the impact of psychological factors on sexual function. Sexual desire should be viewed correctly; it shouldn't be seen as something shameful to be disgusted or feared. One or two failed sexual encounters shouldn't lead to frustration, worry, or a lack of confidence. Couples should increase emotional communication, eliminate disharmonious factors, and cooperate tacitly. The woman should care for, caress, and encourage her husband, avoiding expressions of dissatisfaction and preventing psychological pressure on him. Concentration is crucial during intercourse, especially when reaching the peak of sexual pleasure and approaching ejaculation.

2. Moderate sexual activity and abstain from masturbation: Excessive sexual activity over a long period, immersion in pornography, and frequent masturbation leading to mental fatigue are important causes of impotence and premature ejaculation, and should be avoided. Practice has shown that couples sleeping in separate beds, ceasing sexual activity for a period of time, and avoiding all types of sexual stimulation to allow the central nervous system and sexual organs to get sufficient rest are effective measures for preventing and treating impotence and premature ejaculation.

3. Dietary therapy: Aphrodisiac foods mainly include dog meat, mutton, sparrow, walnuts, bull penis, and sheep kidneys; animal offal contains a large amount of sex hormones and adrenal cortex hormones, which can enhance sperm motility and increase libido, and is also considered an aphrodisiac; in addition, zinc-containing foods such as oysters, beef, chicken liver, eggs, peanuts, pork, and chicken, and arginine-containing foods such as yam, ginkgo, frozen tofu, eel, sea cucumber, cuttlefish, and octopus, all help improve sexual function.

4. Improve physical fitness: Physical weakness, excessive fatigue, lack of sleep, and prolonged intense mental work are all contributing factors to the disease. It is important to actively engage in physical exercise to strengthen the body, pay attention to rest, prevent overwork, and adjust the functional imbalance of the central nervous system.

5. Use medication with caution:

(1) Traditional Chinese medicine emphasizes syndrome differentiation and treatment in the prevention and treatment of this disease, and prescribes medicine according to different body constitutions, rather than simply using aphrodisiac drugs. Blindly abusing aphrodisiacs may not improve sexual function and may even lead to other diseases.

(2) To date, there is no specific Western medicine that can effectively treat erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation. On the contrary, many drugs can cause erectile dysfunction, such as antihypertensive drugs like hydralazine, reserpine, methyldopa, and guanethidine; diuretics like furosemide and spironolactone; drugs for stomach and abdominal pain like atropine and propantheline; drugs for peptic ulcers like cimetidine; analgesics like morphine and meperidine; hypnotics like nitrazepam and methaqualone; and hormonal drugs like acetaminophen and progesterone. Although these drugs will not cause erectile dysfunction in all users, they should be used with caution and not for long-term use.

6. Quit smoking and drinking: Long-term smoking hinders blood flow to the periphery of the body, affecting penile blood circulation and impacting sexual response. Foreign researchers have pointed out that factors leading to poor blood circulation and erectile dysfunction include smoking, diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure, with smoking being the most significant. Alcohol is a gonadotoxin; excessive drinking or alcoholism can poison the gonads, resulting in decreased testosterone levels in men, and causing erectile dysfunction or infertility in 70% to 80% of cases.

7. Massage for prevention:

(1) Press the 4th lumbar vertebra frequently.

(2) Pressing fingers: Grasp the middle finger of the left hand with the thumb, index finger and middle finger of the right hand, and pull it from the base of the finger to the tip of the finger until the skin turns red; or press the bone between the ring finger and little finger of the left hand with three fingers of the right hand until the skin turns red.

(3) Massage the area below the inner and outer depressions behind the ankle and persist.

8. Practice the Kidney-Piercing Exercise: Also known as the Iron Crotch Exercise, this is a health-preserving exercise kept secret by ancient health practitioners. Its specific practice involves four steps:

(1) Rub your hands together to warm them. Place one hand on your testicles and the little finger of the other hand on the lower abdomen. Then, rub the testicles and penis upwards with both hands about 100 times. Then switch hands and rub the testicles and penis about 100 times in the same way.

(2) Rub your hands together to warm them, and then rub your testicles and penis back and forth with appropriate force more than 100 times.

(3) Hold the testicles and penis between your palms and pull them up and down 3-5 times each.

(4) Rub the testicles with your fingers, alternating between both hands, and then rub the lower abdomen dozens of times.

Note: The intensity and frequency of this method should be increased gradually. When starting out, use light force and reduce the number of repetitions. The goal is to avoid pain or discomfort after practice. However, once you reach a certain level, you should use as much force as possible and increase the number of repetitions to several hundred. It is also important to keep the genital area clean to prevent infection. This exercise is not suitable for those with eczema or inflammation in the genital area.