The Vitamin He Needs So His Penis Can Perform

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It's like sex fuel for his boner.

Lacking enough of the sunshine vitamin might snuff out the lights on his bedroom game: New research from Italy suggests that low levels of vitamin D may increase a guy's risk of erectile dysfunction.

When researchers tested 143 men with varying degrees of erectile dysfunction, they found that nearly half of them were coming up deficient in D, and only one in five had optimal levels of the nutrient. What's more, men with severe cases of ED had vitamin D levels that were about 24 percent lower than those of men with mild forms of the condition. 

Insufficient levels of D may spur the production of free radicals called superoxide ions, says study author Alessandra Barassi, M.D., and her research team. These free radicals deplete your nitric oxide, a molecule that helps your blood vessels function properly. The result: It makes it hard to, well, get hard. 

"Nitric oxide causes the blood vessels to relax, which increases the blood flow and causes an erection under normal circumstances," says Larry Lipshultz, M.D., a Men's Health urology advisor. Without the necessary amounts of nitric acid, though, your blood vessels may not relax enough to allow for an erection.

For guys with low levels of vitamin D, the study recommends he takes supplements to get back to the optimal level of 30 ng/mL or above.

As for men with normal erectile functioning, research is currently studying whether vitamin D supplementation may act as a preventive measure to delay ED.