How can Chinese herbs help in the treatment of erectile dysfunction, low testosterone and men’s health in general? Some Chinese herbs have exhibited special properties at the time that these herbs were discovered and initially used by the Emperor to appease his concubines.

Now, I know this sounds like the best job on the planet, and probably it was. But it’s important to know that there was a lot of pressure on the Emperor to appease his concubines. And the reason for this is because those concubines, his wives were chosen for political reasons, not necessarily their looks.

Even so, he had to fulfill obligations with each one of these women, sometimes more than once a day, different women in order to appease political expectations. And if he failed to do so, that might well have meant a war-like situation. No pressure here, right?

So a great deal of pressure was placed on the King’s physician, the Emperor’s physician in order to find herbal supplements that could help him fulfill his duties, no matter what. And this is what the Chinese herbal apothecary holds in its understanding of how to assist with men’s health.

Much later, many hundred years down the road, we discovered mechanisms of action that helped us to explain why they worked. Different herbs work in different ways, and I want to share some of that information with you now.

You may well, if you’ve studied men’s health for any length of time, you may well have heard of nitric oxide production and nitric oxide synthase, and that’s one of our markers. So is cGMP and also cAMP expression, of course, testosterone itself, and then reducing intracellular calcium, calcium two plus concentrations specifically, and down regulating, transforming growth factor and the SMAD2 signaling pathway. And finally, ameliorating the oxidative stress.

A little background of how Chinese medicine views the reproductive system and men’s health. The kidney and the liver are the two primary organs that are related to erectile dysfunction in traditional Chinese medicine. The kidneys stores the essence and the liver stores the blood.

Essence can be recognized as a power that is responsible for growth, development, and reproduction. Besides, it participates in the generation of blood and can enhance immunity. In addition to storing blood, the liver can modulate blood volume and maintain the flow of blood.

We talk about the liver as the tomboy organ of the body, that it has both reproductive function and it also has digestive function. So, it has functions on like the masculine/feminine side and then it has the digestive function that’s considered to be on the masculine side, which is why little boys like poop jokes.

Sexual and reproductive functions are also under the control of the liver. Thereby, kidney and liver are two important organs with a wide range of functions and TCM. Both the essence and the blood belong to yin in nature. Hence, the kidney and the liver are thought to be of the same source. The weakness of one organ usually leads to the imbalance of the other one.

And by the way, this is the same diagnosis that we use for diabetes, liver and kidney yin deficiency. The diagnosis of disease in Traditional Chinese Medicine lies in identifying patterns of disharmony, which is also called syndrome differentiation.

ED commonly involves the kidney or liver patterns of disharmony, such as kidney yin deficiency, kidney yang deficiency, and liver qi stagnation. Recognizing the relationship among the organs involved in erectile dysfunction makes for an effective therapy plan.