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The Telegraph, a British online news source, announces Viagra (Sildenafil) will soon be sold in supermarkets without the need for a doctor’s prescription.  The focus of the Telegraph report is not that Viagra will be sold over-the-counter, but rather that it could be a “bad idea… according to pension experts.” Viagra would be a bad idea — not because it may have side effects or cause men to use it indiscriminately, but for another reason.

The Telegraph says it all has to do with the law of unintended consequences.  The gap between male and female life expectancy is narrowing.  Typically women live 5-8 years longer than men.  That gap is shrinking to about 4 years, according to the British Office of National Statistics.  A pension consultant quoted in the Telegraph report says this is because men are seeking medical care and visiting their doctor more than in past years, not for reasons to check up on their health, bur rather to obtain a prescription for Viagra.

Nick Flint, the quoted pension advisor says:  “The advent of Viagra has been important. Whereas many men in their fifties and sixties were very reluctant to take medical advice a decade or more ago, the drug (Viagra) has encouraged men to go and see their doctor. As a result, other problems are being identified at an early stage and this is having a beneficial effect on male life expectancy.”

Pharmacies that intend to sell non-prescription Viagra say they are going to conduct blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol tests before they sell these little blue pills to males.  And these males may be more likely to have never visited a doctor and their underlying circulatory problems have gone undiagnosed.  So maybe this screening it will be a boon to fill up doctors’ appointment books.  But then again, maybe the costs of detecting more disease would become even more problematic for under-funded health insurance plans.

Now I don’t know there is really any solid evidence that more doctoring equates with longer life.  Modern medicine has no cures for cancer and few if any proven cures for heart disease, which are the two leading causes of death.  There is treatment for these diseases, but not proven prevention, outside of a glass of red wine.  But wine is not doctoring.

The many French males who are living exceptionally long are doing so with little doctoring and more wine.  Fortunately, many people simply don’t take the drugs they are prescribed, largely due to side effects or cost.

The estimated 30 million men who have taken Viagra should be made aware their impotency is often due to poor circulation and inability of blood vessels to dilate (widen).  This is often the result of high blood sugar levels, calcification of arteries, and failure to create nitric oxide, the transient gas that facilitates blood vessel diameter and control of blood pressure.  It is interesting that the very existence of erectile dysfunction is an indicator of poor circulation and underlying coronary heart disease.  Yet doctors are all too willing to prescribe Viagra, that is, give the patient what he wants, without telling him he has circulatory problems that need to be addressed with diet, good health habits, etc.

The obvious question arises, why don’t doctors just prescribe red wine?  Well, this would likely give license for males to over-imbibe.  This then leads to the idea of a red wine pill that would provide red wine solids without the alcohol, sugar and calories.  However, cardiologists and general practitioners have not expressed much interest in this idea.

When a major university-based researcher announced that a modest dose of the red wine molecule resveratrol had been shown in animals to avert cardiac death in a more reliable manner than aspirin, not one group of heart doctors expressed even an iota of interest.  Cardiologists would rather go on prescribing anti-cholesterol statin drugs that prevent just 1 non-mortal heart attack per 71 users over a 5-year period.

It is of interest to note that resveratrol, a key ingredient in red wine, has been shown in animal studies to relax the corpus cavernosum (penis), resulting in an inflow of blood and an erection.  Resveratrol also increased testosterone levels and sperm activity in laboratory rabbits.

So if you have any impotent male pet rabbits, resveratrol might be called for.  Let us know if your pet rabbits on resveratrol pills live any longer, without doctoring, will you?  — © 2010 Bill Sardi, ResveratrolNews.com