What the beverage industry doesn’t want you to know about sugary drinks and sexual dysfunction:

Erectile dysfunction, or impotence, is the inability to get and maintain an erection during sexual activity on an ongoing basis. Impotence can lead to stress, anxiety, relationship problems and low self-esteem. Common causes of erectile dysfunction include diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and metabolic syndrome.(1)

Consuming sugary drinks increase your risk of developing type 2 diabetes, which is a risk factor for erectile dysfunction.(2)

In a recent study, young healthy men who drank more than one sugary drink a day had significantly lower sperm quality, impacting their fertility, than those who drank less than one sugary drink a day. (3)

Sources:

  1.  Mayo Clinic; Erectile Dysfunction; January 2010
  2. Malik VS, Popkin BM, Bray GA, Despres JP, Willett WC, Hu FB. Sugar-sweetened beverages and risk of metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes: a meta-analysis.Diabetes Care. 2010;33(11):2477-2483.
  3. Chiu, Y. H., Afeiche, M. C., Gaskins, A. J., Williams, P. L., Mendiola, J., Jørgensen, N., … & Chavarro, J. E. (2014). Sugar-sweetened beverage intake in relation to semen quality and reproductive hormone levels in young men. Human Reproduction, deu102. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24812311)