Viagra May Also Lengthen a Man's Lifespan, Swedish Study Finds | Hacker News Reader

Viagra May Also Lengthen a Man's Lifespan, Swedish Study Finds

jacc.org

50 pointschewz45 comments

Isn’t this what viagra was originally being studied for, but abandoned due to the ‘side effect’?

Pfizer was doing trials on potential PDE5 inhibitors to treat angina. One of the other side effects they observed was muscle/back aches.

As a layperson interested in effects of compounds on the human body, this is not super surprising.

It’s a vasodilator, which lowers blood pressure. That takes away one of the main limiting factors on lifespan - the heart’s ability to keep pumping.

Ever heard of hypertension ? Its also a cause of stroke.

Hypertension is worse than hypotension.

This study looks like it only tested men with coronary heart disease? So a more accurate title may be 'viagra may also lengthen men with coronary heart diseases' lifespans'? Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

"also" lengthen

Blood flow is important for several things

Also helps with colon cancer: https://www.nfcr.org/blog/viagra-a-colon-cancer-risk-mitigat...

I searched but I didn't see much about the nature of the control group and/or a placebo.

Drinking water, for example actually can significantly reduce your likelihood of heart disease and presumably increase your life expectancy.

I wonder how much better Viagra does compared to that.

Please do not replace drinking water with taking Viagra...

Any source for the water claim?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5079212/#sec4ti...

Thanks but did you actually read it? "There was no statistically significant association between water intake and any of the metabolic/heart diseases."

Yeah I did, but it referred to a couple studies such as

https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/155/9/827/58224?login=t...

That did show the association. The study I linked just happened to cite the relevant ones so it was easier to post that.

Though I should’ve just linked directly, my bad.

Improved mental health as a result of not suffering from dysfunction wouldn't hurt either.

Lifespan... never before in history has so much disappointment been felt by so many by so few words.

Viagra leads to sex, sex is exercise, exercise leads to longer life.

But sex also leads to children, children leads to less sleep, less sleep leads to shorter life.

Nope, having children later increases life expectancy. People have theories about why but it’s not been proved IMO. I’ll try to find the paper later...

Source?

https://time.com/4574770/older-moms-may-live-longer/ For example...

It is the other way around, healthy men with increased life span are more likely to have a children.

Sick short malnourished male is less likely to find partner, let alone have a children.

Study also excludes divorced men who technically have children, but do not live with them. Divorce decreases life expectancy severely.

I'd think its more about lifestyle choices. Easier to ride motorcycles and jump out of planes if you're not changing diapers.

Yeah, exactly this.

We should really stop using the word "increases" to describe a correlation and use "goes hand in hand with" or something like that. Same for your usage of "decreases". ;)

Yes I guess also the richer you are the more likely you are to live longer and delay kids. Maybe it’s just correlated.

Respectfully, you seem to be confusing correlation with causation. A very common mistake.

I don't believe that drowning deaths are caused by ice cream sales either, but I can easily prepare the data in a way that makes that appear like a solid assertion.

Edit: I am intrigued by the downvotes. Perhaps I am wrong and ice cream sales actually do cause drowning deaths.

You can just, uh, use a condom, no?

I mean, you can... But you can't get another man pregnant, so there's really no point (at least in terms of fertility).

You could but for some people the fun is thereby reduced to zero.

I once heard something about listening to an orchestra with earplugs on.

Even though people tend to focus on rock and metal concerts, it's totally possible to get permanent hearing damage from an orchestra. They can be pricey, but a set of custom earplugs can save your hearing while maintaining a consistent volume reduction across all frequencies.

Who would have thought children and tinnitus had so many things in common.

They also both tend to make high-pitched noises, on that note.

"may also lengthen"

Great pun

Big if true

Why does no one here have a sense of humor.

Because humor is accepted in every other forum (especially Reddit) and it ends up making every post nearly content-free with a barrage of attempts at humor in a game of one-upmanship.

I have observed many times over that some of the "well known" people make humorous statements and no one blinks. It definitely feels like a clique operates here in some discussions.

false dichotomy. somehow every other medium tolerates a little humor and wit without devolving into reddit.

And many people, myself including, come here mainly because it has meaningful discussion.

Oh, we do. Topical comments with jokes get upvotes, if they're garnish. Dick jokes are droll, riffing headlines is so overdone it's already got a fork in.

If you want funny, though, a potential side effect of vasodilation is migraines bad enough to put a guy right off the mood.

I vouched for this comment as there's nothing offensive in this.

Some people don't like humor (I used to be of this opinion), but I think small doses don't hurt anyone.

Because this isn't reddit and the sites rules pretty specifically ask that this sort of humor remains on other platforms.

Nobody wants another reddit.

The guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, also right there at the bottom of the page) seem pretty silent about any sort of humor, "this" sort or otherwise.

Those same guidelines do, however, warn against claiming that HN is turning into reddit, so...

Are you sure that a bit of humor will downgrade HN to reddit? As long as it's intelligent, it belongs to HN (I'm not sure if this one is though).

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