Again, when I asked him what his success rate was, he said “well a lot of people dont come back so I assume they are better” Unfortunately we all realize this is complex and a simple fix of TRT wont do the trick.
To give you a summary of my story: since age of 27 been 1Y of Finasteride, 1Y Saw Palmetto, ~5Y Dutasteride, 6Y nothing, and then in December 2012 10 Days of Dutasteride wreaked destruction in my body.
My values are out of whack.
Test | Value | Reference Range
FSH | 4.6 | 1.6-80 mIU/mL
LH | 2.9 | 1.5-9.3 mIU/mL
Estradiol | <15 | < OR - 39 pg/mL
Vit D 25-OH Total | 100 | 30-100 ng/mL
Testosterone:
Total | 836 | 250-1100 ng/dL
Free | 92.7 | 46.0-224.0 pg/mL
Bioavalable | 190.6 | 110.0-575.0 ng/dL
SHBG | 46 | 10-50 nmol/L
Albumin, Serum | 4.5 | 3.6-5.1 g/dL
DHT | 70 | 16-79 ng/dL
3Alpha-Diol-G | 3067* | 190-900 ng/dL
In my case the PFS symptoms (loss of noct/spont erection, difficult erection under stimulation) can’t be explained by low DHT, or low DTH metobolites: the 3Alpha-Diol-G is the highest the doctor has ever seen.
I’ve been experimenting with food and supplements, and an interesting thing is that all the foods that cause me a relapse are anti-estrogen:
Borage Oil
Primrose Oil
Astaxanthin
Fish Oil
Flaxseed Oil
Nettle Root
Lycopene
Avocado
Silica
Chlorella
Ubiquinol QH 200mg
Nettle Root, for one, is a 5AR inhibitor along with most oils.
Seems like he just throws everyone on TRT and sees who sticks, so I don’t get how he could have improved as many people as he claims.
I don’t see why people still take him seriously. He charges $600 out of pocket for one visit. If he “treats” a PFS patient over 3-4 visits, thats $1800-$2400 for him right there. He’s just profiteering.
I’m afraid you are totally on the wrong track. For the follow-up visits he charges only a small fraction.
Before judging his professionalism you should have a session with him.
Yes, I can vouch for this. First, the initial charge, at least as of last fall, was more like 400 or 450. Still a lot, but not 600. Maybe he’s raised it, I don’t know. But more importantly, I had multiple follow-ups with him over the phone – often extensive conversations lasting 20-30 minutes – that he didn’t charge me for, as we assessed my reaction to treatments and possible next steps.
I really feel inclined to speak up for his professionalism. No, I don’t think he has the silver bullet to treat this. But he’s not adamant that he does. Everytime I talk with him, he’s listening carefully to what I’m saying, asking questions, proposing possible explanations/strategies. He’s open to ideas that I bring in. And as I said, I have gotten some results through him. For whatever reason, the T has dramatically improved the awful urinary symptoms I had for months after quitting. (My best guess: These were caused by physical changes in the prostate directly related to taking/withdrawing Propecia; actually have seen studies that point to T injections as a solution to lower urinary tract symptoms: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2517082/) In terms of sexual side effects and other disturbing changes to my body, the treatment only worked for a short time. Disappointing, obviously, and I guess consistent with what others here have experienced. Anyway, I think hes a good faith operator who’s genuinely interested in getting to the bottom of this, even if he doesn’t have the cure.
Recent quitter- my urinary urgency problems cleared up within two months without doing anything. That my point he is selling people as a healer and his treatment protocol is completely ineffective. People need to know this and stop wasting money on a proclaimed expert in the field. If you want someone to hold your hand and talk about theories, I’ll do it for free…just donate a little to the foundation.
Hi Fintruth,
How did you dead with your urinary problems ? Ive had this problem for over a year now and it wont go away.
Oh, he was at least semi right about one thing, though. When I read the part about dudes’ anguish suppressing their HPTA/HPGA axis I thought that was total bullshit, but then I looked into it and I found several very in depth studies supporting it. Extreme stress (like many of us go through, miserable from this condition) can indeed suppress that axis and blunt your recovery. I still don’t believe that he just put them on TRT and they felt great and everything was peachy like he says, but I do think it is important to remember the role stress can play in recovering from this shit.
extreme stress or high cortisol? I think he believes that we have elavated cortisol blood levels because of our “anguish”, he is wrong…there is something more insidious going on. He sees it as, poor sexual functioning leads people to depression and anguish. Thats not the case at all.
I could be wrong but I don’t think he mentioned cortisol. I think he said stress suppresses the axis directly, and the study I found seemed to support this. I’m trying to find it now but I forgot what exactly I googled to come across it in the first place. Anyway, it’s not the root cause of PFS and his supposed method of addressing this issue is bunk. All I was getting at was being in a constant state of anguish and stress can indeed blunt your recovery by suppressing your HPTA axis or whatever function, which before I looked into it I thought was silly. So I thought I’d pass that info along. It may be what’s playing a part when people take a long break from the forum and chill out and see minor improvements.
Glad yours cleared up on their own. Mine didn’t. I can’t even begin to describe the hell of living with a constant, 24/7 need to pee from last June through last November. I consulted numerous urologists, tried all sorts of treatments/diet regimens/exercises. NOTHING had any effect. Even if I had no sexual issues, this would have been totally unbearable. And then, with that first T injection…rapid, dramatic improvement. Like I said, I do not know exactly what the connection is. It may be that my urinary stuff is completely separate from my sexual stuff – that one purely relates to the prostate (and to whatever direct healing effect T has on the prostate) and the other is a more complex hormonal/neurological problem. Whatever it is, I have no reason to believe my urinary condition was about to improve without the T. And it has not fully cleared up – I still will get really bad days. But they are uncommon now – and before the T, I literally had zero good days. “Urinary symptoms” is a very broad term; maybe you were experiencing something different from me.
Also, as for the stress/cortisol issue…I had the same conversation w/ Jacobs and he told me what he told Cap, apparently – that overwhelming stress can inhibit/shut it down, no connection to high cortisol needed. I think I agree with Cap – there’s got to be some connection. It was when I went through the most stressful episode of my life that I lost my libido and got erection issues while on Propecia. But I’d had other side effects before that – so it’s not a major stress episode caused everything.
Yeah I had a similar thing happen. I never had the 2 week recovery then crash most people have. I came off the drug and felt relatively fine for about six weeks. Not 100%, but good enough to not be too concerned about it and getting better slowly. Then I found this forum and another site describing someone’s 5 year side effect ordeal and TOTALLY lost my shit. I immediately crashed (bedridden for 2 weeks) and this whole thing began.
That’s the other thing that happened to me – panic over discovering stories like you find at this site. Basically, I’m a very anxious person to begin with, but I had two major stress episodes that make it harder for me to sift through what exactly is happening:
#1: While I was on the drug (14 months), I went through a breakup. It happened suddenly (from my viewpoint) and it was easily the most traumatic thing I’d ever dealt with. Was crying/not sleeping for days, just kind of losing my mind. This is the exact point my libido/erection issues hit – and so I connected them. Told myself that the break-up had temporarily knocked out my libido. Did not connect it to Propecia.
#2: A month after the break-up, I went to a sleep specialist because…well, because I wasn’t sleeping. As a routine matter at the start, he asked what drugs I was on. I mentioned Propecia. He reacted with genuine concern – told me it had been linked to prostate cancer and that there was some class action suit taking shape and that I shouldn’t be on it. Something about his tone of voice really shook me. As soon as I got home, I started googling, found this site and many others, and went into a full-scale panic – holy shit, what have I done to myself, etc. Flushed the pills down the toilet immediately. After this, there was no withdrawal surge/crash that many report here. Just the onset of those urinary issues I described and some weird sweating changes. Basically, I’ve been in a constant state of panic/depressions since that day – and that was June 2012. The urinary stuff was so bad and so constant for so long that it made it even tougher for me to try to relax. My mind has not been off this for more than 20 seconds since that day.
So, long story short, I guess I wonder some of the same things you do Cap, about the role this stress/anxiety/panic might/could be playing. Not saying it’s everything, but I do think it’s something. Otherwise the coincidence of having my libido kick out literally as soon as I was dumped last year would be too much.
Yeah, I’ve always been very anxious as well. That’s why I was so easily duped into taking Fin even when my hair was fine, only receding slightly. A lot of people with PFS seem to have been anxious people beforehand. I doubt that’s coincidence. But that’s all just theorizing. Now we just have to focus on getting better, and the only way what we’ve been talking about relates to that is just trying to relax, I guess. I was planning on starting yoga soon to maybe help with that.
And what’s made that so hard is that being an anxious person, I haven’t been able to stop, relax and let myself calm down without thinking “Am I feeling any better yet?” for more than 20 seconds since last year. I’m intrigued by some of the recovery/partial recovery stories here – the ones that involve diet/nutrition/exercise etc. These people seem to chalk this up to different explanations, but I wonder if the common thread is just embracing a healthy lifestyle, both physically and mentally, and genuinely calming down. Easier said than done for someone like me though.
as unpopular as this may sound, I do believe the conditon is potentially self-limiting. The problem is how long and how much damage is occured in the interim.
I know exactly how you feel, man. I hate it.
I’m sure it’s a factor. Reminds me of what my friend that used to work in a hospital would tell me about cancer patients. Those who gave up and were miserable tended to kick the bucket much sooner than those who resolved to fight it and be optimistic. I’m not saying being positive can cure anyone, but extreme stress and misery can certainly impede the body’s healing power and normal function. I think a lot of it ties in to droit’s theory as well.
And I’ve seen throughout my life how health anxiety can become a self-perpetuating thing for me. I remember someone here claiming to have cured himself w/ a diet/vitamin regimen. He said it showed that it was “leaky gut,” whatever that is, and he got jumped all over. My reaction was: It probably had nothing to do with leaky gut – it was just a function of the guy living a really physically healthy lifestyle, which probably had all sorts of great hormonal and neurological consequences, and mentally convincing himself he was getting better, which encouraged a positive self-reinforcing cycle.