Good news or bad news on male enhancement products? Depends ...

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At least one ingredient in some of those seemingly ubiquitous products might have had at least some effect. On the other hand, that ingredient was a drug, the Food and Drug Administration has found. Know what that means? Yep. They have to go ...

Nature & Health Co., based in Brea, has issued a recall (voluntary) of six dietary supplements marketed as male enhancement products.

Got the packets or bottle? Look for these names:

LibieXtreme
Y-4ever
Libimax X Liquid
Powermania
Powermania liquid
and (the best-named) Herbal Disiac

As it turns out, the FDA did a little testing and found that these products contain either tadalafil, a similar substance known as aminotadalafil or a chemical similar to sidenafil.

Tadalafil is a key ingredient in Cialis.

Sidenafil is a key ingredient in Viagra.

The presence of such ingredients may sound fine and dandy (no prescription needed), but users can’t know how much of the chemicals were in the supplements, especially as they weren’t listed as ingredients on the label. Nor can users know precisely how they might react with other drugs. Those are significant unknowns.

In any case, their presence means the supplements are actually drugs, the FDA says. And that means the supplement maker can’t sell them.

The company says, possibly with a sigh: Fine, return them and we’ll give your money back.

Here’s the notice, with more details.

And here’s more on tadalafil and sidenafil.

-- Tami Dennis