According to researchers from Taiwan, men who are suffering from erectile dysfunction (ED) are more likely to also have migraines. Compared to men with no sexual disorder, males with ED are 63 percent more prone to severe headaches.
Dr. Chao-Yuan Huang of National Taiwan University’s College of Medicine made the claim that “no study to date has ever attempted to explore the association between migraine and ED.”
The researchers gathered data from about 23,000 men, whose information was collected based on insurance claims from men in Taiwan. Around 5,700 men had been diagnosed with ED, which is characterized by the inability to achieve or maintain an erection.
Dr. Huang’s team compared the data of these ED patients to 17,000 men who are suffering from the same dysfunction but had not sought treatment.
The researchers found out that around 4 percent of men with ED were previously diagnosed with migraines while only 2 percent of men without ED were diagnosed with migraines.
Age also seems to be a factor. Men with ED aged 30 are twice as likely to be diagnosed with migraines compared to men without ED.
“It’s an interesting first recognition of the correlation, but by no means does it mean they’re causally linked,” said Dr. Tobias Köhler, a male sexual function and fertility expert from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. According to him, this is the first time that he has heard about the migraines-impotence relationship. Dr. Ege Serefoglu of Tulane University School of Medicine, on the other hand, stressed that these findings should be looked at cautiously.
