Viagra was being developed as a treatment for angina when its potential as an anti-impotence treatment was discovered. It was licensed in the U.S.A in 1998 and there are now millions of men around the world who regularly take the drug and who have been delighted with the results.
It may seem surprising that Viagra has only been on the market for ten years as it has such a high public profile in this country and, indeed, around the world. It is safe to assume that the majority of adults in the UK had heard of Viagra and know what it is used for. The same can only be said of a handful of other medications. The others are those in common daily usage. Almost all, however, drugs such as aspirin, paracetamol and ibuprofen have much more general usages than Viagra, which was marketed for one specific condition - erectile dysfunction.
Viagra works by allowing the blood vessels in the penis to open, therefore allowing more blood and oxygen into the organ and allowing it to become erect. Over the ten years since Pfizer launched Viagra it has been used in a number of new and positive ways. These have included the drug being given to a premature baby to increase the blood supply to its lungs and has also been given to fighter pilots in the Israeli Air force to increase blood supply to the brain to help with the lack of oxygen at high altitudes.
Recently, however, Viagra has been discovered to have been employed as a performance-enhancing drug by athletes. The fact that the drug can increase blood flow means that it can help endurance athletes such as marathon runners and cyclists. The World Anti-Doping Agency is finding more and more cases of Viagra appearing in athletes’ urine samples. The drug is not on the list of prohibited drugs so this in entirely legal. They are, however, in the process of considering whether or not to ban Viagra when the next list is published in 2010. A study carried out on cyclists who were racing at high altitudes found that their times dropped by 15 percent after taking Viagra. It appears that the blue pill can improve performance outside the bedroom as well as in it!