PDE5 (viagra, cyalis) improve the health of the cardiovascular system, thus improve kidney health and I greatly enjoy them.
This is well researched and just like with semaglutide I believe a big part of the population should take daily tadalafil.
Better cardiovascular health, more erections and many positive downstream effects (lower E:T ratio, weight loss) that are beyond the scope of this comment.
Better than exercise is a better normal lifestyle. Trying to compensate in an hour what went wrong most of the day or week, and with your diet, is far from optimal.
From a personal experience, so it's just a guess, a contributor may be fluid movement in the body. Fluid in blood vessels are pumped directly, but must fluid is not in blood vessels. The heart has a diminishing effect outside the vessels (capillaries have small holes to let water and small molecules through into extracellular space, and then to collect it back, rest goes through the lymphatic system which also drains back into the bloodstream). Muscle and body movement helps. From what I experienced and experimented, just walking did a lot more than running. I focus on this specifically due to personal health experiences that I don't want to go into that let me feel a clear difference, where intensive running did hardly anything but then just walking did, an experiment I performed during a period of my life when "getting stuff out from all over my body" mattered.
Personally, I choose to run only when my brain/body tell me to, when I feel like it. Definitely not when I would have to fight myself to get going. (If your body/brain tells you the opposite then it is what it is, personal feel over generic advice)
Exercise is a better normal lifestyle. Standing isn’t of sitting isn’t going to fix much, given the key finding in most relevant studies is that frequent movement is necessary (albeit it’s easier and more natural when already standing).
Doctors have been telling us that for decades now and still noone does it despite overwhelming evidence. I guess the average Joe will always need a cheap workaround drug rather than putting themselves at any level of physical discomfort.
Every person has a limit of how much time and energy they can put into exercise. If they can go beyond that with a pill (with no other cost), why wouldn't you want everyone to take it?
It might be empirically sound, but it does not make a priori sense that exercising a body will improve it. If I use almost any object in the universe frequently, it typically degrades rather than improves.
The health benefits of exercise are most likely due to improved blood flow and related physiological effects. In principle, pills could theoretically achieve similar outcomes by enhancing circulation or other underlying mechanisms.
Medication frequently (though not always) provides benefits that may be achieved at least in part by non-medical means: lifestyle (adequate sleep, low stress, reduced exposure to contaminants and pollutants), diet (preferring healthier to unhealthier foods, generally), and exercise (itself comprised of multiple modalities, including cardio, strength training, fine motor control, and others).
The best results are achieved when these are working together toward some health or fitness goal. It's far more effective to align your lifestyle, diet, exercise, and medications than to have these working against one another (I'll take this pill to compensate for my drinking / smoking / drug use / pollution exposure / stress, etc.). Of course, that's not always possible, and there are circumstances where it's difficult or impossible to attain some of these mechanisms (parapalegic, living in a highly polluted environment, inherently stressful living conditions, GI compromise limiting eating or diet, congenital or genetic conditions or predispositions). Even here, if the patient can make some progress in a specific modality, they'll probably see some benefit.
Some of the most impressive athletes I've seen, from a sheer grit perspective, are those who are working against some major limitation: the swimmer at a health club long ago paralyzed in both legs, the one-legged open-water swimmer, old farts with their pacemakers showing through their chests swimming in the San Francisco Bay, patients with diabetes, heart failure, Parkinsons, recovering from cancer, with various injuries or scars, still at it. Some are astonishingly good by any measure, many aren't, but damned if they're not trying and generally living far better than if they weren't.
This isn't "don't take your meds", it's "use all the available tools". Lifestyle, diet, an exercise are underrated and powerful tools.
"You don't look like your medical history" is a high compliment coming from a doctor, and I'd strongly recommend earning it.
> This isn't "don't take your meds", it's "use all the available tools".
Agreed - low dose daily cialis/tadalafil (e.g. 5mg/day) is very common among elite athletes, bodybuilders, etc. As are GLP-1's despite elite athletes rarely being overweight.
Tadalafil is taken for its endothelial benefits (erections are a convenient side effect), and GLP's for its nutrient partitioning and insulin sensitization effects.
Medications are very often most effective when paired with good lifestyle habits, rather than one of the other.
It also depends on what your goals are, obviously.
Do you not have any negative side effects? When I tried I felt this tightness and weird headache that I don't otherwise ever experience, brain fog and also nasal symptoms.
unfortunately i was surprised that even the generic is kinda pricey to take every day. At the smallest available dose it was 5 usd a pill (last i checked in China)
I just checked my text from Walmart last week saying my
Tadalafil was ready for pickup. It was literally $25.60 for a 30 day supply of 10mg and I currently don't have insurance. 100% out of pocket.
interesting. thanks for letting me know. in Taiwan it was also not cheap (and requires a prescription and doctor visit) Guess Ill keep looking around. id sort of given up using it regularly
Copying the abstract here, just in case anybody don't have access:
Emily Austin, Hilary S. Myron, Richard K. Summerbell, Constance A. Mackenzie,
Acute renal injury cause by confirmed Psilocybe cubensis mushroom ingestion,
Medical Mycology Case Reports, Volume 23, 2019, Pages 55-57, ISSN 2211-7539,
Abstract: Psilocybe mushrooms are consumed for their hallucinogenic properties. Fortunately, there are relatively few adverse effects associated with their consumption. This is the first reported case of acute kidney injury (AKI) secondary to confirmed ingestion of Psilocybe cubensis mushroom. A 15-year-old male developed symptomatic AKI 36 h post-ingestion of Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms. He was admitted to hospital with hypertension, nausea and abdominal pain and a creatinine of 450 mmol/L. A sample of the crop of mushrooms was confirmed by mass spectrometry to contain psilocin. On day 5 post-admission, he was discharged home. Outpatient follow-up confirmed complete resolution of his renal function.
Kind of a cool read. They're not really sure why the P. cubensis was nephrotoxic. The sample they put through mass spec didn't contain the compound (Orellanine) that the clinical presentation lined up with, and none of the other youths who ate from that crop of mushrooms had subsequent problems.
I wonder if there was an accidental polyculture issue, either with a different mushroom or a freak mutation that caused that particular shroom to synthesize toxic compounds. When growing directly from spores, you get mixed genetics, so your various mushrooms will grow slightly differently (if you want consistent genetics you grow clones from an isolate via agar plate or tissue sample from fruiting body).