NFL and ED

According to a systematic review, rugby and American football have the highest concussion incidences compared to other sports (Prien et al., 2018). Concussion is the most common type of mild traumatic brain injury (Tator, 2013).

Another recent systematic review found that sports related traumatic brain injuries - such as concussions - actually account for up to 30% of all traumatic brain injuries (Theadom et al., 2020).

One large study which examined traumatic brain injuries in 73,000 patients compared to 218,000 controls found that men with traumatic brain injuries were 2.5 times more likely to develop erectile dysfunction (ED) compared to the general population (Yang et al., 2018).

In a study of 3409 former American football players, 18.3% of them had low testosterone levels and 22.7% of them had ED. The study found a significant increasing association of concussions with reports of low testosterone and ED (Grashow et al., 2019)