Viagra is one of the biggest developments in men’s medical health in the last century, and most people have heard of the drug and know something about it. It is a drug that helps men with erectile dysfunction or impotence to achieve and maintain erections. But with the fame and notoriety of Viagra, comes a vast array of myth, jokes and misinformation which can be very unhelpful.
Erectile dysfunction, perhaps more commonly known as impotence, can affect men for many different reasons and at various stages in their lives. The reasons why a man experiences erectile difficulties can have a psychological or physical root, or a mixture of both. It is not an unusual problem; it is estimated that around 12% of the entire world’s population suffers from erectile dysfunction at any one time.
Viagra is a medicine that was being developed to help patients with angina and high blood pressure on a study in the UK in the 1990s. As studies progressed, it became clear that there was one major side-effect of the medicine – the patients were reporting more frequent and more intense penile erections. As it’s effectiveness for treating high blood pressure and angina were considered marginal, the research emphasis for Viagra was switched to the treatment of erectile dysfunction in men.
Since Viagra was patented for the alleviation of erectile dysfunction in men in 1996, more than 300 million tablets of Viagra are now sold per year. It has become one of the most widely used medicines in the western world, and Google lists over 17 million web pages containing the word ‘Viagra’. It is an oral medicine that comes in 25mg, 50mg and 100mg dosage strengths in a diamond shaped blue-coloured hard tablet, with the name of the manufacturer Pfizer clearly stamped on the tablet.
The active ingredient in Viagra is a compound known as Sildenafil Citrate, which has an effect on the blood flow to the penis. Contrary to the many jokes and myths about Viagra, it doesn’t instantly give a user an erection, and sexual stimulation is still required to achieve the desired result. If medical advice is taken and the potential user is open and honest about how erectile dysfunction affects him, Viagra can be an exceedingly valuable tool to solve this problem and restore a happy, healthy sex life to the user and his partner.
As an oral tablet, Viagra is easy to use and has quickly become the preferred method of solving erectile dysfunction for patients. Other treatments for impotence involving injections, vacuum pumps, or tiny hormonal pellets designed to be implanted in the urethral opening, are more complicated to use, and potentially more difficult and awkward in an intimate situation.