Male Menopause and Sex

Seven sexual changes that occur in healthy, normal males as they age include the following:

• Erections take longer to occur.
• He often requires direct physical stimulation to get an erection; a sexy sight or fantastic fantasy may not arouse him as it did before.
• The full erection doesn't get quite as firm as it used to.
• His urge to ejaculate is not as insistent as before. Sometimes he doesn't feel the need to have an orgasm at all.
• The force of ejaculation isn't as strong as it once was. The amount of his ejaculate is less, and he may have fewer sperm.
• The desire for and frequency of masturbation may drop, but in some men may increase.
• The testicles shrink some, and the scrotal sack droops. The sack doesn't bunch up as much during arousal.

Impotence can be a significant problem for men going through male menopause. Impotence is defined as the persistent inability to attain and maintain an erection adequate to permit satisfactory sexual performance.

According to results from the Massachusetts Male Aging Study that studied a large sample of men between the ages of forty and seventy, the combined prevalence of minimal, moderate, and complete impotence was 52 percent.

Although the study found that psychological factors play a role as men age, physical factors are more significant.

There was a high correlation between erection dysfunction and heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, as well as with the medications that are often taken to deal with these problems. Since the physical, psychological, and sexual aspects are interconnected, most all these symptoms can be prevented and treated by concentrating on the whole man.