MALE SEX PROBLEMS FROM ALCOHOL

A significant number of young, healthy men become impotent because they are phsically unable to handle alcohol, an Australian psychiatrist and alcohol researcher said recently.

Dr. Graeme Jensen told staff members at the Addiction Research Foundation that the only links so far between alcohol and sexual performance in males have been organic damage (liver disease) and psychiatric problems.

His theory, partially substantiated by endocrinologists, is that certain males over 40 years of age who drink moderately or heavily, but are not alcoholic, are physiologically vulnerable to alcohol which shows up in impotence. "These men have several years of sexual adequacy behind them and they develop sex problems after they start drinking.

There is no other treatment except to stop drinking. It's probably a metabolic susceptibility." He said the answer is likely to come from endocrinologists who study glands and internal secretions. Many of the impotent drinkers had an excess of estrogen hormone.

"At this stage, I would suggest the alcohol-impotency syndrome is related to the balance of male and female hormones in the body," Jensen said. Jensen, who has had 15 years experience with patients with alcohol problems, said only a small proportion of the impotent drinkers had liver damage which would affect sexual performance. He said he was also seeing an increasing number of teenage boys and young men who had no problems until they started drinking.

In most cases potency returned to a majority of patients from four to twelve weeks after they stopped drinking, he said. His research continues, but he said studies on rats and dogs indicated that small doses of alcohol can enhance sexual prowess, but results in diminishing secual potency when moderate or large doses are taken.

Jensen added he hadn't the nerve to publish his study in Australia. "Australian men equate their virility with the amount of beer they can drink".
THE TORONTO STAR

DON says: And I thought it was all my fault!