so can vitamins actually
improve your erections well today i'm
going to talk about how folic
acid has been studied and might have
some benefit in proving erections i'm dr
rena malek urologist and pelvic surgeon
and if you're new here i
am a board-certified urologist who makes
videos on a number of different types of
urologic conditions including erectile
dysfunction which is the topic of this
video today if you like what you see
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so why folic acid isn't it what we
supplement pregnant women why would men
benefit from folic acid well folic acid
actually plays a role in the production
of
nitric oxide nitric oxide is essentially
the
beginning of the erection cascade so
it's essentially like the ignition
to your erection and so there was
recently a study that was published
looking at
multiple different studies and combining
all the data
on folic acid and erectile dysfunction
before this came out it was really
unclear if folic acid had a benefit at
all
some studies said it did some studies
said it didn't so let's
look into the data and find out more so
for this study they looked at a couple
of different types of populations or
patients that were recruited in the
study
one was comparing the level of folic
acid in the blood or the serum
folic acid between patients who were
either normal and healthy and had normal
erections
to those who had erectile dysfunction to
see if there was a difference
in the other part of the studies that
they looked at they compared
outcomes between men who took folic acid
and those who didn't
using a validated questionnaire and
what's a validated questionnaire
well it's actually a survey that's given
to patients
that's been studied in a diverse group
of patients
and has been validated to correlate with
the severity of a condition
in basic terms is if somebody answers
this questionnaire you're going to get a
score and that score is going to tell
you how bad their erectile dysfunction
is
and so when they looked at all the
different studies on folic acid and
erectile dysfunction they came down to
nine studies
of those six looked at serum folic acid
levels in a number of healthy men and
men with erectile dysfunction they had a
total of 982 men with erectile
dysfunction and nearly 850
normal healthy men and what they found
they looked at all the data combined
was that those who had erectile
dysfunction had a lower serum folic acid
by 0.94 nanograms per milliliter
and that actually got significantly
worse as their erectile dysfunction
continued to get worse
in two studies they compared the
patient's erectile dysfunction before
getting folic acid to
after getting three months of daily
folic acid and in those studies they
used a
0.4 milligram dose or a 0.5 milligram
dose of folic acid every single day they
had a total of about 140 patients and
what they found was that they did have a
significant
decrease in their severity of erectile
dysfunction so for example they found
that people went from having severe
erectile dysfunction to
mild to moderate erectile dysfunction so
there was a significant difference
in the strength and quality of their
erections and the last thing they looked
at looked at specifically men with
diabetes
they gave them tadalaphyl which is a
medication that's commonly used for
erectile dysfunction often known as
cialis
and they gave them 10 milligrams every
other day they then divided these
patients up into two groups
one group got five milligrams of folic
acid every single day and the other
group got a placebo or sugar pill
and five milligrams is actually a much
higher dose than is
often given to patients for folic acid
so that is one thing to be aware of
they chose diabetic men specifically
because men with diabetes tend to do
worse with medications for erectile
dysfunction they're less likely to get
an erection that's sufficient for
penetrative intercourse or hard enough
to have sex
with just pills alone and so they wanted
to see if
adding folic acid would actually make a
difference and what did they find
they saw that men had a significantly
higher increase
in the quality of their erectile
function score
on this validated questionnaire that
correlated with an improvement in
erectile function compared to those who
didn't get the folic acid
as i mentioned this was a higher dose of
folic acid but they didn't have any
dangerous side effects and no one in the
state dropped out because of the dosage
of folic acid
the side effects included a mild
headache some lower back pain and some
flushing
so what is the take home from this
should you start taking folic acid for
your erectile dysfunction
well the jury's still out what is the
right dose you should take and for how
long and how long is the benefit going
to last
at this time i can't say definitively
yes go ahead and take folic acid
supplements
if you decide that you want to try folic
acid please make sure to touch base with
your primary care doctor because there
are certain medications that you
shouldn't
take with folic acid specifically
certain types of seizure medications
and a host of other medications as well
you can however consider taking foods
that have higher levels of folate
in them that includes legumes spinach
broccoli
lettuce certain fruits like bananas and
melons
orange juice and tomato juice yeast
mushrooms and certain meats like beef
livers and kidney
all are really high in folate so if you
like those foods certainly add them into
your diet
and that may help the biggest thing to
help with erectile function is
keep yourself healthy have a healthy
diet make sure you're staying active and
lose weight those sorts of things will
absolutely help you keep your erections
strong and ready to go when you need
them as always remember to take care of
yourself because you're worth it