This week, the New York Daily News ran a series of articles “exposing” the use of Viagra (sildenafil) as a performance enhancing drugs in sports (“Source: Roger Clemens, host of athletes pop Viagra to help onfield performance,” June 10).
Roger Clemens, whose claims he never took steroids are under federal investigation, has apparently discovered the benefits of another performance-enhancing drug sweeping the sports world – Viagra.
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Clemens wasn’t alone. The pitcher, who is believed to have scored the drug from a teammate, joined the burgeoning number of athletes who have turned Vitamin V and its over-the-counter substitutes into one of the hottest drugs in locker rooms.
Of course, the performance enhancing benefits of Viagra have been discussed practically ever since Viagra was commercially introduced as a prescription pharmaceutical drug over a decade ago.
Patrick Arnold, of Ergopharm and yes, the innovative chemist who created THG for BALCO, wrote an article about Viagra as a phamaceutical ergogen for MESO-Rx about EIGHT YEARS AGO.
Viagra works by increasing the effects of nitric oxide (NO), a substance that serves many key functions in biological processes throughout the body. One of the most well known and important functions of NO is the dilation of blood vessels. This allows greater blood flow to the muscles, which of course can be valuable to an athlete during competition.
What is more interesting to me is the role of NO on muscles during resistance training. JE Anderson found that NO appears to be a vital signal in the activation of muscle satellite cells in response to damage. Satellite cell activation is the key first step in the repair and hypertrophy of muscle cells after heavy training. Viagra may therefore enhance the hypertrophy response to exercise, working at the most basic and primary level of the process.
In addition to this, there is evidence that suggests that Viagra may work to amplify the “pump” response during training. The pump is thought to happen when contracting muscle fibers signal local vascular relaxation (increasing the blood flow to the working muscles). According to KS Lau and coworkers, NO generated by neuronal NO synthase in contracting skeletal muscle fibers may regulate vascular relaxation via a cGMP-mediated pathway. Since the mechanism of action for Viagra is amplification of the cGMP pathway, there is ample reason to believe that the drug may indeed affect the blood flow and pump to the muscle, and therefore indirectly aid in the hypertrophy response.
The dietary supplement industry even created an entire class of supplements based on Viagra’s nitric oxide boosting effect.
So, how could the trend of Viagra as a performance enhancing drug in pro sports be missed?
About the author
Millard writes about anabolic steroids and performance enhancing drugs and their use and impact in sport and society. He discusses the medical and non-medical uses of anabolic-androgenic steroids while advocating a harm reduction approach to steroid education.
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