How long does sexual dysfunction treatment take?

There is no unified standard answer. Judging from thousands of clinical cases, mild symptoms caused by simple psychological factors or bad living habits can basically be significantly improved in 1-3 months.； Moderate to severe cases of organic damage and chronic underlying diseases such as diabetes/hypertension generally require a conditioning cycle of 6 months to 1 year or even longer. A few patients with congenital developmental abnormalities or irreversible nerve damage may require long-term on-demand medication for maintenance.

Let me give you a recent example. A 29-year-old Internet product manager who just returned for a follow-up visit last month stayed up until two or three o'clock every day to catch up on projects for half a year. He sat for so long that he developed eczema on his buttocks without even thinking about exercising. Three months ago, he started to suffer from problems with insufficient hardness and weakness in the middle. He came here to check his hormones and blood vessel functions, and they were all normal. This is a result of typical living habits. The plan given to him was also simple: take 20 minutes every day to jog downstairs, turn off the computer and go to bed as much as possible before 11 o'clock, and take half a tablet of sildenafil as needed before having sex. There is no need to deliberately abstain from sex, and there is no need to keep an eye on whether he is getting better every day. As a result, he came for a follow-up consultation last week and said that he could have normal intercourse without taking medicine for more than a month. After 2 months of conditioning, his condition was basically back to the previous level.

Of course, not everyone can be so fast. The most impressive patient here is a 46-year-old male patient who has a history of diabetes for almost 10 years. His blood sugar control is so-so. He takes medicine and stops when he remembers it. When he came, he had been completely unable to have an erection for two years. It was found that diabetes had damaged the capillaries and peripheral nerves of the penis, which is a typical organic sexual dysfunction. The plan given to him was to first control his blood sugar to a normal range, combined with drugs to improve microcirculation, nourish nerves, and Chinese medicine's kidney-tonifying and blood-activating conditioning. There were almost no obvious changes in the first three months. Morning erections would only occasionally occur in the fifth month, and sexual life could be completed normally in the ninth month. Afterwards, he had to continue to control blood sugar to maintain his condition. Problems may still occur after discontinuing the medicine.

Regarding the conditioning cycle, there is actually quite a big difference in the judgment logic between Western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine. In clinical practice, patients often ask which one is faster. Western medicine generally uses a 3-month evaluation cycle, and generally recommends that patients with mild symptoms regularly take small doses of PDE5 inhibitors (the commonly heard of sildenafil and tadalafil), and at the same time adjust their living habits. Most people can see obvious effects in 1-2 courses of treatment. The advantage is that the effect is quick and it can quickly help patients build confidence. The disadvantage is that if the root problem is not adjusted, it is easy to rebound after stopping the medication. The conditioning of traditional Chinese medicine pays more attention to the overall syndrome differentiation. If it is liver stagnation, it will soothe the liver, if it is damp and hot, it will clear it, and if it is kidney deficiency, it will replenish it. There is no fixed course of treatment. Some people can see improvement after 2 weeks of symptomatic treatment, and some people have severe deficiency and life problems. If you have bad habits, you may have to take medication for more than half a year. The advantage is that conditioning is more focused on the root cause, and the probability of rebound after improvement is low. The disadvantage is that it takes effect slowly, and it tests the doctor's syndrome differentiation ability. If you encounter an unreliable person, taking medicine for half a year will be useless. In the past two years, more and more clinicians have suggested a combination of the two: those who are eager to improve their sexual intercourse status should first use Western medicine as needed for emergency treatment, and at the same time use Chinese medicine to adjust the body's fundamentals, which is faster than using one method alone.

I have to mention here, don’t believe in the propaganda of “7-day cure” and “guaranteed cure”. I once met a 25-year-old young man who didn’t perform well in his sexual life for a few times, so he blindly bought “special aphrodisiacs” from Wechat and took them for half a month. I felt dizzy, panicked, and had nosebleeds twice every day, but I couldn't get hard at all. I came here to find out that a large dose of hormones was illegally added to the medicine I was taking, which messed up my endocrine system. It took me 3 months of treatment to return to normal, but it was twice as slow as normal.

To be honest, after sitting in the clinic for so long, I found that the biggest factor affecting the speed of treatment is not the medication, but the mentality. Many patients immediately ask, "Will I be fine in 3 months?" I'm going on my honeymoon next month." After I returned home, I counted the days every day and tried every two or three days. Once I failed, I became so anxious that I couldn't sleep all night. Instead, it became more and more urgent. It was originally a mild illness, but suddenly became a chronic psychological disease due to anxiety. There was a patient like this before. He only had poor performance occasionally, but after 2 months of treatment, he actually got better. Because he tried it once and it didn't work, he secretly tripled the amount of medicine he took. Instead, he suffered side effects of headache and blurred vision. He needed treatment for another half a year before he got better. On the contrary, those who did not take this matter too seriously and listened to the doctor's instructions to exercise and rest without their partners urging them to get better much faster than expected.

To put it bluntly, sexual function itself is deeply bound to physical state, emotions, and partner relationships. There is no fixed "recovery timetable." If you have a good physique, a simple cause of the disease, and a high degree of cooperation, you will naturally recover quickly. If you have many underlying diseases and stay up late drinking and worrying every day, then no matter how amazing the medicine is, it will not be able to cure it in a short time. Instead of worrying about how long to take treatment every day, it is better to start by letting go of anxiety and staying up less late, which will save you a lot of detours.