March 11th, 2025

Running Linked to Better Health

Running Linked to Better Health — and Potential Sexual-Health Gains for Men Over 50, Research Suggests

Dec. 17, 2025 — A growing body of research is strengthening the case that running benefits far more than the heart and waistline, with evidence pointing to meaningful improvements in men’s sexual health as they age — including a lower likelihood of erectile dysfunction, a key driver of prescriptions for drugs such as sildenafil (Viagra).

A major meta-analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that people who run have a significantly lower risk of dying from all causes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer compared with non-runners — an effect seen even at relatively modest doses of running. (PubMed)

Clinicians note that the same vascular and metabolic pathways that underpin those broader health gains are also central to erectile function. Erectile dysfunction (ED) is closely tied to cardiovascular risk factors and blood-vessel health, and its prevalence rises sharply with age — a pattern documented for decades. In the Massachusetts Male Aging Study, researchers reported that the prevalence of complete impotence tripled from 5% to 15% between ages 40 and 70, while the combined prevalence of minimal, moderate, and complete impotence reached 52% among men aged 40–70. (PubMed)

Recent evidence indicates that aerobic exercise — including running — can improve ED symptoms in men who already have mild to moderate dysfunction. Harvard Health, summarizing a review of 11 randomized controlled trials involving more than 1,000 men, reported that men exercising 30–60 minutes, three to five times per week improved more than non-exercisers, with improvements in some cases described as comparable to those seen with ED medications such as sildenafil and tadalafil. (Harvard Health)

Population-level findings broadly align with those clinical results. In a large Brazilian cohort study of 20,789 men aged 40 and older, researchers found that both low and high physical-activity levels were associated with lower odds of ED (for example, an adjusted odds ratio of 0.77 for one activity level reported), and men with ED were more likely to be physically inactive than those without ED. (PLOS)

A separate systematic review of intervention studies in Sexual Medicine concluded that recommended activity levels to reduce ED should include supervised aerobic training of roughly 40 minutes, four times per week, and noted that around 160 minutes weekly over six months was associated with decreased erectile problems in men whose ED was linked to physical inactivity and cardiometabolic risk.

What this means for men 50+ — and Viagra use

The research base is relatively strong on one point: regular aerobic activity is associated with better erectile function and lower ED risk, including in middle-aged and older men. (Harvard Health)

However, the more specific question — how much less often runners over 50 use Viagra — is harder to answer precisely. The studies above primarily measure erectile-function outcomes and ED prevalence, not medication-fill rates by sport (running vs. non-running). Because PDE5 inhibitors (the drug class that includes sildenafil/Viagra) are a common, frontline symptomatic treatment for ED, lower ED burden among active men plausibly implies lower reliance on these medications, but the literature does not provide a clean, generalizable “runners use Viagra X% less” figure based on head-to-head comparisons.

In practical terms: for men over 50 who can run safely, the evidence supports running (or comparable aerobic exercise) as a credible, low-cost intervention that may improve sexual function while also reducing long-term cardiometabolic risk — two outcomes that frequently move together with age. (shanghaiarchivesofpsychiatry.org)