Feb. 12, 2002 — If you’re strong enough to take the sex, you’re strong enough to take Viagra. A new study finds Viagra safe for men with heart disease — if they’re able to exercise without having the symptoms of severe disease.

Men taking nitrate drugs (such as generic online order viagra
) to ease the symptoms of heart disease can’t use Viagra. Even when a man isn’t taking nitrates, there’s been concern that Viagra might make his underlying heart disease much worse. There have been reports of men suffering heart attacks or chest pain after taking the popular erectile dysfunction drug.

Adelaide M. Generic pack viagra
, MD, PhD, led a team of Mayo Clinic effects of viagra on woman
s who studied the effects of Viagra on 105 men with coronary artery disease (or heart disease). The men took Viagra or a harmless sugar pill an hour before exercise tests. Then medications were switched, and the men exercised and were tested again.

The results: Viagra itself didn’t make exercise harder on the heart.

“It seems more likely that the heart attacks and pain reported with Viagra are related more to the performance of sexual activity in a patient with coronary artery disease than the use of the drug,” notes Thomas H. Marwick, MD, PhD. Marwick is a heart disease researcher at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. The Arruda-Olson study, and Marwick’s accompanying editorial, appear in the Feb. 13 issue of TheJournal of the American Medical Association.

Arruda-Olson and co-workers warn that men with heart disease should see their doctors before taking Viagra. They viagra vs levitra
exercise tests to determine whether patients’ hearts are strong enough for the drug.

The researchers warn that men taking impotence vitamins
drugs for their heart condition should not take Viagra.

Sept. 25, 2001 — We’ve all heard and laughed at Viagra jokes. Poking fun at “the little blue pill” is a favorite of late-night talk show hosts and regular folks alike. But for men with erectile cialis soft tablet
and their partners, the hope Viagra offers — of restoring a healthy sex life — is no laughing matter.

There have, however, been worrisome reports of health risks linked to the drug. Now Italian researchers say that taking Viagra can be deadly if users also have chronic heart failure, a condition where the heart is unable to pump healthy amounts of blood through the body.

Their new study, led by Gianfranco Picirillo, MD, of Medical Policlinic Umberto I in Rome, looked at the heart rhythms of 10 healthy men and 10 others with chronic heart failure after they took a standard dose of Viagra. While both groups experienced certain changes to their heart’s normal electrical activity, those changes were more pronounced and were potentially more dangerous in the men with heart failure.

The scientists conclude that for men with heart failure, taking Viagra may result in abnormal heart rhythms, or arrhythmias, that could lead to sudden death. The risk is even more pronounced, they theorize, for patients who also take certain other drugs including certain antibiotics, antihistamines, antifungals, and erectile dysfunction medication
medications.

But other heart experts are not convinced there’s anything to worry about.

“What we know about Viagra is clear,” says Gary S. Francis, MD, director of the coronary intensive care unit at The Cleveland Clinic Foundation. “Physicians are well aware of it. The drug should not be taken with nitrates nitroglycerin because there’s a risk of sudden, dangerously low blood pressure,” he says. There has been no evidence, however, that heart failure patients in general should avoid Viagra, he tells WebMD.

Rony Shimony, MD, FACC, says that people with heart failure who have a weak heart and irregular heartbeats automatically have a higher death rate than healthy people.

“You’re already in a higher risk group,” says the attending purchase sildenafil citrate at Lenox Hill Hospital and at Cornell Columbia Female herbal viagra
Medical Center, in New York City. He says that these sudden deaths can’t necessarily be linked to Viagra and that the study “is not a reason to panic. Heart failure patients are at higher risk to start with,” he tells WebMD.

What’s more, says Shimony, “cardiac patients are clearly at increased risk from doing any form of exercise or taking any form of medication. You have to use common sense.” No doctor would prescribe Viagra to a very ill patient, he tells WebMD, but if you’re appropriately screened by your heart doctor, even if you have well-controlled heart failure, all evidence indicates that you will not drop dead.

According to Shimony, “the overall experience of the medical community has been that Viagra is a very safe drug” without long-term side effects. But because it is used only to enhance the quality of life, rather than prolong it, “when a doctor prescribes Viagra and something bad happens, that’s when the drug comes under great scrutiny.”

Francis does not completely dismiss the notion that something may be going on here, but erectile pill
more work is needed to determine if the findings are important or not. Results from any test conducted on only 10 people “don’t mean a whole lot,” he says, but this one small study suggests is “that the use of Viagra in patients with heart failure has the potential to alter the electrical stability of the heart.” And that change, he says, “may predispose them to arrhythmias, some of which may be fatal.”

Jan. 8, 2003 — For men taking Viagra, an unnerving side effect — light generic pill viagra
, bluish-colored vision — has been a concern. But there’s no evidence that Viagra causes eye damage, even in those who take high doses, according to a new study.

Since Viagra lowers blood pressure overall, there was a pills
that the drug might decrease blood flow to optic nerves — nerves that control vision — which can cause nerve damage.

However, this study of 13 men at Stanford University found that high doses of Viagra by and large preserved the thickness of the choroid layer of the eye, indicating that blood flow was normal. There were some small variations in thickness, which indicated that some men with an underlying blood vessel condition — such as hardening of the arteries — may indeed have changes in vision.

The study appears in the November-December 2002 issue of Ophthalmologica.

Some of the men did have more clinical pharmacology tadalafil
discriminating between shades of blue and green. However, those men had trouble seeing the difference between many colors.

“Viagra can change blood vessel structure as well as general blood pressure, so we needed to answer the question whether the drug could change blood vessels in the eye,” says lead researcher Tim McCulley, MD, assistant professor of erectile dysfunction medication
at Stanford University, in a news release.

“Our study may have had a small group of dysfunction pills
, but it showed very little change in blood vessels or blood flow in nearly all the patients,” he says.

Oct. 23, 2000 — It’s not yet clear whether what works for rats might be effective for humans. But one study is showing that an ‘herbal Viagra’ mixture really can help if things get dicey in the rat boudoir.

The study, featured in this month’s Journal of Urology, showed that the herb mixture, based on an ancient Chinese formula, achieved “significant results” in terms of erections for laboratory rats, reports study author Tom F. Lue, MD, a urology researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.

For Lue’s study, the researchers put 24 young rats on a high-100 90 generic viagra
diet that induced erectile dysfunction. “Health issue sexual
is bad for men and rats alike,” he tells WebMD.

Two months into the four-month study, a commercially available herbal mix called BetterMAN was slipped into the drinking water of 16 of the rats.

All the rats fed the high-cholesterol diet indeed ended up with high cholesterol levels — and all became impotent. But those who drank the herbal mixture were later able to achieve erections, while the other eight rats remained impotent.

In the normal course of their short lives, Lue tells WebMD, rats often do experience erectile dysfunction — usually by the time they are 24 months old (about 70 in human years).

The results of his study are strictly ed tabs
, says Lue. “This pilot study is designed to see whether the treatment does anything at all,” he says. “One always has to be cautious when trying to extrapolate findings from rats to humans.”

BetterMAN is an 18-herb mix based on a formula used in traditional Chinese medicine, explains Peipei Wu Wishnow, PhD, the China-born, MIT-trained researcher who developed the formula and founded Erectile pill Inc. The company provided BetterMAN for Lue’s study.

“The formula improves blood circulation … and modulates sexual desire through the central nervous system,” Wishnow tells WebMD. “It improves male sexual functioning and decreases nighttime urination — two problems many men over 40 experience.”

Exactly how it works is not well understood, but unlike Viagra — which is supposed to be taken about an hour before intercourse — the BetterMAN mix “not only improves spontaneous erectile function, but also delays ejaculation and enhances libido,” says Wishnow. BetterMAN is taken daily, with rest periods of a few days.

In the last 10 years, says Wishnow, 5,000 Chinese men have used the formula as prescribed by physicians, with 75% reported improvements in sexual functioning and urinary control. In one small study of 45 men in the U.S., 70% reported improvements in sexual functioning and urinary control after two months of regular use.

BetterMAN has been available in U.S. stores since April 1998, Wishnow tells WebMD. Thousands of men have used it since then, and “the mix has shown no side effects or known erectile dysfunction pill
with medications — a concern many people have with Viagra,” she says.

Not everyone, including Lue, is convinced that BetterMAN is the answer to men’s woes. “I believe Viagra is still the drug of choice, “says Lue, who also involved in a clinical trial of Viagra. “However, if a patient doesn’t want Viagra and asks for herbal alternatives, I will tell him about it.”

Muta M. Issa, MD, an assistant professor of urology at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, compliments the study on its methodology, but tells WebMD the results are “too preliminary” to offer any advice to humans.

“The study is done with rats — different animal, different species,” he says. “It’s quite literally there to give someone an idea, if they want to investigate, take it to the next step. Whether the herbal formula is promising or not is difficult to say.”

For more information from WebMD, visit our Diseases and Conditions Center on Sexual Conditions.

Nov. 30, 1999 (Washington) — Men with prostate cancer who have their
prostate removed are usually free of cancer, but the procedure often comes with
a cost — impotence. A new study, however, shows that Viagra (sildenafil), the
popular medication for erectile dysfunction, can restore impotency lost in
surgery. Whether men respond, however, depends on how much nerve damage
occurred during surgery.

Each year some 200,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer and, of those,
50,000 will have to undergo surgical removal of the prostate.

“Erectile dysfunction tablets
and impotence are the two most common prostatectomy side
effects. A large number of patients, even with viagra tablet
techniques, end up
with erectile dysfunction,” Milton Lakin, MD, who leads the medical urology
section at Cleveland Clinic Foundation, tells WebMD. “The first thing
doctors want to do is a very good cancer operation. Cancers are being
discovered early enough that in many cases it is possible to spare both nerves,
or at least one.”

The new study, which appears in the November Journal of Urology, was
completed by physicians at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. It involved
about 80 men who ranged in age from 47 to 76 years old. All were prescribed
Viagra following prostate removal surgery. Based on their responses to a series
of questionnaires, 53% had improved erections and 40% had improved ability to
have intercourse.

Among those with nerves spared on both sides of the prostate, almost 60% had
improved erections and about 45% reported improvement in their ability to have
intercourse. Of men who had nerves spared on one side of the prostate, close to
40% had improvement of their ability to have intercourse. For men with no
nerves spared, the reported increase in erections dropped to 20%, with only 10%
noting an improvement in the ability to have intercourse.

At least one side effect each was experienced by 63% of the men, most
commonly flushing, headache, nasal congestion, and heartburn.

Brian Miles, MD, one of the study authors, called the results
“gratifying” and noted that the findings indicate patients should start
on the medication about six months after surgery. He tells WebMD that he has
had success with nerve transfers that involve implanting a leg nerve in the
pelvis, which can help maintain normal erectile function.

These findings confirm previous study results and put a greater spotlight on
the prostate surgery itself, says Lakin, who was not involved in this study but
has been part of nearly identical studies that produced similar results. “I
am not a surgeon. I deal primarily with sexual dysfunction. But where I think
this study will have the most impact is in causing physicians to pay more
attention to nerve sparing,” he says.

Lakin says that he commonly phentermine post soft viagra xanax
Viagra following surgery for prostate
cancer because other options are more invasive. “Erectile dysfunction treatment
, it’s very
hard not to offer a patient a pill even if their nerves have been cut, but I am
very honest with them. And if they call and say it didn’t work, we go on from
there.”

If Viagra fails, physicians can recommend other options, including
injections and vacuum devices, both of which have good success rates, even
among men whose nerves were damaged, according to Lakin.

Vital Information:

• Viagra is an effective treatment for impotency in men who have their
  prostate removed.
• For men whose nerves have been spared, the drug improves the ability to
  have an erection by nearly 60%, but the erectile dysfunction drugs
  drops to 20% in those
  with no nerves spared.
• There are other options for men who don’t respond to Viagra, including
  injections and vacuum devices.