Answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) about ED drugs

No one of them is better than the others across the board. They all share the same mechanism and differ mainly in how fast they start and how long they last. The most effective drugs come as ordinary tablets, as soft tablets that dissolve under the tongue, as swallowable gels and as capsules — the format changes the onset, not the outcome.

Yes. Never take any of them if you are on a nitrate-containing medicine — that combination can drop your blood pressure to a dangerous level. Significant cardiovascular disease also rules them out until a doctor says otherwise. Beyond that, each drug has its own list. The good news is that most of the common effects — headache, flushing, a blocked nose, indigestion — fade as the dose leaves your system, and several of them only appear on an overdose. Once a doctor has cleared you, the contraindications stop being guesswork.

Not with us — this site does not sell medicine. At an online pharmacy the sequence is: fill in the ordering form and the medical questionnaire, get contacted or emailed to confirm the order, pay, and receive a tracking number when it ships. Pharmacies that issue prescriptions have a clinician review the questionnaire in between.

A genuine generic contains the same active ingredient, at the same dose, and has to demonstrate that it behaves the same way in the body. That is what “generic” means and it is why the price collapses once the patent goes. What varies between suppliers is the manufacturing standard, so the question worth asking a pharmacy is which manufacturer and which regulator stands behind the tablets — a pharmacy that will not answer that is answering it.

Return policies belong to the pharmacy you bought from, and they vary widely. Read the policy before you pay rather than after, especially the part about medicines that have left their supply chain — many sellers will not take those back at all, whatever the marketing says.

Drugs whose patent has expired, so they are no longer sold exclusively under one brand name. Generic versions are held to the same standard of active ingredient and dose as the branded original, and they cost a fraction of it.

For most men, yes — roughly eight in ten report an improvement. That still leaves about three in ten who get no useful response, and for them a different drug in the same class sometimes works where the first one did not. Which one suits you is genuinely individual.

These drugs only work alongside sexual arousal. They do not create desire and they cannot raise a libido that has gone; all they do is let an erection happen and hold. If desire is the problem rather than the mechanics, a PDE-5 inhibitor is the wrong tool and a doctor is the right one.