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Viagra improves brain blood flow and could help to prevent dementia

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Re: Viagra improves brain blood flow and could help to prevent dementia

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe these studies are particularly hard

They certainly are hard, because dementia is something that develops over years if not decades. Anytime it takes that long to do a single iteration of your experiment, it's hard!

Does it need to be, though? You can survey healthy but senior populations about their habits, and then over the following years track what happens.

If medical records were public, the answers could even be in those for any medicines that are prescription based. You could then make statements like "A% of patients who took drug B within C years did/didn't develop disease D".

Re: Viagra improves brain blood flow and could help to prevent dementia

#102

First NIH said it does: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/viagra-... Then it doesn't: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-dream-stud... Then it does: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2024-06-07-sildenafil-viagra-impro... Who knows what to believe.

Maybe these studies are particularly hard

Don't worry, I caught your innuendo.

Re: Viagra improves brain blood flow and could help to prevent dementia

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe these studies are particularly hard

They certainly are hard, because dementia is something that develops over years if not decades. Anytime it takes that long to do a single iteration of your experiment, it's hard!

And any time the object of your study is also a treatment for ED it gets extra hard. ;-)

Re: Viagra improves brain blood flow and could help to prevent dementia

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vaguely recall an anecdote about athletes using it for performance improvement, and getting a slightly different stat buff

It's commonly used in bodybuilding competitions.

Now I cannot get that picture out of my head. A crowd full of bodybuilders in tight shorts and all on Viagra doing workouts.

Each to his own I guess..

Re: Viagra improves brain blood flow and could help to prevent dementia

#106
post #86
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Viagra doesn't "make" you hard, you still need sexual stimulus. I've taken it and then the sexual opportunity fell through, so I went back to coding or whatever, and I didn't notice anything different.

Severe warning. I have no sexual problems and took a viagra once. It definitely was automatic and persistent. It was terrible. It wouldn’t even go away when I was done with it.

Pseudoephedrine

Re: Viagra improves brain blood flow and could help to prevent dementia

#107

First NIH said it does: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/viagra-... Then it doesn't: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-dream-stud... Then it does: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2024-06-07-sildenafil-viagra-impro... Who knows what to believe.

All I know for certain is there's no dementia in my pants.

Re: Viagra improves brain blood flow and could help to prevent dementia

#108

First NIH said it does: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/viagra-... Then it doesn't: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-dream-stud... Then it does: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2024-06-07-sildenafil-viagra-impro... Who knows what to believe.

Could be different for different folks

Re: Viagra improves brain blood flow and could help to prevent dementia

#109
post #41

I’d like to see how this effect from Sildenafil compares to increased NO levels from eating beets.

This is how i figured out NO would help my heart. Eating cereal colored with beet powder. If i understand the magic happens when it combines with saliva. So chewing beets might help.

Re: Viagra improves brain blood flow and could help to prevent dementia

#110

First NIH said it does: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/viagra-... Then it doesn't: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-dream-stud... Then it does: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2024-06-07-sildenafil-viagra-impro... Who knows what to believe.

> Who knows what to believe. This may be a sincere statement, but I'm not sure it's a helpful one. What data do we have? A 2:1 advantage in published studies that it does help. Since there is no such thing in science as absolute proof of anything, these are pretty good odds. Certainly more work will be done in the future to try to replicate the results and figure out the one negative outcome. But until then, we canno…

The first one is just a combination of some computer modeling guessing at possibly useful existing drugs and a look at the existing patient data showing that people who were on these seemed to have Alzheimer's less. It's very clear that it's just an initial step that doesn't actually show there's a benefit.

The second is more of that same basic kind of research, but weighing in the opposite direction: it showed no association with Alzheimer's for people with a specific other condition who got these drugs vs. ones with the same condition that didn't (also they did some cell culture testing outside the body that didn't show any effect/improvement).

This new one is an actual double-blind study giving people the drug. Equally important, it's not claiming an effect on Alzheimer's, but vascular dementia, a different form of dementia that's directly related to blood flow and therefore to Viagra's known effects. Of course it's still just really a marker for future research on if this is broadly useful.

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