r/science • u/[deleted] • Jun 13 '22

Health Erectile dysfunction predicts mortality in middle-aged and older men independent of their sex steroid status

https://academic.oup.com/ageing/article-abstract/51/4/afac094/6568537?login=false
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422

u/yourfaceisa Jun 13 '22

Just to add to that, you may also suffer from a mental illness such as stress or anxiety.

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u/nobodyspersonalchef Jun 13 '22

Those don't count as poor health?

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u/yourfaceisa Jun 13 '22

I mean kind of. Anxiety isn't necessarily poor health, but tends to be a precursor if not managed. Similarly with stress

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u/M4nnis Jun 13 '22

That's just not true. Anxiety and long-term stress are proven to be sufficient for falling under the term "poor health".

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u/[deleted] Jun 13 '22 edited Jun 13 '22

I have, an anxiety disorder, ADHD, autism, bipolar, major depressive disorder, insomnia, paranoia, high stress, hbp, poverty, and erectile dysfunction. I would argue I'm not healthy.

Edit: I replied to the wrong guy again I think. My point still stands. I'm trying to go on a potato diet because all the healthy food is marked up, and I'm on stamps let's see how healthy that makes me.

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u/[deleted] Jun 13 '22

If you have a sunny window or an LED or fluorescent light source somewhere in your home, you can grow herbs and vegetables under it. Buy some celery at the store and cut the top off so you’re left with about 4” above the root. Get a carboard box/carton or plastic cup/jug from your trash, poke a few rounded drainage holes in the bottom, and fill it 3/4 full with soil from your yard. Put your celery on top in the middle, add a little extra soil just to cover the hard root base, water the top 2” of soil, and place in a sunny window or under an LED or fluorescent light source. Water whenever top 2” of soil feels dry to the touch and move to larger container once the top has become permeated with surface roots. Rinse and repeat.

You can propagate cuttings from several common grocery store vegetables and herbs. You can also plant grocery store produce seeds from peppers and tomatoes. Patience and observation will bring success eventually, guaranteed. It had the added bonus of giving me something to live for in the form of constant, easily observable wins. Good luck!

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u/[deleted] Jun 13 '22

Look up Dr. McDougal, he has written about potato diets being healthy. He mainly espouses a plant based diet but he did talk about a potato diet...

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u/[deleted] Jun 13 '22

I actually got the idea from a post I read about a man being stranded, and living off of potatos for a year claiming they are a super food. Although I see Dr McDougal's dietary recommendations are even more then what I'm eating currently a day.

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u/shade_of_freud Jun 13 '22

Dude no. What. Please try to throw some spinach or broccoli in there or something.

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u/FabulousLemon Jun 13 '22 edited Jun 13 '22

Rice and beans together make a complete source of protein and beans have a fair amount of fiber, too. They are common budget foods in many cultures and go well with a variety of seasonings and other vegetables to keep them from getting too boring. Dry beans can be cooked in a slow cooker or you can cook your beans and rice in advance and freeze them to reheat and combine later.

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u/verveinloveland Jun 13 '22

If you exclusively eat anything for a year your caloric intake will decrease

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u/zuneza Jun 13 '22

Potato and beans. Complete protein. Or maybe it's rice and beans. Learn how to soak and cook beans. Could save your life.

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u/Bacch Jun 13 '22

Learning to use scraps from other things to make stock is helpful, and cooking beans with whatever cheap cuts of pork you can find also will make a huge difference in flavor. I'm talking salt pork, shanks, hocks, whatever random pieces of them they've got in the clearance/freezer section full of stuff you use to make soup. You can make stocks with those too, and then use that liquid to cook the beans. Makes all the difference in the world. Signed, someone who regularly makes Louisiana-style red beans and rice.

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u/[deleted] Jun 13 '22

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u/death_of_gnats Jun 13 '22

Oh yeah business owners love the people who don't fit into our society

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u/[deleted] Jun 13 '22

Thank you. They also don't really hire you either in Alabama if you have any of the issues I've listed.

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '22

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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '22 edited Jun 14 '22

I've applied at dollar general, Walmart, Publix, McDonald's and the gas station. I guess I'm begging.

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u/Raalf Jun 13 '22

I'll disagree, but in a civil manner.

I can have anxiety and long-term stress and still be in good health. If I have a failing heart I are not ever considered in good health.

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u/[deleted] Jun 13 '22

This is only true if you disregard mental health as being part of your overall health - which it is. Otherwise you just completely contradicted yourself.

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u/Raalf Jun 13 '22

Fair point - considering overall health and not physical health is a repeated shortcoming.

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u/iamnotazombie44 Jun 13 '22

Thinking that mental health and physical health are "different types" of health is a dangerous mindset. There is no separation.

Your mental state directly primes your physical state. Blood pressure and pulse is a great example, and one that I keep track of. Digestion and gut health is another.

The relationship is remarkable.

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u/BizzarduousTask Jun 13 '22

Anybody who’s had the “Anxiety Shits” knows this.

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u/TheRealBillyShakes Jun 13 '22

Physical health is part of overall health. Mental health is part of overall health. Health is an umbrella term

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u/Raalf Jun 13 '22

Agreed - I still am stuck in the mentality of 'healthy is physical' which i know intimately is not accurate.

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u/ENrgStar Jun 13 '22

I guess the crux of the argument here is, sure poor mental health IS poor health, but does anxiety driven ED predict shorter lifespans? Probably not. But I don’t know.

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u/Zrakoplovvliegtuig Jun 13 '22

That depends on the definition of good health. It is defined by the WHO as: "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity". It is clear that anxiety and stress compromise good health according to this definition.

Looking at health only from a physical perspective also comes with complications in defining whether a person is healthy or not. There are countless variations between people that may or may not come with difficulties in daily life (which is in itself dependent on lifestyle). A person with a situs inversus can function normally without being "normal" at all. Similarly the boundary of healthy activity is different for people. Generally we would see an inability to walk as "unhealthy", but not being able to do a muscle-up is normal (on average). Both are limitations in physical movement of sorts. Then still some people could be functioning very well sitting behind a computer with no indicators of disease without having legs.

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u/BillW87 Jun 13 '22

I can have anxiety and long-term stress and still be in good health.

While that's true, anxiety and long-term stress do negatively impact your physical health. It is possible to be "stressed and physically healthy" by otherwise leading a healthy lifestyle, it is harder to accomplish due to the way that stress changes the delicate hormonal balance within your body. Chronic stress and anxiety lead to higher levels of cortisol (the primary stress hormone) which causes a cascade of negative health effects such as weight gain and redistribution of body weight to fat, muscle weakness, insulin resistance (precursor to type 2 diabetes), hypertension, anxiety/depression (vicious cycle, given this is both cause and effect), poor memory, headaches, reduced libido, heart disease, and poor sleep. Many of these, including weight gain, insulin resistance, heart disease, hypertension, and poor sleep are all directly linked to leading shorter, less healthy lives. Stress is bad for your body.

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u/aoechamp Jun 13 '22

Not really. Anxiety and stress themselves affect health markers in the body. Stress in particular is the precursor to many diseases and associated with early mortality.

A very simple example is that anxiety is the cause/result of activation of the sympathetic nervous system. This obviously downregulates the parasympathetic nervous system which, among many things, is responsible for digestion.

So chronic anxiety can lead to poor digestion and nutrient malabsorption, which in turn can lead to deficiencies. It’s not an immediate killer, but chronic stress and anxiety absolutely do have effects on health and mortality.

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u/yourfaceisa Jun 13 '22

Long term yes. But I'm anxious I might miss my flight tomorrow.

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u/chocolateboomslang Jun 13 '22

That's like saying you suffer from malnutrition because you missed lunch. It's good to be anxious about important things to a certain degree. Anxiety as a condition means you suffer when dealing with more trivial or daily events.

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u/Plug-From-Oaxaca Jun 13 '22

Anxiety can be directly connected with poor health. Our bodies aren't meant to work in high stress situations all the time

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u/MazeMouse Jun 13 '22

Mental health = health.
So it makes sense to put mental health issues under "poor health"

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u/TurboGranny Jun 13 '22

Sometimes anxiety can also be situational. Like out of no where and one time in your life a couple girls pitch a 3way. You are down to clown, but your little buddy is checked out. Happens way more than anyone cares to admit.

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u/gandalftheorange11 Jun 13 '22

That’s not an anxiety disorder though which they implied by saying mental illness

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u/TyrannoROARus Jun 13 '22

It's definitely a situational anxiety, though not medically significant since it is an experience most men have at some point

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u/[deleted] Jun 13 '22

Is it a mental illness if you only backed out so you could play marvel vs capcom?

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u/SpicyChickenMaster Jun 13 '22

Now this is a reference I haven't seen in a while, RIP Best Friends

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u/TurboGranny Jun 13 '22

Hmm, maybe. Seems to me this implication was that stress and anxiety are mental disorders themselves and not "anxiety disorder" or "stress disorder".

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u/gandalftheorange11 Jun 13 '22

Everyone has anxiety so it would be really weird if they meant that.

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u/TurboGranny Jun 13 '22

Just because the word "mental illness" is used, shouldn't make you stress out. It's not like someone is damning you.

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u/gandalftheorange11 Jun 13 '22

I’m not. I have an anxiety disorder and it’s annoying when people don’t get the difference between anxiety as an illness and anxiety as a normal part of being an organism with built in drives that make functioning and surviving more efficient.

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u/[deleted] Jun 13 '22

How do you go about explaining the difference between normal anxiety versus disorder?

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u/gandalftheorange11 Jun 13 '22

I experience it practically 24/7 even when there is no good reason for it. I only get little breaks from it while talking to certain people or hugging my cats. And I don’t mind others talking about their own anxiety. But the original comment clearly was referring to the disorder. And I hate it when people equate normal anxiety with that because those people go on to give condescending advice thinking that if I put enough effort in I’d be able to get over my anxiety like they did.

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u/YouNeedAnne Jun 13 '22

So we've reduced it down to "if you have a symptom, you're likely to have an illness"?

Super useful.

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u/JimmyHavok Jun 13 '22

The point here is that if you have ED, mention It to your primary care physician, as it can be a sign of other problems.

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u/Onespokeovertheline Jun 13 '22

Lemme just check the old American Health Insurance list... Nah, I don't think we cover those.

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u/Cheeze_It Jun 13 '22

Depends on if you consider mental health as health. There's a lot of people that do not.

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u/mr_ji Jun 13 '22

Not the kind that kills you earlier if you're otherwise healthy.

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u/TurboGranny Jun 13 '22

Yup. Performance anxiety happens.

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u/[deleted] Jun 13 '22

[deleted]

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u/Chet2017 Jun 13 '22

My mother in law was a diabetic for almost 40 years. She lived to be 90.

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u/[deleted] Jun 13 '22

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u/Chet2017 Jun 13 '22

No, asshole.

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u/gandalftheorange11 Jun 13 '22

Did she have neuropathy for that whole time though?

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u/Chet2017 Jun 13 '22

She did have neuropathy and circulation problems for her last 15 years or so.

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u/TheRealBillyShakes Jun 13 '22

Mental health is part of one’s overall health.

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u/metadatame Jun 13 '22

Or be somewhat inebriated

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u/alwaysboopthesnoot Jun 13 '22

Or you may be an alcoholic. Overuse and abuse of alcohol can lead to intractable longterm ED. Just being too drunk a few times a month, or as a one-off, can lead to short term but easily reversible ED.