I’ve been free of the evil weed since May 1. Quit cold turkey. It’s a good feeling.
I recall a few years ago, when a cow-orker of mine quit. He said he achieved bigger and better erections after he quit. He maintained that smoking constricts the blood vessels (hence the increased danger of stroke for smokers), and erectile tissue becomes erect when it is engorged with blood. Thus, quitting smoking would allow more blood flow.
The OP is dead-on from a medical standpoint. Smoking is one of the leading causes of impotence, and if you combine smoking with diabetes, it gets really, really bad. Many urologists won’t consider surgical therapy at all (implants or arterial bypasses) until the patient quits smoking first. They found over half didn’t need treatment once they stopped, and of those that did need treatment, the outcome was far, far better than surgery on the smokers.
Congratulations on successfully quitting smoking, dear heart… and I am so glad it has had a beneficial effect on your love life, too!
Hmm…I wonder…if I START smoking and then QUIT smoking, will it do anything for MY love life? Nah…didn’t think so.
Thanks for the confirmation, Qadgop. I had considered posing this as a question in GQ, hoping for you to find it there, but I couldn’t resist being puckish and posting in MPSIMS.
Scotti, my love, don’t start smoking, for goodness sake! Besides, I would be incredibly disappointed/horrified/majorly bummed if I found out you achieved erections!
Crazy Cat Lady, you haven’t read many posts around here, have you? This was positively tame. Besides, erections are simply a fact of life. My acknowledging that I achieve them, and that I’ve noticed a difference since quitting smoking, is about as clinical an analysis as I could get.
It also occurred to me that this would be a powerful message for anti-smoking advocates. Dr. Q has confirmed that this is indeed true, so why don’t we see PSAs telling men that smoking will decrease their erectile function?
I think it because, just like the other big negative effects of smoking, it takes some time for it to become pronounced, as it were. If dying/not-being-able-to-breathe/etc. twenty/thirty years down the road don’t work, not being able (or having difficulty) to get it up twenty/thirty down the road isn’t likely going to have an effect.
Under federal legislation regulating the packaging of tobacco products, the warnings are getting quite graphic. In addition to text, there’s now a series of illustrations.
Check out the fourth warning label down, which deals with impotence. (None of that “erectile disfunction” or “e.d.” stuff that Senator Dole talks about.)
