You may not know it, but you run a high risk of receiving counterfeit Viagra and Cialis when you try to buy these drugs online, with or without a prescription.
The consequences could be severe, according to Dr. Kewon Min of Busan Paik Hospital in Busan, Korea. He and a team of researchers took a closer look at counterfeit erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs. They found that only 1 of 19 orders of online ED drugs contained the correct amount of the active ingredient; the rest contained either too much or too little. More shockingly, they discovered that 26 percent of samples included toxins and heavy metals.
Doctors and pharmacists agree: if you have a prescription, get your medication from a pharmacy. They are bound by law to provide you with the correct medication with the correct ingredients in the correct amount, and the drugs they administer are heavily inspected and controlled.
If you don't, you may find some of these unpleasant ingredients in your counterfeit Viagra and Cialis:
High-Volume Active Ingredients
Counterfeit Viagra and Cialis are unregulated and, therefore, tend to contain amounts of active ingredients that are far above the recommended amount. Patients who take these drugs unknowingly run the risk of suffering from severe side effects and overdose.
Most drugs cause extremely unpleasant side effects upon overdose, and many of them can be deadly. Patients with existing conditions may also find that even amounts of active ingredients barely above the recommended dosage can exacerbate other health issues to a life-threatening degree.
Priapism, the condition of prolonged erection, increases with overexposure to the active ingredients in erectile dysfunction drugs. Besides pain and tenderness in the penis, priapism can also cause permanent damage to the systems that enable erection.
No Active Ingredients
It may not be life-threatening, but buying counterfeit Cialis and Viagra that has no active ingredient is a waste of time, money, and could cause other physiological and psychological problems with which patients are struggling to continue or worsen.
Dr. Min's team reported that 37 percent of their samples contained no active ingredient. It's possible that some orders of counterfeit ED drugs contain all pills with no ingredients while some distributors may mix active pills with inactive pills. Either way, the risk of taking a medication you don't intend to take is high.
Heavy Metals and Toxins
26 percent of the Korean research team's samples contained some amount of heavy metals or toxins. Among the metals found were:
- Mercury – causes itching, burning, pain, organ failure
- Lead – causes stomach pain, neurological disease, death
- Cadmium – causes chills, fever, muscle aches
- Arsenic – causes diarrhea, vomiting, convulsions, coma, death
- Chrome – causes dermatitis, asthma, ulcers
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| Ensure that your medication is authentic, like this Cialis medication, in order to avoid health risks. Source: fda.gov |
None of the metals included are ordinary ingredients in Cialis or Viagra. Consumption of these metals, especially over time, can lead to irreversible, permanent damage and even death.
Unapproved Erectogenic Ingredients
There's more than one drug that can have an erection-inducing effect. They're called erectogenic drugs, and they're not all alike. Among the additional erectogenic drugs found by the Korean research team, the counterfeit Viagra and Cialis contained:
- Aminotadalifi
- Homosildenafil
- Hongdenafil
- Pseudovardenafil
- Xanthoanthrafil
Taking any amount of these erectogenic drugs could lead to undesirable side effects or damage to organs.
Excess Dirt and Chemicals
Besides the unsavory ingredients purposefully included in counterfeit Cialis and Viagra, you may also find extraneous chemicals and strange compounds picked up from the environment in which the drugs were produced. Facilities that manufacture counterfeit ED drugs are not regulated by any entity or law, so the conditions in those facilities are limited only by the imagination.
For the protection of your health and to encourage the supervision and regulation of safe-to-use drugs, we recommend buying all of your drugs from a trusted pharmacy, including drugs for erectile dysfunction. Obtaining Cialis and Viagra online for low prices or without a prescription is not worth the price of serious medical trauma or death.
