: Why not just pop a pill for erectile dysfunction?
Steven Lamm, MD: I'm worried about the underlying blood vessel or nerve problem that will go untreated if a man doesn't change their lifestyle.
What then will happen is there may come a point where these drugs stop working because the process has continued, or the man's had a heart attack or a stroke, or renal failure from his diabetes.
So I think it's important to, once again, function in the restoration business with the medications, but the real message is we've got to deal with the underlying medical problems.
And that explains why just getting some of these drugs over the internet without a medical prescription is a mistake. Not because necessarily the drugs or so dangerous or anything like that,
but rather we are missing this great opportunity to really get men to get their blood pressure checked, their cholesterol checked. We have a hundred million people whose cholesterol is too high.
We have 50 million Americans whose blood pressure is over where we think it should be. Less than half of the people treated for hypertension have their hypertension controlled.
Those are patients who have progression in their erectile dysfunction.
