If you want a bit of a boost in the bedroom department, you may be tempted to turn to herbal supplements – but where is the line? Maybe you’re ok with natural ingredients, but consider Viagra to probably be one step too far. However, a new study has found that herbal supplements aimed at improving men’s sexual abilities often contain the active ingredients in erectile dysfunction pills such as Viagra.
Moreover, the study, which was published online in the May edition of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, found that some of these over-the-counter herbal remedies contained more of the ingredient than is allowed in prescription-only pharmaceuticals. According to Neil Campbell, the lead author of the study and a researcher at Pfizer, which sells Viagra, ‘It’s pretty scary stuff. These products are not herbal at all, they’re adulterated.’
Campbell and his colleagues analysed 91 samples from 58 products, 57 of which claimed to be “all natural”. However, 81% of them contained the tadalafil or sildenafil (marketed as Cialis and Viagra, respectively) or similar ingredients that are not approved by the FDA. There were also problems with labelling, such as missing expiration dates or lot numbers, unidentifiable manufacturers, or samples of the same product having different appearances.
Campbell said, ‘There’s so little effort to do something the right way to produce a legitimate product. This is an all time low.’ He added that men could be ‘risking their lives’ simply by taking herbal sex enhancement drugs, as prescription erectile dysfunction drugs – which sometimes contain less of the active ingredient – come with potential side effects and health risks. ‘Unfortunately, to an unwitting patient they think they’re taking an herbal product, it really poses a really scary threat for patient health and safety,’ he noted.
Dr. Gregory Lowe, an assistant professor of urology at Ohio State University who was not part of this study, commented, ‘Almost one patient a day says they’ve tried Mojo or one of these over-the-counter products. One of the big concerns is that we don’t know what the patient’s getting.’ He added, ‘Commonly, I hear patients say, “it worked one time and it didn’t work other times.” And that fits in well with what they found here,’ namely, that quality control is lacking.
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