Posts Tagged ‘sexual side effects’

PSYCHIATRIC MEDICATIONS

// October 30th, 2010 // No Comments » // Impotence

Most medications useful in the treatment of anxiety, depression, mania, psychotic states, and other psychiatric disorders have sexual side effects. Sexual function, however, is rarely entirely normal in psychiatric patients. Like untreated hypertensive males, men plagued by anxiety, depression, and other psychiatric disorders commonly have impaired sexual function.

Psychiatric, or psychoactive, drugs interact with the network of chemicals called neurotransmitters that are present in the brain and elsewhere in the nervous system. Neurotransmitters allow nerve cells to interact with one another. Many experts postulate that psychiatric illness reflects an illdefined breakdown in the normal chemical communication among brain cells. This disruption favors a pattern of random, chaotic neurochemical signals that may cause depression, paranoia, psychosis, mania, or other forms of psychiatric dysfunction. Psychoactive medications are thought to be effective by virtue of their ability to redress this internal chemical turmoil and help realign neurochernical impulses so that normal communications can resume.Psychiatric medications also interrupt the neurochemistry required for the smooth progression of the normal male sexual response cycle. Like antihypertensive medications, some psychiatric medications have a negative effect on libido and/or impair the capability to have erections. But the most consistently reported sexual side effect is delayed ejaculation or a complete inability to ejaculate.

METHYLDOPA

// October 30th, 2010 // No Comments » // Impotence

Methyldopa (Aldomet) is generally accepted as an effective antihypertensive medication, but it interferes with the function of the naturally occurring body chemical doparnine, which is important for normal nerve function and hormone release.

The body converts the drug methyldopa to a look-alike chemical called methyldopamine, which then shoulders aside the body’s own dopamine. Methyldopamine is referred to as a false neurotransmitter and, like a false prophet, confuses the body by providing scrambled and inaccurate information. The result is that systems crucial for erection do not function properly. Methyldopamine tricks the body into releasing excessive amounts of the sexually inhibiting hormone prolactin. In addition, methyldopamine creates sufficient biochemical bewilderment in nerve endings to interfere with the way nerves that regulate erections communicate with one another. This then provides a favorable environment for the development of neurogenic impotence.

The most common sexual side effects of methyldopa are decreased libido and impotence; these side effects are not universal, however. The frequency of methyldopa-induced sexual dysfunction varies from study to study, with reports ranging from as low as 3 percent to as high as 37 percent. In most studies, sexual side effects can be anticipated to occur in about 20 to 25 percent of methyldopa-treated hypertensive men.