My Experinces with PFS and potential Treatments

Member Stories
#4

7 week update since the initial post:

About 4 days after I ended my fast i woke up with throbbing, raging morning wood. My mental fog was gone and i felt 100% back to normal. The interesting thing is, the night before id eaten a lot of Indian food with tons of yogurt. Since that day I’ve been in varying degrees of near total to total remission from PFS (98% to 100% cured). I can have intercourse at full strength (sometimes 3 times a night) again now, and there is no more fatigue plaguing my every step. Depression and anxiety are both back to pre PFS levels. Dick is also back to normal shape and size in the flacid state.

When i do relapse into very very mild PFS symptoms I’ve noticed it’s when i am really stressed or when my stomach/gastrointestinal tract is out of whack.

I’m going to declare myself 99-100% cured because, the relapses are becoming rarer and rarer.

Factors contributing to my success (IMO):

  1. 10 day water fast (reset the endocrine system and allow the gut to return to baseline)
  2. Weight train nearly every day for 30 min to 1 hr (natural, non-exogenous testosterone production)
  3. I am eating very healthily, cut out most sugars and refined grains (wheat mainly) Basically, a non strict paleo diet.
  4. Supplements im taking:
    A. B vitamins
    B. Omega 3s
    C. Tons of probiotics
    D. L-Glutamine (for gut health and a bump for the muscles)
    E. Digestive enzymes and fiber (mainly Bromelaine [for gut health])
  5. Time!

When my gut is happy, so is everything else. This doesn’t entirely make sense to me, unless this is manifestation of the gut inflammation theory of PFS - which I’m starting to believe. What does make sense is that we should stop messing around with our hormone level by using exogenous hormones/supplements. If we want our bodies to return to baseline levels of natural hormone production, then mucking around and sending mixed signals to our body by adding in supplements that alter hormone levels artificially is probably the worst thing to do. If your hormone levels are low then artificially raising them is the last thing you want to do. That will tell the body that it doesn’t need to do any more healing in order to get your hormone (or receptor) levels back to baseline. We SHOULD let our bodies to be low on whatever hormone/receptor it is deficient in, so the body gets the message to up-regulate that particular hormone’s production or receptor expression. Combine that with a ultra strict, 10-day, distilled water fast, to facilitate this healing process, and then a clean diet and exercise afterwards… and boom I’m back to normal, or nearly there.

Mother seeks advise for 19 year old son with pfs
#5

Hate to break it to you dude but you didn’t have PFS.

You recovered within 2 months and all you did was eat healthy. That’s not PFS. Sorry. You just recovered in A Normal time frame after taking the drug for 11 years. 11 year usage and you had a mini crash one week after only to recover a month or two later. Yep definitely not PFS.

#6

You can not say that. He hit it hard early with many things. If he did nothing we do not know if he would have recovered or not.

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#7

It’s been a long time, I’m here to update things.

After the fasting and all sorts of experimentation with supplements, I went through what others refer to as a series of “minicrashes” over the next year. The symptoms that would come back, would be a little less intense with each minicrash, but the crashes were horrible nonetheless. During this time i began to see a pattern. I started to notice that whenever my gut/stomach/GI tract was upset, that was when my symptoms seemed to flare up. And, if i did something to soothe my GI tract the symptoms of the minicrash would resolve.

Even as someone with a doctorate in a medical discipline and as someone who designs and evaluates FDA sanctioned/approved clinical trials for experimental drugs, I don’t know what this means. Obviously, research needs to be done.

I have heard theories that Fin has mild anti-inflammatory effect on the body, including the GI tract. Not sure what the mechanism of action would be, but if that’s true, it may be something to think about for all you guys out there that aren’t finding relief from other common treatments.

In conclusion, aside from a continuing adverse event of slightly weaker memory, I am symptom free . . . as long as i keep my gut happy. If my stomach/bowels get angry, I will literally lose my libido, my ability to become erect, and my zest for life; brain fog settles in and I’m effectively dead to the world.

So, if nothing else works, try calming your gut, guys.

Start a regimen of either an H2 blocker (ranitidine) or a PPI (omeprazole). Use antacid tablets with your food along with a low-acid, whole-foods diet for a month and see if you don’t get better

#8

Do you think fasting made much of a difference? I’m thinking of trying it out eventually, maybe only for 24 hours at a time, but it hasn’t been two months since withdrawing from fin for me.

How do you safely water fast for so long and what’s the necessary refeed process? If you had to do it all over again, would you recommend fasting and for as long as you did?

#9

Are you saying you took omeprazole, @finished? Regardless, just so other posters are aware this is noted to have antiandrogenic activity - which would explain a potential symptomatic improvement if indeed this provided you relief and you’re not just generally suggesting it as a digestive drug that you haven’t personally taken. However, there’s an inherent risk to using antiandrogenic substances for PFS patients, particularly severe cases, so I’m just flagging that for others.

Glad to hear you’re doing better. All the best

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#10

I agree with axolotl. If omeprazole can cause gynecomastia and ED then it’s a pretty strong AR inhibitor. I’d avoid it.

#11

I used to read this forum and stumbled upon this thread recently. My story is pretty similar to FINished, with a few major twists, so I figured I would share it. I started Fin in Jan 2017 (age 23) and took it for one month. (Side note: I was taking Saw Palmetto for at least a year before that, at very high doses for part of the time because I had no idea wtf I was doing. Never had sides until I took fin). At first my sides were just stomach/digestion related but towards the end of the month I started having some problems down below and stopped immediately. It wasn’t until then that I found out about this whole universe of former Fin users who were having long term side effects and it scared the shit out of me. My sides continued to get worse until March 2017 when I crashed. Crash was pretty typical of what you read about here so I won’t go into too much detail. I was in bed for almost a week straight. I felt like I had ruined my life and quite honestly reading this website was playing into my depression. I finally decided I had to get out of bed and come up with a plan to try to make myself feel better.

My diet was already pretty clean, for me it was just cutting out that occasional cheat meal and any occasional sugary snacks/desserts.

Starting taking Omega 3

Staring taking probiotics

Got back in the gym for the first time since I started taking Fin (weight lifting and cardio 5 times a week)

And perhaps most importantly I stayed positive. I felt an immediate lift when I stopped beating myself up about the whole thing. I approached everyday thinking about how I could make the most of it, and it helped me immensely.

By June/July 2017 I was feeling pretty good. The stomach sides, which were always the biggest problem for me, lasted the longest and continued to flare back up just as soon as they had disappeared long enough for me to forget about them. Every few months I would have an “episode” where my stomach/digestion went haywire and some of the other sexual side effects would come back. These usually last 4 - 7 days. I’d say it happened 4 times between June 2017 and June 2018. I will also add that I don’t think my sex drive is quite what it was prior to Fin. But outside of these episodes I don’t have major problems.

Now here’s the twist. In June 2018 while I was dealing with a particularly bad episode I decided to see a doctor. To be fair, my stomach had been generally more temperamental than normal over the last few months. Just attributing my visit to an “episode” isn’t quite fair. To my utter shock, I tested positive for Celiacs disease, which was confirmed by a biopsy a few weeks later. I have no family history of celiacs and never had any stomach problems (or health problems, for that matter) prior to taking fin. It was an interesting development to say the least, and for a couple reasons. I would go months at a time feeling pretty normal and I certainly was eating my share of gluten. in fact when I got the call from the doctor about Celiacs, I had just finished a plate of penne vodka, which I now refer to as the last supper. The whole thing is very strange.

So I’ve been gluten free for a couple months now and here we are in early October and here comes another episode. The discomfort in my lower abdomen has been particularly bad this time around. Sexual side effects are also there. I’m considering fasting for a week or two since it sounds like some people have had some success with that.

Overall, I can’t complain, a lot of people have it way worse than me. I can’t help but wonder how celiacs played into this whole thing. Is it just a coincidence?

#12

fin alters your gut microbiota which is confirmed by studies, im pretty sure u could normally tolerate gluten but now cant due to fin, same thing happened to me. Whenever I eat glutten now my stomache swells like those starving kids in africa, my diet before fin was tons of carbs (pasta, rice) without any problems

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#14

I’m not very good at using this site, but I’ll try to answer some of the questions posed.

I think water fasting helped the overall process, but it’s really hard to do it for 10 days and tbh, I’m not really sure it was the biggest part of the cure. Just getting the GI tract calmed down is the main goal. If you do do a fast, i would suggest a few things: Don’t drink distilled water. Go for mineral water instead. Distilled can be somewhat acidic, which hurts the GI tract. I honestly don’t know if I would fast again. At least not for 10 days. Maybe 5…

Yes, i agree with what most are saying here. It must have been that Fin altered my gut microbiome and other things, and I hope that i haven’t gotten celiac disease too.

Overall, i would say that when my gut is happy, there is no PFS. If my gut gets into a bad mood, which it still does from time to time, I can crash pretty quickly. So am I cured?..I don’t know if that really counts, but at least I am sometimes.

#15

What exactly does a 10 day water fast consist of ? Thanks

#16

A water fast is simply refraining from eating anything with any caloric content. The only thing you put into your body is water. Can range from 3, 5, 7, 10, and all the way up to 20+ days.

It’s hard.

#17

I don’t think PFS ends at gluten intolerance perhaps try cutting out everything except meat and greens and then start adding things in.

Also, for those treating gut issues, have you done a parasite detox? I am in the second week of cloves + black walnut + wormwood + grapefruit seed extract (the last one is optional)

#18

How is that going?

#19

Haven’t heard of that before, is it helping you?

#20

To be honest, I have not done it properly, so don’t want to talk it down yet. I have not noticed life changing differences (though I believe I have become a little less anxious), but I have been caving into my sugar cravings at the end of every day. I didn’t personally go through any “die off” symptoms that many people report from these sups, where the toxins released by the dying bacteria make you feel sick, but then again I was still feeding the bacteria. I did notice some digestive response in the first few days (increased movements). I am now entering the week off and have promised myself to finally kick the sugar before restarting the treatment in a week.

You can buy cloves + black walnut + wormwood for like $25 online, and grape seed extract for maybe $10 more. Something worth remembering if you do decide to try it is apparently the cloves break down the membrane around bad bacteria, so you should take that first, on an empty stomach in the morning and at least 1 hour after eating in the evening, and the other three around 30 mins later. Also, you should be taking probiotics if you are not already, to help build up the good bacteria. Finally, bone broths are supposed to be important because the collagen and cartilage helps repair your gut lining.

I will report back after I have finally managed to do a week without also ingesting sugar.

#21

I am not surprised of the outcome. All the recovery I have seen all are based on the guts.

I believe Finasteride brings us to a Leaky gut syndrom And/ Or And Candida infection for some others.
Because of the leaky gut syndrome we become allergic to every food we eat as our body is fighting against the small shits coming into our blood. This is why we have inflammation all the time, that we are tired depressed and so on. We need to close the Holes to stop inflammation, and clean the yeast.

I think that L-Glutamine that you took repear the gut, Pre and Prebiotic to fight the yeast is there are (Candidose).
Enzyme to be able to process the food that we eat (basically instead of takin 50 supplements, just taking a wide range of enzyme and have a balance diet would do the work).

For detailed explanation go there https://www.yeastinfectionadvisor.com/candidadiet.html
and there https://goodbyeleakygut.com/tests-symptoms-leaky-gut/

#22

100% on the gut theory. When my poops are soft and nasty and I poop twice a day, I have zero libido and can’t feel my penis. My poops used to be very different a few years ago. They’d be big and hard and I’d feel like a new man after I dropped a big one. I also have reflux and other GI issues. Sucks… My stool test came back clean but maybe they weren’t looking for the right things.

#23

Check the link i posted above, tell you which test to do in it, regular stool test dont show much. It wont show that you have leaky gut for example.

#24

Ive seen quite a few posts like this. Abnormal gastric motility or gastric emptying might be something to keep in mind as well. I think it might be safe to say with some types of GI issues that could cause abnormal muscle movement, you can forget about normal sexual function. This abnormal muscle movement might have as much to do as whats going on in the colon and gi tract in general as it does the penis.