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Does Every Guy Lose Blood Flow Below the Belt? (What Science Says)

Fact Checked

Blood flow is critical for strong erections. But as you age, what happens to your penis’ best friend? Find out in our special report.

Last Updated: 08/18/2025

Written by

Kimberly Wilkes

Blood flow into the penis is critical for strong, healthy erections. A strong erection is powered by up to 8 times the amount of blood compared to when it’s flaccid.

“Blood flow is an extremely critical component to sexual health,” says Paul Thompson, M.D., a urologist and surgeon with more than three decades of experience treating erectile dysfunction. “When it comes to satisfaction in the bedroom, blood flow is every man’s best friend.”

But what happens to your blood flow as you age? Is it every man’s destiny to become sluggish down there? Or is there something you can do to keep the blood flowing so that your erections can impress both you and your partner?

This blog post will dive into the concept of whether every guy is doomed to poor blood flow with age, and if there’s anything you can do about it. Spoiler alert: there’s bad news and good news.

How Erections Work

To understand why blood flow is so important to erections, it helps to know how erections work.

When you’re aroused, the smooth muscle that lines the blood vessels of the penis relaxes and widens. The result? Blood flows into the corpora cavernosa, two spongy, cylinder-shaped structures of the penis. This leads to an erection.

As blood pours into the penis, the veins constrict, which creates a seal to maintain the erection. If you can’t achieve or maintain an erection, it’s often due to not enough blood flowing into the penis to begin with or because that blood leaks out of the penis, creating a venous leak.(1)

Why Blood Flow Is Important

Blood flow not only directly stimulates an erection, it also delivers nutrients like oxygen to blood vessels, keeping them healthy and ready to power a strong erection.

There’s also a connection between the poor blood flow that occurs in most cases of erectile dysfunction and cardiovascular disease. Scientists consider erectile dysfunction to be an early warning sign of cardiovascular disease, and the two conditions share risk factors.(2)

In fact, half of all men with ED have a history of cardiovascular disease.(2) This link may be due in part to poor blood flow throughout the body, which affects the smaller vessels of the penis first, then as circulation gets worse, the poor blood flow also affects the whole vascular system.

Causes of Poor Circulation in the Penis

Scientists used to believe that plaque buildup in blood vessels was the main reason for reduced blood flow in the penis, causing erectile dysfunction.

However, according to the Mayo Clinic, scientists now believe that the root cause of reduced blood flow is more likely due to problems with the inner lining of blood vessels.(3) Technically speaking, this inner lining is known as the endothelium. Smooth muscle that’s not working its best also slows blood flow.

The endothelium is a single layer of cells that forms the lining of blood vessels. These cells release substances that cause your blood vessels to open and close. Smooth muscle is a type of muscle tissue that works without your having to think about it. It controls many important bodily functions such as blood pressure, digesting food—even penile blood flow.

If the lining of your blood vessels is not working well, then it’s not secreting enough of a molecule known as nitric oxide. Producing enough nitric oxide is important for relaxing smooth muscles in blood vessels, leading to enhanced blood flow and healthy erections.

In other words, if you have poor circulation, the processes that normally lead to great blood flow aren’t working properly.

The end result of faulty blood vessel lining is plaque build-up in the blood vessels of the penis. If you have plaque build-up, it likely all started with the endothelium going bad.

Will Every Guy Lose Blood Flow?

Aging lowers circulation throughout the body, which makes people more susceptible to vascular disease and poor blood flow as they age. In a study that compared young men with older men, femoral (upper thigh) artery blood flow was 26% lower in the older men, despite similar levels of cardiac output.(4)

“In my experience,” says Dr. Thompson, “The vast majority of my patients over the age of 40 have reduced penile blood flow. They are also noticing softer erections or they can’t get hard as often as they used to.”

Most older men experience poor circulation because, as you grow older, your risk of age-related diseases that impact blood flow goes up. Data from the Cleveland Clinic matches what Dr. Thompson has noticed in clinical practice: being older than 40 is a risk factor for poor circulation.(5)

In addition, if you’re overweight, have diabetes, or aren’t exercising often, you are more likely to have poor circulation.(5) Cardiovascular disease is also a sign that your blood flow isn’t up to par.

ED is linked to the same underlying risk factors as vascular disease, such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus (DM), high cholesterol, smoking, and obesity, which are common during aging.(6)

Just as it does throughout the rest of your body, aging lowers penile blood flow in every man sooner or later. That’s why blood vessel problems are the most common cause of erectile dysfunction.(7)

Diagnosing Poor Circulation

The gold standard to measure penile blood flow is a Doppler ultrasound. This test uses a wand-like device to send sound waves through blood vessels that feed blood to the penis. The resulting image can reveal if you have poor blood flow.

How to Improve Blood Flow to the Penis

The good news? Options exist for boosting blood flow to the penis and enhancing your erections. These can benefit just about every man and spice up your time in the bedroom. Dr. Thompson finds the following five strategies to be the most effective ways to increase your circulation to the penis and throughout your body:

Address Underlying Conditions

The first step? Get a check-up at your doctor’s office to find out if you have any of the risk factors for poor blood flow. Then work with your doctor to treat conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and high blood pressure.

Banish Your Inner Couch Potato

Exercise is one of the best ways to boost circulation. Start with mild to moderate exercise, and aim for at least 30 minutes every day. Choose taking an evening walk over binge-watching your favorite show.

Drop the Extra Pounds

Packing on weight increases the risk for factors that reduce blood flow, such as high blood pressure and diabetes. Obesity can cause blood flow through the veins to be more sluggish. Obesity is also one of the leading causes of endothelial dysfunction, meaning it messes with the lining of your blood vessels.(8)

Use Acoustic Soundwave Therapy

“As you get older, lifestyle changes are not always enough to boost blood flow to the penis,” said Dr. Thompson. “That’s where acoustic soundwave therapy comes into play.”

Also known as low-intensity shockwave therapy or Li-ESWT for short, acoustic soundwave therapy supports healthy penile blood flow. Acoustic soundwave therapy can enhance the health of the blood vessel lining to improve erections for a more satisfying sex life.(9)(10)

Here’s how it works: an Li-ESWT device is run back and forth along specific treatment zones, delivering powerful soundwaves into penile tissue. In-clinic treatment is effective, but expensive and inconvenient. Dr. Thompson recommends an at-home acoustic soundwave therapy device that’s just as effective as in-clinic therapy at a fraction of the cost.

A Perfect Pairing

Use an at-home acoustic soundwave therapy device together with a smart ring to measure your current erection health—firmness, duration, and recovery time. This gives you a performance baseline so you can track real progress over time. Wear the smart ring after each session to help retain blood and deliver more oxygen and nutrients to the treated tissue—amplifying results.

The Bottom Line on Building Blood Flow

The older you get, the less blood you have flowing into your penis, and the more your sexual health suffers. Addressing underlying health conditions, exercising, and dropping those extra pounds are all helpful—but they may not be enough to keep your erections strong and healthy as you age. To keep blood flowing into your penile tissue, urologist Paul Thompson recommends using an at-home acoustic soundwave therapy device followed by a smart ring in order to achieve impressive results.