agreed.
i second this. i think you may be getting people confused m_81… ihatepropecia_702 is not seeing dr g.
Ops, my bad. I was dead sure solonjk said he was taking it in the very first page of the thread.
I added cgj1’s recovery to the list of people recovered via boosting cortisol or thyroid hormones – he recovered with clomid and thyroid meds, a la Dury. The list of recoveries is at page 2 of this thread.
He has been feeling good for only one month though. We’ll see if it lasts.
I think Solonjk took cortisone along with cipro which made him really better a few days after, but then he had a lot of other issues due to the interaction between cortisone and quinolones.
the doc in Greece don’t advice to take anti inflammatories of cortisone families because for him the inflammation is due to infection.
but i think once you are sure the not to have latent infection it migt be something to try, (being cautious).
You taking Preg when you already have high cortisol will probably mean the supplemented preg would travel down the DHEA therefore increasing testosterone etc. You shouldn’t just take the preg unless you think you need it for balance - although it does seem to help many guys seemingly restore balance even when there isn’t clear anomolies in their bloods.
The low t3 but high reverse t3 in theory should be easily treated with T3 as you are currently doing. Continue experimenting with that - speak to moonman perhaps, he did this successful as did JN (I believe).
That’s probably too little T3. I took pregnenolone with high cortisol because I had brain fog, i.e., the pregn got all converted to cortisol, and little was left to boost neurotransmitters.
I have been feeling great on IsoCort which is a plant derived cortisol. All my systic acne dissapeared. Energy is back. Since quiting finasteride I would feel exausted after one outing a day. Now I have energy all day regardless of what I am doing. I have been able to get my temp up too. And I find the higher my temp the less deterred and more attracted I am to the though of sex.
I was having pannic attacks and I think all of this has been pretty much solved via the isocourt and the pregnelelone.
Body temps are a great and cheap way to measure your thyroid adrenal. This way actualy measures how much thyroid hormone is hitting your cells. I think I need something stronger than isocourt and maybe some florinef because my aldosterone is low. I am really sure that if I can maintain a good body temp from when I wake up till a few hours before I sleep most, if not all my problems including libido will be solved.
But right now, cortisol and maybe the pregnenelone are helping greatly.
I am not sure If i have damaged addrenals. My cortisol is low thought the day. If my addrenals are damaged I do not know if the preg will actually convert to cortisol.
Also if you are going to try pregnenolone, i think that over the counter stuff is not strong enough. I read the body makes 20 - 30 mg per day. Transdermal T has an absorbtion rate of 10% if pregnenolone is the same you will need 300mg for a replacement dose. You will need atleast 10% cream. Replacement cortisol dose is 20 - 40mg. So that life flow pregnenelone stuff won’t do it unless your absorbing it all which I doubt. If you do not take a replacement dose you could just be suppressing what your putting out and therefore be making no progress.
Anyway make sure you take your temps throughout the day. Its cheap and a very good way to see if you have thyroid / adrenal issues.
So so far cortisol has been great to me.
Where are you getting the high strength Pregnenolone?
I hope the results last Vincent
I got it prescribed by a doctor. Compounding pharmacies make it. Perhaps you could make it yourself I am not sure.
I think it makes sence that your libido could be shut off if your body temperature is not notmal. If your body temp is not normal then it means your body must conserve its energy and may shut of any systems which are not needed, like libido? So even if you are on heaps of test and you have thyroid issues it could mean that you still wont get antt improvement in libido, this is what happened to me.
I know the cortisol is helping me. As for the pregnenolone, I am not sure yet as I am taking them together. I started with just the isocourt and that by itself helped me.
If my adrenal glands are damaged (adrenal dysfunction) this may mean that pregnenelone may not be converted to cortisol?
As for panic attacks, it makes perfect sense that you will have them if your cortisol is low. Your body can not deal with stress so you pretty much explode if you have even a small amount of stress that you need to deal with.
I still can;t get my temp perfect on this route, but it is significantly higher than prior to taking the cortisol. And I always feel good when my temp is high. I think I may have a chance in recovering my libido if I can keep it up all day.
At this stage I feel that there is no point messing with your sex hormones until you have normal thyroid / adrenal function.
I was able to get my libido back a few months ago when on a small dose of arimidex. It only came back for a few days. And I was never able to reproduce it. I hear estrogen further inhibits cortisol so perhaps, during the brief recovery period I was able to push my adrenal glands to secreat more cortisol which caused the recovery. I know that when I stayed on the anistrozol after my recovery faded I screwed up my joints exercising. Cortisol is a treatment for joint arthritis.
So having messed up cortisol levels will screw up many things in your body. My cortisol silivary test was low throughout the day and below range at night.
I am planing to get some hydro cortisol and florinef if I cant get my temperature to 37 for the fair share of the day.
Also in terms of erectile function, I am sure this has an effect. I am able to pop woods in just seconds when I am feeling well.
I wish I understood how important a measure body temp was when this shit all started.
HOW DOES MY TEMPERATURE DIAGNOSE HYPOTHYROIDISM? Generally, the average temperature of an adult with a healthy thyroid and a healthy metabolism is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 37.0 degrees Celsius, and that occurs around mid-afternoon or 3 pm. So if you take your mid-afternoon temp and find it in low 98′s or even in the 97′s, you have been given a strong clue that you may be hypothyroid. And a few report their mid-afternoon temp being in the 96′s. BRRRR.
Another temperature clue occurs first thing in the morning before you raise from your bed. Dr. Broda Barnes, a doctor who paid attention to clinical presentation and prescribed the pre-reformulated Armour, found that a healthy before-rising morning basal temp should be between 97.8 – 98.2. If it’s higher, you may be hyperthyroid, and if it’s lower, you are most likely hypothyroid. He also recommended under-the-arm temperature testing, but patients have found oral to be just as effective.
stopthethyroidmadness.com/temperature/
This is also valid for cortisol issues too. You will also find that people loose their libido and erections according to their thyroid/cortisol situation too.
Ie : forum.mesomorphosis.com/mens-health-forum/armour-issues-with-libido-134280801.html
Is this guy one of us?
I took my second dose of Hydrocortisone today. Made me feel bad. I am also worried about what it could be doing to me. You hear that you can not apply cortisone cream to the skin constantly or it will thin. What is happening to my insides when I take HydroCortisone 
. Anyway I was feeling like shit. But it did get my temp up to 37. I was lyning in bed a few hours ago feeling really bad. Temp was 36.4. I then applied 30mg life flo pregnenelone to my arms. I can tell you… I am feeling much much much better! I wonder if taking cortisone can suppress other pituitary hormones? Anyway after the application of pregnenelone back to 36.8.
I wonder if when I got my libido back a few months ago on arimidex then it disappeard it was something to do with my sex hormones stealing pregnenelone at the expense of cortisone. I remember there was a period after I my libido disappeared I felt terrible.
Perhaps if I can keep my pregnenelone up and try the arimidex again I may be in luck?
Anyway I can tell you that the pregnenelone does do something.
Awesome.
I agree that the counter stuff won’t do anything for most of us. I needed more than 500 mg of TD pregnenolone per day in order to treat brain fog and anxiety. I’ve been on that dose for about 10 months. Then, I started feeling like it was too much and decreased the dose. Currently, I’m taking only 160 mg per day (80 in the morning, 80 in the evening) and I’m feeling pretty good. I don’t think that the adrenal glands are physically damaged or that taking high doses for long time is bad.
That’s great, but what about libido? In my case, boosting cortisol helped with ED but not much with libido. Being on cortisol boosting protocol didn’t help raise my T and my free T levels.
If your body tells you to decrease the doses, then you might want to consider this option. My body has been “telling” it to me recently, and I’ve been feeling better since decreasing the doses.
I am still experimenting with this stuff, IsoCourt, Pregnenelone and Hydro cortisone along with some adrenal extracts and adrenal support vitamins. Maybe at first it made some difference to my libido. When I started the IsoCOurt. Not a major change but I did do the porn stimulation test when i first started and I was able to get wood in less than a minute. On the pregnenelone I do not seem to have improvements in this department. Maybe progesterone is going too high? 10mg of hydrocortisone seemed too much. I took it and did not feel good. I am also worried what it may be doing to my insides? Cortisol breaks down tissue.
“I don’t think that the adrenal glands are physically damaged or that taking high doses for long time is bad.”
I hope this is the case, I am curious what could be causing my low cortisol?
My I tested my ACTH it was a 4.5 on the scale of 1 - 12. This was about a year ago, I only tested my cortisol recently. But I guess that back then my cortisol was low too.
I have heard that some kind of immune system cells can block the ACTH receptors, so when you get an infection your cortisol will down regulate and allow your immune system to attack the invader.
And I think chilln says that low thyroid also effects the adrenals function. My tsh was low, t3 and t4 were in the top half of the range. Rt3 was high but in range, I guessed this was caused by low cortisol not allowing my thyroid to function as usual.
I am still wondering how I got my libdio back for a short period on arimidex 0.1 E2D. But then I crashed. I remember after a while on the arimidex I felt bad. And hurt my joints in my hand. I lowerd dose, stopped, tried again. Could not seem to get the libido back. Perhaps my pregnenelone was all stolen and made into sex hormones because my estrogen dipped low. My libido dipped low, but then my cortisol went really low and this caused me to feel bad? I am not sure but I do know I did get my libido back.
My testicles feel enlarged like they are trying hard produce something?
In terms of energy, that is where pregnenelone and cortisoal have made the biggest difference. Before I ran out of energy after a small outing. On these things I seem to never run out of enegy, so far.
vince, if you are currently on cortisol-thyroid treatment and are unsure of what should happen then you should def. spend a lot of time/most of your time reading about the regiment and how it should be done imo. i don’t mean to belittle but cortisol is a pretty drastic medicine to your body and when you are feeling good and non-fatigued, i’d do everything to study that shit before you start getting problems again.
i guess read on JN’s story from the beginning, Stop the Thyroid Madness and some other assorted Adrenal Fatigue-cortisol treatment sites. Good luck man.
The problem is that, there is really a lot of controversy over adrenal insufficiency. Some people say there is no such thing as adrenal fatigue. I have also read that if you loose one adrenal gland the other one will double it size and make up for the lost gland. So my cortisol is low. I am trying to work out what is causing that. It is really pretty complicated. If you take HC you will suppress ACTH and then have many other missing hormones. If you apply HC to your skin it will slowly breakdown your skin. What is it going to do to your insides when you take the tablet?
I also have over range eosiniphils(white blood cells). This can be an indicator of a parasite or adrenal insufficiency. Now can a parasite cause adrenal insufficiency by lowering cortisol to allow more white blood cells to attack the invader?
My ACTH was just below mid last time I tested it. So that seems to suggest my body is not screaming at my adrenals to increase cortisol output. Perhaps I need to test ACTH again.
Increased body temperatures have made me feel alert all day. I have been taking pregnenelone and some adrenal support supps + glandualr. Libido is still 0 at this stage.
I am just anoyed because I had my libido back on arimidex for a few days. Over those few days all other symptoms also disappeared from what I remember. A few days after I lost my positive benefit from arimidex I felt bad. I felt I wanted to just go to bed. I really am curtious to know what happened here? Did my pregnenelone get stolen to make sex hormones to make up for lost estrogen? Then did this send my cortisol crashing?
I have read stop the thyroid madness book. I read the section on adrenals. I also read the Wilson book and another book. I think there is more to it than resting the adrenals to increase cortisol.
It sounds like you are thinking the right questions really. It’s the same question i have been wondering too. Could there be some kind of reason for taxed adrenals eg. infection or parasites? I don’t know why but for me, my prostatitis treatment nearly cured me from hypoglycemia/adrenal fatigue and chronic fatigue. Well, my eyesight improved and my energies tripled. Strange improvements and losses in sexual sides.
Now, i’m not sure if it’s the infection but it sure SO FAR seems to overlap with my improvements. I didn’t even change my diet to non-carb or non-allergic one during it and i don’t think zero exercise plus lots of sun can cause this, that’d be a miracle improvement from d-vitamin for any finasteride sufferer.
What i need to do is that next summer, i go to the treatment again and try to kill my infection…but this is awfully far away so i can’t in any way try to confirm any condition. Argh.
But yes, i’m pretty much echoing your thoughts (IS THERE ANYONE THERE there t h e r e t h e).
EDIT yo also have you tested what foods you are allergic to NOW? The IgG test where you test the specific foods to your blood sample. that can wear your adrenals out (even when you don’t have visible symptons) and i’m planning to check that out next.
today my first week after T4 meds (thyroxine), i feel mentally very different than pre-T4 times(best of 2 years of PFS -without any med’s used-) and also my lower back pain has decreased a bit(not BS/placebo effect).