the penile plethysmograph told a different story!

A small study done with a group of smokers and recent quitters shows that giving up smoking can improve the hardness, the thickness and the time taken to reach maximum arousal by five times!

For the study 65 men who were sexually active and who were prepared to try and quit smoking were recruited. They all agreed to follow an eight-week smoking cessation program using nicotine patches and quit smoking counseling. They also agreed to take part in erection testing! This was done by using a penile plethysmograph which measures the change in hardness and circumference of erections.

The men had their erections tested with the penile plethysmograph at the beginning of the study, halfway through and one month after the end of the eight-week quit smoking program. Their erections were tested while the men were given pornography to watch.

At the end of the study almost 1/3 of the men had quit smoking and it was observed that these men had wider and harder erections as well as a faster time to reach full sexual arousal, when compared to those men who failed to quit.

The interesting thing about this study was that the penile plethysmograph allowed for objective reporting of erection quality as opposed to the obviously highly subjective reporting of the men. Fascinatingly, despite both groups of men saying that there had been no change in the quality of orgasms, erection strength and arousal speed the penile plethysmograph told a different story!

The study which was led by Christopher Harte from the VA Boston Healthcare System really highlights the link between good erectile function and quitting smoking and should not be ignored by any man! Christopher Harte also pointed out that the fact that the men did not report better erectile function when they quit could be because they genuinely did not notice it, as it would be a gradual process over a few weeks.

The research which was printed in the British Journal of Urology International also suggests that the nicotine found in cigarettes has a negative effect on erectile function because the improvements were not apparent until after the use of nicotine patches was stopped.

There's no getting away from it guys. Quit smoking or face impotence!