Your Risk Of Erectile Dysfunction More Than Triples If You Have This Health Condition

HIGH BLOOD SUGAR can make it hard to get hard: Men with diabetes are significantly more likely to have erectile dysfunction that those with normal blood sugar readings, research in the journal Diabetic Medicine concludes. That could be a serious problem for the 15 percent of men who have diabetes in the U.S.

After crunching the numbers from 145 studies including over 88,000 men who averaged 56 years old, the researchers determined that those with diabetes were more than three times as likely to have erectile dysfunction than healthy guys were. In fact, 59 percent of men with diabetes had ED.

What’s more, men with diabetes tended to develop their erectile dysfunction 10 to 15 years earlier than those without the condition did, according to the study.

So how can high blood sugar sink you in the bedroom?

Diabetes can damage your blood vessels and your nerves—both of which are needed for healthy erectile functioning, says Sean Skeldon, M.D., who has previously researched ED and diabetes, but was not involved in this study.

Another important point: Erectile dysfunction is often considered a harbinger of heart disease. That’s because the blood vessel issues that cause ED—say, like, the narrowing of those blood vessels—can also affect your heart, too. They just manifest first with problems in the bedroom, since your blood vessels in your penis are smaller than the ones that carry blood to your heart.

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The good news, though, is that many of the risk factors for diabetes are under your control—meaning your penis and your heart could benefit from some prevention strategies. One easy one? Drink an extra cup of coffee. One review in the journal Nutrients found that people who upped their coffee intake by one cup a day cut their risk of type 2 diabetes by 6 percent.