To understand what causes erectile dysfunction—what goes wrong—we first need to understand what occurs when everything goes right. An erection may seem like the simplest thing in the world: the penis gets hard. But what makes that penis hard? Buy Kamagra Effervescent 100mg Online There is no bone in it, after all, or it would never become flaccid. Instead, “hardness” is caused by the penis filling with blood to the point where the pressure is strong enough that there is no “give” left. Think of the tire of a car: without air it is perfectly soft, but when filled the pressure makes it very hard.

Why then, you ask, isn’t the penis always hard? Blood is always circulating through it, after all. To answer this we need to learn a little about the penis’s anatomy.

The penis is an organ with paired erectile chambers called the corpora cavernosa running almost its entire length. These cylinders are surrounded and held in place by a fibrous sheath called the tunica albuginea. (To continue our tire metaphor, the corpora cavernosa would be the tube and the tunica albuginea would be the tread.) The corpora cavernosa are filled with tissue called lacunar spaces, which are surrounded by more lean muscle tissue and supported by elastic fibrous tissue composed of collagen. The lacunar spaces are supplied with blood through small blood vessels called helicine arteries, which in turn are branches of the blood supplier for the entire penis, the penile artery. In the penis’s normal flaccid state, these spaces are empty because the smooth muscle surrounding them is contracted, constricting the helicine arteries and preventing blood from flowing in.

Like all the other organs of the body, the penis does need a constant minimal supply of blood to maintain healthy tissue. Buy Extra P Super Force Online This inflow of blood through the arteries is then drained away by a system of veins that runs just beneath the tunica albuginea, where it meets the spongy tissue of the corpora cavernosa.

The smooth muscle cells of the corpora cavernosa play a key role in initiating an erection. Paradoxically, they must relax in order for an erection to occur. By doing so, when signaled by the brain, they allow blood to flow through the helicine arteries, filling the pool-shaped lacunar spaces. The arteries also dilate to allow for the greater flow of blood. As the lacunar spaces fill, the corpora cavernosa inflate, pushing against the tunica albuginea as they do so. Buy Fildena A neat engineering trick is that, because the veins that drain the penis are located between the tunica albuginea and the corpora cavernosa, as the corpora cavernosa swells it squeezes these veins against the less flexible tunica albuginea, pinching them off and preventing the new inflow of blood from being drained away. Penile pressure increases to approach mean arterial blood pressure and penile rigidity develops. This is an erection.

Once the smooth muscle of the penis stops receiving signals from the brain to produce an erection, it contracts again, preventing further inflow of blood to the penis. Without this blood, the pressure inside the corpora cavernosa drops just enough to allow the veins to again begin to drain blood out of the penis, further reducing pressure and allowing increasingly faster drainage to occur, and the penis quickly returns to its flaccid state.