The curious tale of how Viagra was discovered | Men Up | BBC Ideas – BBC

The curious tale of how Viagra was discovered | Men Up | BBC Ideas – BBC

Bagra was discovered by accident but its impact has been Huge the search for something to help men get it up is as old as history itself from eating roasted wolf penis to Electric sharks to Silicon implants inserted into the shaft you name it it’s been tried but the story of how Viagra was discovered was quite unexpected it’s

The early 1990s a number of men in a trle s denail a drug to treat Hina report anticipated side effects erections lots of them the urban myth which happens to be true is that the men who who had it refused to return their unused tablets because their sex lives

Improved so much the first clinical trials for it as an erection drug are held in Swansea in 1994 and it was clear then after the first patient that we had something special then so we had these ordinary middle-aged Swansea men able to have sex for the first time in years after just

Taking a tablet and four years later Viagra as it’s now known comes to Market before the ’90s the condition Viagra cont treat was known as impotence which is not a great word if you’re trying to sell a drug to men as it literally means lacking in power so the marketing team

Hones in on a new term erectile dysfunction and enlists key figures including Brazilian Superstar football at Pelle and US presidential candidate Bob Dole to open up and normalize erection difficulties particularly for older men Viagra the little blue diamond becomes one of the fastest selling drugs ever men who struggled for years with

Their erections but have being too afraid to talk about it finally had something that could help just like erections studies into erection difficulties can vary widely and are often unreliable one UK study found that around 8% of men under 44 had had trouble getting or keeping an erection

Older men are far more likely to be affected the figure Rises to 30% for men age 65 to 74 it’s strongly associated with health conditions like cardiovascular disease and diabetes and also depression and life events such as unemployment and relationship difficulties some argu Viagra was as revolutionary as the introduction of the

Contraceptive pill but others disagree instead of opening up discussions around sex critics say Viagra has doubled down on a really narrow idea of what sex is and reinforced stereotypes of about masculinity take the porn industry before Viagra male actors would be chosen for their ability to get hard and

Stay hard they were known as woodsmen but porn films were more realistic and often featured flaccid penises too because that’s the reality Viagra turbocharged all that now it’s younger harder more athletic men sex scenes are longer rougher and involve more penetration this adds to the expectation that men’s

Role in sex is to get hard and perform so many younger men have performance anxiety stress plays a huge role in inhibiting erections so ironically stressing about erections can make it harder to get hard it’s actually normal not to be hard all the time and when we

Talk about hard how hard do we mean not all sexual activities require a rock hard penis and if we really want to half penis all the time we can buy one and keep it in a drawer if you want to have a good sex life then talking about sex with your

Partner trying new things and being comfortable about what your body can and can’t do is the best way to get there so did Viagra change the world or just double down on how it was and just a s denail to use its clinical name again was never originally intended as a drug

To help with hardons it could have some other potential uses too one small study found promising evidence to suggest it could help with period pain but efforts to explore this further have never been funded and early studies suggest it could potentially be useful in treating Alzheimers so could Viagra change the

World in a totally different way watch this Space

Viagra burst into bedrooms in the late 1990s. Its impact has been huge – helping men who had struggled with erections for years. But has it changed the world? Or just doubled down on how it was?

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Swansea, 1994. Five ordinary Welshmen face up to their secrets and lies when they embark on one of the world’s first medical trials for the drug that would become Viagra.

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