Saw Dr. Crisler this morning

Hey guys,

I had an office consultation with Dr. Crisler this morning and thought I’d just let you guys know about a few things. You can find my story in the personal profiles forum by searching for “JoshCurtz”.

I’ve had no real tests done because of lack of cooperation from my personal doctor, but Dr. Crisler is arranging some tests for me. I showed him the lists of tests you guys recommend in the “Hormone & Blood Tests” forum and he said they weren’t all necessary at this point for me because he likes to work in stages so for now he has ordered some subset of the tests. He said he prefers doing a 24 hour urine sample because he can see hormone levels throughout the day this way as opposed to one snapshot in time. He did also order some blood work but I forget what it’s for. Once I get the tests done I’ll let you know what all he had tested.

Dr. Crisler examined me physically as well and said I had some sort of fatty growths in the chest area and flank area. He said it wasn’t gyno but used some other term which I forget now (lipo something maybe?). I thought this has always been there because I’ve always had some minor fat in the chest and abdomen flanks but who knows. He is going to check estrogen levels because these could be results of estrogenic effects.

The doctor said he had examined several finasteride sufferers and some had pre finasteride and post finasteride hormone profiles and that even after restoring their hormone levels not all were cured. So as a lot of you on this board have said, he believes it is more than just the hormone levels being disrupted here. Dr. Crisler expressed the same frustration at finasteride being prescribed for hair loss that we feel. He said he has some ideas as to what finasteride might be disturbing in our body but nothing that he can publish yet. He mentioned this will be a slow process trying to work to discover what this damn drug did to us.

Dr. Crisler said people from these forums have sent him gifts and have been very appreciative of his help and he said he really likes the guys on our forum. He said he really wishes he could still participate in our boards but he runs his own boards over at anabolicminds and just doesn’t have the time to keep up with our board. He mentioned that he is not affiliated with MesoRX anymore because he had some disagreement with the owner which I can’t remember. I mentioned “Jim1234” who recently appeared on these forums and said he doesn’t know him but he said if he is “Lou123” then the guy is not qualified and is basically full of it.

I’ll keep you guys posted as to what comes up in my lab work. I might have forgotten some stuff he said so if you guys have questions feel free to ask and maybe Dr Crisler answered the question during our consultation.

When you say not all recovered, even after the person’s hormones were corrected, did he say if there were any factors such as age or other complications or is it just a case of any one of us old or young, might be like this permanently?

I know other doctors have had issues getting older men back to functioning post finasteride, but they have said that there have been issues that complicated recovery such as diabetes and things like that.

He didn’t mention finding or not finding a relationship between age and whether or not a person recovers after restoring hormone levels. He did mention several times during our talk that he is trying to figure this thing out as he sees more patients and tries different things.

Does Dr. Crisler ever work with Dr. Shippen or vice versa?

Perhaps if some of the top docs in the world put their heads together on this they might come across an answer (hopefully) quicker… and hopefully a cure.

What a day that would be!!!

Mew, Dr Crisler and Dr Shippen are good freinds and they regularly chat about hormones in general when they see each other at conferences and stuff. They have lunch together and things too. I would say that they do swap notes on finasteride. I would be surprised if they didnt.

Yup, Dr. Crisler said him and Dr. Shippen are good friends and they talk often and meet at conferences. He said they do discuss finasteride issues together.

So did he say anything positive about finasteride issues? Do any guys recover when their hormones are corrected?

It sounded like some guys do recover when their hormones are corrected. He did seem optimistic and said something to the effect of “we’ll figure this out. it will take time, but we will figure it out.”

He likes to see test results from finasteride suffers because it helps him try and figure out what’s going on. I think now that I said that, it might be worth asking him if he wouldn’t mind other finasteride sufferers sending him their hormone profiles since it might help him put some more pieces of this puzzle together.

Is there not some way we could help piece some of this together?

For example a shared online spreadsheet that we can populate with agreed hormone profiles (type and measurement), and which calculates some key ratios, such as T:E ratio, Free Androgen Index…

That way we may see some common trends more easily and have a better idea of where problems lie. We need a more scientific way of looking at our results, and we can then use this to work more effectively with the ‘experts’.

I agree, we need to piece this together in some sort of spreadsheet so that we can then hand this over to experts.