About your friend who took Accutane. Did he have a similar reaction? Crash after stopping medication? and similar symptoms?
Does anyone know if Accutane works through a similar mechanism to Propecia?
Also, IHP recovered about a year after he did his 10 day water fast correct? Can we really put that much weight on the water fast? Maybe it was his all around healthy lifestyle that he maintained for so long.
dgreene, I think the water fast is just an effective way to start a body cleanse. IHP wasn’t recovered merely from the water fast. He combined diet disiplines with a variety of other supplements to assist his body to recover. CDnuts did multiple water fasts and I do not believe he ever recovered completely. If you got back and read his posts at the end, he stated things still don’t feel right. Maybe he recovered enough to go on and live a somewhat normal life.
Some of what IHP was doing was somewhat centered towards a Candida overgrowth approach.* These Anti-candida diets alll seem to have an extreme 1st phase to them. You need to starve them of what is fueling them. The true water fast is probably as effective as any of these, as a 1st phase. However, that is only the begining and you need to comit to the diet for months and sometimes years to eliminate a large grade overgrowth.
Listen, this guy didn’t recover. He only said he was feeling better and specifically said he didn’t make it back to %100 normal. Yes he did say libido vanished 1 1/2 months off of the drug. This was his main complaint/symptom. If you have any other questions about accutane just google it or search it on this site. All the info has been repeated several times. I’m not here to start arguments, make theories, or do Q&A about which drugs do what or why water fasting may help, only trying to give and get advice about improving.
All I’m saying is that I know a young guy who was suffering from drug-induced low libido who said fasting helped him for some reason and remembered Brong mentioning he has some improvements from fasting too.
Here’s the main body of my friend’s message:
I’ve personally never known of anyone except him and BrongFogBoy gaining sexual improvements from fasting. I’m not expecting much, if any benefit myself and only going to try fasting because it sounds safer to me than trying more drugs or HRT, which didn’t work either.
Some people complain about feeling awful during a long water-only fast.
@BrongFogBoy or anyone else who has water fasted for more than a few days at a time:
Did you experience pains, stomach cramps, lightheadedness or fatigue during your fast that prevented you from going about your day as usual?
Wow WTF. How come I never heard about SSRIs, Accutane, and Propecia causing such severe and persisting side effects. And I know so many people who have used Accutane. This shit should be common knowledge now. Who knows what other drugs can fuck you up big time.
Now you know. And Accutane SE’s are worse than finasteride’s. think about that!!
anyways, this is honestly something i’m most interested in but i’ve recently readed that people with any problems with metabolism (namely, sensitive bloodsugar/reactive hypoglycemia and obviously diabetes) should not do this as it would damage the health (it was a segment a friend of mine linked from his book), which if true is a real downer. I really want to know if it’s true or not, if it’s real.
I intially ignored this thread for a few reasons but decided to read it today and well…
70 days with no food or nutrition huh? Tell that to these guys…
Participants who died on hunger strike
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Irish_hunger_strike#Participants_who_died_on_hunger_strike
To sum it up, the longest guy lasted 73 days, the shortest only lasted 46 days. (FYI the world record for a hunger strike where the person didn’t die is 116 days)
Oh and 13 guys started the strike and were taken off it but guess what:
Although ten men died during the course of the hunger strike, thirteen others began refusing food but were taken off hunger strike, either due to medical reasons or after intervention by their families. Many of them still suffer from the effects of the strike, with problems including digestive, visual, physical and neurological disabilities.
What you said about the body having “reserves” of energy is correct, its called fat. But with no protein intake protein sythesis begins to decline and your body starts eating away at muscle to repair more “vital” tissues. Yes thats right, your body normal uses its protein intake to build muscle but when you have no protein intake your body sees fat AND muscle as up for grabs to use to KEEP YOU ALIVE. 20 days yeah thats doable, maybe even a month. But you are nuts if you think its healthy to go any longer.
Did you go to the gym before your fast and test your strength? There is no way you didn’t lose muscle and strength, hell before finasteride, when I was into bodybuilding after 4 days of strict dieting I would notice a significant strength differance and I wasn’t starving myself.
Where are these studies that say you can do 40 days without food and it being healthy? I am not saying fasting might not help somewhat, but this talk about 40-70 days of fasting is laughable, bogus and dangerous. Human beings need protein to survive, we really weren’t designed to be on a vegetarian diet either or else we would have the correspondingly complex digestive system that all true herbovores do have. Instead we have mixed disgestive track that is, not as short as a pure carnavore and not as long and complex as a pure herbavore. Sorry for that tangent.
Sure when your sick you don’t feel “as” hungry but usually that only lasts a few days… like the crash period many of us experience here.
On a more positive side to your statements: a 10-20 day fast might not be a bad idea and is obviously something that most of us can do here quite easily. But a lot of people on this site seem to champion the idea that a certain diet will cure them, and I think that one day that notion will be proven incorrect. Eating a certain way, particulary low refined sugars, low processed foods, moderate fats and low enriched carbs will definitely not hurt, would be healthy, and may help our condition somewhat but it would also help someone who didn’t take finasteride in the first place. Its not going to fix a problem that goes to the root of our hormonal make up, and has effected our physiology so completely.
Now I guess I better get ready for people to ridcule me as wrong, think what you want to think I suppose.
Dubya, I fall into the camp that believes this could help us, but my life situation has prevented me from doing it as of yet. I have consulted with a few different places I would consider going to complete this. If you are doing a 14 day water fast or longer, you really should do it with people that are professionals and have medical qualifiations. At least so they check your vitals.
Even if choose not to, I definitely don’t think you should be working or going about normal daily activities. You should be lying down and resting. Your body needs to recover and you willl get quite weak doing a lengthy fast.
I also agree with everyone here who has mentioned that fasting beyond 30 days is risky. I spoke with a woman at one health center who has been conducting fasts for 30 years. She says if you suspect cadida to be the source a 21 day fast needs to be done at a minimum.
Thanks for the reply boston. I wasn’t considering going for much longer than ten days. It seems as if nearly everyone recommends taking it easy during a fast, so it will probably be a long while before I can give it a try.
Hey man, I did a 7-day water fast not long ago (about three weeks ago). I planned on reporting about the whole thing in my member story and I still will, but to sum it up, here’s how it went: I started doing 10-day a water fast because my gf was heading out of town so I thought it was the ideal time to do it. Unfortunately, I get paid to play soccer and injuries to my team meant that I was required to stop my original fast two days in and played a game. I then restarted my fast that very day.
I had no problems managing the fast. I just drank water (most of it filtered) and took no meds, vitamins, or anything. I never had stomach cramps but I did feel lightheaded AT TIMES - mainly when standing up quickly. I had what we call here in Australia as 3.30itis, where I’d really feel tired at about 3.30, but this would usually hit me anyway in my normal life. It was slightly different, tho. I’d get home from work and would feel like sleeping, but it wasn’t like I was tired or about to pass out, I just felt content and peaceful, but to the point where I would have a short nap. I did indeed work during the fast and I actually encourage anyone else who doesn’t have a really physical job to continue working, because it took my mind off food. I was able to focus on work. After the initial 3-day “I WANT FOOD” section of the fast, I didn’t really care about food and was happy to watch people eat while feeling no real drive for eating myself. Sometimes, out of habit, I would go to the fridge or something, and this was probably the worst thing for me - the barrier that I had to deal with that I was not allowed to do things that I wanted to do - namely eating. But I slowly came to terms with it.
I was planning on going a full ten days but the stop-start probably hindered that a bit. I really started losing weight and I definitely lost some muscle mass. There are some reasons for this. I restarted the fast on a day that I played a 90min game of soccer and so my body probably turned to my protein/muscle stores at this time. I also appeared at the final of my oztag (an Australian sport) final expecting to simply watch, but when I rocked up a few players were late so I had to fill in for a few minutes - this was tough and I regret doing it. I also went for a skate with some of my friends a couple of times, and this was more taxing on my body than I realised in the past. I’m sure that if I had not taken part in these kinds of things, I would have lost LESS muscle. But in terms of body fat, I lost a lot - I ended up going from around 10% body fat to less than 5% in seven days. I had abs to die for haha.
Now for the benefits:
-My blood pressure dropped and has stayed closer to the ‘normal’ range than in the past.
-After day two of returning to food, I’ve had morning erections every day since and I also have had more spontaneous erections than a couple of months ago.
-Size seems to have improved and I’d say is normal when flaccid, but still not quite there when hard.
-My mind is definitely clearer. Definitely. I have been focused at work. I don’t feel depressed anymore. I used to be particularly unstable and emotional about things in my personal life, especially in my relationship. Now I feel cool, calm, and relaxed, and I’m not coming off as ‘needy’ to my gf anymore - which has oddly swung the power of the relationship back over to me (as weird as it might be to think that way), like she does the chasing now whereas it was quite the opposite before.
I still am not 100% and I still require viagra/cialis to keep hard. I have no problem getting an erection without it, but I still have problems keeping them. Also, as much as my mood has improved, it’s not back to normal just yet. I used to be cocky and funny but, while I feel a lot better now, I’m not there yet. Interestingly, I’ve been a little sharper with my humour and seem to be less ‘bitter’.
I’m planning on doing another water fast at the end of my soccer season (which is not until September). I want to go for up to two weeks. My body would surely not handle much longer than that as I have such a low body fat percentage to begin with.
propeciAUS,
Thanks for the update. While I have badly wanted to do a 14-21 day fast, it is virtually impossible with my life as it is. Your 7 day fast story, has made me rethink what I may do. Now I know certainly doing a 7 day fast could be doable while working, so at least I can see if I can get any benifts at all. Otherwise, time just keeps ticking by and this horrible sickness doesn’t go away. 
Thanks for the update. You have inspired me.
Just 2-3 days of water fasting can bring benefits. Within 15 hours I had a sharp pain in my liver and some other body pains, which is apparently a good sign. I started feeling very good the next day but I had to eat as I am living with my dad and he would be very unhappy if I started rejecting food.
When I get chance I will do a 5-14 day water fast. It’s just getting away from my parents and anyone else really.
That’s awesome man, sounds like you definitely responded well to the fast. Let us know what the results of the two week fast are when you get around to it.
If you get a chance, add selenium and Iodine to your diet (200 micrograms of selenium and about 2 drops of 2% lugols Iodine - both every day) and see if you don’t see an obvious increase in your personality cocky/funny. You would notice the change after about 3-4 days of taking this, if you don’t then this isn’t the issue and you can discontinue.
I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice! Consult your physician blah blah
With more people reporting good results with fasting, I thought I would post these. I found part 4 particularly interesting.
Part 1: Weight Loss
marksdailyapple.com/fasting-weight-loss/#axzz1rFXaBhQF
Part 2: Cancer
marksdailyapple.com/fasting-cancer/
Part 3: Longevity
marksdailyapple.com/fasting-longevity-lifespan/#axzz1rFXaBhQF
Part 4: Brain Health
marksdailyapple.com/fasting-brain-function/#more-28410
Thanks man, I’ll look into it!
You are just a spammer.
BrongFog, I’ve read your other post with the protocol for brain fog. The problem I have is that the’re not selling gugulipid in the country where I am right now and I would like to know if you think the brain fog problem would go away anyway if I did the fast? I could order it from the States, but they charge 30-40 dollars just for the delivery. Also, I have very bad insomnia. Do you think the fast would help me? And if I’m using Minoxidil 2%, would it be a problem if I continue the drug while doing the fast?
Can’t speak for the other things but in terms of minoxidil, I kept using it when I fasted… It would probably be ideal not to use it, but I dont think there was a problem with using it.
propeciAUS, Good because it was actually the only reason I saw not to try it. Now I just have to put some weight on because if I do it like I am right now it will probably be the end of me. It shouldn’t be to difficult because I’m actually not so young anymore. I just have to stop going to the gym for a week or two.
Anyone else tried fasting and had results? I just started a water only fast a few days ago and will post results when i’m re feeding in a few weeks.
Same here. This is now my fifth day and I’ll try to do 21 days.