Premature ejaculation has long been recognized as a health condition, but a clear definition of the condition has emerged only recently, and it is still evolving. Now one group of sexual medicine experts say they've arrived at a new definition that includes men who have had premature ejaculation all their lives, and those who've acquired the condition as they've aged. 
 
 Men with "acquired" premature ejaculation are those who have had normal sexual function in the past, but now nearly always ejaculate less than three minutes after penetration, under the new definition. "Lifelong" premature ejaculation is defined as having sex that lasts for about one minute of vaginal penetration, and has been like that since the first sexual experience. 
 
 The definition also says that men who have premature ejaculation may be suffering from the negative personal consequences of being unable to delay ejaculation, such as distress, frustration or an avoidance of sexual intimacy, the researchers said. [7 Surprising Reasons for Erectile Dysfunction] 
 
 To write the new definition, experts in the International Society for Sexual Medicine (ISSM) reviewed the scientific evidence on the forms of premature ejaculation, as well as recommended treatments. The experts authored two reports published today (May 22) in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. 
 
 In 2008, the ISSM experts issued an earlier definition for lifelong premature ejaculation but this was limited to men with the lifelong form of the disorder. 
 
 "The unified definition of lifelong and acquired premature ejaculation will reduce errors of diagnosis and classification by providing the clinician with a discriminating diagnostic tool," said study researcher Dr. Ege Can Serefoglu, of the Bagcilar Training & Research Hospital, in Istanbul, Turkey. 
 
 Doctors can use the new definition to diagnosis men with the condition, and to design clinical trials for treatments, the researchers said. 
 
 However, the researchers limited their definition to men engaging in vaginal intercourse because there are few studies on early ejaculation in the context of other sexual acts or in homosexual men, the researchers said. 
 
 Acquired premature ejaculation is most commonly due to sexual performance anxiety, psychological or relationship problems, or erectile dysfunction, the researchers said. But it can also be due to inflammation of the prostate gland, an overactive thyroid or withdrawal from prescribed or recreational drugs. 
 
 As many as one-third of men may suffer from premature ejaculation at some point in their lives, previous studies have found. Reviewing past data, the researchers found that about 2 to 3 percent of men have lifelong premature ejaculation, and the rate of acquired premature ejaculation is about 4 percent among sexually active men. 
 
 Email Bahar Gholipour or follow her @alterwired. Follow us @LiveScience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. ||||| STOCKHOLM, Sweden, April 14 (UPI) -- Men who suffered from lifelong premature ejaculation can be treated by pelvic floor exercises over a 12-week period. 
 
 Study leader Dr. Antonio Pastore of the Sapienza University of Rome said the study involved a group of 40 men ages 19 to 46 who had premature ejaculation -- defined as “ejaculation within a minute," who had tried a variety of therapies, without any significant improvement. 
 
 During the 12-week study period, the men were trained to exercise their pelvic floor muscles and their time-to-orgasm was measured. 
 
 The study, presented at the European Congress of Urology in Stockholm, found at the start of the trial the average ejaculation time was 31.7 seconds, but by the end of the 12-weeks of pelvic floor exercises this had risen to 146.2 seconds -- a more than four-fold increase. 
 
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 This is a small study, so the effects need to be verified in a bigger trial. Nevertheless, the results are very positive. The rehabilitation exercises are easy to perform, with no reported adverse effects," Pastore said in a statement. "Previously the men in the trial had tried a variety of treatments, including creams, behavioral therapy, antidepressants and psychological treatments -- with little success. However, we found that 33 of the 40 men in our trial improved their ejaculation time within 12 weeks. We also found that the fact that the men were able to improve their sex-lives through their own efforts helped their self-confidence." 
 
 [European Congress of Urology]
– We all know what premature ejaculation is, but it turns out that until now, an agreed-upon definition of the health condition hasn't exactly existed. A committee of sexual medicine experts has changed that, formulating a new definition that for the first time speaks both to men who have experienced the condition all their lives and those who acquired it with age. In the case of the former, it's defined as men whose sexual experiences have always lasted no more than about a minute after penetration; in the case of the latter, it refers to men who almost always reach climax in fewer than three minutes of penetration. (LiveScience last year noted that men in general ejaculate in an average of four minutes.) Further, the definition notes two other components of the sexual dysfunction: an inability to delay ejaculation, and resulting "negative personal consequences." Their paper, published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, notes that it's the "first evidence-based definition for these conditions," one born from a review of scientific evidence and suggested treatments. This unified definition "will reduce errors of diagnosis and classification," a researcher tells LiveScience, which notes that, because of the nature of the studies the researchers relied on, the definition extends only to men who have heterosexual sex. (A new book argues that short sex is pretty normal.)