HEALTH: What You Need To Know About Aphrodisiacs

An aphrodisiac is any substance that increases sexual desire, performance or pleasure. Many men take performance enhancing substances otherwise known as ‘manpower’ to improve their sex lives and impress their partners.

However, the director-general of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has warned that consumption of such substances could lead to stroke or sudden death.

Adeyeye said that most of the performance enhancing drugs are not registered with NAFDAC and that the drugs are smuggled into Nigeria, warning that the unbridled use of aphrodisiacs has a lot of implications in the entire body system.

“The use of the products could potentially affect the blood pressure of the body. When you have a disproportionate flow of blood to a particular part of the body and lasting longer than normal, they tend to disrupt the normal flow of the circulatory system,’’ she said.

The DG further warned that aphrodisiacs could also interact with other drugs in the system, explaining that the liver is responsible for breakdown of drugs while the byproduct of all waste goes  down through the kidneys. ‘’When these things are used especially with some herbal medicines that don’t have dosage and professional prescription, it can lead to internal organ damage. It can hurt the liver and the kidneys, leading to untimely death.

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“Everything should function the way God designed it. When they begin to disrupt those functions overtime, it will affect the imbalance and the ecosystem of how the body physiology works and can lead to unintended consequences.

‘’For those who have certain health risks, like people who  are hypertensive, or people who have heart disease, there is more of anxiety that the drug could stimulate into the system, and with anxiety, that can lead to changes in the physiology of the body and can lead to stroke or sudden stoppage of the heart,” she said.

She lamented that many men have died using performance enhancing drugs and their relatives would blame their death on some imaginary witches in the village, noting that these happen in cases when men suddenly slump during sexual intercourse.

Adeyeye said  that ‘’it’s not all cases of sudden death that are caused by witches and wizards in the village; but in most cases they are caused by what we eat or drink carelessly.’’

The NAFDAC boss also described as false the claim by the producers of the products that they have no side effects, insisting that majority of the products did not go through the approval process of the Agency.

‘’There are a lot of side effects. Every drug is a potential poison. Every drug has one side effect or the other. These are chemical products with side effects. In some cases there are associated Adverse Drug Reactions, which means it could lead to death or more serious organ damage depending on usage’’, she said.