Boosting dopamine through diet - big improvement

Therapeutic Efforts Supplements & Lifestyle
#1

Hi all,

I have been experimenting with food regimens since i first realized i had post-finasteride syndrome, six years ago. I have a main diet, that doesn’t change. And every two weeks or every month i tested something different like an extra food or supplement, to see if it could impact my well being and libido. Up untill April, the biggest contributions to my well being- as far as diet changes - had been:

  • A no caffeine diet (better sleep, calmer, etc)
  • A no milk diet (faster metabolism)

The list of what i ve tried is long, from Phosphatidyl Serine to Fava beans, from ‘all’ kinds of cheese to many kinds of dark chocolate. All gave me no improvement or only a mild short-lived improvement.

Ok, it may sound too simple, or hard to believe, but i have had great improvement, mentally and sexually (libido!) by adding the chocolate-hazelnut spread Nutella to my daily diet. I know… it doesn’t sound possible, it is way too simple. But remember we can all be dopamine deficient after Propecia, and dopamine is the sex drive neurotransmitter. This little stuff has hazelnut and chocolate, two dopamine boosters. The effect seems to be cumulative, so if you want to test it, try at least for a week. But don’t over eat it, chocolate has caffeine.

This is the way i have been doing:
I have about three tablespoons before breakfast and before dinner. I tried on every meal but this is the way it worked best for me, skiping one meal. I eat before the meals because i have a tendency of acid reflux after i took propecia and chocolate is not the best friend of this problem. Everytime i ejaculate, i eat nutella and i recover from the after ejaculation depression very fast!! I don’t have this problem anymore. I have not had this improvement with any other food. It is like fueling your dopamine ‘stock’ and preventing it daily from going down.
However i ve limited my ejaculations to three times a week (never twice in a row), mostly on alternate days. Man!! I am in peace… living well, having sex and feeling normal mentally.

If you want to try it, i believe you need to cut caffeine from the diet because chocolate has caffeine too. Also, since it has a lot of calories and fat, i have now a low fat diet, low sugar (besides the nutella) to compensate. I have not gained weight because i changed my main diet, but be careful, it is easy to gain weight on this stuff.

I wondered for a couple of weeks if i should post this here. But i ve been living like this since April and it has been so much better! I am calmer, sex is good, i really think it has made a difference in my well being and sex drive. I had to stop this regimen for a week because of the acid reflux and i realized how much it makes me feel better. So this is the reason i am posting. If it helps one person here, it is worth posting it. I don’t think this will benefit everybody. We all have tried different paths since quitting Propecia, and we also have different metabolisms and react different. But since it is not a medication and it is so easy to try, i think it is worth a shot.
If you are struggling with depression, try this!!!

#2

Haha, I guess this is as risk-free a treatment we could get. Only sideeffect is getting fat when using too much :smiley:

I find it hard to believe, but I guess there is no harm trying.

#3

I know… it is hard to believe indeed :slight_smile:

I am not saying it is the cure for PFS. But it has kept my depression problem in control. And i guess if i responded sexually also, it means PFS hit me harder on dopamine deficiency. Or maybe the use of prednisone combined with a faster metabolism (as i have posted on previous posts) have resolved other issues and the only lacking one for me was dopamine deficiency. In the past two years my metabolism has become faster and this improved the sexual issues. But the dopamine part was missing.

Man… try it… lol
It has to be a daily boost.
One way or another you ll have a good time :laughing:

#4

Very interesting, and as treatment options go this sounds among the most enjoyable! Can you give details on how its helped you libido-wise, if it’s not too embarrassing? Has it helped with ED (e.g. hardness, performance etc), or just with desire?

Thanks

#5

Hey davey,

It has helped mostly with desire and how enjoyable it feels. I had already improved sexually when my metabolism become faster in the last two years. But sex was still something not as intense as before. This is what has improved with the dopamine boosting. Feeling horny when seeing porn, more sensation on penis, much more volume ejaculated, having that urge to do it.

I believe it was a sum of factors and the dopamine boosting was the final piece of the puzzle for me.
The way i see it, this is what happened for me in the past 6 years:

  1. First i improved from the lack of Gaba/ alopregnanolone (i took Xanax for some time and it ended the crash symptoms for me). Since that period i have a caffeine free diet and avoid stress. Exercise mildly. These actions help keep Gaba/ Alopreg always balanced.

  2. The crash period made my allergies go out of whack and i developed some food allergies. Because of that, i was forced to take prednisone on many different occasions, to end food allergy episodes. This medication shuts down your ACTH production for a couple of days (this is what its supposed to do to calm down the immune system), and it restarts gradually. This involves both your pituitary and adrenals (which many people here think is involved in our problems). Also, I believe our condition has affected the glucocorticoid receptor, which is the receptor cortisol binds. In a twisted way, i was forced to take prednisone many times and ended up stimulating my glucocorticoid receptor, as prednisone binds to the same receptor.
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucocorticoid_receptor
    I am going to post a thread on this issue on theories.

  3. Then over the years i struggled to have a faster metabolism. I had gained 40 pounds right after i quit propecia, eating the same healthy food i ate all my life. This situation started to change for me after two episodes. First, i decided to take milk out of my diet. Somehow i got this idea in my mind that it was making me slow. It slowly got better, but it didn’t feel like me yet. Then, one day i had food poisoning from a salad. I had to go on a fasting for two days, my stomach couldnt hold anything or i would vomit. Turns out the fasting sped up my metabolism. In three months i lost 25 pounds, without taking any medication or changing anything in my diet. It was like a switch was turned on. Most of this weight was liquid retention, because i went from a bloating appearence to my normal appearance.

  4. By this time, erections were normal, i could have sex or masturbate normally (but felt weird after ejaculation). I was not horny though, and it did not feel very pleasurable. This is what has been improving in the last year and the dopamine boosting feels like the final puzzle for me. But there is another aspect. By eating Nutella i am raising my blood sugar levels a lot (pretty much a ‘sugar bomb’). This also has an influence on the glucocorticoid receptor.

In my opinion it is a combination of factors to improve sexually:
increase in gaba + glucocorticoid stimulation (so cortisol can bind) + faster metabolism (from hypo to hiper) + dopamine boost

#6

I also had a strange food experience that increased my libido. I had Chinese food over the weekend, and the next day, I was actually thinking about sex. Generally I could look at woman and say, wow she’s attractive, but I’d never have that primal urge to get it on. After the Chinese food, I felt like a male lion during mating season. I could imagine sex, and have the primal desire to do so.

#7

do u recall what u ate? did u drink alcohol?

#8

Vittujoo, it was just the fried rice and general tsos chicken. I’m going to try it again next weekend to see if it does anything again. I know the whole causation/correlation thing, so I don’t want to jump the gun here. I’ll test it out and reply if it does anything. Two days after I ate it (I had it two nights in a row), I was actually waking up thinking about sex, it was wonderful, haha.

#9

Hahaha… I really used to love Nutella as a kid. Wouldn’t it be amazing if this really helped? Tastes great AND makes my dick work?! Hell yeah!

Seriously though thanks for the personal insight corrieovip. I’ll give this a shot when I can afford the carbs.

#10

what do you mean by afford carbs?

#11

Hey Bryce,

I’m on a low carb cycle right now (cutting a little fat)… I’m probably going to carb up again in 4 weeks or so. Since joetz noted that he noticed a cumalitive effect I’ll try the nutella when I can eat carbs a little more generously instead of restricting it to a cheat day or something.

#12

^^^ corrieovip… not joetz… sometimes when I’m reading threads the usernames kind of blend together.

#13

Tried the exact same chinese food again over the weekend. No improvement. Sigh.

#14

eating a very healthy diet is a good idea and may bring some improvements … but honestly, eating chinese food, or whatever, is not going to solve our issues

#15

Have any of you tried to boost dopamine with supplements like Tyrosine or Phenylalanine? I just got a test back saying I’m really low in dopamine, so I’m trying the diet route as well as these dopamine precursor supplements.

#16

What kind of test was this? What else did it say?

#17

It’s a blood test for catecholamines: epinephrine, norepinephrine, and dopamine. I think that the dopamine test measures the levels in your body, not specifically in your brain. But I’m assuming it’s a decent proxy for what’s in the brain. I got it done at Labcorp.

My results:

Dopamine 15 (0-48 pg/ml)
Norepinephrine 408 (0-874 pg/ml)
Epinephrine 91 (0-62 pg/ml) HIGH

#18

Merrychristmas- very interesting that you had these tests done. Do you have a really good endo that can interpret these results for you? Perhaps a neuro-endo that can somehow fit your results into a broader picture of what’s going on here.

#19

For a good part of the last couple years, I mostly dropped sugar from my diet. I was rather strict about it in the beginning, but temptation began to win out as the months progressed. I am not completely convinced that trying to eliminate sugar from my diet was the best idea, as I relied on it so heavily for so many years.

Sure mass sugar consumption isn’t the best for one’s health, but it is known to up dopamine. Some of my better surges in libido lately have come from large amounts of sugar intake. Tonight in fact I downed a monster chocolate shake from a fast food chain (they gave me the fish tank size… two sizes larger than I wanted) and while I felt like I was dying because it was just sitting in my stomach and would not digest… I felt a distinct dopamine high. Was watching a team of mine on TV and getting very into the game, and also got rather aroused while viewing pornography.

That is all.

#20

I do have a doctor who is looking at this. I’m supposed to talk to him this week. I can report back then.