Cured after 11 years

[pal]

Welcome to our community. Please fill in the following template as a way of introducing yourself, and helping others to understand your background and situation.

Where are you from (country)? Sweden

How did you find this forum (Google search – if so, what search terms? Via link from a forum or website – if so, what page? Other?) Search

What is your current age, height, weight? 40, 190 cm, 90 kg

What specific drug did you use? Finasteride

What dose did you take (eg. 1 mg/day, 1 mg every other day etc.)? 0.5 mg/day

What condition was being treated with the drug? Hair loss

For how long did you take the drug (weeks/months/years)? 5 months

How old were you, and WHEN (date) did you start the drug? 29

How old were you when you quit, and WHEN (date) did you quit? 30

How did you quit (cold turkey or taper off)? cold turkey.

How long into your usage did you notice the onset of side effects? Quit because of gyno, side effects started after I quit.

What side effects did you experience that have yet to resolve since discontinuation? Had ED, extreme fatigue, brain fog, no libido and lethargy.

Sexual
[*] Loss of Libido / Sex Drive
[*] Erectile Dysfunction
[ ] Complete Impotence
[*] Loss of Morning Erections
[*] Loss of Spontaneous Erections
[*] Loss of Nocturnal Erections
[ ] Watery Ejaculate
[ ] Reduced Ejaculate
[ ] Inability or Difficulty to Ejaculate / Orgasm
[ ] Reduced Sperm Count / Motility

Mental
[*] Emotional Blunting / Emotionally Flat
[*] Difficulty Focusing / Concentrating
[ ] Confusion
[*] Memory Loss / Forgetfulness
[ ] Stumbling over Words / Losing Train of Thought
[ ] Slurring of Speech
[*] Lack of Motivation / Feeling Passive / Complacency
[ ] Extreme Anxiety / Panic Attacks
[*] Severe Depression / Melancholy
[ ] Suicidal Thoughts

Physical
[*] Penile Tissue Changes (narrowing, shrinkage, wrinkled)
[ ] Penis curvature / rotation on axis
[ ] Testicular Pain
[ ] Testicular Shrinkage / Loss of Fullness
[ ] Genital numbness / sensitivity decrease
[ ] Weight Gain
[ ] Gynecomastia (male breasts)
[ ] Muscle Wastage
[ ] Muscle Weakness
[*] Joint Pain
[ ] Dry / Dark Circles under eyes

Misc
[ ] Prostate pain
[*] Persistent Fatigue / Exhaustion
[ ] Stomach Pains / Digestion Problems
[ ] Constipation / “Poo Pellets”
[*] Vision - Acuity Decrease / Blurriness
[ ] Tinnitus (ringing or high pitched sound in ears)
[ ] Hearing loss
[ ] Increased hair loss
[ ] Frequent urination
[ ] Lowered body temperature

[ ] Other (please explain)

What (if any) treatments have you undertaken to recover from your side effects since discontinuation of the drug? Tried TRT and just about everything under the sun.

If you have pre or post-drug blood tests, what hormonal changes have you encountered since discontinuing the drug (please post your test results in the “Blood Tests” section and link to them in your post)? Didn’t have pre-bloods but they were fairly normal afterwards.

Anything not listed in the above questions you’d like to share about your experience?

Tell us your story, in your own words, about your usage and side effects experienced while on/off the drug.

---

Took finasteride for 5 months. I felt fine while taking it but it gave me gyno so I stopped. After stopping, I got ED, extreme fatigue, brain fog, no libido and lethargy. I tried just about everything over 11 years. I also tried testosterone treatment but it had almost no effect regardless of dosage.

I read a case study by Neurologist David Clark (link) where someone had similar symptoms but there was no mention of finasteride or PFS. His issue wasn’t the hormones being too low but rather too high which caused receptor issues so they decided to down regulate them.

My take on PFS is that the receptors become hyper sensitive due to getting so little DHT for a long period of time. So when things compensate or go back to normal, they are too sensitive and you end up in a miserable state.

I decided to test that by supplementing DHT (proviron) and despite it being a general feel-good hormone for most, I felt absolutely dreadful when taking it. My symptoms increased by 10x and I couldn’t function but it made me realize I was on to something. I felt like my options were either to permanently decrease DHT in some way or decrease the sensitivity of the receptors.

The receptors likely became hyper sensitive by getting so little DHT for a prolonged period of time while taking finasteride. So I tried the opposite to reverse the situation. I took a large amount of DHT (proviron) for 7 weeks at 200 mg per day to reduce receptor sensitivity to DHT.

At first, I felt absolutely miserable when doing so, it is the worst I’ve felt in my life and I was unable to do almost anything but after some weeks it became more tolerable as the receptors lost some of their sensitivity.

After stopping 7 weeks later (when I ran out of my proviron), things felt off for a few weeks but then after around two months I got back to my pre-PFS state. Now and for the past six months, I feel great, my libido is great, mental issues are gone, ED is gone. This after having PFS constantly for 11 years. My life is finally back.

I know people have strong opinions regarding PFS but I thought I’d post my story as perhaps it may give some insight to some or help someone.

[vkg1]

Thank you very much for coming back and sharing your story even though you are recovered.

[whathaveidone4669]

Thanks for coming back mate, wow that case study is very interesting.

[TenPiedad]

proviron at that doses will shut you down, and since proviron doesnt aromatises, you body will be lack of estrogens for long time, and since estradiol is neuroprotective you might end harming yourself even more.
Dont try this guys

[Sawproblemo]

@pal

Thanks for sharing! I always wondered about flooding the system with DHT and how that would affect receptors. I know that for many it has no effect or a negative effect, but glad it worked for you. Everyone is different after all.

Can you please elaborate on some of the other things you tried over this long time and what seemed to help, even if temporarily?

[Mcbbould]

Hey man,

Thanks for coming back. Did your vision clear up as well?

[NewYorker]

Would you mind adding more detail to this? After more than a decade of PFS, I’m getting desperate, and may try it.

[Sawproblemo]

Guys, that’s a great read he posted. I’m not the most scientific one here but it talks about feedback loop between receptors, hormones, and HPA axis and disruption of receptors.

Here’s an excerpt. I’m sure most of us know this stuff already:

“So here’s the thing, in general, you’re looking at hormone quantities, you can’t assess hormone receptors, and here is the basic kind of model. So you got your hypothalamus and pituitary gland, and those are gonna send signals to various glands to tell them to synthesize hormones. Those hormones then have to be transported, they have to converted peripherally, usually. And they have to be eliminated. Hormones have a half-life. You can’t just make a certain amount of testosterone and they hang out forever, it doesn’t do that. It has to be eliminated, biotransformed through your liver. The hormone has to be bound to a receptor, which means you have to have enough receptors, there’s gotta be transduction, transcription, a proteomic response, and then you have to have feedback, you have to have feedback from the periphery back to the hypothalamus that says, “Hey, we got it. “You said make testosterone, we made testosterone, “testosterone did its thing. “We’re telling you that we did it.” And here’s the problem, or the various problems, you can have a breakdown in any of these places. Any of those places. So you don’t just look at the quantities, ’cause quantities just tells you about synthesis. As much as you can, you want to try to think about these other issues, which we don’t have time to talk about today, but a little bit. So it’s real complicated, but the good thing is, you can work your way through it”

[heymomlook]

I tend to be skeptical of the “AR silencing” hypothesis but it’s stories like this that keep me interested. Oddly enough fasting (something for which many members here have had good experiences with) cleans out androgen receptors and apparently “resets or sensitizes” them. I personally feel quite horny after a long fast

[Tomas]

Anybody know thay doctor who explain what to do to figure out where is the problem coming from???

[whathaveidone4669]

There’s a video which the text is a transcript of at the top of the page, makes it easier to follow. Honestly seems like fantastic investigative work by that neurologist, if only majority of doctors were willing to approach problems by assessing symptoms and deductive reasoning. Instead what i’ve tended to experience is that docs make assumptions and simply dump us in the depressed/crazy category.

[heymomlook]

That’s what my GP has done. feels pretty bad.

I just wonder what the mechanism for this change is. Because on the one hand you have people who only crashed when they came off the drugs but the majority seem like they crashed while taking the drugs and symptoms just persisted after cessation… If the androgen flood hypothesis is correct, wouldn’t we see minimal side effects while taking the pills and much more severe complications afterwards

[synetic]

Congratulations on your liberation from the long tunnel of pain. Has the visual lust returned to perfection?

[Lostinaustin]

Any other way we can downregulate other than massive amount of proviron?

[Alekos]

Glad for you bro, I really am. Now my question is can you describe how would you take proviron 200 mg , I mean describe exactly time of the day before food or after, 200 at once or 100 and 100. Please be specific as much as you can. And again congrats and sorry that u had to deal with this shit for 11 damn years

[Lostinaustin]

Hey man, could you do the survey?

[Vvs1]

I think what’s working is he shut down his natural production, and his own body restarted production and naturally rebalanced itself.

Notice he said he felt off for a weeks after quitting Proviron, then everything went back to normal.

I feel like a restart is a common theme of guys that are cured. The YouTube commenter cure claim was HCG for 21 days, followed by clomid for 21 days. That’s basically a shutoff, then restart. (Plus a progesterone transdermal if that matters)

[anon22245532]

Has anyone taken the DUTCH test mentioned in the video?
https://dutchtest.com/product/dutch-complete-2/

And is there a test that can measure DHT? I can’t tell if the DUTCH test gives that level.

[anon22245532]

This one measures DHT:

DUTCH Sex Hormone Metabolites - DUTCH Test

[dae1]

Can you describe your ED better? Did your penis hang awkwardly? Did he change form and tamani? Did Viagra work on you?