Male sexual problems can affect men of all ages, causing physical and emotional distress. These issues, which include conditions like erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, and low libido, can have a significant impact on a man’s self-esteem and relationships. Understanding the causes, seeking appropriate treatment, and finding support are essential steps towards reclaiming a fulfilling and satisfying sex life. Explore the comprehensive resources and information available to help you navigate and address these challenges.
Delayed Ejaculation
To end the scourge of delayed ejaculation, any trigger that helps a man to become more aroused and ejaculate faster can be a useful tool and helpful aid in stopping delayed ejaculation: anal stimulation is one such method, and so is the use of fantasy.
Undescended testicles
A small percentage of boys are born with either one or both testicles still in the body and not in their natural place in the scrotum.
This condition is called undescended testicles. In many of these cases the testicle or testicles drop into the scrotum on their own while the child is still an infant. In other cases, hormone therapy is necessary to help the testicle drop, while in yet others, surgery is required.
The large majority of men are cured by the time they reach adulthood; undescended testicles require medical supervision because, one way or another, the testicles must reach the scrotum prior to puberty or their sperm-producing ability will be permanently destroyed.
The hormone producing ability of the testicles is not normally damaged if they remain undescended for such a period of time.
FAQs
My son had surgery to drop one of his testicles. They had to remove it. What will happen to him?
One testicle is sufficient to produce enough sperm and male sex hormone. Your son will grow and develop as a normal man. His sexual desire, capacity for erection and ability to have an orgasm will not have been affected, so his sexual life will be unchanged.
If your son chooses, he can make a woman pregnant and have a child. In your son’s situation, an undescended testicle may show early signs of tissue disease, so rather than wait for problems to occur later on, the decision appears to have been made to remove the damaged testicle.
After the removal of a testicle it is possible to insert a safe silicone testicle, the same size, shape and weight as a natural one. This allows the man to relax and not worry about feeling or appearing unusual.
But what if you lose both balls?
If both testicles are removed due to disease or accident, the man cannot produce sperm and is sterile. Also, his major source of male sex hormone, testosterone, is no longer present, and this will affect him to a great extent if he has not yet reached puberty, and to a lesser but still serious extent if he has.
If he has not yet reached puberty, the loss of male hormone will prevent his pubic and facial hair from growing completely, his voice will not deepen, his penis, testicles and scrotum will not grow to adult size and his general muscle size and strength will not reach the normal range. Although the adrenal glands produce some male hormone, and hormone therapy may be helpful, sexual activity and ejaculation may not be normal.
Emotional problems – loss of self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy – are quite common in cases like this, leading to difficulty in forming sexual relationships. Even if the man has the ability to function sexually, his emotional and social problems may make it difficult to develop a relationship.
If a man loses his testicles in adulthood, there is evidence that his general muscle size decreases, his metabolism and respiration are lowered, and he has a less typically male shape.
Carefully regulated doses of male hormone may enable him to continue to function sexually, but he may feel the emotional stress associated with the loss of his testicles so strongly that it prevents him from engaging in sexual activity, even though he has the physical ability to do so.
My brother is 21 and has had to have his testicles removed because of cancer. I wonder, will he be able to get an erection and have sex?
Knowledge about the effects of castration on sexual desire and performance is incomplete. In some cases of castration of adults there is evidence that the men involved have been able to continue having erections and orgasm.
Their desire and the frequency of their sexual activity have not been interfered with. In other cases there is evidence that desire and sexual activity in general diminish after castration. This may be a result of the surgery itself or it may be due to depression and feelings of inferiority and inadequacy following the surgery. It may also very well be a combination of the two.
My older brother got mumps and everyone was worried he would be sterile. Could that happen?
Yes. It is possible that the virus that causes mumps could infect the testicles, causing permanent damage to the seminiferous tubules that produce sperm cells. This permanent damage results in sterility, and is already one of the leading causes of sterility in men. Boys who contract mumps before puberty usually do not have this problem, since the sperm-producing areas in the testicles are not yet properly developed and so cannot be damaged by the virus.
Sperm
From puberty on, sperm are made in each testicle. It takes approximately ten weeks for an individual sperm to develop. Billions of sperm are produced each month, with some decrease in the later years. If sperm are not ejaculated they simply break down and are absorbed by the body. Sperms have three parts: a head, a neck and a tail.
The head contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, which carry the man’s contribution to the heredity of the child.
The other half is contributed by the female egg or ovum, which also contains 23 chromosomes. The neck and body of the sperm contain material that can be converted into energy so that the sperm can move on its own once it has been ejaculated by the man.
The tail of the sperm whips back and forth, rather like a tadpole’s, to enable the sperm to move in the vagina, uterus and Fallopian tubes. Sperm move about five to seven inches per hour.
Sperms were first identified in the seventeenth century by the Dutch scientist Leeuwenhoek, the man who invented the microscope. From puberty until death sperm are constantly being manufactured in a man’s testicles.
Although it is hard to believe, a healthy man produces about 50,000 sperm a minute, or 72,000,000 a day. They are so tiny, however, that even this enormous number amounts to less than a speck of sand.
The process of sperm production is called spermatogenesis, and it generally takes 60 to 72 days for a mature sperm to develop. This process occurs in stages: first the spermatogonium appears, which develops into a spermatocyte, then into a spermatid and finally into a spermatozoa or sperm.
Sperm can be stored for a while in a sperm bank. Sperm banking is a form of fertility insurance. Cattle breeders first used this technique to insure that they could continue to breed cattle by artificial insemination if natural breeding did not work.
A complete ejaculate of semen is collected and stored at an extremely low temperature. Although it is said that semen, properly frozen, remains capable of fertilizing an egg, it appears that after four or five years sperm begin to lose their mobility. Their capacity to fertilize an ovum is thus impaired.
Men who use sperm banks are usually those who are about to undergo a vasectomy or who are about to have radiation treatment. The sperm bank provides them with a chance of having a natural child by artificial insemination at a later date.
FAQs
Can you ever run out of sperm?
No. Sperm production is a continuous process from puberty throughout life as long as the man is healthy. Even if a male ejaculates frequently sperm will still be present in his semen, although the number of them and the total amount of semen is likely to decrease after successive ejaculations over short periods of time.
Are there any special foods or vitamins that help you produce more sperm?
No. There are no foods, beverages, vitamins or special substances that will help you produce more or healthier sperm than you already produce as long as your body is working normally. A diet that enables you to do the things that you need to do each day is sufficient to continue the healthy production and development of sperm.
The so-called special potency and virility recipes and neighborhood traditions that have existed for hundreds of years about the sperm-producing qualities of certain foods and substances are all untrue.
An influential myth that has been around for centuries is that ejaculation of sperm causes a man to lose his strength and energy. In the long run, the myth says, he will become feeble if he ejaculates frequently. This is entirely false. An extreme case of the conservation of sperm is the Indian Tantric practice of training men not to ejaculate in intercourse.
Tantrics regard semen as the vital force and spirit of a man, and intercourse as a spiritual experience. Orgasm is achieved by Tantric, but as a state of mental bliss.
Athletes have been warned for generations that ejaculation prior to a sports event will weaken them and reduce their performance. As a result many men, including large numbers of married men, have avoided sexual contact for periods of sometimes weeks and even months before competing. There is no justification at all for such unnatural behavior.
Provided a man doesn’t ejaculate prematurely i.e. just moments before his event, his performance, sexual and otherwise, will not be adversely affected by ejaculation even on the day of his competition.
A related myth is that men completely lose their ability to produce sperm, or they run out of sperm, once they reach their 50s or 60s. Sperm production, however, continues at a steady, uninterrupted rate into the 70s, when there may be a slight drop in the quantity of sperm produced, but it is not sufficient to interfere with the ability to father a child.
It is also widely and wrongly believed that “too many” ejaculations in a short period of time cause a man to run out of sperm. This is a myth for many reasons. First off, “too many” is a phrase that is meaningless.
What is too many?
Two, five or ten ejaculations? Second, although semen volume and sperm count do, in fact, reduce after several ejaculations over a short period, his body provides a man with all the semen and sperm he can need. Usually the body will signal through fatigue that it is time to rest.
The idea that semen ejaculated into the mouth and swallowed can do harm is equally wrong – as long as the man who ejaculates does not have a sexually transmitted infection (STI) like syphilis, gonorrhea or herpes. If he has, the person swallowing the semen may contract the STI.
Swallowing semen is something that some people enjoy as part of their lovemaking and others prefer to avoid. Liking it or disliking it is certainly no measure of how open a person is towards sex.
Ejaculation and sex problems
There are some very annoying male sexual dysfunctions – first among them is premature ejaculation, the tendency of a man to ejaculate before either he or his partner have achieved sexual satisfaction. You can see how that wording makes it possible for the definition to be flexible – what provides one couple with sexual pleasure (in terms of length of intercourse) might not satisfy another.
So while you might be happy with two minutes intercourse, another couple may only settle for ten minutes.
But when premature or rapid ejaculation is a problem, it certainly can disrupt a relationship, not to mention causing a man to feel ashamed, unfulfilled, a failure as a man and as a lover, and inadequate for the male role he has adopted. So how to deal with it?
In essence, you can learn to slow down your approach to orgasm and ejaculation by learning to be more sensitive to your body’s arousal. As you approach the point of ejaculatory inevitability, you can then slow down sexual activity and reduce your arousal below the point at which ejaculation becomes unavoidable.
The next problem which is faced by men on a regular basis is delayed ejaculation, the inability to ejaculate during sex except with prolonged stimulation – of an often very vigorous kind. And some men with delayed ejaculation cannot ejaculate at all, regardless of how much stimulation they receive.
Delayed ejaculation is almost certainly a predominantly emotionally based condition, a male sexual dysfunction which originates in a complex blend of emotions and motivations: desire to please a woman, a sense of the man being responsible for the whole success and pleasure of sex, a low level of sexual arousal, combined with a hard erection, a low level of sexual interest in the partner, and often resentment or anger, if not hostility and shame around sexual issues.
Fortunately, delayed ejaculation and its treatment is rather easy, using a program designed to get a man back in touch with the sensations and feelings in his body.
Hormones
Testosterone is the chief male hormone of a group collectively called androgens. They are produced mainly in the testicles, with very small amounts also being produced in the adrenal glands.
Men’s testes and adrenal glands also produce small amounts of estrogen, the female sex hormone. Testosterone production in the testes is stimulated and influenced by a very complex signal system with the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus.
The growth and development of the penis, scrotum and testes, and the development of pubic hair, beard growth and the other secondary sex characteristics are the results of greatly increased levels of testosterone released at puberty and thereafter.
Testosterone also influences sexual drive and sexual interest, so a low testosterone level causes libido to decrease. It may also be the cause of some male sexual dysfunction such as lack of libido.
I strongly believe that religious oppression of sexual desires is a major cause of sexual dysfunction. Anger and guilt probably lead to delayed ejaculation, while shame may produce premature ejaculation. It is essential that for a healthy sexual relationship in adulthood, a man should work on his repressed issues about sexuality, and clear as many of them as he can. Otherwise I think he will never achieve the maximum expression and power of male sexuality that is his birthright.
