Myth or truth: Can Viagra improve athletes' sports performance?
Professional athletes - especially sprinters, cyclists and soccer players - are rumored to be consuming the famous blue pills to improve their performances (outside the rooms and) on the court. Apparently many of these sportsmen are convinced that Viagra can also improve their sports skills.
According to the website POPSCI, which published a news article on the subject, there are some studies that show a correlation between the use of Viagra and the improvement in sports performance. Apparently, the benefit would be due to the pill's effect of relaxing some muscles and improving blood flow through vasodilation, which would favor muscle oxygenation and thus increase endurance during competitions.
Viagra in the highest
The idea is the same as when athletes train at higher altitudes to improve oxygen flow to the muscles. However, no study has found evidence that the use of Viagra can help athletes who train at sea level, and it appears that the only beneficiaries would be those who take the “remedy” while training in locations over 1, 800 meters.
According to Don Catlin, a UCLA researcher and anti-doping expert, while there is evidence that training in these conditions can improve athletes' performance, this improvement ranges from 1 to 1.5%, which is not much. In addition, including blue pills in this equation would only serve, at best, to meet the physical difficulties athletes experience when they eventually need to compete in places far above sea level.
So why take?
According to Catlin, although the rate of improvement is tiny, many sportsmen mistakenly believe that the improvement provided by Viagra is quite significant and, as this medicine is not banned by the official committees, they prefer to train in harsher conditions.
Moreover, as there is not enough evidence to prove that the famous blue pill is beneficial to certain athletes, the organizations that control the substances consumed by athletes believe that Viagra's discreet physical reaction is not worrying enough to ban its use in the environment. sportive.
