That’s what the doctors and pamphlets say, but in practice, Nystatin helped at least 3 of us:
-Ihatepropecia702, who barely busies himself with the forum or PFS research anymore because he’s busy fucking all the time (still complains of brain fog). He’s been on Nystatin/Diflucan (Fluconazole) for nearly a year. He also kickstarted his process with a fast, 10 days of stomach-cleansing antibiotics, probiotics, digestive enzymes, anti-candida supps. BUT…it was the increase in dosage of Nystatin that got him marked results. And his basic ongoing regimen is Nystatin with Diflucan cycled in (VERY harsh on the liver)
-Golf: took Nystatin briefly, experienced return of morning wood. Got off it, to get fresh baseline tests, wood disappeared
-Me: took Nystatin for about 2 months, no results. Decided to double the daily intake…started getting STRONG morning wood, nearly every morning. (Aside from also clearing up my skin, demonstrating that unlike mainstream science’s belief, dermatitis is gut/yeast-based). I quit the Nystatin to wait one month and do an unbiased stool test. The erections persisted for about a month, and then subsided.
The doctors all said that Nystatin wasn’t absorbed by the gut, that, if anything, it was the Diflucan. But it was definitely the double-dosing of Nystatin that yielded results (not that the Diflucan wasn’t doing anything).
One doc said that it could very well be the hormonal-modulating qualities of antifungals and the “azole” class of antifungals, pulling out a steroid pathway chart and showing how these drugs (which were listed in sideboxes along with other meds or foods) upregulate and downregulate some processes, the net effect being unknown. He proposed that it might simply be acting as an aromatase inhibitor, and to try low-dose arimidex instead. I declined.
This doc also said, like all the other docs, that sometimes, we just don’t know why a medicine works for something, or what exactly it does. It’s just never been studied that way.
Yet another doctor scratched his head, because antifungals are given to prostate cancer guys to LOWER testosterone, because cancer needs T to thrive.
If this is so, could Lower T mean lower E, and perhaps less inflammation in the prostate? Could Nystatin have other anti-bacterial or anti-inflammatory properties that we do not know about? It’s really a mindfuck for me, and nobody can really explain it. They’re probably not handing out research grants for this, but I sure would like to know what the hell that drug was doing. I could never reach Ihatepropecia702’s results, but I cannot discount them. That guy needs to be studied in a lab, seems like he’s being ignored because he doesn’t fit neatly into any theory, and we tend to throw those guys out or accuse them of not having “true PFS.” For the record, he took finasteride as long as me, had just as bad E.D. and libido issues, and is now a very happy dude, despite still battling the brain fog.