Cheaper Alternative to BlueChew Gold

If you're searching for a less expensive or subscription-free alternative to BlueChew Gold, Shameless Quad is our answer.

Shameless Quad contains the same four active ingredients found in BlueChew Gold: sildenafil, tadalafil, apomorphine, and oxytocin. The specific doses and formulations are not identical, but the four active ingredients are the same. BlueChew confirms those four ingredients in its description of Gold.

But before deciding that you need any four-in-one erectile dysfunction medication, let's talk about what these ingredients actually do and whether a four-drug medication makes sense for you in the first place.

First, Two Things We Believe About Telehealth

If Google, ChatGPT, or another search engine brought you here, there are two things you should understand about Shameless Care.

1. Medications should not be used to sell subscriptions.

We don't require subscriptions.

If you need medication, buy medication. If you need it again, order it again.

We don't believe getting a prescription should automatically sign someone up to have their credit card charged every month or every few months.

BlueChew uses a recurring subscription model. Its terms state that subscriptions automatically renew and the customer's payment method is automatically charged until the subscription is canceled.

Some people may like automatic refills. That's fine. We simply don't believe they should be mandatory.

At Shameless Care, there are no subscriptions.

2. You should be able to see the real price before providing health information.

We also believe prescription medication pricing should be easy to find.

You shouldn't have to provide a company with information about your erections, medications, cardiovascular history, blood pressure, or other private health information just to figure out what something costs.

Price should be one of the first things you see, not a surprise at the end of a medical intake.

That's why Shameless Care publishes its actual prices publicly.

Now let's get to the more interesting question.

What Is Actually in BlueChew Gold and Shameless Quad?

Both contain four active ingredients:

Sildenafil + tadalafil + apomorphine + oxytocin

The first two primarily affect blood flow and erections.

The other two act through very different pathways and are intended to influence aspects of sexual arousal, motivation, or intimacy.

Let's look at each one separately.

Oxytocin: Interesting Science, but Keep Your Expectations Realistic

Oxytocin is both a peptide and a naturally occurring hormone.

You'll often hear it called the "bonding hormone" because oxytocin signaling is involved in social bonding, attachment, trust, social attention, and other interpersonal behaviors.

That description sometimes gets stretched into marketing claims that make oxytocin sound like a pharmaceutical love potion.

It isn't.

One important issue is how oxytocin is administered.

A huge amount of human oxytocin research has involved intranasal oxytocin, meaning a spray administered through the nose.

BlueChew Gold and Shameless Quad use oxytocin sublingually, meaning the medication dissolves in the mouth.

Those are not equivalent delivery methods.

An older human pharmacokinetic study examining sublingual oxytocin found extremely poor and highly variable systemic bioavailability, approximately 0.007% to 0.07%. You can read that study here.

That's tiny.

And we're not going to pretend otherwise just because we sell a medication containing oxytocin.

But low absorption doesn't necessarily mean zero effect.

This is where the science gets more interesting.

Researchers have experimented with oxytocin-containing medicated lollipops, essentially using the mouth as an oromucosal delivery route.

In one randomized study, researchers found that oxytocin delivered using medicated lollipops increased peripheral oxytocin concentrations and produced measurable changes in social-attention testing. You can read the full study here.

So there is legitimate scientific evidence suggesting that oral or oromucosal oxytocin can produce measurable biological effects.

But the evidence is nowhere near strong enough to promise that taking sublingual oxytocin is going to suddenly transform your sex life.

Think potential subtle effect, not magic.

Apomorphine: Dopamine and Sexual Arousal

Next is apomorphine.

Despite the name, apomorphine is not morphine and isn't an opioid.

It is a dopamine receptor agonist, meaning it stimulates certain dopamine receptors.

Dopamine plays an important role in sexual motivation and erectile response, which is why apomorphine has been studied as an erectile dysfunction treatment for decades.

A systematic review of nine randomized controlled trials found that sublingual apomorphine generally performed better than placebo for erectile dysfunction, although its effect was considerably less dramatic than modern advertising might lead you to believe. You can read the review here.

That matches what we've seen after providing apomorphine-containing ED medications to thousands of customers.

For some people, it seems to add something.

But it isn't profound.

You may have seen BlueChew advertisements where a sexy woman bounces up and down, calls you "sir," and tells you that apomorphine handles arousal for you.

That's advertising.

The actual science is considerably less exciting.

Apomorphine may influence the dopamine pathways involved in sexual arousal and erectile response. That's real. The clinical evidence is summarized here.

But don't expect to take it and suddenly become uncontrollably sex-crazed.

For both apomorphine and oxytocin, the word I would emphasize is:

Subtle.

Sildenafil and Tadalafil: The Heavy Lifters

Now we get to the ingredients you're probably already familiar with.

Sildenafil is the active ingredient in Viagra.

Tadalafil is the active ingredient in Cialis.

Both are PDE5 inhibitors. They improve erectile response by increasing the effect of nitric oxide and helping blood vessels in erectile tissue relax.

These are doing most of the traditional erectile-dysfunction work in a medication like BlueChew Gold or Shameless Quad.

But sildenafil and tadalafil behave somewhat differently.

Sildenafil

Sildenafil generally has a shorter duration of action.

It can provide a strong on-demand effect, but traditional swallowed sildenafil is also affected by food, particularly a high-fat meal, which can delay its absorption.

Tadalafil

Tadalafil lasts much longer.

Its erectile effects can persist for up to approximately 36 hours, giving you a much larger window for sexual activity.

Food has substantially less effect on tadalafil absorption than it does with traditional sildenafil tablets.

Why Combine Sildenafil and Tadalafil?

Combining sildenafil and tadalafil can potentially give you characteristics of both drugs.

Sildenafil can provide additional short-term erectile support while tadalafil provides a much longer window.

And this isn't purely theoretical.

One randomized study involving 180 men compared tadalafil 5 mg daily with tadalafil 5 mg plus sildenafil 50 mg as needed. The combination produced greater improvement in some erectile-function measurements, particularly among men with more severe ED, without a significant increase in reported adverse events in that study. You can read the study here.

That does not mean everybody should combine sildenafil and tadalafil.

Both medications lower blood pressure and share many of the same potential side effects. Combining them should therefore be done only when prescribed by a clinician who knows your medical history and the doses involved.

More ingredients also does not mean fewer side effects.

If sildenafil gives you headaches, adding tadalafil, apomorphine, and oxytocin doesn't magically cancel out the sildenafil.

Do You Actually Need Four Ingredients?

This is probably the most important part of this article.

We sell Shameless Quad.

It contains sildenafil, tadalafil, apomorphine, and oxytocin.

So we're obviously not opposed to four-in-one ED medications.

But if you've never tried ordinary generic sildenafil or tadalafil, I would not start with a four-drug medication simply because you've seen BlueChew Gold advertised 800,000 times.

And let's be realistic.

You probably have.

Even BlueChew's own medical content notes that first-time ED medication users may prefer starting with sildenafil, tadalafil, or vardenafil to establish how they respond before moving to a multi-ingredient product. You can read BlueChew's dosage guide here.

That makes sense.

Generic sildenafil works extremely well for many people.

Generic tadalafil works extremely well for many people.

They're inexpensive, extensively studied, and give you a much cleaner way to determine what works for your body and what side effects you experience.

If one medication solves the problem, there isn't necessarily a prize for taking four.

When Does a Four-In-One Medication Make More Sense?

A combination medication becomes more interesting when you've already used traditional ED medication and want something different.

Maybe sildenafil works well but you don't like having such a narrow timing window.

Maybe tadalafil gives you flexibility but doesn't provide quite the same erectile response you get from sildenafil.

Maybe you have already tried PDE5 inhibitors and want to see whether adding centrally acting ingredients such as apomorphine changes the experience.

Or maybe you simply prefer one prescribed dose rather than trying to manage multiple separate medications.

Those are reasonable conversations to have with a physician.

BlueChew Gold vs. Shameless Quad

What does BlueChew Gold actually cost?

I went through BlueChew’s entire medical intake process because I wanted to see the actual price of BlueChew Gold.

BlueChew advertisements frequently promote a “first month free” offer. On its website, I was also shown a banner saying:

“Try 2 months of Gold, Get 1 FREE!”

To me, “first month free” sounds like I should be able to try the medication for a month without paying for it.

That isn’t what happened.

After providing my personal and medical information and going through the checkout process, I was asked to pay $403.99 if prescribed.

The checkout said I was receiving $351.90 in total savings, including a $50 medical consultation that had been waived.

That was confusing too. BlueChew publicly describes its medical consultation as free, so I’m not sure why a $50 consultation that apparently isn’t normally charged was being counted toward my savings.

There was also a promotional discount applied to the order. But because BlueChew Gold is a subscription, I wanted to know something much more important:

What will my card actually be charged the next time it renews?

And I still couldn’t easily tell.

Will the promotional discount continue? Will I pay the full listed price? Is the “free month” simply the difference between buying three months individually and committing to a quarterly subscription?

Maybe there is an explanation for every number on the screen. My point is that I went through the entire process specifically trying to understand the price, and I still found it confusing.

Now compare that with Shameless Quad.

You don’t have to provide Shameless Care with your name, email address, medical history, or payment information to find out what it costs.

The price is right on the product page.

That price includes the physician consultation, medication, shipping, and applicable taxes.

There is no introductory price.

There is no “$50 consultation waived.”

There is no first-month-free calculation.

And there is no subscription price to figure out later.

You see the price before giving us any private medical information, and that is the price you pay.

---

Shameless Quad is a compounded prescription medication. Compounded medications are not FDA-approved and are prescribed only when a licensed medical provider determines they are appropriate for an individual patient. Sildenafil and tadalafil can interact dangerously with nitrates and certain other medications. Your medical provider should review your health history and current medications before treatment.