ED may be have a physical or mental cause. The standard way of distinguishing between the two is whether you get morning wood or not. The idea is that if you can get an erection in the morning, but not for sex, then your plumbing is working, but not your brain. This always bothered me since I have been diagnosed with a venous leak using a Doppler test. I also have coronary artery disease which are both physical reasons for my ED. However, I don't have relationship problems, or believe that sex is dirty. I also don't view porn or solo masturbate. These are the kinds of things thought to be psychological causes of ED. In spite of this, I still occasionally have morning erections, which according to some means my ED is not in my vascular system but in my head. This has always bothered me.
I found this study which clears the issue up for me:
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One problem is that morning erections or lack thereof are often used as the only criterion for determining whether the ED is physical or psychological. However, they authors discuss cases of people with documented psychological ED, as well as cases of people with no ED at all, who don't wake up with a stiffy. In other words, some people whose plumbing works fine during sex have no morning wood.
One problem is that studies using morning erections as a criterion for determining if ED is mental or physical don't back up their diagnosis with other, independent tests besides morning erections. Another issue is determining what is a normal. They count things like how many erections happen at night, how hard they are, and how long they last. Where do you draw the line in the sand between normal (meaning the cause is psychological) and abnormal meaning the cause is physical? The line in the sand can't bet how you measure up to some medical norm, but whether things work like they are supposed to in bed. In addition, if you've got physical ED, that by itself gives you psychological insecurities as well. You get performance anxiety. Is it going to work? Is it getting soft? Is my partner sick of having to deal with my ED? So it may be the case that having physical ED leads to some mental causes too.
So what is the take away? Morning wood or lack of morning wood doesn't tell you whether your ED is mental or physical as doctors and everyone else have been assuming for years.
I found this study which clears the issue up for me:
<REMOVED>
One problem is that morning erections or lack thereof are often used as the only criterion for determining whether the ED is physical or psychological. However, they authors discuss cases of people with documented psychological ED, as well as cases of people with no ED at all, who don't wake up with a stiffy. In other words, some people whose plumbing works fine during sex have no morning wood.
One problem is that studies using morning erections as a criterion for determining if ED is mental or physical don't back up their diagnosis with other, independent tests besides morning erections. Another issue is determining what is a normal. They count things like how many erections happen at night, how hard they are, and how long they last. Where do you draw the line in the sand between normal (meaning the cause is psychological) and abnormal meaning the cause is physical? The line in the sand can't bet how you measure up to some medical norm, but whether things work like they are supposed to in bed. In addition, if you've got physical ED, that by itself gives you psychological insecurities as well. You get performance anxiety. Is it going to work? Is it getting soft? Is my partner sick of having to deal with my ED? So it may be the case that having physical ED leads to some mental causes too.
So what is the take away? Morning wood or lack of morning wood doesn't tell you whether your ED is mental or physical as doctors and everyone else have been assuming for years.
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