Hey all, just posting to join on having PAIS. I’m a 25 year old male who began TRT at 20, and had taken OTC AI’s before Arimidex/Anastrozole, but primarily have taken Arimidex/Anastrozole at up to .5 mg/day to manage e2 sides.
They very first time I used this drug I can remember having a terrible reaction. My dose was around .5 mg or so and in solution from UG lab, and I remember almost instantly having a panic attack/feeling spaced out, and later that day I went swimming and had a brutal cold shock/diving reflex like I’d never has before in the water - like my autonomic nervous system was not reacting properly.
Since then my e2 levels have been kept fairly low, and when they rise, I have a strange mix of both high and low e2 symptoms. Prior to ever using an AI, I did a cycle of testosterone without it, and felt amazing! Huge energy, libido, muscle pump etc. I never should’ve touched it.
I am still on arimidex .5 mg EOD, which seems to keep me functioning somewhat normally.
Here are some symptoms I experience when my e2 rises and I stop taking arimidex, in order of most to least frequent:
- fatigue
- insomnia, and very shallow or restless sleep
- massive anxiety around people/feeling disconnected from others
- extremely rapid hair loss/fragile hair, ESPECIALLY on the sides of my head around my ears, and otherwise in a patchy/apparently random pattern, NOT typical male pattern baldness patterns
- bloating in my face
- puffy and sore nipples
- poor erection quality
- painful/swollen testicles and lower abdomen
- constipation
- rapid muscle loss/ feeling flat
- bones and joints feeling frail and painful, e.g. joint pain, a crumbling or stiff sensation in my spine and elbows, almost like the joints are frozen
- severe fluctuations in body odor (arm pits can go from smelling sweet/estrogenic like a woman’s, to musky or smelling like cat piss
- tingling in my arms, legs, feet and hands
- feelings of depression, dissociation, anhedonia, and anxiety
- inability to focus/ poor cognition
- decreased memory
- feelings of vertigo
- and when e2 becomes very high, I even get delusions and visual hallucinations, like seeing flashes of light, trails behind objects, or objects in peripheral vision that are not really there
When e2 is low, it is pure hell and I get feelings of pain in my wrists and forearms and through my whole body. I even suspect this alters my cartilage or collagen production in my skin and face, which has caused increased stretch marks, wrinkles, and ashy or dry skin, even on my palms and tops of my hands where it’s never happened before.
Taken together, I believe all of my symptoms in some way resemble a systemic disease or auto-immune condition, which I suspected may be the early onset of MS, schizophrenia, or Parkinson’s. I even had an MRI done in 2018 to check for lesions for MS, which came back fine, though I’m thinking of having another done as symptoms have progressed. Estrogens play a critical role in all of these conditions, and this is heavily noted in research.
In fact many, many of the symptoms of this condition, which appears to be progressive and neurodegenerative, appear to resemble Parkinson’s or dementia, especially changes in my autonomic nervous system. This is so frightening that I’m hardly able to acknowledge it, as I am only 25 years old. OH and issues with random muscle spasms, poor fine motor control, and speech/vocal articulation are present also.
Basically I feel like a shell of myself and more similar to my 68 yr old father than a 25 yr old man due to all of this. There appear to be both good and bad days, and I think dopamine production plays a large role, as well as e2 receptor overload/knockout like some have mentioned, as well as DIFFERENTIAL e2 action across different tissues - my bones and joints appear to experience low e2, with pain and cracking, while my nipples may be sore, etc. etc. I suspect LH is somehow implicated also, perhaps LH insensitivity due to overload from repeated AI use.
Still there are days when I feel back to my old self, though this may be wishful thinking and at this phase I’m still optimistic about a recovery, and it can be hard to separate my symptoms from ones I may have dealt with organically (MPB is common in my family, though nobody has it in the atypical fashion like I do).
Please, has ANYONE noticed any improvement in this?
