Is the phrase "the harder the erection, the healthier the man" true?

[lance_10]

I've read somewhere that an erection may be a measure of man's health.  How true is this?

[Yakof]

ED can certainly be indicative of other health problems but it's just one of many possible indicators.

[GuitarRox]

There are many, including doctors that do believe this to some extent.  There was a link that was first made known, for example, in 2002 that heart disease and weak erections were noticed. And years later, they found that erectile dysfunction was predictive of future heart disease. I think any man, especially a younger man, with weaker erections should talk to your doctor about it and perhaps begin monitoring.  Also, as we all know stress can impact this so would try to also monitor that to see if it is impactful. https://www.webmd.com/erectile-dysfunction/features/erections-happy-healthy-hard

[Paxiled]

This is probably true but is also a generalization.  If the ED is due to lack of nitric oxide, that is also a risk factor for heart disease.  If it's due in fact to any nutritional deficiency, that would be a possible problem for the heart as well.  If it's due to a circulation problem, again, could be a blood vessel problem.  Problem is, this is a tautological premise, as anything that's wrong with anyone could be a sign of heart disease and almost everything correlates with heart disease because we all die of heart failure.  Eventually, that is.  Or tomorrow, if that's one's fate.  So everything in life correlates with heart disease, which is why it's so hard to single out anything and say, hey, that will cause you to have heart disease.  It might.  More likely, though, it won't except in the sense that again everything that's wrong that shortens life will end in heart failure.  This is the cholesterol dilemma.  Yes, it does correlate with heart disease, but so does everything else, and it doesn't necessarily correlate any more than other things and it only speeds heart problems if it oxidizes, which is an antioxidant problem and not a cholesterol problem except insofar as the more bad cholesterol you have the more antioxidants you'll need to prevent it from sticking to your arteries.  Being born and living long is 100% predictive of heart disease.  So if you're relatively young and you're having some kind of problem with erections, something is wrong, but no, it isn't heart disease.  If you're old, might be.  But it could also be a ton of other things and not reflect heart disease but you're still going to eventually die of heart failure.  

[Paxiled]

Not sure why one would think about this, but no.  While the ability to get an erection consistently is a sign that part of the body is working well and also indicates at least a small measure of mental health as well, the body has a lot of parts and getting an erection doesn't mean they are all working.  In fact, what some men do in order to get a constant erection can be quite harmful.  As a man ages, stuff happens.  But while that may affect the consistency of the erection, it may not reflect more important body organs one needs to be healthy in order to keep living.  So I guess it all depends on what you mean by healthy, as not everyone defines this the same way.  For some, it's how long you live.  For others, it's how much you enjoy life while you're alive quite apart from how long that might be.  For others, it's not how long you live but how good you feel and how much you can do, which is different from merely being able to keep breathing.  So in sum, being able to get an erection does indicate the part of your physiology and mental state that controls that is working and that's a good thing.  But you could be slowly dying from liver disease while this is going on, if you get my drift.  An interesting side note is that there are philosophies that have existed throughout civilizations that abstaining from sex is the key to health.  Chew on that one for awhile.