Are you thinking about using Rhodiola Rosea
for Erectile Dysfunction?
Then you’ve come to the right place….
In the article below, David Jaynes explains how and why this adaptogenic herb can help you get your erections back on track.
Here we go…
Rhodiola Rosea For Erectile Dysfunction – Part 1
For thousands of years, those living high in the mountains and in the cold, northern climes of Scandinavia and Russia have turned to the Rhodiola rosea plant for relief from the long, harsh winter.
But in ancient Chinese medicine, it’s been used to treat another affliction – erectile dysfunction.
Here’s how it can help you with your morning wood by boosting neurotransmitter activity, reducing stress, and getting your dopamine pumping.
Rhodiola Rosea Boosts Brain Neurotransmitters
Most of us know that dopamine plays a key role in helping you get an erection by acting as the messenger between your brain and your body. Basically, when you see a naked woman that turns you on, that’s your brain talking.
But to get your body to respond appropriately, you need dopamine to carry that message down to your penis.
If your dopamine levels get too low, or if your receptors are burned out, that message won’t be sent.
You’ll also start feeling anxious, stressed or depressed and will start craving a hit of dopamine through food, alcohol, drugs or other cheap sources in an attempt to feel better.
For example, when drug user gets cranky between dosing up, it’s often because their dopamine levels have dropped.
However, as we’ve seen before, simply giving your body a HUGE hit of dopamine, via drugs, alcohol or porn, isn’t a good solution.
In the long term, you erode your ability to produce dopamine, while burning out your receptors at the same time.
Fortunately, Rhodiola rosea doesn’t just replace your serotonin or dopamine levels…it supports your natural ability to balance and recycle these neurotransmitters.
In particular, Rhodiola rosea works to inhibit something called catechol-O-methyl transferase, or COMT.
COMT is an enzyme that breaks down serotonin and dopamine. The more COMT you produce, the more effective your body is at breaking down these neurotransmitters.
But if you’re struggling with your morning wood, you don’t WANT to break down serotonin and dopamine. You want less COMT in your system.
Rhodiola rosea is a known COMT inhibitor.
Some studies suggest that it can lower COMT levels by as much as 60%, thereby increasing the availability of both serotonin and dopamine by 30%.
In other words, it makes it 30% easier for you to put up the bat signal and tell your body it’s time to get hard.
Rhodiola Rosea Increases Arousal
We’re not quite done with dopamine yet.
It’s been clear for a long time that increasing dopamine levels will increase libido. Even the Huffington Post has gotten in on the action, by publishing articles such as…
“Increasing Dopamine as a Way to Supercharge Your Sex Life.”
But for something a bit more reputable, two researchers from the Université Paris-Sud looked at this and published a paper in European Urology reaching the same conclusion.
To quote the opening line of the abstract:
“The use of the D1/D2 dopamine receptor agonist apomorphine for the treatment of erectile dysfunction provides strong support in favor of a participation of the dopaminergic system in the control of sexual function (source).”
And while they do go on to say that it’s not really clear WHAT dopamine does or its specific job in sexual arousal, they are certain that it plays an important role.
Which brings us back to Rhodiola rosea.
The long and the short of it is that by reducing the amount of COMT, thereby reducing your body’s ability to get rid of dopamine, you end up with more dopamine in your system – which makes getting an erection easier.
But Rhodiola rosea doesn’t stop there….
Rhodiola Rosea For Erectile Dysfunction – Part 2
While dopamine is important, there are other requirements for you to get an erection. Acetylcholine, for example, is equally important in helping turn your desire in your brain into action in your pants.
Rhodiola rosea helps here as well.
One study completed by Canadian researchers and published in Pharmaceutical Biology back in 2004 found that Rhodiola rosea inhibited the enzyme acetylcholine esterase, which is essentially the acetylcholine equivalent of COMT (source).
To recap, Rhodiola rosea improves dopamine levels by reducing COMT. Rhodiola rosea ALSO helps arousal and ED by doing the same thing with acetylcholine.
By reducing the inhibiting enzyme, you have more acetylcholine in your system, which makes it easier to turn desire into action.
But Rhodiola rosea actually helps in one more way….
It’s been shown to increase levels of norepinephrine in the brain. Low levels of norepinephrine mean that you’ll struggle to feel aroused, struggle to feel engaged and full of life, and generally feel down.
In fact, there’s a theory that a leading cause of depression is not low serotonin, but rather low norepinephrine.
It’s hard to be excited about anything when your norepinephrine is low – including getting hard.
Rhodiola rosea can help alleviate these symptoms though. Researchers have found that taking Rhodiola rosea can improve norepinephrine levels, thus helping you get it up when the time is right.
Rhodiola Rosea Reduces Cortisol
The last way that Rhodiola rosea can help you with your sex life is by reducing the dreaded stress hormone – cortisol.
Where other hormones released during stress like adrenaline and norepinephrine have multiple useful functions, cortisol really doesn’t, especially in chronically stressed individuals.
What’s more, unlike many other hormones and neurotransmitters, cortisol doesn’t disappear as quickly. It can build up over time in your system, particularly as a result of persistent, low-level stress.
All this to say that stress isn’t great for your sex life, and cortisol is major player in the boner-killing power of stress.
Enter Rhodiola rosea.
While it’s not well understood, Rhodiola rosea seems to interact with the Hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, or the HPA system by suppressing its output.
And if you suppress the system that produces the things that make you feel stressed (like cortisol), you can reduce stress and anxiety themselves.
One study completed in 2008 looked at sufferers of general anxiety disorder, or GAD. For 10 weeks, they were given daily doses of Rhodiola rosea. The result was a significant decrease in anxiety, based on established anxiety measurements.
From this result, and given that we know that GAD sufferers have high levels of cortisol, researchers concluded that Rhodiola rosea is an effective tool to reduce cortisol.
Another study, completed a year earlier, looked at the effect of Rhodiola rosea on mice.
Specifically, researchers looked the antidepressant, anti-anxiety, and stimulating effects of Rhodiola rosea in the rodents.
They found that all three effects happened when they gave mice Rhodiola rosea extract…That is, it acted as an effective antidepressant, an effective anti-anxiety medication, and an effective stimulant.
Now you might be wondering how one remedy can have so many positive effects.
While we don’t have a firm scientific answer what we DO know is that Rhodiola rosea is a powerful adaptogenic herb.
This basically means that rather than effecting everyone and every system in precisely the same way, it seems that Rhodiola rosea will simply facilitate a correction of neurotransmitter and hormonal levels to return their natural state of homeostasis.
Which, when it comes to ED, is exactly what you want…
The vast majority of ED problems are caused by imbalances in something, whether its dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, cortisol, or adrenaline, and the best way to cure your ED is to get all these systems back into balance.
Rhodiola Rosea & ED Conclusion
Rhodiola rosea is an excellent supplement to take to help you get your erections back on track, not because it does one thing so well, but rather because it balances out your entire system.
Rhodiola rosea will help:
- Increase your dopamine and serotonin levels
- Increase your acetylcholine levels
- Increase norepinephrine, specifically the norepinephrine used as a transmitter
- Decrease stress hormones like cortisol
It’s no wonder so many guys swear by the stuff. But before you go and spend your hard-earned cash on a giant bag of Rhodiola rosea, it’s worth noting that even miracle cures come with caveats.
If you’re suffering from ED and you’re not sure why, Rhodiola rosea is a great place to start.
But if you’re suffering from ED and you KNOW that it’s not your dopamine pathway, you’ve got your stress under control, and your libido is high, it might not solve your problem.
And while it can’t hurt, you might want to look more at other physical factors instead.
