Brain fog with Propecia (my story)

Symptoms Neurological
#1

Hi, I wanna share with you guys my story (my odyssey) with Propecia. English is not my native language so I’m sorry for any possible mistake.
I started to take Propecia 5 months ago and I stopped yesterday after I stumbled upon this website.
I had lots of mental side effects, mainly mental.
Here is an incomplete list:

  1. I can’t concentrate or focus on anything anymore
  2. I have problems with finding the right word and this affects my speech very badly.
  3. My short term memory has been vastly affected as well, I’m very forgetful.
  4. I have problems to put my thoughts into speech
  5. I even have problems organizing my thoughts.
  6. I have problems reading. I have to re-read sentences many times before understanding the meaning of the words. It’s like my mind can’t “picture” the word.
  7. I confuse languages. Sometimes I speak a mix of italian, spanish and english without a reason.
  8. My self esteem has gone downhill.

I didn’t have any of those problems before starting taking Propecia. I’ve always been a guy with no problems focusing/concentrating on things and before taking Propecia I was one of the best student in my university.

As I said before I stopped the medication yesterday after finding your posts.

Now I don’t know what to do.
I’m trying to eat as healthy as possible. My diet is composed by lots of veggie, chicken breast, salmon, steaks, fruits and whole wheat foods. I eliminated from my diet all processed foods, junk foods, sugar, white wheat foods, tuna, alcohol and coffee.
I exercise 4 times a week.
I take a supplement of omega 3 and a multivitamins.

Hope that’s enough to get rid of my brain fog.
I’ll let you know.

Good luck to everybody.

#2

Hey Gosh900,

it’s almost scary to read that, because EACH of your statements could have been made by me. While reading I looked twice at your nickname to make sure it wasn’t an old post of me. And you’re describing it VERY well and precise. I once made a list of my side effects and I know how hard it is to describe it and, even worse, how impossible it is to make someone believe, be it doctors, family or friends.

My story: I started Propecia when I was ~18 years old and took it about 6 years until the age of 24. Now I am 26 (turning 27 next month) (don’t know why my signature shows 25 years, have to correct it soon).

What’s interesting is that you’re also mostly suffering from mental side effects. Though I am also experiencing bad physical, non-sexual sides (of which most started or got worse about half a year ago) like muscle weakness, joint pain (I guess from bone loss), blurry vision, gum recession, returning inflammations all over the body).
But it also started of with only mental sides.

What I would recommend you first if not already done) is a blood test. I haven’t done the whole recommended blood-test yet (propeciahelp.com/testing) but those are the blood levels I took and are destroyed:
SHBG 59,8 nmol/l (16,5 - 55,9) far to high
Free Testosteron 23,38 (35 - 92,60) far to low (caused by high SHBG)
DHEA-S 125 µg/dl (160 - 449)
Vit D 18,7 ng/ml (>30)

So maybe it’s a good idea to start with these to see if there are similarities between our cases.

Beside that I think you’re on a good way in keeping a healthy diet and sports. I am going for the approach of cdnuts (user of this forum who has fully recovered) now:
viewtopic.php?f=22&t=8271

which contains (among others):

  1. Fasting (i benefited from a fast back in 2014 too but had to break up cause I was far too thin even before I started)
  2. Paleo diet
  3. HIIT (high intense interval training) in combination with “normal” work out

But first go for a blood test (so that you can compare afterwards).
I’m really glad you made it to the forum… so we can hopefully benefit from each others experiences.

Dreiser

BTW: As you might have noticed, English isn’t my native language as well :wink:

#3

Hey! how are you doing? My symptoms have improved a lot! I think I have found the cure

After extensive research I think the one thing that causes all our problems is called: yeast overgrowth.