BlueChew Side Effects
Side effects of BlueChew’s ED medications and the likelihood of experiencing them vary by drug and dosage. Find out all of the details below.
Photo by Innerbody Research
Erectile dysfunction (ED) affects many people — likely a third of men.1 It becomes more common with age but also affects 5% of men under 40.2 As you explore your options for ED treatment, you’ll naturally want to know whether treatments are effective, safe, and affordable. These bedrock considerations overwhelmingly shape our regard for any medical treatment. But there are layers to the subject of safety; a treatment can be generally safe while also possibly causing mild side effects in a broad group of people. And what one person considers a minor nuisance may be a deal-breaker for another.
One provider of ED medications — BlueChew — has understandably attracted a lot of attention over the past several years. For some people, BlueChew’s ED medications are a nonstarter — unsafe or unsuitable for underlying health reasons, as determined by a consulting medical professional. If you’re considered a good candidate for treatment, it means you’ll be able to access some of the most effective, safe, and affordable ED treatments available. But that doesn’t mean you won’t experience a side effect, or maybe more than one.
So, what are BlueChew’s side effects? Are they exactly the same for each treatment option? What about the likelihood of experiencing them? And does dosage affect the likelihood?
Because so many people have asked us for clarification about the potential side effects of BlueChew, we’ve created this comprehensive guide to shed more light on this important subject. If you’re going to begin a new medication like the kinds that BlueChew offers, you should definitely know what side effects you could encounter — and when those side effects should prompt you to speak to a doctor.
First: What BlueChew offers
BlueChew entered the landscape as a unique company — the first to provide chewable prescription ED treatments online, allowing you to have medication delivered straight to your door, without any physical doctor’s visit or trip to a pharmacy. Initially, this meant compounded versions of the active ingredients in Viagra and Cialis, which are sildenafil and tadalafil, respectively.
Later, BlueChew introduced a third option: chewable vardenafil, the active ingredient in Levitra. The catalog then expanded to include chewable daily tadalafil and BlueChew’s first two combination therapies, or multitherapies, BlueChew Max and VMax. Max and VMax were combinations of tadalafil with either sildenafil or vardenafil, compounded into a single chewable tablet.
The wild success of these combinations led BlueChew to explore the limits of multitherapies, eventually consolidating its offering around a new flagship product, BlueChew Gold. Gold combines sildenafil, tadalafil, apomorphine, and oxytocin at three different dosages and represents the most advanced ED medication combination on the market.
BlueChew’s medical review process
Only a medical professional — like the kind affiliated with BlueChew or its competitors, or a doctor you’d see in a traditional office — can determine if you’re a safe and suitable candidate for these medications. If you are, it means the medical professional has reviewed pertinent details about your medical history, health, and current medications and concluded that using one of these medications will likely help address your ED symptoms without posing a serious risk to your health.
But if you are approved, it does not guarantee you’ll experience no side effects. In fact, side effects are not uncommon. Thankfully, they tend to be very mild, with very few people discontinuing treatment because of them. In our surveying the landscape of available ED treatments — prescription medications, over-the-counter options like supplements, and various devices you’d use at home or in a clinical setting — none currently offer the same combination of effectiveness, safety, affordability, and convenience as the treatment from BlueChew.
Why BlueChew causes side effects
To understand why the medications in BlueChew Gold would cause side effects, and also why those side effects would vary from drug to drug, it’s useful to know a few basic details of how the medications work. Warning: it’s a bit complicated!
BlueChew Gold contains two PDE5 inhibitors. PDE5 stands for “phosphodiesterase type 5.” (You can see why people use the abbreviation.) Phosphodiesterases are a superfamily of enzymes that regulate signals within cells. As the number in PDE5 would suggest, there are numerous families of phosphodiesterase that have been identified — 11, to be precise (PDE1 through PDE11) — and they all have different effects on the human body.3 Scientists further divide these families into subtypes and splice variants.
The two PDE5 inhibitors in BlueChew Gold — sildenafil and tadalafil — both temporarily prevent PDE5 from doing what it normally would do in your body … which makes it useful to understand what PDE5 ordinarily does.
What does PDE5 ordinarily do?
You may or may not have heard of the chemical nitric oxide (NO). Some people take dietary supplements to increase NO in their bodies, typically with goals involving exercise performance, sexual performance, or general cardiovascular health. This is because NO, vascularly downstream of where it is released in the body, causes the conversion of GTP (guanosine triphosphate) into cGMP (cyclic guanosine monophosphate). cGMP relaxes the smooth muscles in the walls of blood vessels, which is what causes them to widen — something called vasodilation.4 So, NO can promote increased blood flow.
When it’s released vascularly upstream from the spongy tissues of the penis, NO leads to more cGMP in those tissues, which enables an increase in blood flow and accumulation of blood there, causing an erection.5 What causes an erection to stop, meanwhile, is PDE5; when the body feels that it’s time for an erection to end, PDE5 is released to bind to the cGMP, causing smooth muscles in the blood vessels to return to normal.6 This means less blood flow to the penis, and the erection goes away.
Inhibiting PDE5 is an effective way to allow many (but not all) men with ED to get erections strong enough for the sexual activity they want. And the reason these treatments don’t cause spontaneous erections is that arousal is still necessary for the brain to signal to the cavernous nerve (a nerve in the penis) to release NO there.6 (Remember, NO has the aforementioned effects vascularly downstream of where it’s released.)
Can these drugs affect other PDE enzymes aside from PDE5?
None of the PDE5 medications in BlueChew Gold are completely selective for PDE5. In other words, they can inhibit other families of PDE as well. To the limited extent that they do collaterally inhibit other PDE families, they can produce different side effects corresponding to those PDE families and what their normal jobs are in our bodies. And while these medications share a small set of common potential side effects — headache, nasal congestion, and dyspepsia — most adverse side effects happen because of the medications inhibiting other PDE families aside from PDE5.35
Sildenafil collaterally inhibits PDE1 and PDE6. Tadalafil, meanwhile, doesn’t cause that kind of collateral effect, but it does collaterally inhibit PDE11.6 This provides some explanation for why these medications differ in the side effects they're most likely to cause.
Common side effects of BlueChew Gold’s sildenafil
BlueChew Gold contains sildenafil at a dose of 70mg, 90mg, or 110mg. As the active ingredient in Viagra, sildenafil is probably the most common and certainly the longest-studied ED medication on the market today. It’s the one that started them all, the only one introduced in the 20th century; if you’re old enough, you may remember Bob Dole as a spokesman for it following his presidential campaign in the late ‘90s. Sildenafil is typically used as an as-needed medication. You’d take it 30-60 minutes before sexual activity might occur, and after that waiting period, the medication will be effective for a period of 4-6 hours.
BlueChew Gold can kick in a little faster, thanks to the fact that it’s delivered in a dissolvable tablet that you can let sit under your tongue (sublingual administration). There, the drugs can enter your bloodstream through oral membranes, rather than having to make it through digestion. BlueChew Gold can work in as little as 15 minutes.
On the one hand, the fact that it’s the longest-studied ED medication can give people some peace of mind, and it’s still the first path that many prescribing doctors explore with patients. On the other hand, years of research also reveal that sildenafil seems capable of causing certain side effects that a couple newer options like vardenafil and avanafil likely won’t. Avanafil — the active ingredient in Stendra and the newest PDE5 for ED — is a relatively costly medication offered by Hims but not BlueChew. It’s the most selective PDE5 inhibitor and less likely to cause side effects.7
Sildenafil’s most common side effects are mild and include:8
- Headache
- Flushing of the face and skin
- Nasal congestion
- Acid reflux (heartburn)
- Dyspepsia (discomfort in the upper abdomen caused by stomach upset)
- Vision changes (such as a blue-green tint, temporarily blurred vision, or difficulty with color perception)
Side effects involving vision disturbances arise due to the fact that sildenafil also collaterally inhibits PDE6. Of course, this isn’t the purpose of taking sildenafil; the goal is to inhibit PDE5 in order to facilitate erections. PDE6 isn’t associated with erections but, instead, with certain visual processing pathways. People who experience vision-related side effects often successfully avoid them in the future by switching to tadalafil. Switching to vardenafil sometimes solves this problem as well; though vardenafil also weakly inhibits PDE6, research indicates that men who experience vision-related side effects from sildenafil may avoid those side effects when using vardenafil, though that isn’t yet an option within Gold’s formula.9
Also, these mild visual changes are not to be confused with a very rare but serious side effect (described later) involving total loss of vision in one or both eyes. It’s rare, but if it happens, seek medical attention.
Common side effects of BlueChew Gold’s tadalafil
Credit: PubChem
Whereas sildenafil and vardenafil are similar in molecular structure, tadalafil (the active ingredient in Cialis) is quite different from them.3 There’s a waiting period of about 30-60 minutes before a dose starts working, but tadalafil is a much longer-acting drug than either sildenafil or vardenafil. Because tadalafil remains active for 18-36 hours, it can be prescribed either as an as-needed medication or a once-daily medication. However, because it’s combined with sildenafil in BlueChew Gold, it’s only available in quantities for as-needed use within that multitherapy. Gold delivers tadalafil in doses of 18mg or 22mg.
Despite its differences, tadalafil is still a PDE5 inhibitor and so is capable of causing several of the same side effects as sildenafil. The most common side effects of tadalafil are mild and include:11
- Headache
- Dyspepsia (discomfort in the upper abdomen caused by stomach upset)
- Back and muscle pain
- Nasal congestion, runny nose, and/or sneezing
Notice that this list differs from sildenafil’s side effects in a couple meaningful ways. First, visual side effects aren’t likely to occur with tadalafil because tadalafil doesn’t inhibit PDE6. But unlike sildenafil, tadalafil may cause back pain and muscle aches. This is owing to the fact that tadalafil inhibits PDE11 — something that sildenafil and vardenafil do not.10 If you’re already susceptible to back pain, this is a reason to pick one of those other two medications over tadalafil. Though the majority of people do not experience anything but potentially mild side effects, 2-3% do contend with more significant back pain and myalgia.12
Likelihood of tadalafil side effects
You might look at these lists of side effects and conclude that, since its list is shorter, BlueChew Gold’s tadalafil doesn’t pose the same degree of risk as the other medications. However, studies indicate that tadalafil users experience side effects at least as often as users of other PDE5 inhibitors.3 And tadalafil, particularly at higher doses, can produce side effects that last longer than those of sildenafil or vardenafil.23
Research suggests that 53% of tadalafil users may experience side effects in the first year of treatment, while that number rises to 73% by the end of year two. However, these side effects are mild, and only 10% of users considered the side effects consistent enough to bother them.13
What about vardenafil side effects?
You might be wondering how the side effect risks of sildenafil and tadalafil compare with another relatively common PDE5 inhibitor called vardenafil. Vardenafil was once part of a few BlueChew products, but it isn’t available as part of BlueChew Gold. Still, it’s worth outlining some of the reasons vardenafil might be a better choice for some men, as it could mean you need to look to a competitor like Hims to get your hands on it.
Like sildenafil, vardenafil is taken on an as-needed basis around 30-60 minutes ahead of time in order for it to provide effective treatment for 4-6 hours.
Vardenafil has a very similar side effect profile to sildenafil. However, along with tadalafil, vardenafil was developed about a half-decade after sildenafil appeared on the market. Compared to sildenafil, it is more selective in inhibiting PDE5.9
Side effects of vardenafil tend to be mild and most commonly include:42
- Headache
- Dyspepsia
- Facial flushing
- Nasal congestion, runny nose, and/or sneezing
Vardenafil does still collaterally inhibit PDE6 but doesn’t do so to the extent that sildenafil does, so its likelihood of causing visual side effects is lower.9 This often makes it a good alternative for people who want to discontinue sildenafil due to changes in color perception.
How likely are the likeliest side effects of PDE5 inhibitors?
One large study conducted in 2009 compared the frequency and duration of various side effects caused by sildenafil, vardenafil, and tadalafil among a group of over 400 men who were each given the maximum doses of one of those three drugs (or a placebo). The chart below shows the rates of specific side effects experienced with each drug at a maximum dose. It found that:23
- The vast majority of participants didn’t wish to discontinue the medications.
- Most side effects were mild.
- Between one-third and one-half of participants experienced side effects, depending on the medication (with vardenafil users experiencing side effects 33% of the time, sildenafil users experiencing them 43% of the time, and tadalafil users experiencing them 46% of the time).
- When they occurred, side effects among tadalafil users tended to last longer compared with other drugs.
| Sildenafil | Tadalafil | Vardenafil | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Headache | 15.6% | 24.3% | 18.2% |
| Dyspepsia | 5.5% | 11.2% | 6.1% |
| Nasal congestion | 1.60% | 0.9% | 3.00% |
| Flushing | 14.2% | 4.2% | 3.0% |
| Back pain | 0% | 3.3% | 1.5% |
| Vision issues | 3.9% | 0% | 0% |
| Other | 3.1% | 1.9% | 0% |
It’s important to remember that this was a study of what might happen at the maximum dosage levels. By comparison, a 2006 review of clinical evidence — after sildenafil had been on the market for eight years — showed these rates of side effects when a broad spectrum of dosage levels was taken into consideration:22
| Sildenafil | Placebo | |
|---|---|---|
| Headache | 10.8% | 2.8% |
| Dyspepsia | 3% | 0.4% |
| Nasal congestion | 2.1% | 0.3% |
| Flushing | 10.9% | 1.4% |
| Dizziness | 2.9% | 1% |
| Vision issues | 3.6% | 0.4% |
Other reviews of clinical practice show that the rate of side effects for sildenafil at 50mg (a rate of 20%) is about one-third the rate seen at 150mg.20 Meanwhile, several double-blind studies showed that vardenafil does not bring a risk of back pain (which is consistent with the fact that it doesn’t inhibit PDE11 as tadalafil does).21
Common side effects of apomorphine and oxytocin
The other two active ingredients in BlueChew Gold are not PDE5 inhibitors. Rather, they’re a dopamine receptor agonist (apomorphine) and a hormone associated with arousal, intimacy, pleasure, and connection (oxytocin).
Combined with PDE5 inhibitors, these two drugs are meant to round out a formula designed to tackle ED from multiple angles. PDE5 inhibitors can address physiological ED concerns related to blood flow, but that only accounts for one potential cause. Meanwhile, mental health concerns are behind around 40% of ED cases, and ED rooted in imbalanced brain chemistry — often called neurogenic ED — is likewise highly prevalent.25 41
Because these two drugs have different mechanisms of action to fight ED, they also come with their own sets of side effects. Let’s see how those break down:
Apomorphine
Apomorphine is a dopamine receptor agonist, essentially tricking your brain into thinking it’s receiving more dopamine and causing downstream effects that include improved erectile performance.14 It’s been studied extensively, and nausea remains its most common side effect, which has been shown to be dose-dependent.15 For most men, a 3mg dose is ideal, though BlueChew includes it in Gold at doses up to 4mg for men who need more and don’t experience attendant nausea.37
Oxytocin
We produce oxytocin when we bond, be that with friends at a football game or with a lover in the throes of postcoital bliss.38 That’s led scientists to regard oxytocin as “the love hormone,” but its potential reaches beyond affection and into deeper psychological applications. Specifically, it’s been studied as a treatment for anxiety and depression — major causes of psychogenic ED.39 Dosing is tricky, though, as most of this research has used not sublingual tablets but nasal sprays, which are absorbed into the blood even faster and more efficiently. A large review of intranasal oxytocin studies showed effects like GI upset, softer stool, lightheadedness, dizziness, hallucinations, euphoria, and aggression, though these may not be representative of the sublingual experience.40
When side effects would require medical attention
As described above, the vast majority of BlueChew side effects are mild. In very rare cases, however, PDE5 medications may cause side effects that would require swift medical attention. If you experience any of the following side effects, you should seek medical attention immediately:
An erection that doesn’t subside
Like all versions of these PDE5 inhibitors (branded, generic, or compounded), BlueChew medications are supposed to enable a healthy erection that endures during arousal and then subsides. But in very rare situations, the medications may cause an erection that lasts longer than four hours, a condition known as priapism.6 Priapism is a dangerous situation that can permanently damage the tissues of the penis if unaddressed, so it’s very important to seek medical attention.
Sudden loss of vision
This is a separate phenomenon from the potentially bothersome yet mild visual side effects mentioned earlier (like changes in color perception). Rarely, a person using PDE5 medications may experience a sudden loss of vision due to a condition called non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION).16 This can happen in just one eye or in both eyes. If it happens, seek medical attention.
Hearing loss
Sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) is another rare but serious side effect that may apparently occur from using PDE5 medications.17 The degree of hearing loss could vary from minor to severe, could occur in one or both ears, and could be accompanied by tinnitus (ringing in the ear). Some research suggests that full or partial recovery of hearing is possible afterward, either spontaneously or through treatment, but in some cases, hearing never returns to normal. And while this side effect is rare, sildenafil may put you at a higher risk of it than the other ED medications.17 It remains unclear why SSNHL would occur from using a PDE5 medication.
Again, these side effects are rare, thankfully. At the time of a particular review of literature in 2008 — a decade after Viagra hit the market and a half-decade since Cialis and Levitra had entered it — there had been only one documented case of priapism caused by tadalafil and only a few documented cases caused by sildenafil; there was just as much evidence of this class of drugs alleviating recurrent priapism as there was evidence of the drugs causing priapism as a side effect.18 And in the case of hearing loss, more research is certainly needed; a review of the literature published in 2019 concluded that research up to that time was inconclusive, with some data suggesting risk and other data suggesting that PDE5s were actually otoprotective (protective of hearing) rather than somehow ototoxic.36
You’re far more likely to experience bothersome side effects than dangerous ones. And if you do encounter common side effects that rise to a level of severity or frequency that bothers you, talk to your prescribing medical professional. If you work with BlueChew, you’d want to share your negative experience through their patient portal so that the medical professionals can reassess your dosage or medication and potentially propose an alternative treatment path that wouldn’t cause those unpleasant side effects.
Contraindications and associated risks
BlueChew’s medications are available only via prescription by one of BlueChew’s affiliated medical professionals. If you take certain medications already or have underlying cardiovascular conditions, prescription ED medications can be downright dangerous to you. For instance, if you take a nitrate-containing medication (like nitroglycerin), that’s a contraindication to using PDE5 inhibitors like sildenafil, tadalafil, and vardenafil. Using both can cause possibly deadly low blood pressure (hypotension).35
If you have preexisting hypotension or take medications like alpha-blockers to treat high blood pressure, the prescribing doctor would need to decide whether it’s safe for you to take PDE5 inhibitors. Doing so may also cause dangerously low blood pressure, symptoms of which can include:
- Dizziness
- Weakness
- Fainting
- Tiredness
- Physical instability
But hypotension doesn't always cause noticeable symptoms, despite the risks to your health.
Those with chronic kidney disease may not be suitable candidates for prescription ED medication, though the prescribing medical professional will be able to determine whether your circumstances contraindicate using them.
All of this underscores the importance of being thorough in your description of medications and existing health conditions when you consult with a doctor — something perhaps even more important in an online consultation scenario. Prescribing medical professionals will be able to determine whether you’re a safe candidate for the treatments that BlueChew offers, but only if they have enough information about your underlying health and current use of medications.
Does dosage matter for side effects? And how BlueChew Gold compares
Your likelihood of experiencing side effects may be higher or lower depending on differences in the dosage of the active ingredients. Studies examining the effectiveness and safety of tadalafil, sildenafil, apomorphine, and oxytocin at different dosages reveal that side effects are typically more common at higher doses.3
BlueChew Gold is available in three strengths:
| Base | High | Extra | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sildenafil | 70mg | 90mg | 110mg |
| Tadalafil | 18mg | 22mg | 22mg |
| Apomorphine | 2mg | 3mg | 4mg |
| Oxytocin | 160IU | 200IU | 240IU |
Let’s look more closely at each ingredient in BlueChew Gold to see what dosages have been associated with higher frequency or severity of side effects:
Tadalafil
Though studies are slightly mixed in terms of the linear effect of dosage on the likelihood of experiencing side effects, in one study, the group of participants taking 5mg of daily tadalafil experienced back pain more often than the group taking 2.5mg of daily tadalafil.19 Another study comparing 5mg and 10mg daily dosage efficacy and tolerance revealed that the 10mg/day test group experienced side effects at a higher rate than the 5mg/day group.24
Sildenafil
Research suggests that the likelihood of experiencing side effects increases as the dosage increases.22 For instance, a study of 256 sildenafil users at three different strengths (50mg, 100mg, 150mg) found that the incidence of side effects increased at each dosage level.20 Specifically, 20% experienced a side effect at 50mg, while 36% and 63% experienced one at 100mg and 150mg, respectively.
Apomorphine
An ED trial pitting several sublingual apomorphine doses against one another found a linear relationship between dose and side effects. It also showed that the 3mg dose performed nearly as well at improving erectile performance as the 4mg dose, even as the 4mg dose significantly outpaced it in producing side effects.37 That indicates that a 3mg dose is likely the strongest safe dose for men, though men with more severe ED or those with higher body mass might require the 4mg approach.
Oxytocin
It’s difficult to estimate how oxytocin might produce side effects in a sublingual tablet at a particular dose, as the majority of oxytocin research for arousal, anxiety, and depression has been conducted using delivery by nasal spray. A nasal spray can enter the blood more quickly than a sublingual tablet, and it even has a greater potential to access the brain more effectively, making a dose comparison almost useless.
The large oxytocin review we cited earlier relied on doses ranging from 18-40IU, but BlueChew Gold offers oxytocin at doses ranging from 160-240IU.40 That should not equate to a 600% increase in potential side effects at the high end, simply because the administration method is so different. But it does mean you should talk to your doctor or a BlueChew-associated medical professional if side effects common to oxytocin appear.
Comparing BlueChew side effects across medications
Given that some side effects are universal among PDE5 medications, while others are unique to one or a couple of them, here is a handy chart that hopefully enables easier comparison of the likeliest possible side effects:
| Sildenafil | Tadalafil | Apomorphine | Oxytocin | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Headache | ||||
| Dyspepsia | ||||
| Nausea | ||||
| Nasal congestion | ||||
| Flushing | ||||
| Back/muscle pain | ||||
| Vision issues | ||||
| Runny nose / sneezing | ||||
| Dizziness / lightheadedness |
When it comes to likelihood, numerous studies into these drugs broadly agree that:
- Most men won’t experience anything beyond mild side effects.
- Side effects are more likely to occur at higher doses.
Side effects of BlueChew’s inactive ingredients
In order to formulate medication that is both chewable and dissolvable, BlueChew includes a short list of inactive ingredients, as well. These collectively amount to less than a gram of each tablet, but they’re important to consider, especially if you’re active enough to take ED meds regularly.
Here are the inactive ingredients in BlueChew Gold:
- Sucralose
- Neotame
- Citric acid
- Magnesium stearate
- Sodium starch glycolate
- Crospovidone
- galenIQ™
- Silicon dioxide
- Cherry pomegranate flavor
- FD&C Blue #1
Let’s take a look at some of these ingredients to understand whether they might contribute to certain side effects:
Sucralose
Did you ever wonder what made Splenda sweet? Sucralose is an artificial sweetener that, in our opinion, doesn’t produce the most enjoyably sweet experience. (But tastes vary!) It’s very common in a multitude of products, from nutritional shakes to fitness beverages. Though you aren’t likely to experience noticeable side effects from the amount in BlueChew Gold, some studies suggest there are health risks from consuming larger daily quantities of sucralose — for instance, the risk of inflammation caused by changes to the gut microbiome — even at levels of consumption that are considered to be within the safe daily range. More research would be useful.26 27 28 29
Citric acid
Citric acid is found in countless foods and beverages that Americans consume and is recognized as safe by the FDA. However, one examination of the effects of manufactured citric acid (MCA) on four individuals suggests that its GRAS status should be reexamined to determine whether some quantities of this additive trigger inflammatory responses.30 If true, those effects would vary from person to person but may include symptoms associated with asthma, IBD, or fibromyalgia. If you’re already consuming products that contain this ingredient (you likely are) and don’t experience those conditions, then the chances seem exceedingly low that you’d have trouble with this here.
Magnesium stearate
Another additive common in foods, magnesium stearate seems to pose little or no risk of side effects, according to the current literature.31 But at high enough quantities, magnesium can produce a laxative effect. So, if you supplement with magnesium, there may be a very slight risk that this small amount of additional magnesium tips the physiological scales for you to experience laxative side effects (e.g., loose stool), though even then, BlueChew would be no more to blame than any of the other foods, supplements, or medications that you take that contain magnesium.
FD&C Blue #1
Previously, BlueChew used Blue #1 Aluminum Lake in its formulations, which is understandable; brand-name Viagra uses Blue No. 2 Aluminum Lake to achieve its trademark blue color. Though it’s a common ingredient in everything from breakfast cereals to popular drinks, Blue #1 isn’t exactly good for you. In very large quantities, it would be toxic for humans.32 If you already consume many foods and drinks containing Blue No. 1 or use cosmetic products containing it, adding another source could marginally increase your cumulative risk of experiencing a couple of irritating side effects, such as a skin rash or cough.32 Fortunately, Bluechew recently switched to FD&C Blue #1, which is a simple, water-soluble food dye, rather than the aluminum-bound pigment that makes up aluminum lake.
galenIQ
galenIQ is a branded form of isomalt, which could potentially aggravate FODMAP-sensitive individuals, as isomalt is a disaccharide (the D in FODMAP).33 Based on the company’s materials, it appears to be used more as a binder in tablet manufacturing than a sweetener, but specific research into the safety of its patented form has not been conducted.
Neotame
Neotame is an artificial sweetener that may have adverse effects on the gut microbiota.34 However, clinical trials are lacking, and microbiota data come from in vitro models, so it’s hard to quantify how a small amount delivered only occasionally in an ED medication might affect the microbiota.
Final thoughts on BlueChew side effects
BlueChew Gold is available only by prescription for good reasons: it would pose an unacceptable health risk to some people, and for the rest of us, it may cause side effects that are disruptive enough that it’s important for a doctor to be involved in making adjustments to dosage or proposing a different PDE5 medication entirely. But thankfully, the medications in BlueChew have been widely used for decades, so there’s a long track record to study. It reveals that, for the vast majority of people prescribed these medications, they cause only mild to moderate side effects — the kind that seldom discourage people from using them if the treatment is working.
Sources
Innerbody uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
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