Hormones and Your Body After SCI — The Endocrine Connection

Spinal cord injuries can disrupt your body’s hormone system. Here’s what to watch for.

Your body’s hormones do a lot of quiet, important work — regulating energy, blood sugar, sexual function, stress responses, and more. After a traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI), that hormone system — called the endocrine system — can be thrown off balance in ways that many people don’t realize.

A major study published in 2025 found that people with SCIs had significantly higher rates of several hormone-related conditions compared to people without injuries.

Two of the most notable findings were adrenal insufficiency and erectile dysfunction. The adrenal glands sit above your kidneys and produce hormones that help your body respond to stress and regulate blood pressure, metabolism, and immune function. People with SCIs were 2.5 to 5.6 times more likely to develop adrenal insufficiency — meaning those glands don’t make enough of these vital hormones. Symptoms can include extreme fatigue, low blood pressure, dizziness, and a weakened immune response.

Erectile dysfunction was also significantly more common after SCI — about 1.8 to 3 times more likely than in uninjured individuals. This is often due to both nerve damage and changes in blood flow, but hormonal factors can also play a role.

The study also found higher rates of diabetes and, in some cases, pituitary dysfunction — problems with the small gland at the base of the brain that controls many other hormone glands in the body. Pituitary dysfunction was linked to a dramatically higher risk of early death, making it especially important to identify and treat.

The endocrine system and the nervous system are deeply connected, so it makes sense that damage to the spinal cord would ripple outward to affect hormone function. But many of these conditions can be diagnosed with simple blood tests and treated effectively once identified.

What you can do: Ask your doctor about hormone-related screening, especially if you’re experiencing unexplained fatigue, weight changes, low libido, dizziness, or difficulty regulating body temperature. Make sure your care team knows that endocrine problems are more common after SCI. Don’t assume these symptoms are “just part of” living with an SCI — they deserve proper evaluation.

Source: Mashlah A, et al. JAMA Network Open, November 2025.