Viagra and Nytroglycerin

The erectile dysfunction medication Viagra should never be taken if you take any form of nitrates for a heart condition or you have a heart condition that may at some point require you to take nitrates. Nitroglycerin is often used to treat chest pain during a coronary emergency.  During emergency calls involving the heart, emergency personnel make every effort to find out if the patient has used Viagra with the last 24 hours. Some patients who have been given nitroglycerin after having taken Viagra have died because the two drugs used together can drastically lower blood pressure.

Taking a look at both drugs and what they do will help understand why this is a deadly combination.

How Does Viagra Work?
An enzyme called PDE-5 is produced in the penis. This enzyme destroys another chemical called cGMP, which is largely responsible for the relaxation of the muscles in the blood vessels in the penis. The chemical that Pfizer discovered, called sildenafil citrate, blocks the enzyme PDE-5. When the man is sexually aroused, the brain sends a message to the penis to produce nitric oxide. The nitric oxide creates the cGMP, which begins to relax the arteries in the penis. The penis can then fill with blood, resulting in an erection. 

How Does Nitroglycerin Work?
In order for the heart to pump blood into and against the high pressure in the arteries, the heart muscle needs to use a lot of energy. For the heart to produce enough energy it must have oxygen. The heart pain of angina or a heart attack is caused by insufficient blood and oxygen in the heart muscle. Nitroglycerin and all drugs in the nitrate family can level out the imbalance between the flow of blood to the heart and the amount of work the heart needs to do. They do this by widening the arteries of the body thereby reducing the workload of the heart as well as opening up the arteries which provide blood to the heart itself allowing more blood and oxygen to get to the heart muscles.  The action of widening the arteries of the body causes the blood pressure to drop.

Deadly Combination
Both Viagra and nitroglycerin are what are know as vasodilators, which means they both open up the arteries and veins of the body thereby lowering blood pressure. One of the processes that occurs naturally when taking Viagra is that it lowers blood pressure.  Viagra tends to lower blood pressure to a minimal degree.

The point of giving someone nitroglycerin who is having some sort of heart distress is to widen the arteries, thus lowering the blood pressure. The combination Viagra and a nitrate acting to lower blood pressure at the same time can cause someone to become severely hypotensive, which can bring on fainting and even death.

Viagra 25mg Prices | Viagra 50mg Prices | Viagra 100mg Prices

Back to the Viagra Drug Information Page

Back to the Prescription Drug Information Main Page