jjbunch, This has to be one of the absolute worst ideas I have ever heard. You stand to hurt yourself much more by messing with Saw. You must have no concept of how bad this condition can get. Anyone cheering on this type of experimentation is asinine. There are people on this board in a real bay way due to Saw. It can be just as bad as fin & sometimes worse. Some of the suicides were from Saw. I suggest you stop immediately. The data coming back on these 5ar blockers is absolutely horrific. 5ar blockers damage the brain. steer clear! You are on the wrong path and it should be obvious.
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Yes, but what you’re presenting is absolutely not what you want to happen and is why this is a bad idea. We have a proven significant upregulation of the AR already, and that’s likely why further 5ar inhibition can sometimes give a temporary improvement followed by an eventual worsening. As this is what caused the issue in the first place, and as MCI says the risk is huge, I thought I’d better point this out.
my condition came from finasteride, I’ve lived long enough with these effects. Something as trivial as saw doesn’t phase me anymore. I’ll update this post with how it goes. Just take me as an experiment to cure a cause. Nothing more.
Why not try homeopathetic dilluted finasteride? I think SP is far more dangerous
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Update: (I will also add this information to the top post)
I tried Saw for 3 days, one dose of 160mg in the morning, one at night.
Over the course of the three days, I seemed to wake up just a little happier. A little less anxiety, a little more “myself.” I was by no means cured and it did little to nothing for libido.
(impatience warning, please do not do as I did): Two days ago I swallowed a ton of Saw. Probably at least ten capsules, around 1600 mgs. I slept well and woke up feeling revitalized. (It should also be known that I have been acclimating to a new work schedule which may have been slightly why I felt better waking up). I had an erotic dream, something I hadn’t had for a while. Also, for the interested, early in the days I masturbated. It was nothing crazy. Later that night, my erection and orgasm were back nearly full force. It was such a sweet sight to see my dick was not permanently smaller than prefs.
Anyway, I didn’t take any saw that night, fearing I might overdo it after taking such a handful the day before. Today, I woke up feeling fine. I went to work, did my shit, felt no fatigue and little brain fog. My balls felt much different as well. Instead of feeling somewhat inflamed, they felt like they were full of semen. A nice sensation. I later masturbated and had an even better erection which took little stimulation to keep and granted me a nice orgasm.
We are all used to people reporting their sexual effects, but I do apologize for masturbatory talk. It just feels kind of weird.
Anyway, this could all be placebo for what I know. I could be awaiting another crash as we speak, so I don’t want anyone to try this yet but I do feel there is some promise to upregulating via inhibition cycling.
I will continue this experiment and see what follows. I also am fond of administering SAW at night as I feel the body does most of it’s recovering at night, perhaps recovering aspects of the neurons and steroids of the brain more efficiently during sleep. Anyways, I will stop for now and post when I have additional content. Thanks for reading.
Taking fin/saw/or any other 5AR inhibitor will do the same things. I think this route should only be used if you’re completely impotent because you’ve already hit the bottom in that regard. There’s a guy named Cheerburglar on reddit who improved his libido/erections by taking fin over and over again. He didn’t return to normal but he improved. You can read all about in this thread I made: Using Fin To Replace Androgens?
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I agree that you may only wish to pursue this route if you’ve hit rock bottom. Also, thank you for providing the original quote, I knew I had seen it before but I could not find it. Cheeseburglar and a few other accounts are compelling enough for me to try it. I would advise no one else try it unless they are fully aware nothing good may come from it.
I also wish to provide some support to people suffering if it does help me. Add another data point.
I stated this in my thread too, but just be aware you may have hit rock bottom in terms of sexual side effects but you can always get new side effects in other parts of the body. For example you could get tinnitus and there’s no cure for that once you get it. So it’s still really risky. I believe I read in old posts on this forum that you can go from “life being annoying with side effects” to “I want to kill myself” so it really is a last resort.
And there have been people who have recovered from sexual side effects years after they quit just by doing nothing. So I’d advise waiting a few years before taking finasteride again if you’re new to PFS.
Feels great again today. I took 6 capsules last night, I feel fine, even somewhat aggressive. I’m going to stop posting here for some time because I’m getting sick of being told “you shouldn’t do this” or that from people that don’t seem to have gone the route I am taking currently.
I will report back maybe in a few weeks or months. Good luck to all suffering and here’s to hoping things look up.
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Good luck and let us know how it went!
Only few PFS guys can get (way) better with the use of 5ARis like saw, progesterone or zinc. I was also one of the lucky guys, used prog cream 2 years ago and then tomato juice cycles for 4 weeks and improved from 0 to 70%.
But then i wanted even more and bought more and more supplements to raise androgens. My AR changed somehow and now I need to inject huge amounts of Testosterone, take 20g creatine and bulgarian tribulus daily to feel OK.
This shows how much the AR can change over time. I went from totally intolerant to androgens to oversensitive and then finally to almost insensitive (I need at least 300mg t/week + DHT boosting supplements to have decent libido).
Hola.
So I continued the regimen and it did not worsen conditions nor improve them after continued use. It provided a few days worth of sexual enhancements which tapered off and then returned to normal (post fin) state. Thanks for reading and I am done with this little trial.
Hi @jjbunch,
I tried saw palmetto for about a year after crashed due to saw palmetto. (at the time I didn’t know pfs)
During saw palmetto I had absolutely no interest in sex and no erections. My stamina however was pretty good and capacity of problem solving and memory were good. I had no anxiety, no racing heart or depression. Stopped saw palmetto for the second time I developed insomnia, extreme anxiety, racing heart and depression. Take it carefully. It’s not a candy.
Currently my T level dropped by 22% after discontinuing saw palmetto.
In my case saw palmetto and finasteride boosted my T level like steroids.
My body shape now is awful. I developed huge pot belly, thin arms, thin neck and double chin.
I react immediately well to clomiphene/hCG/anastrozole with amazing improvements in physical, mental and sexual sides but for a while (I was able to achieve a full recovery for 8 days).
Despite all hormonal therapies (not AAS) my T level is unmovable and fixed at 4.0 ng/mL (immediately after discontinuing saw palmetto was 5.1 ng/mL and body shape and cognition were a lot better than now).
Be careful.
Hi @axolotl. I have a question which may have been discussed and answered before. So as far as I understand, we have over-expressed androgen receptors following prolonged DHT deprivation. Now that DHT is back up, presumably, ARs are being overwhelmed and rendered dysfunctional for some reason. Wouldn’t it make sense, at least theoretically, to try to down-regulate ARs by raising DHT, T, etc way up for a period of time? Then once the treatment is discontinued, ARs would have theoretically returned to a more normal state. That of course is likely to be dangerous vis-a-vis cancer risk and additional side effects, but speaking strictly theoretically, doesn’t it make sense? Also, I know something like that has been tried by many and it doesn’t seem to work. Are there any theories as to why?
What you suggest appears to make sense. If lowering androgens increases ARs, then increasing androgens should lead to a decrease in ARs. However, when we quit Fin, our androgens increase significantly compared to Fin-levels back to baseline without an equivalent decrease in ARs back to baseline. Now it would be interesting to know whether AR density remains unchanged between on Fin and post-Fin periods, or whether the density decreases after quitting Fin, but just not enough to reach pre-Fin levels. I don’t know if this data is available. I think there is even a rat study where ARs density continues to increase post-Fin.
Anyway, it is crucial to find our why AR density does not return to baseline when androgens do. Clearly, at least for us the connection between AR density and androgens is not linear. It would also be interesting to know why the negative feedback loop that silences the androgen signal (when after quitting Fin baseline androgens connect to the overexpressed AR) is so massive that it overcorrects the signal. And, of course, it would be interesting to know how we can safely decrease AR density.
Coming back to your original question: Quitting Fin already results in an increase in androgens without decreasing AR density (at least not enough), Now one could argue that the level were just not high enough to make an impact. But many people here have already tried supplementation of DHT and T (incl. supraphysiological amounts). A few had success, most did not, and a lot got worse. The risk is that you make the problem even worse. Remember, apparently, our problem is that our AR signal is silenced in the presence of overexpressed ARs and baseline androgen levels. Increasing androgens may just silence your AR signal even more. Plus, people get problems from using aromatase inhibitors with T.
I think we need to figure out another way to decrease ARs.
Take what I write with a grain of salt. I have litle clue about biology and just try to get the big picture ideas from the studies and the people here who are more versed in this field.
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Could you explain how what you suggested could cause cancer? That really scares me. I don’t see how PFS can cause cancer.
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As far as I understand androgens are pro-proliferative, meaning they lead to increased rate of cell self-replication, etc, which is what happens in cancer. Presumably finasteride decreases prostate cancer while you are on it by reducing the proliferative effect of DHT on prostate tissue. In our case, post finasteride, ARs are super sensitive so we may already be getting a high proliferative signal with the DHT we normally have. Should we raise DHT even further, the proliferative effect would be even higher. Prof. Traish talks about cancer in the context of DHT in one of his papers. Not sure how relevant it is but check it out.
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Yeah I used Saw Palmetto after finasteride.
It helped me with the side effects.
After one month discontinuing Saw Palmetto however I developed racing heart and insomnia. Now I’m better.
Hi @Andrea, can you tell us what side effects Saw Palmetto helped you with and what if any additional side effects it brought and how permanent were they?
Basically I developed pfs from Saw Palmetto and not from finasteride.
However I didn’t know about pfs at the time.
With Saw Palmetto I had no mental sides after discontinuing finasteride.
After discontinuing Saw Palmetto I developed racing heart, insomnia and depression for several months. Now I’m better.
Paradoxically Saw Palmetto seems to mimic finasteride and prevent some side effects.