There are a lot of men out there who need help with a very personal problem, but they are afraid to do anything about it. This is because the topic of erectile dysfunction is about as terrifying to face as an appointment with a divorce lawyer, so they try to avoid it altogether. Unfortunately, erectile dysfunction affects not only men, but it also affects their spouses as well, so this makes it impossible to avoid indefinitely. Sooner or later the topic of sex (or lack thereof) will come up at the dinner table, and then they must face the problem head on. That is usually when the name Viagra enters the conversation, and they better be ready to make an informed decision on whether or not to use it.
Viagra was invented by a team of scientists in the late nineteen nineties, and it was approved for sale by the FDA (food and Drug Administration) on March 27, 1998. It was considered to be a breakthrough discovery in the medical and science worlds, and the inventors won the Nobel Prize for this invention. They had essentially discovered that when a man gets an erection a chain reaction occurs in the tissue of the penis which causes the levels of a substance called cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) to be elevated. When the level of this substance remains high, the penis remains erect. They also discovered that an enzyme called phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE5) breaks down cGMP. They found that the cGMP levels tended to breakdown rapidly in some men, and this was the cause of their sexual dysfunction problems. The key to sustaining an erection was to maintain high levels of cGMP for a long period of time, so they invented a drug that would inhibit the levels of the enzyme PDE5. This would allow the cGMP levels to remain high, which would sustain an erection for a long period of time.
