I did try both Wim Hof and CBD for sleep. Didn’t do much of anything for sleep for me. CBD may have even made it worse. Everybody reacts differently though, might help someone else.
Hey Henchman, quick question for you. In periods where you’re feeling well, do you have oily skin?
I’m just starting on my journey but the last two days I’ve felt better and I noticed how much oil I had on my forehead. Turns out 5ari enzyme expression is part of secreting oil in our sebaceous glands.
Just theorizing that oily skin could be a sign of 5ari enzyme levels.
Any correlation on your side? I see a lot of mentions of dry and flaky skin, just wasn’t sure.
I don’t thing there is necessarily a link between “feeling better” and oily skin, as I have had periods where I’ve had oily skin and mentally felt like shit. However, I will say that I have noticed a correlation between my overall progress upwards and having oily skin and acne breakouts. As I got better and better I had more and more acne breakouts on my back and face particularly, which I associated also with oily skin. Oily skin and breakouts came and went many times on my way to recovery.
End of month, 33 months post-fin. Have basically been 100% since last post now other that falling ill due to stomach bug or similar.
- Dry skin has resolved almost everywhere else but has gotten very bad around the outer edges of my lips. This was very bad before I stopped fin and before I made the link. Thought I was allergic to mangos.
- Rigid hands, still bad in the morning but better otherwise and the inflammation on my joints has seemed to reduce greatly.
- Sleep has been a little up and down this month but overall up and last night was great. Got 10.5 hours last night and woke up in a puddle of drool.
- Orgasm quality - Has remained resolved and at basically 100%
- Libido - Very much improved and while not quite 100% is very good.
- Enjoyment of music is returned and seems to be slowly but steadily increasing.
- Brain fog - Has remained resolved since my most recent jump forward without relapse.
- Mood/anhedonia - Has remained resolved since my most recent mental jump forward without relapse.
Overall, yet again the best month yet and most significant jump forward in a while.
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Congrats man. Love reading your posts. Giving me lots of motivation to fight this.
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Darkstar, you asked about link between feeling good and oily skin. I will say that I have had a resurgence of back and face acne with my latest leap forward, however yesterday and today I had a “dip” and felt not so great (not bad though), but acne and oily skin persisted. So no clear direct correlation, but more of an overall upward trajectory correlation. (If that makes sense)
One thing that I do think 100% correlates with actually feeling good/bad is armpit sweating and corresponding armpit odor. I have been smelling pretty badly lately, but yesterday the smell was greatly reduced, and now that I’m feeling better again slowly today I can tell the odor is as well.
No idea of the mechanisms at play here, but thought you may find this helpful/interesting.
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Hey man, another question for you. I’m a month off fin, and 2.5 weeks since I crashed.
Midweek this week I had a big turn upwards and my mental sides and emotional blunting have lifted. I’m laughing at tv shows and feeling good with my GF. I’m feeling much better but I can feel PFS hanging over me.
I’m not having any issues getting an erection, but I have intentionally avoided sex and orgasms because I’ve read about others crashing after an orgasm. I read some of your posts about it too.
Did your orgasm related crashes take you down to the level you were at when you first crashed? Or is not quite that bad?
I’m weighing up if I should put it off a bit longer or not. I’d rather not have brain fog and emotional blunting on our trip but I do have some libido and ability to get there.
I don’t want to lose the gains I’ve made through rest, exercise and diet.
What do you think?
Hey man, short answer to your question is that my opinion is to enjoy as much time with your girlfriend as you can.
There are a few reasons why I have this opinion, however you do what feels right for you.
I want to repeat again, this is 100% just my opinion and possibly a very unpopular one. I also say this as someone who has gone through this many, many times myself. I feel that paranoia is a grossly understated symptom of PFS.
That being said, I do not think that everyone’s claims are bogus or anything like that. I do think that a large portion are though. I think there are some extremely sensitive PFS’ers that crash to 5ari foods and things like that, I think there is sufficient claims to back this. However, I think many of the claims of crashing due to sex and things like this are likely overstated. Even as recent as months ago I thought mandarin oranges were crashing me, I’ve thought mangosteen and chocolate, sex and caffeine, and a hundred other things have crashed me. Now either all those unlikely things are true, or I was simply unstable and would’ve crashed anyways, and my paranoid PFS diseased mind was assigning causality where there was none.
Now that I am well, and my brain is functioning normally, it’s easier to think about things rationally. Looking back the only things that I really think had an affect on me were creatine, caffeine, and saffron tea. The creatine is a hard one to explain, but I really do believe this affected me. The caffeine I’m less sure off, but it just always gave me a noticeable feeling. The saffron tea is really only because of the extremely obvious affect it had on my wife (made her SEVERELY depressed). I say all this, but I’ll crash again next week and thing that something I ate that day caused it. I know this, but it’s so hard to fight PFS brain.
So, to summarize my first point, I don’t think having sex will do anything to you. (Again, opinion). Next point, and maybe more important point. I think you will crash again and you should enjoy the time you have. You are early and on the upswing. I think your worst crash is yet to come. I don’t want to scare you, but instead want to prepare you. You will likely crash, it will be worse than you can imagine, there is nothing you can do about it, and when it happens just try not to panic. Just focus on the fact that it will very likely get better over time, it will just take much longer than you feel like you can stand.
Enjoy the time you have with your girl while you can. For any of us it could be our last day. For PFS’ers this phrase hits twice as hard.
Thanks man. I survived my first crash and built myself back up. I’m sure I can again. I’ve developed some good coping techniques. Hopefully my rebound period won’t be as bad.
I’m going to get off this forum for a bit. You’re right about paranoia and there’s a correlation between me overthinking it and my anxiety going up.
Just gotta learn to live. Thanks again for the advice.
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Quick update. Right after my last post I had a “crash”. Sleep got worse (slightly harder to sleep, down to 6 hours, and multiple wakeups at the end of my sleep). Also, just had some mild morning anxiety and drop in libido. (Also had to fight thoughts that maybe it was some miso in some soup I drank, aforementioned paranoia creeping back). It’s only really noticeable as a crash as I know what to look for.
Now on the rebound the additional improvement I notice this time mainly are with libido. Libido is 100%. It is so high that it’s adversely affecting my ability to think straight. I now have a 2nd brain competing with my first again. Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining! Just something to note as I almost preferred it how it has been. It was so much easier to think clearly.
As noted recently my body odor has gotten correspondingly MUCH WORSE. I HAVE to wear deodorant again as my armpits smell like a wet gym sock.
Assuming libido stays resolved, my remaining items are now only the last bit of sleep stability, last bit of emotional feeling from music, and the rigid hands thing which has started going away again.
Hey @Henchman21
I’m 22 years old. Been going through side effects now for 1 month.
I took 2 pills of finasteride 1 month ago.i noticed side effects pretty much right away, it’s been 1 month of side effects.
There was 1 day 2 weeks in where I had all of the side effects, excerpt low libido, I felt my libido surge for 1 day and then go away the next day, I jerked off like 4-5 times that day. I don’t know if a crash happened or not.
Here are my side effects, and the progress for each one:
- racing heart rate (it’s not racing anymore, first 2 weeks it was)
- heart palpitations (it’s still doing that but has reduced the last 3 days)
- feeling each individual heart beat I have (has improved a bit the past few days, but rn I just woke up in the middle of the night and I can feel each heart beat)
- occasional shortness of breath (hasn’t happened much)
- loss of 95% of sex drive (it hasn’t improved very much, for a long time it was 100% loss, I could easily go days without jerking off)
- frequent urination (has stopped happening as much)
- I lost a ton of weight, couldn’t eat/enjoy food for a while, lost 17 pounds, I’ve been eating 3-4 meals a day for a week now.
- insomnia (keep waking up after 2-3 hours of sleep, then hard to go back to sleep)
- anxiety/panic attacks (have reduced a lot but still very very prone, my gf of 1 year also just dumped me a week ago bc of this health crisis ): )
- A-sexuality (couldn’t feel attraction, now I can again)
- I can get erections with physical stimulation, but I can’t get spontaneous erections anymore. I can jerk off and orgasm, and enjoy it, but feel very little need to do so.
- watery/clumpy semen, and less volume.
- I ejaculate faster a lot of the time, sometimes it’s normal
- emotional flatness (this comes and goes, half the time I can feel 80% emotions, the other half I feel 0-20% of them)
- brain fog (this one seems to have mostly gone away)
- fatigue (this one just started to set in, for a while I couldn’t feel tired)
- dark circles under eyes
- cold shriveled up penis/balls (seems to have resolved)
- couldn’t sweat and had no body odor (body odor and sweat returned yesterday)
I’m not taking anything rn except time release melatonin at night. My blood work showed I’m vitamin D deffiicnt though so I’ll probably start taking 2000 IUs a day. My naturopath also wants be to take Methylguard (vitamin B complex with folate) right now because she thinks I’m MTHFR gene, idk if I should do that one though.
I’m trying to weight lift 3-5x a week, I just feel so lifeless and as if it’s so hard to. Grieving my breakup has also been hard for me to focus on stuff, been feeling very anxious about that lately. I know I need to be more disciplined about this. I have been hitting the weights more like 2 times a week, it needs to be 3-5x.
Is there any advice you can give me? Do you think that bc I took only 2 pills that I have less chance of recovery? Do you think I could recover in 3/6 months to a year?
I’m really suffering rn……
Hey,
Im sorry your gf left you, and I’m sorry that you’re going through this. I’m also sorry to say that I don’t have any of the answers you’re looking for. Nobody does. I can say that I took very few supplements during my recovery, but time release melatonin and vitamin D were some that I did take. I do not know if they helped at all, but they did not hinder my recovery.
Could you recover in 3/6 months? It is possible. You are very early on, maybe you don’t have PFS and your sides will resolve over the next couple months. If you still have sides after 3 months then you have PFS and are in it for the long haul. If you have PFS, will you recover in 6 months? Almost certainly not, but all is not lost and there is a good possibility you will improve over time. It will just almost certainly take longer than you want it to.
There is no advice I can give you that will make you better. If I or anyone else could do this, there would be no reason for this forum. However, I will give you this advice. Try not to focus on recovery yet, early phase is about survival. Accept what has happened the best you can and make a plan and stick to it. I would suggest to make a strict routine and to keep a log so you can look back and chart your progress. Count your blessings. If you’re able to work out that’s great, many can’t, even if you don’t get the pump you’re used to. Make some short and long term goals for what you want. Sleep 4 hours uninterrupted, 5 hours, 6. Libido 10%, 20%, 50% recovered. Goals like this, I did this. You can look back at mine earlier in this thread. Chart your progress towards these. Recalibrate your life expectations for a bit. Find the sources of your anxiety and eliminate them as much as possible, find coping mechanisms (mine was running).
Try these things to start and I’ll be here if you have any questions or need to talk.
Got very sick a few days ago and since then I have been in a somewhat significant crash, finally pulling out of it today, took 4-5 days. Maybe a coincidence with being sick, likely a coincidence, not sure.
Some anxiety/anhedonia/depression and mild sleep disruption. Struggled mostly with the anxiety. Just going a little heavier on my running for now, helps a lot for me to manage. Long medium paced runs. Anxiety is still there today just much lower than it has been.
So today is kind of a big day for me.
When I crashed almost 3 years ago now, I was in the middle of watching a show I loved and was in the middle of a book series I was REALLY into. Also, I had been painting a piece that I was really looking forward to. However, when I crashed (and I even started losing interest before I crashed) these things, and my entire life, were put on hold.
My anxiety was so bad I was too afraid to even stay upstairs in my own home for so long. I have a “man cave” upstairs in my house that is full of all the things I love. I didn’t enter that room for over a year and all of my hobbies and that room just sat collecting a thick layer of dust. I’ve been going in there for a while now again, but only this past week have I had the motivation to give it the deep cleaning it deserved. Removing the caked-on layers of dust throughout the room, now that it’s back in use full time.
I have been 100% for 5-6 days straight now. The longest streak I’ve had since this started. It feels stable, and whether or not this is finally it, I no longer have any doubt that I will end up here in the relatively near future. I finished that show I had never finished this week, and this morning I finally finished that book series that had been halfway read for over 3 years. The ending brought tears to my eyes. My returned emotions on full display.
I had to work this weekend, but I’m headed home now and I’m planning to go clean up that half-finished model that has sat there for so long and paint it up (assuming my paints are still good). So, that’s it then. My life is no longer on hold, things are back on track. I applied for a bunch of jobs yesterday and I’m ready to progress my career again. I’m going to say for me that PFS is officially over.
There’s only one more post here that I plan to make. You’re supposed to stay recovered for four months straight before it’s official, so I’ll be back to let everyone know when that is, but other than that I’ll only be back to respond to people, or if something significantly changes with my condition.
I hope my story gives hope to those who need it, just like many stories before mine, gave hope to me when I needed it. If anyone ever needs to talk, I’m always around.
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do you think time was the only thing that helped you? i ask that cuz rarely you mention something like supplements, lifestyle changes, etc
I’m not sure. That’s the problem with PFS. I have no idea if anything I did helped, or if it was just time. I 100% changed the way I lived for the better part of the past 3 years, did it do anything? No clue. That’s why I don’t mention any of it as I don’t want to claim to be “cured” by something when I really don’t know anything. I’m a scientific guy, and nothing I did has any scientific method or merit. It’s a 1/1 sample size. We can get no useable data from my experience. I can only list the things that I did differently from the average person, that may or may not have helped. Incomplete list is:
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Paid very close attention to all products I used (shampoo, soap, etc.) and made sure there was zero chance of 5ari ingredients.
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Everything I ate was 100% handmade / organic including making noodles, pizza dough, and other normally store bought basic items from scratch.
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I was 99% quarantined for a very long time. I basically never left my home in early stages except to exercise outside. Whenever I did I was VERY careful (mask, sanitizer, etc.) and never got sick until recently.
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I used some supplements as described early on. I can’t really remember anymore but the main ones were Vitamin D, time release melatonin, and Magnesium BisGlycinate.
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I worked out relentlessly with lots of weight lifting and sprinting at the start. I found that focusing on long distance running made me feel better than the high intensity stuff and moved to that after a while, topping out at around 9 miles per dedicated session a day. Whenever I could spare the time I had multiple sessions. I really transformed myself, I went from running a 9-10 minute mile to running a 5:30 split for a 2 mile run.
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I worked very hard to remove as much anxiety from my life as possible. Spent the vast majority of my time outside in the sun, even while I was at work. Luckily I worked from home and I often ran or walked while in meetings.
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I completely changed my diet multiples times and was VERY strict. Started with carnivore zero carb then changed multiple times from there, I can’t even remember what all I did now.
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The creatine incident which was a turning point for me I believe. I think this is what set me on the right path honestly, but DO NOT try to replicate.
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Strict routine every day, including good sleep hygiene. Meditation when I couldn’t sleep during sleep hours.
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No caffeine, no alcohol for a long time. Still no alcohol.
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Lots of probiotics throughout as it’s one of the only things I was comfortable taking.
There’s probably more that I’ve forgotten, but most of it is here in my story. Again, no idea what helped and what didn’t. Just listing what may have been different from others. Hopefully someone gets something out of it.
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Glad you’re doing so well! That’s the way my life has been since the beginning with avoiding everything, largely being a hermit, and just resting a lot. I couldn’t enjoy ANYTHING. I would often just sit in silence in between occasionally watching some random crap on youtube, that was it most days. As time went on I would start to enjoy smaller things like cooking or very light positive social interactions with people. Eventually this turned into me largely just stuffing my face too much because food became the only comfort in between just rotting away in my room in between work and the grocery store not really doing much of anything. Barely even socialized online besides some occasional forum posting because my brain just wasn’t capable of doing anything more. I did a lot more than you supplement wise though, I simply tried everything I could and endlessly experimenting with leveling things out in numerous ways. Also was very careful about what I put on my skin and the allergens I was exposed to. As little as I need and the best one’s for me I could find. Clean food was also had the entire time I made myself from scratch, no extra additives where I can avoid them. All in all I treated myself like I was a bear in hibernation. I’m only just starting to really enjoy music again and I think I can really enjoy watching things again now. I also don’t think there is currently any risk of me crashing anymore if I avoid what in the past were the worst crash triggers for me, any supplement risks I take now are extremely calculated to minimize the risk but I don’t really even have too much more I want to try.
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So glad to hear it! Just curious, how long did it take you to hit various milestones? Sounds like you were up and down in crashing cycles like me?
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Time is really foggy, in my story in my topic here I just remember general ranges for when things happened and the sequence of what I tried. Everything was a complete blur especially very early on, like if I think backwards there are complete holes in my memory and otherwise some solidified memories I remember from things that stood out. I’m glad I can’t really from my current state of mind remember how I felt vividly back then besides a couple really crappy points because it was just too traumatic. I’m around 10 months out though, I know that much.
Better with the hands rigidity?