New member new story

I was 44 when I started taking Propecia. Prior to taking Propecia my sex life was very healthy. I’m married with children. I took Propecia for 63 days when I started noticing sexual side effects. I took 1/2 pill for 8 more days, then discontinued totally. For weeks there was no improvement. I expected it to take awhile as the warnings said. However there was an erie quietness to erections, libido, and every other emotional response in my body. Like in a scary movie scene where 2 people are walking in a forest and one says “listen, do you hear that?” And the other person says"I don’t hear anything." And the first person says “exactly, Where’s the birds, frogs, crickets, etc?” And then the bad guy pops out behind a tree or something and scares the hell out of you. I knew something was wrong.

I started doing some googling and found this website. It is invalueable. I mentioned these symptoms to my GP on a visit for something else. He said it couldn’t be the Propecia and he could give me Viagra. I refused the Viagra at that point. After 6 weeks everything started coming back. I was about 75% of my normal self in all aspects. However after 2 1/2 months nothing more improved. It was 4 months now since I quite the Propecia. My hair did not start falling out again. I was actually pretty happy with my full head of hair back and 75% of what I was. But still a little scared.

One day my wife switched from the pill to a new levenoestradiol (spelling?) secreting intrauterine device. Literally within seconds after intercourse the original symptoms began again with the same erie quietness. Over the next couple weeks  I lost the ability to have and maintain an erection, loss of libido, loss of short term memory and the ability to concentrate, a little depression, and my eyes cannot focus on anything close.

  I just happened to have another appointment with my GP. He tested me for testosterone and SHGP. He mailed me a note that everything was normal. But the symptoms kept getting worse. I made another appointment with him just for this matter. I saw my T was very low- 200. But he said my free T was normal. I cant remember the # but I remember it was low normal. 6.5 I think. But my SHGP was low normal too which I thought was good until reading a recent post by Hypo. The GP said he didn't want to give me Testosterone because he didn't want to wake up my prostate. I showed him some copies I made from this website and he agreed to do some more bloodtest. They are pending and I will post them when I get them. He agreed to give me copies. He did say it is highly unlikely the interuterine device had anything to do with this. And he may be right.

It has been 6-7 weeks since the return of my symptoms. Almost 8 months since off Propecia.  Assuming the IU device had nothing to do with this, has anyone else had these type of rebounds in symptoms like mine. Thanks for reading. I will post more later. Any input would be appreciated.

Excacly what I got. I still cannot understand what the eye thing means hormonewise…

JH

Maybe nothing but co-incidence. I’m just listing everything here for completeness sake. Doctors already do not take us serious.So I want to be careful not to blame all my woes on Propecia giving doctors fuel for the fire. However being among friends I’m being complete to see if there are trends.

 2 other wierd symptoms I have are:

     1) I fall asleep whenever I concentrate on something and I'm not tired.

     2) I developed a numb area of skin on my face below 1 sideburn.

I have the same vision problems. I still think it has something to with increased intracranial pressure (pseduotumor cerebri). I really hope someone gets their cerebrospinal pressure tested so we can figure out if that’s the reason. Mine was really high. Please speak with your doc about this. There’s some medication you can get on to lower the pressure. This would be groundbreaking if we discovered propecia causes pseudotumor.

From medicinenet.com/pseudotumor_ … rticle.htm

What are common characteristics of patients with pseudotumor cerebri?

The majority of pseudotumor cerebri patients are young, female, and obese: girls in their teens who are overweight.

What causes pseudotumor cerebri?

Pseudotumor cerebri in most cases has no known cause. It can occur in association with pregnancy, estrogen treatment, cortisone-related medications, adrenal or parathyroid gland abnormality, and certain drugs (tetracycline, vitamin A, nalidixic acid).

From nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency … 000351.htm
Causes, incidence, and risk factors

The cause for the condition is unknown. The following factors increase the risk:

Obesity
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), tetracycline, nitrofurantoin, isotretinoin, tamoxifen, nalidixic acid, lithium, and the starting or stopping of steroids
Vitamin A (too much or too little)
Cushing’s disease
Hypoparathyroidism
Hypothyroidism
Chronic renal failure
Anemia


Hmm… let me just hypothesize here.

  • Finasteride is a 4-aza-steroid compound, a steroid analogue (a substance with steroid-like properties)

  • Finasteride increases Estrogen levels in men (making us more “women-like”)

  • Some guys ended up with increased TSH/thyroid levels, ie hypothyoidism from taking Fin… for example, me.

  • The sites above list causes as possibly being from “starting or stopping steroids”, as well as “estrogen treatment” and “hypothyroidism”, and that it typically appears in girls. Funny, Finasteride seems to lend itself quite well to all of that.

Anyone see the correlation here? Just some thoughts… who knows though.

Wow! Good research Mew!

Would someone with vision problems (like myself) please get a spinal tap and have their pressure checked??? If you have pseudotumor (like me), this would be a HUGE revelation!