Side Effects

Side Effects

There are hardly any medicines which work perfectly, and anti-impotence medications are no exception. But the basic question remains – why side effects occur?

Every medicine which is intended to work in a particular part of your body to make positive changes may affect other parts of the body unintentionally. This happens because when a medicine is taken, it flows throughout your body and may affect a part of body where it shouldn’t.

Let’s take an example of the most common medication, aspirin. Aspirin is intended to relieve pain. But when it passes through the stomach it erodes the stomach lining and thins the blood.

If a simple medication like a pain reliever can have side effects, why wouldn’t complex medications like Viagra, Cialis and Levitra have a few?

Side effects of Viagra, Levitra and Cialis

It is very important for patients to go through the entire list of side effects before seeking impotence treatment.

  • Problems with impotence medications like Viagra, Levitra and Cialis can include minor side effects like headaches (opens up arteries in the brain’s lining and causes excess pressure) and major side effects like heart attacks.
  • Another major problem comes for people who are taking drugs like nitroglycerin for angina. Nitroglycerin works by increasing nitric oxide, and it helps with angina by opening up the arteries that supply the heart with oxygen. If you take nitroglycerin and impotence medication together, the increased nitric oxide plus the blocking of PDE5 can aggravate problems.
  • The combination of impotence medications with any types of nitrate medications could result in a severe drop in blood pressure and lead to extreme dizziness, fainting or even a heart attack.
  • All these three medications may in rarest event cause a condition called Priapism. If your erection does not go away even after four hours or more, seek immediate medical help.
  • All these medicines may cause dizziness and may affect your ability to drive or operate machinery safely. Therefore, do not drive or operate machinery until you know how a particular medicine affects you and you are sure it won’t affect your performance.
  • Any impotence medicine should not be taken more than once a day. The long term safety of anti-impotence medicines has not been tested yet.

Viagra can have several side effects including headaches, facial flushing and an upset stomach. Though Viagra is a selective inhibitor of PDE5, it also has an effect on PDE6. PDE6 is used in the cone cells in the retina, so Viagra affects colour vision. Many people who take Viagra notice a change in the way they perceive green and blue colours, or they see their surroundings with a bluish tinge for several hours.

The most common side effects of Levitra include headaches, flushing, rhinitis and flu. Levitra has relatively fewer side effects as compared to its other counterparts.

Side effects of Cialis are headache, nasal congestion, indigestion (dyspepsia), back pain, dizziness, flushing, pain in the muscles (myalgia), eye pain, red eye due to excess blood supply (hyperaemia) and swelling of the eyelids.