Beware of products (like foods or dietary supplements) claiming to improve your sexual performance because a lot of these products contain hidden ingredients that are not fit for human consumption and have the potential to be unsafe.
According to the FDA, about 300 of the products out there on the market for sexual performance have been found to have ingredients not reported on the label. These products may include ingredients found in FDA-approved drugs like Levitra, Viagra and Cialis, but the amount may be extremely high (especially in dosage quantity). Also, some products have a combination of hidden ingredients that may prove to be very unsafe regardless of the amount found.
Dr. M. Daniel Dos Santos, representative of the Division of Dietary Supplement Programs for the FDA, tells us that even if you read labels to determine the safety of a product, you may still select a product that is unsafe because some of the ingredients may not be listed. Despite a product label boasting of having only natural or herbal ingredients, the product could still contain unnatural herbal ingredients and chemicals, which means the label is deceiving people into believing they have a natural product when in actuality, they do not.
A Drug Cocktail
The FDA has discovered there are a lot of high doses of hidden ingredient mixtures in a lot of supplements sold for Erectile Dysfunction (ED). One supplement had a dosage amount that contained 31 times more of the ingredient Tadalafil than what is contained in Cialis. Also, this supplement had a high amount of a non-FDA-approved antidepressant called Dapoxetine.
A lot of dietary supplements are legitimately marketed and are not approved by the FDA like many other prescription and non-prescription drugs. The FDA usually examines dietary supplement that are legally sold by either doing facility inspections or by responding to consumer reports of negative responses to using the product. It is required for a company to ensure the products they market for human consumption are safe and actually work.
Unknown Contaminants
Alternative ED products are often marketed as sexual enhancement supplements because a dietary supplement can’t claim legally that it will diagnose, prevent, treat or cure an actual medical condition. Even though they are legally available for sale, it does not guarantee they are safe.
Risky Interactions
Many of these sexual enhancement supplements for men create adverse interactions with heart medications and certain other drugs.
For instance, if you use a supplement that has Sildenafil (an ingredient found in Viagra) and also take drugs with Nitrates, you could risk your blood pressure dropping at an unsafe level. Keep in mind that a lot of people with ED often have conditions that require medications with Nitrates (like high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease).
The FDA works hard to prevent the sale of unapproved products by issuing recalls and having these types of medicines destroyed. The organization also sends out several warnings to be cautious about these types of products. Advisory letters are often given to manufacturers that market these products to cease production and/or sale of these products. After the advisory is given, a refusal to stop marketing the illegal product could result in import alerts (where the FDA can seize and physically examine all products deemed to be in violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act), seizures, recalls, injunctions and criminal prosecutions.