Vaping Associated With Over 2x The Erectile Dysfunction Risk, Study Says

It’s not hard to see why vaping might be associated with erectile dysfunction (ED). Previous studies have shown that nicotine may affect the blood vessels in your penis, and a study recently published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (AJPM) found that men who vaped on a daily basis were more than twice as likely to have reported suffering ED.

This latest study used data collected from December 2016 to January 2018 as part of a larger longitudinal study named PATH. Launched in 2013, PATH is short for Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health and has entailed asking a nationally representative sample of 45,971 adults 18 years and older in the U.S. a range of questions to assess their tobacco use and health outcomes. For those 20 years and older, one of the questions was about ED, although only 13,711 men ended up answering this question. This wasn’t surprising since ED isn’t something that’s openly discussed on a regular basis. It’s not as if people will typically ask, “would you like a soft drink with your meal? Oh, and speaking of soft…”

So, the study team, which consisted of researchers from New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, the Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, the Boston University School of Public Health, and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, focused on the 13,711 men who had answered the ED question. Of this group of men, over a fifth (20.7%) had reported experiencing ED and 4.8% had reported currently vaping with 2.1% doing so on a daily basis. The long and short of it is that those who had reported daily vaping were 2.24 as likely to have reported ED compared those who had never vaped.

Of course, one possible cause of ED is cardiovascular disease. Indeed, among everyone who answered the ED question, those who had a history of cardiovascular disease and were 65 years and older were 1.39 times as likely to have reported having ED, compared to those who didn’t have any history of cardiovascular disease and were in the 20-24 years of age category. Therefore, to better isolate whether vaping was still associated with higher ED risk, the research team looked a smaller slice of 11,207 men who fell in the 20 to 65 years age range and had no history of cardiovascular disease.

Of this smaller slice, 10.2% reported having ED and 5.6% reported currently vaping with 2.5% doing so each day. For this smaller slice, the likelihood of reporting ED was even higher (2.41 times) among those reporting daily vaping compared those who had never vaped.

Now you may not be taking this news lying down and argue that such a study can only show associations and not prove cause and effect. That is true. The study didn’t really tease out other possible causes of ED such as depression, anxiety, use of certain medications, and playing the theme song for the TV series Law and Order while making love. The study didn’t identify who may not be having ED because they’re getting treatment such pounding ED medications either.

Plus, asking someone about ED via a survey is not the same as observing it yourself. While you may not usually say “show me” whenever someone tells you that he has ED, keep in mind that people may differ quite significantly in how they define ED. For some it may be the occasional, “sorry, was thinking of the stock market just then.” For others, it may be a more recurring issue.

Nevertheless, this is not the first study to draw the possible connection between vaping and ED. Previous studies have linked both smoking and nicotine to ED. While e-cigarettes may be less harmful than regular cigarettes, they aren’t harmless. E-cigarettes typically have whole range of chemicals that aren’t great to inhale, including nicotine.

How can inhaling nicotine end up affecting your penis? Unless you are a contortionist or a Phallostethus cuulong fish, your penis is probably nowhere near your nose or mouth. Well, once absorbed into your bloodstream, nicotine may circulate down to the blood vessels in your penis where it can keep such vessels from expanding or dilating. And even though you may use the word wood to describe an erection, it’s not wood or guide wires or wedges of cheese that keep your penis erect. It’s the blood vessels dilating and allowing blood to flow into and stay in your penis. Thus, nicotine could transform a night of “let’s get it on” to “let’s watch Netflix.”

Nicotine may not be only thing in vaping products affecting your chances of being a stand up guy. Rodent studies have suggested that the refill liquids could decrease testosterone levels even without the presence of nicotine. And lower circulating testosterone levels may affect your ability to initiate and maintain erects function too. Of course, you may assert that you aren’t a rat, no matter what people may say about you. However, all of this evidence combined

All of this suggests that vaping may be a rising problem in more ways than one. The number of people vaping in the U.S. has continued to increase, as Katherine Schaeffer described for the Pew Research Center. Vaping was originally thought to be a promising way of getting those hooked on cigarettes to move towards quitting or at least reducing their inhalation of harmful chemicals. But the concern is that ex-cigarettes smokers aren’t the only ones using e-cigarettes, as evidenced by the rising number of teens vaping, which I’ve covered for Forbes previously. Vaping is by no means a harmless activity. And it may be impotent to know that.