My protocol - a test case for all of us

General Discussion
#81

No offense, and I am just going to add to this post after taking a look at this from an outside perspective since i haven’t contributed to most of these posts…

This is ridiculous, arguing and saying people are 100% wrong is complete arrogance. This thread was aimed at a progress log including the OPs routine. The OP is allowed to try whatever they like and to report on this…this is surely a basic right for the forum and be encouraged. If this is an issue then why not make some forum sections private and not open to the public?? There are a lot of controversial areas in the medical world, some of which have been proven to work. How is this not the same?

There was a documentary recently on TED recently which tells the story about how a woman managed to treat her symptoms of MS enough to walk again and go back to a normal life…the theory was a strict natural diet. Alternative therapies may not have scientific backing but some of them have documented benefits.

We are all adults here at the end of the day and we need to respect the beliefs of others even if you don’t agree. This forum is for discussion and debate but not to attack other users. You might not agree with candida theories but googling ‘candida hormones studies’ brings up things like ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC97188/ and there are various sources on the net that say steroids and immune suppressing drugs increase the risk of candida. The point i am trying to make is that peoples ideas might sound crazy but there is science behind most of it but that’s not to say this is causing the problem. There is one user on here that got rid of the symptoms and they came back after two years as soon as they started taking dexa or something similar.

I am grateful for the research going in to this and I truly hope there are some results from the studies. I do however believe, like other users on here, we should leave no stone unturned. Lets just say for example it turns out that every user has down-regulated ARs…what is to say this isn’t being caused by something else in the body that has already been struck off because ‘it’s 100% wrong’.

Hormones are the causes or at least the trigger for these issues and if you asked any person on the street what they think will fix the problems they will surely say hormones will fix it. This isn’t the case. People who are taking hCG and treating this hormonally are not being attacked even though we have many experiences to show this route isn’t working, how is this any different? This is a users experience and they are saying what is working for them, this has certainly proved useful for people considering TRT has it not? I think any information is valuable.

My two c…I would like to hear more about how the OP is progressing and not listening to the same arguments i’ve found in every other post. I am new to this forum but I have been following it with interest and it just seems like people are being pushed away for reporting their improvements.

Please do not take this is an attack…I hope we all one day get rid of these god awful symptoms! Let’s unite and test not divide and segregate!

#82

Jeff, you’re 100% wrong.

#83

I agree with jeff. Science is not a religion there should be room for debate.

#84

Jeff, hormones are being affected because of receptor issues, the signaling, the transmitting etc

#85

lol this did make me chuckle…but seriously we are going through hell…can we at least chill with the battering!
It would be quite nice to have a world where sufferers can share knowledge and out there ideas without being criticized. I kinda get the feeling you are trying to antogonize!

#86

sorry for the double post but…

I am open to this idea completely and yeah some of the arguments are convincing and have science behind them. I do however also believe for me that this isn’t the case and I will try and explain why…let me first say that hormones are vital in the maintenance of certain tissues and the reason I am in this mess. Anyway, I do not have any hormonal profile issues, my hormones are in good shape and my HTPA axis is in perfect working order. This means that for me the androgen receptors and neurons in the hypothalamus and pituitary glands are doing their job in producing their respective hormones.
I do however assume that the neurons in the brain were not damaged since the neurons in the grey matter for producing and detecting hormones were not affected. I do believe this is related to the CNS/PNS though - why this is I can only begin to speculate. This happened overnight and therefore I dont think this is nerve damage per se and I do not understand how hormones could damage the neurons in such a short time frame if it is. The thing that gets me is I can’t understand why this ‘AR down-regulation’ would be limited to certain body tissues and not in others? If this was the case then surely I would have all the symptoms of low androgen levels? Why would my facial hair androgen receptors upregulate again but not in my penis???

Androgens in men have a drastic effect on sexual function, which includes pudendal nerve signalling, prostate, penile maintenance and pelvic floor muscles. They also have an affect on neurotransmitters and the immune system. I think you can agree that testosterone, or more specifically DHT, maintains the penile tissues…this has scientific backing and it is easy to understand why, I do not however have corporal fibrosis…which many people could conclude from ‘science’.

There are a few things I know for sure:

  1. This started on ceasing the drug when hormones shifted
  2. I do not have peyronies
  3. I do not have fibrosis
  4. I have a hypertonic corpus cavernosum
  5. I have very little feeling in my penis (if any)
  6. I get relief sometimes when I need to urinate
  7. I get relief when I lay down for long periods
  8. I do not have hard flaccid(or whatever you want to name it) when I take alpha blockers
  9. I was masturbating LOTS before this happened and with symptoms of tight pelvic floor muscles
  10. I suffered from Prem Ej before this happened to me (no where near what it is now though!)
  11. I used to have a big and lively penis and it only shows itself now and again
  12. My libido fluctuates depending on my mood
  13. I have horrible spider veins on my …
  14. It is shrunken up and hard 99% of the time.
  15. This post is for the OP and I am being a hypocrite by derailing it again!

From everything I’ve read on this forum it seems that the only people who improve are the ones that persevere and take a holistic approach. Diet is one of the most important aspects of health and most of these healthy diets share common ground, cover aspects of inflammation, vital nutrients, anti candida etc. Exercise is also another important one…affecting almost every system in the body. If we all took a holistic approach I am sure that we would all make more progress. Take a look at Chi for an example for this…he has taken a natural approach and has nearly completely recovered by using natural means. I just urge everyone to keep an open mind because after all…whats the harm?

#87

Point is guys here arn’t sharing “knowledge”. No one here possess the knowledge it will take to improve this condition. They are sharing misinformation, wild speculation, quakery and flat out nonsense. This means we’ll go another ten years blowing our money on more nonsense therapies and not get any closer to real answers. If guys want to track their progress on their member stories I don’t see a problem with that. But, the theories section should be shut down (as has been suggested) so we can focus on media exposure and funding/participating in research so the guys here can stop embarrassing themselves and this community and stop wasting our time and money.

#88

So for the OP, what’s been the results thus far?

I can update with my results, since I started roughly around the same time as the OP taking small antifungal/anticandida steps for the last few months. I need to make clear that I don’t have much opinion on the leaky gut/candida debate. I just wanted to try something that didn’t require prescription drugs. I tried several protocols for a few weeks at a time, reasoning that I should feel some difference if anything was working

  1. I cut out out all breads, grains, rices, etc. first, then followed up with cutting out high sugar foods/sweets, Apple Cider Vinegar twice a day (around 1 month)

Result: I noticed immediately less stress in my stomach. The burping and bloating for hours after eating and the constant gas lowered. The itchy skin lessened, the muscle twitching lessened as well, but i think neither of these two symptoms completely went away. Basically all other sexual and non-sexual physical sides were still present.

  1. All of #1 plus digestive aids with probiotics (around 1 month)

Result: Digestion wise, I think everything generally got better. I also felt less of the constant discomfort i would feel in the prostate area…not sure at all how that is related to digestion but i did feel that. I think sleep was a little better too.

In the end I cut out the digestive aids with probiotics. First of all, they were not cheap. Second, I felt like it wasn’t really a cure, just a crutch to relieve some of the symptoms. I wanted to keep investigating to see if there was anything else that would help me

  1. All of #1 plus candida clear (around 1 month)

Result: Not much difference digestion wise. Things were generally the same as before, which still meant my indigestion symptoms were much better than before. Sleep was back to being not so good/deep. During this time I experienced a mini recovery for a few days, not a full blown recovery, but just mini. My testicles had grown in size, there was more girth to my penis, and I masturbated a lot more. It went away after a few days, but it could have just been natural, i seem to have a pretty decent temporary recovery every 6-7 months on my own, so who knows? The feeling of prostate support was gone, i was back to feeling some occasional discomfort down there. One important thing to note, by this time i was eating a lot of veggies and some fruits which i tried to keep low sugar…my bowel movements were SUPER dry. I was going every day, but no matter how much fiber i ate, it was like i was passing a rock every time. When i would wipe, there would literally be nothing on the paper every time. It was pretty uncomfortable.

  1. Started a fully anti-candida diet including the 7 day all vegetable, fiber, liver flush cleanse

This was pretty uncomfortable to do. My sleep was bad during this time, i was constantly hungry and unhappy. I had pretty much zero libido, and I remember experiencing one day with what I have always guessed were high estrogen symptoms (overall “doughy” feeling to the body, over emotional).

After 7 days I stopped this and started the anti candida diet with antifungals and probiotics again, which meant I went back to eating brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat but still not eating fruits at all. My bowel movements have gotten easier and now i do see something on the toilet paper after i wipe.

Result: I can say that my twitching is almost completely gone, the itchy skin has lessened compared to months ago, there almost no indigestion sides anymore…but again, all of the other symptoms are still there including all sexual symptoms. Overall, my body does feel “cleaner”, but so far there has been no translation of this effect to any of the other symptoms of PFS

Conclusion and next steps: I now don’t believe treating this from a digestion angle is going to SOLVE anything for me, but it does make me a little more comfortable as far as digestion. I’m not sure if I will eventually drop the antifungal diet altogether as it does make me feel somewhat better. For now I will continue this for another month or so. I also don’t have access to mass amounts of nystatin or the chinese herbs that IHP had, so maybe those two things were huge parts of his ultimate recovery. I don’t feel like investigating that degree of money into this, and would instead choose to put that large a sum of money either to PFS research or just saving it.