Not long after Buffalo Bills’ quarterback Josh Allen revealed that his overall performance in frigid temperatures is impacted by his little toesies getting cold, he went on to absolutely manhandle the New England Patriots in single-digit degree weather. How did he manage to play so well? Perhaps he took the advice former NFL linebacker Bart Scott gave him just 48 hours before the game.
“VI-A-GRA. Take a Viagra before the game, baby. That’ll get that circulation going right,” Scott advised Allen during ESPN’s broadcast of Get Up. “A lot of NFL players, at least in my day, took Viagra because it opened up the blood vessels.” Scott isn’t a doctor, but he did play 11 seasons in Baltimore and New York. And as someone who attempts to run — not to mention, just survive — through brutal Chicago winters every year, I couldn’t help but wonder: Would taking Viagra help me stay warm in the Windy City’s Siberian-like temps?
“Yeah, I saw that clip live,” Alti Iftikhar, a sports medicine and family doctor in Florida, sighs. “What he’s saying, in theory, is true. But I can’t stress enough that Bart Scott should not be giving medical advice and should stick to the X’s and O’s of football.”
How, though, does it work in theory? “The analogy I give my patients is comparing a garden hose to a fire hose — which one can deliver more water? The fire hose,” Iftikhar continues, answering his own question. “That’s how vasodilator medication like Viagra works, it dilates your blood vessels into a fire hose, thus increasing blood flow throughout the body including the penis, and then voila, erection.”
When standing in cold weather, people’s “blood vessels constrict, or narrow, which allows for less blood to flow to organs, muscles, etc.,” he tells me. He goes on to explain that Viagra potentially could help in such situations by dilating blood vessels to allow for more blood flow throughout the body. However, it’s not without risk. “Taking Viagra can result in a sudden, sometimes detrimental drop in a person’s blood pressure,” Iftikhar says. “When this happens, the amount of blood volume doesn’t change, but since the vessel is dilated, the pressure will drop, which can lead to dizziness, fatigue and sometimes syncope, or loss of consciousness.”
This is likely why Iftikhar can’t recall such a practice being implemented in any official fashion. “Whether some athletes use this as an off-label use without the training staff knowing is one thing,” he tells me. “But when I’ve covered teams in the past, we’ve never administered this type of treatment. As far as I know, it’s not a known practice in athletics or sports medicine.”
Because I’m a dedicated professional (read: an idiot), I’d already set out to test Scott’s advice for myself long before hearing Iftikhar’s warning. Thanks to my ongoing bout with The Big Sad, my doctor once prescribed me generic Viagra in tandem with an assortment of SSRIs, which are notorious boner-killers. And so, I hastily grabbed a couple generic Viagra pills, layered up and ventured out into the snow-covered Chicago streets, where the temperature hovered just above a balmy 30 degrees (almost too warm for Viagra, tbh).
Before taking 20 milligrams of the generic boner pills, I ran for about a mile and measured the surface temperature of my hands and feet: 63.8 and 64.5 degrees, respectively. They felt cold, but not painfully cold.
I then consumed the medication and continued running, past the family homes, churches and schools in my neighborhood. Roughly 40 minutes in, my hands and feet felt colder, but I figured the medication should have had enough time to kick in, so I stopped for a temperature check. Indeed, all of my appendages were colder:
At the conclusion of my run 30 minutes later — 70 minutes after eating the generic Viagra — I can’t say I felt much benefit, but my feet (61.3 degrees) and hands (69.4 degrees) did register a smidge warmer. However, my body temperature rising from the exercise was likely a factor in this measurement as well.
I also didn’t feel too fatigued or light-headed, but I did start to worry about my heart being under enormous stress. Iftikhar alleviated my totally reasonable fear of suffering a heart explosion, however, by explaining that Viagra “doesn’t get the heart pumping like exercise does, it purely causes dilation of the vessels allowing for more blood to flow.”
In other words, healthy people like Allen wouldn’t need to worry about dilated blood vessels impacting their intense cardiovascular activities (e.g., running, throwing, having sex). But again, Iftikhar is sure to stress that “the Viagra could lead to a sudden drop in blood pressure.”
What’s more, even in the total absence of sexual stimulation, the Viagra could still work as intended. That means Allen could get a random erection, and “if it lasts for more than a few hours, he’d have to go to the ER,” Iftikhar tells me. “And trust me, the way we ‘undo’ a prolonged erection is the worst — think of a really thick gauge needle going into your penis and drawing out the blood. As a man, I cringe. As a doctor, I have Men in Black’d the one time I did it from my memory.”
As I write this, it’s now been two hours since I took my generic Viagra, and I thankfully avoided any of the above. At the same time, I can’t help but feel let down — it hasn’t stopped my shivering or weatherproofed me against the cold air breezing through every crevice in my apartment either. Even if taking the Viagra could have led to an embarrassing mishap and frightened neighbors, having an easy solution to freezing winter runs would’ve been nice.
On that count, I’m unfortunately back to square one. “The best thing to do from a training standpoint would be to get acclimated to the weather or conditions you’re going to be in,” Iftikhar says. “The body is an amazing machine and can adapt when the proper workout regimen is implemented.”
Which, given what January and February are like here in Chicago, is probably the toughest pill to swallow.
Quinn Myers
Quinn Myers is a staff writer at MEL. He reports on internet culture, technology, health, masculinity and the communities that flourish within.
