Prostatectomy and Pumping

Everyone knows the prostate is intricately involved in the erectile process. When the prostate is in trouble, you’re more likely to have low libido, issues getting hard, and experience less sexual satisfaction. After a prostatectomy, or the removal of the prostate, erectile dysfunction is particularly inevitable if you don't take immediate action.
My name is Dr. Rachel Ross, functional medicine doctor, and my goal is to help you care for your health through the use the prescription drugs and natural strategies. Today I’m going to show you the number one way for you to combat age-related, prostatectomy-related, and chronic disease-related erectile dysfunction (ED).

Now it's believed that about 70% of men who have BPH or an enlarged prostate will have ED.

Getting the Basics
Firstly, we need to understand what’s actually going on in your body. Here I’ve included a handy diagram for you to see what parts of the prostate I’m going to be talking about. I’ve labelled the corpus cavernosum and the corpus spongiosum, which is embedded within the corpus cavernosum. The blood vessels and nerves within these areas are the most important parts of an erection, and the processes I will go through destroy this tissue and remove the ability for you to expand and stay hard in the way that you used to.

Why ED Happens
So, as I’ve explained above, there are tiny blood vessels within the corporeal throughout the whole erectile tissue. They are embedded within the tissues and are intricately wrapped around the prostate. Imagine it like a ball with a cluster of nerves around it. If some kind of damage occurs to the prostate or it undergoes surgery or if you have benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), nerves can get damaged. It’s like the nerves are penetrating the ball through to the erectile tissue. These are the nerves that get damaged when you have a prostatectomy, whether the doctors try to spare the nerves or not.
As BPH starts to take growth, sometimes these nerves get damaged as well. When cells in the nerves die, this is called apoptosis. This is a natural part of life, as we need cells to die so new cells can grow. Our body is designed to combat the damage, slow it down, and repair the process.
However, when the prostate is in trouble, this means that cell death is happening at a rate that is conducive to survival. As the nerves from this tissue start to die off, their ability to control and signal those arteries to relax and bring blood flow in becomes impaired as well. We want these cells to be repaired because, if they aren’t, there is a reduction in the smooth muscle and blood cells start having trouble moving blood through your body.

Autophagy and Apoptosis
The way your body cleans up after cell death is called autophagy. It controls cell death, turns it on, as well as slows it down. You want your body to do this, as it is part of the process that helps your body prevent cancer. However, for people who have radical prostatectomy or are experiencing basic aging of life, this process is happening too fast. This cell death and the atrophied tissue is actually why you see shrinkage in your prostate and why you notice things not working as well as they used to.
Accumulating evidence has indicated that this apoptosis process, especially in the smooth muscle of cells of the corpus cavernous, plays a huge role in ED. There is a decrease in volume to the extent that the veins stop working. This is one of the main underlying causes of not just ED that is related to the prostate, but also ED related to trouble with androgens of the testosterone and nerve and blood flow issues.

The Solution
The good news is that we can program the cells to slow the process down and be a bit more strategic about which cells die and which ones stay alive. And the even better news is that you can do it without spending money or getting a prescription.
Basically, all you need to do is use a pump. Pumping has been shown to help repair the cavernous nerves that have been injured and help stop slow death in apoptosis. It also encourages slow autophagy instead of the rapid kind. Think of the process like Pacman, gobbling up all the damaged cells that get in the way. With pumping, we can slow that process down and slow the Pacman down a bit so your cells can repair instead of constantly getting destroyed.
Pumping uses negative pressure to increase the blood flow into the arterial inflow into the penile tissue, which improves cavernosal blood flow. Many studies have demonstrated that after radical prostatectomy, there’s unavoidable nerve injury and pumping can actually help reverse this and bring cavernosal oxygenation and blood flow to the area. It exerts a similar effect by a nitride oxide cascade signalling pathway, the CGMP pathway, that we talk about when we’re talking about the blue pill. This causes the corpus to relax and the nerves start to reprogram and regulate a variety of these activities. Pumping has a multitude of benefits, such as improving blood flow, and repairing blood cells. It is also an early use of vacuum therapy for radical prostatectomy, which can not only restore spontaneous erections but can help you maintain the length and increase penile hardness. What more could you ask for?

My Advice on Pumps
When I work with gentlemen, one of the first things that we do is get a good quality pump, as this can restore things in a way that taking pills cannot. While there are some benefits to certain pills and herbal remedies, if you invest in a quality pump, you are actually tackling the problem at the tissue level.
My favourite pump is VaxAid because it uses both air and water to help in the rehabilitation process. Its use of warm water allows the tissue to stretch and accommodate more, just like warm, moist skin compresses do. Their studies indicate that patients and their partners have noticed an increase in the size of the prostate after using it.

So when your doctor shares with you that something is going on with your prostate, or if you start to feel the onset of ED, this isn’t the end of the world. Just get yourself a good pump and watch as things improve.