Five Elements of an Erection

Featuring Dr. Stacy Elliott, MD

Duration: 2 minutes, 31 seconds

There's five main things that need to occur in order for you to get a good erection.

The first one is that you have to have sexual stimulation or mental arousal to transmit a signal. The second thing is that the nerves going from your brain all the way down to the pelvis must be intact.

The third thing is that you have to have adequate blood flow in order to fill out those erectile tissues.

The fourth thing is you need to have a critical level of hormone to sustain the male sexual functioning.

And lastly the anatomy of the penis must be somewhat normal, because if it's not, then the filling out and the elongation of the tubes can't occur normally. And you might have what we call a venous leak where the penis doesn't fill out adequately.

So if we look at those five factors, if we look at mental arousal, for example, if you have depression or if you have some other psychological condition that makes that signal not strong, you could have some sexual problems.

If you look at the nerve signal, anybody that has problems with either stroke or brain injury or in their nerves all the way down to the penis, such as having surgery for anything in the abdomen, the bladder, the prostate, that may also affect the erection.

You can also have trouble with your blood vessels, so if you have cardiovascular problems, if you have narrowing in your vessels with atherosclerosis, then maybe not enough blood will enter into the penile tissues. Same with diabetes, this could also occur.

If you don't have adequate levels of hormones, so some men who have very low testosterone levels have a hard time with all their sexual function, including drive, erection, and even difficulty reaching orgasm.

And if that anatomy is not correct, for example, some men have a bend in the penis that can also be a problem with maintaining an erection, because the elastic coating is interfered with and doesn't sustain the erection.

The reason the five different areas were pointed out was that you may have concerns that you have problems in one or more of those areas. This is the type of thing you can go to your doctor and discuss.

Presenter: Dr. Stacy Elliott, Psychiatrist, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Psychiatrist