Vitamin D Council

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• Vitamin D and male sex drive

Philippe from France writes:

Dr. Cannell: Is there anything out there about vitamin D and sex drive? I am asking because I have noticed an increase in my sex drive (I am a 48-year-old male who has been getting 5,000 IU/day shipped to me in France from Bio Tech Pharmacal for about a year.)

Dr Cannell replies:

I know of no studies measuring male libido and vitamin D but Dr. Wehr and colleagues, at the Medical University of Graz in Austria, just published a surprising study¹ showing that testosterone levels are directly associated with vitamin D levels (measured with the DiaSorin technique) and testosterone levels vary with the seasons, in concert with vitamin D levels. Furthermore, the men with very low testosterone levels had very low vitamin D levels. This study does not prove, like any association study, that vitamin D increases testosterone levels. It may be that sun exposure in the summer is responsible for both higher vitamin D levels and higher testosterone levels.  By the way, the New York Daily News got it wrong, nothing in the Wehr study talks about vitamin D increasing male libido.