Sermorelin with GHRP 2 and GHRP 6 has been known to reverse those symptoms, these are precursors to HGH, released by your pituitary gland and regulated by your autonomic system. Cosmetic injections can repair the way you look, Sculptra is a cosmetic injectable filler first used for HIV patients, now used in lots of people for cosmetic purposes. If you have the money, go see a cosmetic dermatologist, I understand this isn’t comforting but it will make you look 100% better. If you go to a Hormone Replacement Doctor, the hormones may not work that well, but it may provide something. I am on HRT and since I stopped Avodart, it is like I am on nothing, but it has been 12 days since I quit and my HRT doctor tells me I will get better in time as the Avodart wears off. The hormones are barely working, testosterone doesn’t feel like testosterone, but I am sure it is the reason I have not lost all my muscle, seems that I feel and look like I did before I was on test, I do believe the test is preventing me from losing muscle, but with very low DHT production I am not sure I can gain much muscle till I hopefully improve more.
I don’t know your story, but I was an executive of a cosmetic dermatology company, I do know that there are cosmetic solutions and perhaps the right HRT doctor can figure something out. I won’t give up till my situation is solved, for now I am in the waiting it out phase, it is too soon. I know this sucks, but it isn’t 1950, there is a lot of medical help out there for cancer and hiv patients that would help people with this condition. I masturbate once a day now, sometimes twice, it is but a shadow of my former self, but I am not going to off myself yet, I will not go quietly into the night. We must fight, fight and fight some more, we cannot resign ourselves to oblivion.
I am an extremely vain person, I am obsessed with my looks, my body, everything like that, if someone wanted to curse me in the worst way, they would do this to me. It is targeting everything I worked so hard to build up and maintain. I do not believe this is a permanent condition, while some here have had it for 10 years, they are the minority, if you read the recovery stories, most have recovered in 1-4 years. The ones still suffering after 10 years may be older and not on HRT, while HRT may not work 100%, it may work 20% or 30%, it may even trigger them back to normal like the younger guys have done on their own. Don’t give up and lose hope, I see no evidence that this is a life long disorder, in fact, I can say based on this forum that most will recover from this, but few may suffer as far as we know for 10 years or more, but the key word is few. If you lose hope and faith you have given into your own demise, I know how easy it is to do that, believe me, 12 days off Avodart and I am ready to off myself, but slowly I am improving and I hold out hope, we must stay strong as difficult as that may be, if we aren’t then what else is there?
Sorry but this is just plain wrong.
How can you say ‘based on this forum most will recover’. That is why this forum continues to exist - because people have not recovered. That is why hundreds of thousands of dollars of private money have been spent on setting up studies at two elite US research institutions. People are not recovering. That is why we are all here. There are a few stories, but that’s it. There has been no treatment found which has any replicable results for the guys on here. That’s why there are numerous research studies on the go.
I don’t mean to quash your hope. I just want you to direct it to the right place.
Dannyfc- around the 2 year mark I stopped getting those very Low points of numbness. A good 2 years
This was the first study which was the result of about 2 years of work from members of this forum in the pre-Foundation days. The importance of these results cannot be overstated. With a little googling our scientists on this board will easily find that these results actually make a lot of sense.
This was a pilot study.
Generally speaking, this is an obvious route of further investigation.
Please provide a reference for this claim.
Please provide a reference for this claim.
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From the Italian study: Immunohistochemical evaluation of androgen receptor and nerve structure density in human prepuce from patients with persistent sexual side effects after finasteride use for androgenetic alopecia.
"In general, the AR levels can be modulated by several factors [38], [39]. Our unexpected observation that percentage of AR positive stromal cells is inversely related to ASEX score, suggests that patients less able to raise AR are those with more severe side effects related to sexual dysfunction. This seems to support the hypothesis that the body tries to compensate local androgens deprivation by producing more androgen receptors. Notably, 2 of our patients were found to have low androgen levels in the cerebrospinal fluids by Melcangi et al. [20]. Further studies are needed to assess these complex issues. "
From the Italian study: Immunohistochemical evaluation of androgen receptor and nerve structure density in human prepuce from patients with persistent sexual side effects after finasteride use for androgenetic alopecia.
"In general, the AR levels can be modulated by several factors [38], [39]. Our unexpected observation that percentage of AR positive stromal cells is inversely related to ASEX score, suggests that patients less able to raise AR are those with more severe side effects related to sexual dysfunction. This seems to support the hypothesis that the body tries to compensate local androgens deprivation by producing more androgen receptors. Notably, 2 of our patients were found to have low androgen levels in the cerebrospinal fluids by Melcangi et al. [20]. Further studies are needed to assess these complex issues. "
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I read this as the extra androgen receptors (cause) lead to low levels of neurosteroids (effect)…
I read this as the extra androgen receptors (cause) lead to low levels of neurosteroids (effect)…
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“This seems to support the hypothesis that the body tries to compensate local androgens deprivation by producing more androgen receptors.”
If we have low androgens (neurosteroids), which we do, our body compensates by increasing AR. Isn’t that what it says? So our decreased neurosteroids has resulted in increased AR.
Highly upregulated AR… then you come off propecia and hormones bounce back rather quickly… and the body over reacts to this explosion of hormones by subverting the entire androgen metabolism system and cycle. Including nuerosteroids that bind to AR. Seems like a plausible hypothesis abet limited. I have discussed this idea before about a year and half ago after Awor the idea of upregulated AR was proposed. Doesn’t help us here and now much but it hurts Merck’s defense.
This quote does not support your claim. Read carefully and you will see that the authors have made 2 separate statements:
- the body tries to compensate local androgens deprivation by producing more androgen receptors.
- 2 of our patients were found to have low androgen levels in the cerebrospinal fluids
Jumping to conclusions, as you have done, is the mother of all the nonsense theories floating around this place. The correct interpretation is what the authors have stated: “Further studies are needed to assess these complex issues” (read: we don’t know yet what the exact link is between the two, and need to do further research to find that out). In real terms, finding out what the link may be between AR overexpression and certain low neurosteroids is likely to be a key area of investigation down the road.
So essentially the ARs are upregulated due to a lack of androgens. Or rather, something that is preventing the binding of those androgens.
Why aren’t more studies looking into peripheral anti-androgens such as 3b-diol? The Italian ones have already showed a significant abundance of that hormone compared to controls. If it’s a powerful estrogen why aren’t we exploring why it’s overproduced?
Surely the simplest explanation of these findings is that there is some persistent inhibition of 5a-reductase? Isn’t inhibition of 5a-reductase already known from the literature to cause these two changes - unlike anything else.
Inhibited 5a-reductase leads to increased AR expression. Inhibited 5a-reductase leads to lowered neurosteroids.
Therefore isn’t a problem at that level the the best thing to investigate?
i wonder what results would be of people that have taken finasteride in the past, but have recovered back to normal libido? what if finasteride is causing these effects in all users of the drug, albeit more subtly in those who do not have full blown PFS? reason i say is because there seems to be levels of PFS severeness… for example people that only have libido problems vs people with numbness vs people unable to even comprehend reality like RIP guy who killed himself & stayed up 2 or 3 days straight…
I agree: I suspect that finasteride causes many grades of permanent damage. As you pointed out, what about the men who lose, say, 30% of their libido but have no other noticeable side effects? What if they stopped taking finasteride? Would that 30% return to normal? I would be inclined to say no.
That’s why PFS may shape up to be a global epidemic after all.
An accomplished (High IQ) Doctor comments on this study:
“This is a a so-called open journal, ie there are no controlled peer review of the submitted work. The number of subjects studied is very small. The selected parameters require very many, completely unsecured assumptions about the pathomechanism of sexual dysfunction. In summary: The article does not prove anything. Except: There is clearly a growing community of people with sexual dysfunction (felt or real) after administration of finasteride, which manages to encourage scientists to place completely vague findings on this topic in the scientific literature. It is in this self-reinforcing collective madness, of course, an important link.” (Google Translator)
This reeks of a biased PR Merck hired gun. My wife is a cancer researcher. When I showed her the article, she was both impressed by the quality of the work, and the quality of the journal. I would take the above quote with a grain of salt. What the idiot commenter fails to mention is the likelihood of 8 men all having extremely upregulated AR would be if it ISN’T Finasteride caused…
No this is one of our family doctors. As I had already anticipated, most doctors will dismiss the study because of the low number of participants…
This study was just one step.
The research being conducted at Harvard and Baylor are going to be the next HUGE step.
No need for anyone to get discouraged by this, whatsoever.
To be honest, I have come to the conclusion, whether it is right or wrong, that if a doctor does not want to believe us, then fuck them. We all know this is VERY real, and there are a lot of great doctors who DO want to help us, so we should focus on them and not concern ourselves with the naysayers, who have literally nothing to offer us.
Things are very much headed in the right direction. We just need people to keep participating in the current rounds of research. The quicker we finish these, the quicker we get our lives back.
Agree. Are you participating?
Honestly, this just shows how misled your “Hi IQ” doctor is. Open access means that the public can access the article, not that anyone can write whatever the hell they want. That would be called wikipedia. PLoS One is at the (very) high end in terms of journal rankings, and absolutely requires peer review. The sample size is a major issue, and really, it’s hard to draw any statistical evidence away from a pool of 18 participants (so there should be some skepticism). Nevertheless, this will definitely raise and hopefully legitimize questions within the formal scientific community. Still, as Awor said earlier this was only a pilot study… so I’d say it has done exactly what it was supposed to do.
I imagine that if your doctor (who thinks him or herself to be pretty “high IQ”, haha, and is used to telling people what to think) were to be told that he was wrong about something medical (i.e. anything like making a gigantic mistake in believing that finasteride is “well-tolerated”) that it might be a bit of a blow to his or her “Hi-Ego”, and would naturally elicit a defensive reaction.
Yes