While many of the specifics in this article are throwaways, the concept is a BFO - when you find that a function as significant to life as reproduction has been damaged, you know that is a systemic issue. It unlikely on its face that a man that cannot engage in reproductive functions is NOT healthy.
Of the behaviors that correlate with ED, number one on the list is smoking. I always found it ironic that image makers in the media found a way to associate to the masses the idea that smoking was "sexy."
Of course, just as diabetes - uncontrolled blood sugars - is the gateway to every other disease of civilization, it is also thus for ED.
Here's a model for you, proposed by CrossFit's founder, Greg Glassman (kindly forgive the male only perspective): Suppose you are 80 years old, you have hyper tension, "high cholesterol", eat nothing but processed red meat, and in the past week have:
-impregnated your wife
-beaten up a mugger
-dragged a harvested deer 400 meters to your truck
-written a paper on advanced mathematics
Are you healthy? Are you fit?
What if you have "good" cholesterol numbers from a statin, good blood pressure numbers from a medication, and your gout is "well controlled" by the latest gout medication, but you don't feel like doing much, never lift anything heavy "to protect your back", and cannot successfully engage the ladies without the blue pill ... is that person "healthy"?
The point? Just as "stupid is as stupid does", healthy is as healthy does. We look to numbers like cholesterol and blood pressure to evaluate health, but the real evaluation is in the living, the doing, the good experiences, and the actualization of what our bodies were built for. Manipulating correlates of health does not make one "healthy." What allows the health, that was built into your genetics via millions of years of ruthless "life in the paleolithic fast lane", to be expressed is fueling yourself with those things which do not compromise normal function, and demanding enough from your body through physical activity that the body retains the capacity to act when needed, and how needed.
I'm all for having access to medications for those who won't take care of themselves, or for those who need them short term to facilitate "recovery". I think it is foolish and short sighted, however, to say "health care" is the process of extending life via continuous, chronic medication without exploring simple dietary strategies that eliminate the needs for the medications. And yet - governments the world over are bankrupting themselves doing just that.
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