If you want to kill your love life, keep eating salt if you’re a man or feeding your significant other salt if you’re in a relationship with a man.

Who knew that adding salt to your food is also a killer in the bedroom, at least when it comes to performance? Not me. At least until recently.

A few weeks ago, I was at a conference where I had been asked to present on salt and diastolic dysfunction. At the same conference, a session on the causes and treatment of erectile dysfunction, commonly referred to as ED, profoundly shocked me.

How common you think ED is? It turns out that 20 million men take prescription Viagra alone. Millions more take other prescription drugs for ED and unknown millions take over-the-counter variations of these drugs. According to one estimate, one out of every three men over the age of 50 years has ED.

Staggering isn’t it?

Here comes an even more surprising connection. If you’re a man, adding salt to your food makes you more likely to wind up with ED. Here’s how. Eat salt and you will more than likely get high blood pressure sooner or later. Once you have high blood pressure, by far the most commonly used medication prescribed happens to be the number one medication linked to developing ED.

Really?

I had a hard time believing that myself. So I went on mission to seek out the truth. It didn’t take long, and you participate in that search along with me. First, check out this link:

http://www.aafp.org/afp/2014/1001/p503.html

Newly revised guidelines from the Joint National Conference 8 (JNC 8)—the most authoritative body on recommendations for treatment of hypertension—specifies that the first medication to use in the treatment of hypertension is thiazide diuretic. Because these pills are considered among the safest medicines ever (the list of side effects is only two pages instead of ten or more), they are routinely used as first-line medication.

Now go to any search engine, Google for example, and query medications causing ED. You will see that Web MD, NIH, AARP, Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic etc. have all weighed in. Just click on the first link. I will make it easy for you by posting it below:

http://www.webmd.com/erectile-dysfunction/guide/drugs-linked-erectile-dysfunction.

Voila! As you scroll down to the list of medications causing ED, you will see that the first one listed is hydrochlorothiazide, the scientific name for thiazide diuretic. Hydrochlorothiazide is far from the only drug prescribed for hypertension that causes ED. Dozens of other commonly used drugs are also rendering men impotent.

Isn’t that a crying shame?

Wouldn’t the life be simpler—and your love life safer—If you just cut back on the salt you add to your food?