Have you heard about the “new kid on the block” when it comes to Erectile Dysfunction?
This has been called “Porn Induced ED”.
It’s becoming such a huge issue for men around the world that it now officially has its own acronym: PIED
In this article I’ll explain what this is, why it’s a problem, and how to overcome it.
Note: I’m not making a religious or moral stand against porn, simply a physiological one. Also I am going to speak about masturbation which I believe is a healthy and normal thing. If you disagree, this post is probably not for you so I would say stop reading now. But don’t worry I don’t plan to be graphic about it here.
Type 2 diabetes use to be called adult onset diabetes. However, teenagers and children started having it to such a degree that they decided the name had to be changed.
Erectile dysfunction seems to be much the same. Although there have always been performance anxiety issues at play, possibly even more so in a younger crowd, as a chronic issue it was mostly relegated to the realm of older men.
There is a “normal” decrease in testosterone as age increases. That certainly plays a factor. Then the cardiovascular system plays another big role through nitric oxide and much more. These are big factors that certainly must be looked at in any man with these issues. You can read more about erectile issues in this article.
What is Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction?
One piece of the erection puzzle, besides hormones and blood flow, is desire. Let’s take a closer look at these factors.
Dopamine and Erectile Dysfunction
Looking at this biochemically this is largely reliant on one neurotransmitter, dopamine. (At least this is what we know about so far. The exact role of dopamine in sexual arousal has been studied but not all the details are known on how it works.)
To keep it simple, dopamine makes us feel good and is triggered by a wide variety of things. It’s our endogenous reward. Sexual stimulation is one of those things.
And here is where porn can become a problem, because it gets excessively triggered. You get exactly what you want at the click of the mouse and more dopamine is released.
Sexual stimulation by itself will release big spikes in dopamine. So does orgasm.
And if you’re like most men, you could do this up to several times a day, every day. When it comes to neurology, the more you do something, the more that nervous pathway is used. As they say “Nerves that fire together, wire together.”
This short video explains it fairly well.
And this Ted Talk explains other reasons just why online porn specifically is so problematic, including some of the other problems besides ED it might cause.
The analogy to diabetes is actually a pretty good one.
Eating the standard American diet high in refined carbs, causes blood sugar spikes. The hormone insulin is used to then shuttle the resulting glucose into your cells. But high blood sugar spikes done over and over and over again after many years can result in your cells not working optimally. They become resistant to the insulin spike and don’t function so well. The blood sugar can’t get into the cells so well thus the body works harder, making more insulin to drive it in. At some point the pancreas may say screw it and stop producing insulin. (I realize this is a gross oversimplification but hopefully you get the point.)
Unfortunately, this appears to happen with dopamine too. At some point your dopamine receptors can become resistant. Since you’re getting such large spikes of dopamine the cells only respond to this high amount. Anything less than that and you will not be aroused.
So if you’re watching pornography, and over time that porn may escalate to excite you and its only a search term away (cause hey, who just watches simple one on one porn these days? That seems to be the nature of widespread internet porn) you get stimulated.
But then in your sex life things may not work so well. You might not be as excited for a number of reasons. As it says in the above video “reality = boring”.
Bye, bye erection. Or no erection in the first place. :(
There may not be enough dopamine to keep things going. And of course once this happens, that can begin the whole performance anxiety loop that just makes things worse. “I hope it doesn’t happen this time. I hope it works, I hope it works…shit, it’s not working.”
The Test
For some people this may not be an issue…at least not yet.
Besides having issues with a partner in the bed room which could be a variety of factors, the good news is there’s a pretty easy test you can do to find if this may be a problem for you or not.
Like just about anything it is not black or white. There are degrees to this problem and this test can reveal that.
Can you even masturbate without porn?
Can you get fully aroused in the first place?
If you are used to watching pornography notice if you just imagine some of your favorite scenes, rather than creating your own fantasy. (I would argue that rewatching porn in your head is actually quite different from creating imagined fantasies.)
If you’ve been on the porn bandwagon for a long time it can be difficult NOT to re-watch those scenes.
If you cannot masturbate without porn chances are you may have this problem.
Also realize the erections are not an all or nothing thing, but there are varying degrees of hardness. You can be erect…but not fully erect.
Stop the Pornography
It may be simple…but not so easy.
In fact, it can be very addicting. Dopamine is the chemical at play in other forms of addiction too.
Once again I’m not saying we should get rid of porn. However, for certain people it just may not be a good option. And here, going cold turkey may be the best treatment.
Getting rid of the habit can be a challenge. I don’t want to get into all the details of habit change here, but it is doable.
The good news is that it can be done. The bad news is that things may get worse before they get better.
According to other people the amount of time it takes for a recovery from porn induced ED can range quite greatly depending on a number of factors, including when you started watching porn, how often you did it, and more.
Another aspect that plays into this is clearing the porn cache in your head. Some of that may be imprinted in a way that you won’t forget but you always have the choice about using those memories.
Herbs For Porn Addiction and Erectile Dysfunction Treatment
I believe that herbs can help in many things.
However, herbs cannot and will not fix something where the cause is behavioral.
We can go back to our diabetes metaphor. Can herbs help here? Absolutely. Certain helps can be palliative to symptoms. They can also assist in managing blood sugar levels and insulin to some degree. But ultimately, to cure diabetes, it comes down to diet.
Herbs, no matter how powerful or how many you take, will not make up for eating shitty food.
That’s the same here. Herbs can certainly help. The whole reason we put together Thor’s Hammer was to cover some of the different areas that may be at the root of erectile issues.
The one herb I want to focus on most here is mucuna. Mucuna pruriens is a rich source of L-dopa which is the precursor to dopamine.
Whether internet porn is depleting dopamine or just screwing up with receptors is hard to say for sure. I imagine there are multiple other issues and pathways at play too.
But mucuna is also not JUST L-dopa. I believe in the intelligence in natural substances. Mucuna seems to be doing lots of things, like assisting in both testosterone and growth hormone too. So I have a theory that it could help.
Want More Info and Help For Porn Addiction?
If you would like more information on this subject the following two websites are devoted entirely to the subject:
And this video covers the subject over an hour.
My aim for this article has been to enlighten people on something that is not well known as it is effecting an ever increasing number of people.
Yet, because of the shame and guilt that often goes around the issues of sex and masturbation, this is not something most people have heard about.
Treatment is very possible and more and more men who’ve recovered from PIED recomment going cold turkey on the pornography. Herbal treatments can then kick in and help with lingering erectile dysfunction.
If this article helps just a single person, it has been worth the time to research and write.
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Max says
Hi,
Forgive me for my “bad” English. I live in the Netherlands, not that’s an excuse but I’m a little bit rusty.
Let me first explain where I’m cumming from with this comment. I work for almost 20 years as a pornactor and producer. The last 7 years I started to help people with there sex life and there sexproblems.
PIED Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction is mainly bullshit. It’s again a way to sell drugs and to get (mostly young) people to the “How can I fuck up your brain some more” doctor. For another example; The FDA have approved the license to sell a medicijn for FSD (Female Sexual Dysfunction) and the companies who make the “solution” to that “problem” say about 70 till 80% of the woman suffer from it.
But here comes the real joke, nobody know where the “dysfunction” comes from. Aka, it’s doesn’t exits until some bunch of idiots create it. For one reason only, to sells it and make tons of money.
I hear nobody talk about AIED, That’s Alcohol Induced Erectile Dysfunction or RIED, that’s Religion Induced Erectile Dysfunction. What do you think about BHWIED, that’s Bored House Wife Induced Erectile Dysfunction and I can go on for many more.
But we like to blame porn, because it’s an easy target and especially for the people who are against it.
We raise our children with fairy tales about a handsome prins with no dick. Every prins in fairy tales is dickless! We introduce prins charming to the lovely prinses and they live happily ever after…
How the fuck to they live happily? The guy has no dick! She has no pussy or tits and we expect our children to understand it. Look at toys. Every children’s toy is dickless, pussyless, no tits and no anus. How can we expect children to understand anything about sex, the thing we love the most, if we don’t educate in a way that makes sense.
“Let children be children” is the first thing I hear from parents. Parents who come to me with problems about there non existing sexlive. They have problems because they have children and don’t know how to fuck anymore because they are afraid the children will see or hear it. And that’s just one of the problems they have.
PIED is just another way the make big money like alcohol, like traffic tickets, Viagra, diet pills and so on. We know what to do about it, but we al accept the bullshit and bend over. Not that there is anything wrong with bending over and enjoying it, but this is taking a big strapon or a big dick up the ass without any spit or lube.
“The thing you feed, will grow!” We are feeding PIED so it will grow. We like to feed everything. We pay so much attention to breastcancer. What happens? More women then ever are getting breastcancer! Hmmm, strange? We feed terror, so what happens? More terror.
Most people know the hit and bestseller: “The Secret” the law of attraction, but what most people don’t know is that they feed all the negative shit just as much or even more. PIED is not a real problem. It’s created in our heads, so the big companies can label it. So we, as sheep, can feed it in the “right” way. Stop feeding that shit and it will go away. Start educating from sexwisdom and created some healthy blissful sexwise children and they will use porn the right way.
PIED is the same as a kid who finds a chainsaw and start using it the wrong way. If you start to hurt yourself and other people, can we blame the chainsaw? Can we blame the people who sold it? Or maybe the people who made it? Or even better, let’s blame the guy who invented it! Or maybe…maybe the parents who forgot to tell there kid a chainsaw is no toy or even better, why didn’t they learn him how to use it?
It’s so fucking easy to blame everything outside ourselves and especially a lot of parents are like this, because it’s always “something” else.
Wake the fuck up and start creating the world you like to live in from the inside out, not by trying to ficks problems we all created in the first place. We accept the bullshit from the big companies, we accept the bullshit from doctors, we accept the bullshit from school, we accept boring sexlives because most of us are boring people. Maybe it’s hard to say and for many hard to read, but worldwide the average time people have sex is 7 till 14 minutes!
Most people spend more time complaining about stupid stuff like PIED, then they spent time fucking!
Look at me, I’m writing this shit while I have a gorgeous woman waiting for me in my sexroom!
WAKE THE FUCK UP!
Logan Christopher says
Hey Max,
I agree with you on most of your points, except saying that PIED is bullshit. As you said it is like a chainsaw and yes, you can hurt or kill yourself with a chainsaw. Porn is a tool. As a tool it can have benefits…and it can have drawbacks. PIED is one of those potential drawbacks.
This article never attacked porn on any moral ground. Instead it simply stated that for some people, too much porn can be a factor in this issue.
Actually it seems much of your argument is in alignment with many people getting off of porn. Because parents, or whatever other authorities, never taught people about sex, and had their own issues, we’ve learned it from less-than-the-best sources. For some, getting off of porn gives them control, and so that they can have better relationships and sex lives.
Again, this isn’t right for everyone. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t affecting some people dramatically.
-Logan
Scott says
Max,
Internet Porn is not being targeted as part of an agenda…there are scientific studies that show the link between ED and viewing porn –
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/online-porn-addiction-causing-rise-8636996
I think you are incorrect to assume that if young people are taught reproductive health they will somehow “know how to use” porn correctly.
Nothing in the natural world is similar to the availability of high-speed Internet streaming with couples having sex at the click of a computer mouse. At the risk of sounding “preachy”, I don’t believe our minds were made to handle it and maintain optimum health.
Howard says
I used to watch a lot of porn & masturbate frequently. Over the last couple of years I started working out, eating better & staying off porn as much as possible. I found I became much more attracted to my wife & our relationship has improved.
I’ve also been taking a lot of natural supplements. There are many which support hormone health- I find Ashwaghands & Pine Pollen good.
I had ED problems but that’s improved a lot. I’m 61 BTW. I just last week started on Tongkat Ali from Superman Herbs and Morning Wood is noticeably stronger-also my mood is more balanced and confident. I do a short meditation, just focussing on the breath, some mornings and this increases calmness too. Oh: and lots of sleep is a big plus for the whole picture too
Donald says
What are the best herbs for a Harder, longer lasting erection
Logan Christopher says
Our Thor’s Hammer blend is formulated with bed performance in mind. For some people, pine pollen can be enough to get the desired effect.
admin says
Cold showers do help increase testosterone levels, but they work best in conjunction with other lifestyle and diet changes.
Johnny says
I take cold showers twice a day or there really any benefits of taking a cold shower on testosterone.
Martin Tornberg says
This is an insightful article, but I am not sure why you are just citing porn sites in particular as a means of creating artificial, unnaturally frequent boosts in dopamine, leading to dopamine resistance. I would think only a small portion of the population would have the time or inclination to regularly visit porn sites, which seems a rather pathetic waste of time. A vast number of people are artificially stimulating themselves in other unnatural ways on a very regular basis though, both sexually (via stimulating browsing and/or interaction with attractive prospects on dating websites or social networking sites) and in other ways that also trigger dopamine release, such as by getting all excited about a sporting event, for instance, or gambling, or trading in the financial markets. People nowadays are engaged in a whole host of activities that boost dopamine, more frequently and for more extended time periods than what would have occurred during our evolution . Modern media has facilitated this – starting with magazines, then television, and now, over the past couple of decades, the internet; increased accessibility of gambling and stock trading (or currency trading) have also facilitated this situation, since that also tends to stimulate dopamine. So I think you are right that we may have an epidemic of “dopamine resistance” in our society, I think pornographic websites represent only one small part of the reason.
admin says
Well, the focus of this article is on porn-induced ED and since most people do watch porn, this can be an easy fix for many.
I do agree with everything you wrote, though. Thanks for sharing!
Jim says
Companies are making billions and billions of dollars on erectile dysfunction
supplements when all you need are a few chosen herbs like tongkat ali and stop watching porn. I have been off porn for six months and I am functioning at about 75% which is a great improvement. I can come inside my woman too which I could not do before. Hang in there, it works if you work it.
Jim
Greg Borke says
We’re in the world are you going to find this kind of informative information ?
I feel blessed that I have found Such a wonderful place.. Lostempireherbs.com is the fountain of youth, Logan and his team have helped me get through my Ed and now at 53 I’m almost at a full recovery ..
Guys!! If your a newbe here listen up !!! Follow there lead !!
Your best customer, Greg :)
Jim Pardue says
I will give guys some suggestion, i suffered from porn induced ed and the problem is not necessarily watching porn but constantly masturbating to porn.Men can watch porn but from the moment we attempt to use porn as a sexually release it fools the brain and over time you need a higher level of stimulation to even get erected .I couldn’t even have sex unless i watched porn prior to our session .The best thing one can do if you suffer from porn induced ed or ed normally.The best thing i did was stop watching porn entirely for a year and let my penis work on its on i didn’t even masturbate .I started to get wet dreams after about the 3rd month of no porn and no masturbation.By the 6th month i was getting wet dreams more frequently and started to get light morning wood occasionally .By the end of 1 year i was cured but guess what i couldn’t even last 1 minute in bed because my penis got back to its natural sensitivity level.My mood increased ,i got more confident and found myself bringing home real women and using the computer less and actually getting into the real world.I would like to thank lost empire herbs for the high quality herbs i used from your website and the fact that you guys advised me to cycle the herbs for better effect.I think this helped me get back to normal and now usually i have morning wood ever day and its iron.Now i can watch porn and yes its stimulating but i learned from my mistakes and i don,t associate porn with physical sexual desire .My advice to men is stop watching porn if u have ed firstly ,get on the right herbal diet ,i took seamoss or irish moss,red and black maca ,ginseng,ashwahghanda,saw palmetto ,pine pollen,celery seed and juice ,pumpkin seed and lots more herbs.I started doing prostate massages regularly as advised by a physician.Most importantly during this period is no porn or masturbation i didn’t even look at ladies clothed on the internet till i was cured .Aso in order to get your penis back in shape i advise doing regular penis massages and taking good care of yourself.Trust me it will help in the long run.
admin says
Thanks for sharing your journey Jim.
James says
wow Jim i’m going through the same thing fighting this addiction thanks for your story bro.
John says
Nice information and great sorry
jan says
really nice
Anthiby says
Very informative and s good reason to be married and as”Proverbs 5:15 Drink water from your own cisten and water from your own well”
admin says
I like it!