fatuma
7th-December-2007, 11:00 PM
Another reason not to smoke?
LONDON (Reuters) - Smoking could reduce the size of a man's erect
penis, researchers said on Sunday.
The shrinking manhood warning came from the Boston University School
of Medicine whose preliminary findings from a study of 200 men were
revealed in the London Observer newspaper on Sunday.
Researcher Dr Pedram Salimpour said the findings were "statistically
significant" and promised they would be revealed in full next month to
the International Society of Impotence Research in Amsterdam. Smoking
affects the penis in the same way that it does the heart, the
researchers said.
It damages the blood vessels and inhibits blood flow. This in turn
affects elastin, the substance which is believed to govern a man's
ability to have an erection.
Salimpour said smoking damages the ability to stretch -- but it is
still not known how long it takes for the damage to be inflicted.
British anti-smoking campaigners welcomed the findings as a way of
shocking smokers into stopping.
"There may be people out there who don't care at all about the risk of
getting cancer later on but might be really upset if they thought it
was interfering with their sex lives," said Clive Bates, director of
ASH (Action on Smoking and Health).
"The advantage of the penis from the communications point of view is
that it is easy to imagine it shriveled up and shrunken whereas damage
to other vital organs such as the heart is much less obvious or easy
to visualize," he said in a statement.
LONDON (Reuters) - Smoking could reduce the size of a man's erect
penis, researchers said on Sunday.
The shrinking manhood warning came from the Boston University School
of Medicine whose preliminary findings from a study of 200 men were
revealed in the London Observer newspaper on Sunday.
Researcher Dr Pedram Salimpour said the findings were "statistically
significant" and promised they would be revealed in full next month to
the International Society of Impotence Research in Amsterdam. Smoking
affects the penis in the same way that it does the heart, the
researchers said.
It damages the blood vessels and inhibits blood flow. This in turn
affects elastin, the substance which is believed to govern a man's
ability to have an erection.
Salimpour said smoking damages the ability to stretch -- but it is
still not known how long it takes for the damage to be inflicted.
British anti-smoking campaigners welcomed the findings as a way of
shocking smokers into stopping.
"There may be people out there who don't care at all about the risk of
getting cancer later on but might be really upset if they thought it
was interfering with their sex lives," said Clive Bates, director of
ASH (Action on Smoking and Health).
"The advantage of the penis from the communications point of view is
that it is easy to imagine it shriveled up and shrunken whereas damage
to other vital organs such as the heart is much less obvious or easy
to visualize," he said in a statement.