A very common question we get on this website is, can
you get an erection with low testosterone?
Frequent site contributor, David Jaynes has dug into the science and answered this question in detail below.
Let’s get started…
From the Mailbag…
Hello David,
I’ve recently been diagnosed with very low testosterone.
I know it’s a killer for men’s sex drive and performance in bed. On the other hand, I’ve heard terrible things about testosterone therapy.
What’s the skinny on getting an erection with low testosterone? I having extreme difficulties getting them right now.
Also, how can I improve my chances.
Thank you,
Dell
Hello Dell,
I have good news and bad news for you. Here’s the good news…
Can you get an erection with low testosterone? Yes…well, technically yes. A qualified, unsatisfying yes.
Now for the bad news. Brace yourself, because there’s a lot of it.
The Bad News
Testosterone is linked to a lot of aspects of men’s health. One aspect is sexual health: your ability to get an erection and use it to please yourself and your partner.
Several more, like heart health, involve systems that make erections physically possible. Even others are linked to whether or not you can attract a mate, things like mood and body composition.
Here’s a short and incomplete list of how you can get an erection with low testosterone, and the negatives that you may have to deal with.
You’ll Be Less Attractive
Testosterone impacts a surprising number of features in the male body. If you’re not getting enough of it, here are just a few of the things that might happen:
•You’ll gain fat
•You’ll lose muscle
•You’ll lose body hair
•You might develop “man boobs”
•You’ll become too fatigued to exercise
Put all that together, and your turns “at bat” will probably go down whether you can get an erection or not.
Your Mood Will Suck
With all that bad mojo going on in your body with low testosterone, some grumpiness would happen to anybody. But it’s worse than that.
Testosterone is also a mood hormone, for which your brain has specialized receptors. Without enough testosterone to receive, your brain chemistry goes all out of whack.
The result: mood swings, mental fatigue, anxiety and clinical depression.
You won’t want to have sex as often as you used to, and your mood will mean your partner won’t either.
The Erection Will be Weak
Even if you do get an erection with low testosterone, you’re not likely to be overjoyed with the results. Low testosterone can make for weak willies, even if the soldier tries to stand at attention.
It does this in three different ways.
- Testosterone either acts as a vasodilator or stimulates vasodilators in and around the penis. Too little testosterone reduces available blood for the tissues that make a penis erect (source).
- Too little testosterone can reduce circulatory health. Without good blood flow body-wide, you can’t count on good blood flow to your penis and surrounding tissues.
- Those mental health issues we just mentioned can also reduce sex drive and lead to emotional erectile dysfunction.
Regardless of which way (or which combination of ways) your low testosterone messes with your manly mojo, it’s a bad situation.
Climax? What Climax?
The male orgasm is simpler than the female orgasm, but still complex in its own right. In men who can’t climax, the cause is very often psychological.
Yes, the mental health issues caused by low testosterone can all interfere with you reaching climax during sex.
In cases where your orgasm woes come from a physical source, low testosterone is a common culprit. The hormone is responsible for arousal and sensitivity in your sex organs.
No arousal = no boarding the orgasm train to begin with. Low sensitivity = no riding the train to completion.
Ejaculation Will Be Weak
Remember earlier about how even if you do get an erection with low testosterone, it’s likely to be a sad and weak erection? The same goes for your ejaculation.
Anything that interferes with your semen and sperm production also leads to weaker ejaculations. A healthy level of testosterone is vital for sperm production, as it directly stimulates the biological process that initiates sperm synthesis.
Low testosterone is so damaging to sperm production, it has been studied as a route for male birth control. Ironically, testosterone therapy is one of the most promising routes for that study.
That’s because it floods your system with testosterone in batches (rather than the slow production your body does naturally). This stimulates less natural testosterone production and makes your testosterone woes worse over time.
Your Refractory Periods Will Be Longer
All of what I’ve mentioned above is about having an erection and applying it to completion once……and it all applies even more so for round number two.
For example…
- Testosterone is vital for energy, and without it you won’t have the physical stamina for a second round. Instead you’ll be exhausted and ready for a long nap.
- Testosterone keeps your mood elevated. That “crash” you experience after orgasm can go all the way to irritability and depression.
- All the physical processes of blood flow and hormone production that take a little while to reload in a healthy male body? It all takes longer to get lesser results with low testosterone.
And after all that extra time and effort, your climax will be even longer in coming than the first time. And your ejaculation will be even weaker.
The Good News
Dell, I’ll be the first to admit all of that sucks. What sucks even worse is testosterone therapy can actually make it all worse.
But the news isn’t all bad…
You can apply a variety of natural techniques to improve your body’s testosterone naturally. I go into many of them in detail in other parts of my blog, but here’s the short version for some of the most effective:
•Cycling through supplements proven to increase testosterone
•Doing high-intensity exercise like sprints and power lifting
•Reduce stress and get enough sleep
•Increase your Vitamin D, Zinc and Vitamin B intake
So, can you get an erection with low testosterone?
Maybe. Kind of. And it’s likely to disappoint. But you can increase your testosterone safely. Once you’ve done that, your erections will come back — along with all those things that make erections so much fun to use.
