WHO IS: Dr. Brian Scanlan, geriatrician, contributor to Under the Safety Net: The Health and Social Welfare of the Homeless in the United States

THE WAY TO A MAN'S HEART
by Brian Scanlan, M.D.

Viagra works its magic by opening blood vessels and allowing blood to enter the penis. Presto! A hard-on for hours. But the drug's more subtle magic may be how it has opened the doctor's office to men.

Men who have avoided doctors for decades, who have avoided talking about their health even when their lives depended on it, are arriving in my examining room because of their concern about impotence. Instead of getting dragged in by a wife who does the talking for them, they are arriving alone and telling their own stories.

For example: A jovial fat asthmatic who smokes despite his mother's recent death from lung cancer visited my office after hearing about the pill. He dates and dines but just can't consummate after the consommé. His desire for intercourse and orgasm brought him to his first physical exam as an adult. During that first visit with me, after he talked about his lifestyle, his body, and its function, he got his Viagra — and more.

He heard for the first time that impotence (erectile dysfunction, or ED, as the manufacturer, Pfizer, likes to call it) is often caused by arteriosclerosis, or "hardening of the arteries," the same disease that causes heart attacks. Caring for his penis meant caring for his heart. If he shed some pounds, quit smoking, started exercising, cut back on the booze and watched his cholesterol, he could make both organs strong, perhaps even without drugs.

So Viagra had a profound effect on organs my patient had never associated with "Manhood." The pursuit of it not only saved his sex life — it may have saved his life.

Related Links:
(1) The New England Journal of Medicine
A Pill for Impotence — Editorial
by Robert D. Utiger, M.D.
http://www.nejm.org/content/1998/0338/0020/1458.asp

(2) But Maybe Not on a Bicycle Seat! http://www.nd.edu/~ktrembat/www-bike/BCY/men.bikes.html

(3) American Heart Association Health Risk Awareness Quiz
http://www.americanheart.org/risk/quiz.html

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