Alteredlife, have you found amino acids that are beneficial to sleep and anxiety ? Or the production of serotonin ?
I’m doing a diet that is taking care of the neurological symptoms but if I could fix them with aminos and not have to diet, I would prefer that.
Are you still taking beet juice ?
I’m worried about doing this as I get anxiety whenever I take carbs.
Try L-tryptophan. I purchased a bottle back when I was having sleep issues and it was way more effective then any sleep aid i tried
Thanks. I’ll try. I hear L-Tyrosine can help too.
Beet juice is hit and miss. I haven’t taken it in a couple of weeks but I plan to get back on it.
Functions of Tryptophan in the body
Today Tryptophan is recognized as the essential building block for numerous life-giving biomolecules, like enzymes, structural proteins, serotonin, melatonin, and the neurotransmitters. Serotonin is responsible for lots of diverse physiological functions like affective disorders, pain perception, sleep, temperature and blood pressure. This amino acid has been recognized as a possible mediator of central fatigue.
Tryptophan can be obtained from plant or animal sources and is widely used in alternative medicine to help treat insomnia, anxiety, depression, and even PMS. Besides, this amino acid is used for smoking cessation and for other conditions. It is known worldwide for relieving minor PMS, for enhancing relaxation and sleep, for soothing nerves and anxiety, and for reducing carbohydrate cravings. Tryptophan is also vital for the production process of serotonin, which is a brain chemical involved in regulating mood. Therefore, when you suffer from depression, there may be a decreased amount of serotonin released from the nerve cells into your brain. Meanwhile, Tryptophan is able to enhance the serotonin’s antidepressant effect by increasing the amount of serotonin in your blood.
Benefits of Tryptophan
Among other benefits of this amino acid there are facts that Tryptophan helps treating menopausal depressive conditions, as well as alleviating the symptoms of restless leg syndrome. In addition, it assists in controlling the hyperactivity in children and relieves stress. This amino acid is also recognized for being involved in the body’s regulation of sleep: increasing Tryptophan levels may help you normalize sleep patterns. The researches also point out that people suffering from migraine headaches should regulate their levels of Tryptophan.
I would take citrulline, arginine, and bcaa’s. Citrulline is the precursor to arginine, but you have to assume your body is making them correctly. I take both because I don’t have a clue what my body is making properly and there is no medical science that is even looking into this for PFS patients. The BCAA’s have 3 acids that support muscle growth and the Glutamine supports brain function. According to @Pete1989 and an article that he posted, the carnitine tartrate produces androgen receptors. Don’t skimp on just taking one or two acids, mix and match and take several. The more I take, the better results I get. And I don’t just stay on them every day, I’ll take them for a few weeks and then get off for 2 or 3 weeks.
Let me say something else here. I understand wanting to take a medicine to fix our problems. The truth of the matter is that a medicine is what brought on all of our problems though. Our bodies heal themselves. You can take someone who has been in a bad accident and all busted up, rush them to the emergency room and the doctors there don’t heal them. They get them to a stable state and the persons body will then take on the roll of healing itself. Medicines are chemicals that are man made and anything man makes is flawed. Amino acids however, are God made. They are the building blocks of our bodies. Give your body what it needs, and it’ll heal itself and a lot faster.
The atrophy I had was just not being able to build muscle naturally. I would work out hard, and then get weaker. It didn’t matter how hard I exerted myself. Anabolic steroids was the only way I was able to get any gains, and even then I would only get to a certain point and then kind of just level off. I’ve read articles and seen pictures of guys with PFS that are losing muscle and just wasting away. This was before I discovered this, but to me it makes sense now. Building blocks of the muscle is amino acids, not testosterone. Sure, you need testosterone and it helps in building muscle, but if you take the amino acids out of the picture, then you can have all the test you want, and you still aren’t getting anywhere.
Now, the way my muscles felt after a workout before this regimen and the way they feel now after a workout is totally different. I remember after I took the BCAA’s the first time and then worked out I told my wife it was a totally different feeling then I was used to. I could tell something was definitely more positive.
I don’t remember having a lot of cramping, but I did have a lot of joint weakness. I thought it was due to just getting older, but since I started this, my joints have actually been a lot better.
Your whole concept makes a lot of sense.
I`m getting a bunch of different aminos to treat insomnia.
Before we got pfs, we were fine, so you think the 5AR inhibitor also inhibited our ability to syntesize some amino acids ?
It’s already known various neurosteroids aren’t produced anymore, like allopregnanolone, which explains insomnia.
I figured out tryptophan before I knew finasteride was the source of my problem. We need vitamin D, calcium and magnesium to convert tryptophan in serotonine, which is later converted in melatonin.
I will buy some and continue my vitamin D and calcium suplements.
I appreciate you knowledge on the aminos.
Thank you.
This may have been said but keep in mind that the OP was juicing beets which significantly increase nitric oxide in the body, similar to arginine.
While it may have been asked or answered in this thread, has the watery semen issue gone away or stayed the same with the amino acids? I’ve been following your advice, and after a typical 2-3 day recovery, for the last 4 weeks, things subsided quite a bit, but are still better, with the return of frequent morning erections, less brain fog, and a slightly better mood, although still very little to no libido or sensation.
These better feelings may coincide with a few pounds of needed wieght loss I experienced through intermittent fasting, which lead to me ask on the experiences of body fat and the impact on PFS. I suspect, as is typical, those of low to normal body fat experience less severe symptoms than those with higher body fat. Have others also experienced a slight relief of symptoms with weight loss?
@Ozeph I’m like Forest Gump when I say “I’m not a smart man”. I have spent hours upon hours though sitting at my computer researching acids. There was a lady on Rxisk.org that made the same assumption about a possible inability to properly synthesize amino acids. Maybe, maybe not, but this whole concept makes a lot more sense than any kind of DHT problem.
Also, we’ve all seen post where someone would claim that got healed from this or from that. Here was always my problem with these crazy regimens. Most of them didn’t make sense. I’m not knocking anyone. I certainly know what it is like to be desperate. I don’t have any science or medical proof as to what I am claiming. But, there are two things. It makes sense and it is working.
@BrongFogBoy You are correct about that as well. Beets are full of antioxidants also that get harmful toxins out of the body, particularly, the brain.
@NewYorker I have said this several times. I can only vouch for me and my personal symptoms. I never had watery semen so I haven’t researched to see how it is made in the body and what acid would directly be involved in that. There are a lot of symptoms listed that I didn’t have. What is working for me, may take a little bit different mix to work for you. What are you taking?
I’m taking everything you suggested, along with Vitamin D and Zinc. Thank you for that advice. It’s helped a great deal.
I have to speculate a bit, but are there also others who have PFS, who don’t have watery semen? I would suggest that PFS includes watery semen, and a full recovery would also include a return to “normal” in that respect too.
I don’t know about that. My personal symptoms were very dry and cracked hands (particularly on the fingers), low libido, sexual dysfunction, brain fog in the last four years due to getting burned with Jalyn (never had it with propecia), muscle atrophy, fat build up on upper torso. Even losing 20 lbs wouldn’t get rid of fat.
I’ve always said that some guys had and have it much worse. I read behind a guy one time that had been impotent for four years and there are probably some on here that are just as bad. My dysfunction included early on in pfs, sometimes going a week with very low libido. I remember waking up one day and my groin being numb. I remember squeezing it as hard as I could and not feeling anything. That was about 3 to 4 months after my first initial crash.
Although the feeling did come back, the dysfunction has remained all this time, until this last August when all of this started. In all the years I’ve had it, I have only been able to have sex more than one time in a day like 3 or 4 times. Out of those 3 or 4 times, all of them were separated from like morning to evening. Never were they close together. I had a very long refractory period. If you’ve never heard of that, go look it up. It is the time it takes your body to recover after sex in order to be able to have sex again. There is a part of the brain that is in control of that and that part of the brain is controlled by an amino acid. How bout that. I now can have sex 3 or more times a day. My refractory period is an hour and it is consistent. It was more like 5 or 10 minutes before PFS, but I’m not as young as I used to be either. lol I’m very happy with an hour.
Also, I’m not claiming “Healed” yet. I am however claiming much, much better.
Oh now I get it. This is why your taking beet juice. It makes sense.
Thank you. I will try.
I had watery semen for so long I had forgotten it was supposed to be thick. I took finasteride for more than 15 years, I don`t even remember when I started.
A month or two after my crash, my semen became thick again. I have no explanation, I was quite surprised and so was my wife. She thought I was sick ! I had to explain to her its supposed to be that way. We still had a son with this watery semen and hes healthy and is rather well equipped down there compared to other babies.
Im on a ketogenic diet as per https://forum.propeciahelp.com/t/please-share-results-with-a-ketogenic-or-high-fat-intake-diet/31951/11 and it made all the neurological symptoms disappear. By the way, eating LOTS of fat and meat, and no carbs, I lost 25% of my weight, all fat was lost and I gained lots of muscle. Check the post. Diet and exercise are a part of many peoples recovery.
For the sexual symptoms, I would refer to alteredlife method with amino acids. It seems to work. I`m trying aminos too.
I had my blood tested 1 month after crashing. DHT, testosterone and everything was normal and within range. I couldn`t test the 3 alpha androstenediol gluconide, which is the best indication to show you have pfs.
The only abnormality was low vitamin D, which goes with pfs, but other ailments as well. Nonethe less, I could tick half of the symptoms for pfs and they all appeared a month after I stopped finasteride. So obviously I had the crash.
So yes, it`s weird. people recover in all kind of different ways, or sometime for no apparent reasons.
To me, dieting is a question of survival. The anxiety was so intense I was going to kill myself. I found that it manifest itself only if I eat carbs. So i stopped, and all the other neurological problems, like brain fog and speech slur stopped as well. Also the headache, acid reflux and stomach ache.
I think its a good idea to try and get the body in a better general shape by eating better and exercising, I think trying various supplements is also a good idea, to jolt the body this way and that way and get things to reboot naturally, but I dont think taking more drugs and external hormones is a good idea. Our body was working naturally before, the solution has to come from a natural source. not from more aggressive drugs.
If you’re consuming a high quality and high protein diet, about 1-1.2 gram protein/lb of body weight OR consuming 40-55g protein per meal (eating a standard 3-4 meals a day), then supplementing BCAA’s will not do anything and is completely useless.
High quality protein (whey, albumin, meat) contain all of your EAA’s (which contain all of your BCAA’s). Therefore, if your protein consumption is already that high, you’re already getting a surplus of BCAA’s.
If you’re not consuming enough protein in your diet, supplementing amino acids can potentially help and you may want to look into this approach.
This is not my personal opinion, this is science backed by tons of RECENT literature.
I’m just speculating here, but could PFS have made us much more sensitive to body fat gains and contributed to our ability to convert testosterone to something we can effectively use.
Do we know of anyone on the forum who’s high in body fat who had even a partial recovery? I do want to identify the difference because what’s a cause of PFS and what’s an effect.
Losing weight (5-10lbs out of 30 I need to lose) have already made me feel better and sleep better, but I’m also taking all the amino acids and fasting 16 hours, and eating better, although not as described in the diet above.
My next step is to explore LDN (low dose Naltrexone). It’s received some favorable feedback, and I’m eager to find a doctor who’ll prescribe it for me.
I do encourage everyone to read this article on testosterone, but primarily for what it says on bodyfat and would be interested in feedback on it: