Thrasher, there’s no one site that really nailed it down for me, just alot of bits and pieces that seemed to fit together, though, one that I’ve found since, which seems to explain it well, is:
http://www.drlwilson.com/Articles/adrenal_burnout.htm
Now, to better explain my line of thinking, I’ll give you a brief overview of my dietary, lifting, and sexual history.
I spent the first 17 years of my life eating utter crap and getting bare minimal exercise. Throughout this time, like most teenagers I had frequent erections but they tended to be weak(in retrospect). I was utterly disgusted when I nearly hit 290 pounds, and decided to fix that. With little exercise or nutrition knowledge, I chopped portion size(then later calories and fat) and took up lots of walking, and some very silly weight movements with 10 pound dumbbells(thats how weak I was).
6 months or a year later, when moving off to college, I had gotten to about 200 pounds with little or no strength gain, and slight muscle gain(from 100s of reps with the dumbbells and walking and some calisthenics). Erection frequency took a down turn as my eating got less, and more sparse in college. Among the crazy things I tried were, eating nothing but breakfast cereal, eating nothing but crackers and peanut butter, and skipping one or two meals a day(with the third being a cafeteria meal).
After about a year of those habits I progressed to a more moderate, mixed diet of what I thought was healthy(cereal, frozen fish sticks, tortilla chips, peanut butter sandwichs on whole wheat, some fruit and fruit juices, etc). I also started working at McDonalds at this time. At the time I thought McDs was OK as long as portion was controlled, and I only chose certain things (egg mcmuffin, not bacon/egg/cheese biscuit). At this time I was having more frequent erections again(though not quite as many as younger), and they were better. I walked alot, did some moderate running, and continued with my own silly idea of weight training, moving up to 30 pounders.
Another 6 months or so passed and I found myself deciding to turn to low-carbs. I picked up a discount book that looked interesting and it opened my eyes to alot of nutritional theory that I had NO idea about before. I also started reading some muscle mags at this point but they were less of an influence, though I did try some of their training routines on occasion. I was working 3 jobs and going to school at this point, plus trying to have a personal life and train. I got little sleep, and started getting sodas again(something I had stopped at the beginning of my dieting). Before low-carbing I had put on some muscle, and continued to.
I eventually floated in and out of healthy eating for quite awhile. Stress and depression, along with times where I felt fatigued would push me back into eating comfort foods, or just to eat whats easiest so I could focus on something else. The times when I was doing low-carb, lower sodium, and no stimulants, I had some of the best erections of my life, but, they tended to be infrequent. I eventually started adding in ECA and yohimbe to the diets.
Since then I’ve slid between one plan to another, low-carb, warrior diet, both, junk food, and back to low-carb/paleolithic. My libido and erection frequency/quality has fluctuated as well, but tended towards a pattern of “more frequent, weaker” when I had sugar, and “less frequent, stronger” sans sugar and more carbs.
Most recently, this past Christmas, I was eating paleolithic(meat, veggies, nuts, fruit) and, only after taking a vacation both from my job and lifting, as well as taking some st johns wort, did my mood, sleep, and erection quality increase. They stayed decent during my fat fast afterwords, though seemed to slowly decline. I was taking an ECA at this time, along with yohimbe.
Stress has been building again, both from work, and from some overtraining. I took a week off from the gym, but that didn’t help enough it seems. I think I’ve already given a history of my sleep in previous posts.
My thoughts on the adrenals began when I read Poliquin recommending licorice to treat persons with low cortisol and low testosterone. Further reading on the subject of licorice here and elsewhere shed light on what it was treating. Considering what leads to the overexhaustion of the adrenals, and then looking at my history, I think its easy to see why I’ve concluded that its a matter of adrenal exhaustion. I sadly have the history and symptoms now to back it up.