Coffee perks millions of Americans up each morning, and a new study finds it might help keep men’s sex lives percolating, too.
The study, from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, found that men who consume more caffeine each day had a lower risk of erectile dysfunction. The exception? Men with diabetes — for them, extra caffeine didn’t lower their odds for impotence, the researchers said.
“Even though we saw a reduction in the prevalence of erectile dysfunction with men who were obese, overweight and hypertensive, that was not true of men with diabetes. Diabetes is one of the strongest risk factors for erectile dysfunction, so this was not surprising,” lead author Dr. David Lopez, assistant professor at UTHealth School of Public Health, said in a university news release.
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The study couldn’t prove cause-and-effect, but one expert said the findings are in line with current research.
“These findings also support the latest U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee position that drinking three to five cups a day reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease; two conditions that are well established as significant risk factors for erectile dysfunction,” said Dr. Natan Bar-Chama, director of Male Reproductive Medicine at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.
In the study, Lopez and colleagues looked at data on more than 3,700 men tracked by the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The men answered questionnaires asking them to recall their caffeine intake from the prior 24 hours.
The amount of caffeine that appeared to reduce the risk of impotence was equal to two to three cups of coffee a day, the researchers said.
