Doctors can use the 'Viagra visit' to screen men for heart: "By Tara Parker-Pope, The Wall Street Journal

If you're thinking about trying Viagra or another erectile-dysfunction drug to boost your sex life, chances are you should be talking to your doctor about your heart health as well.
There's a growing push in the medical community to use the 'Viagra visit' -- the time when a man asks his doctor for an erectile-dysfunction drug -- as a way to better screen men for heart disease. That's because studies increasingly show that an unhealthy vascular system is one of the main reasons men develop problems achieving and maintaining erections. And many doctors now believe that just as they check a man's cholesterol and blood pressure during the annual physical, they should also be asking detailed questions about a man's erectile function to better gauge his overall cardiovascular health and risk for heart attack.
While erectile dysfunction has long been treated as a lifestyle issue, erection problems appear to be a very early warning sign of looming heart troubles. An Italian study showed that in two-thirds of patients who had known coronary-artery disease as well as erectile dysfunction, the erection problems showed up, on average, three years before other symptoms, such as the chest pain caused by angina.
'It looks like erectile function is one of the first things to go long before someone has a heart attack or stroke,' says Steven A. Grover, professor of medicine at McGill University in Montreal. 'It's one of the first early warnings that something is wrong with the vascular system.'
While this may sound ominous, it also means men with erectile dysfunction are warned soon enough that they still have time to reverse heart disease by exercising, losing weight, and lowering cholesterol and high blood pressure. Doctors say men often are more motivated to make lifestyle changes once ED sets in. And studies show that in addition to lowering heart-attack risk, exercise and weight loss also can improve a man's erectile function.
'It's hard to catch a man's interest when you say 10 years from now you'll have a heart attack,' says Richard Sadovsky, associate professor of family medicine at the State University of New York-Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. 'But it's a very good teachable moment -- men are a little more willing to listen to lifestyle changes and clinical recommendation when it has to do with erections......'"