Terribly sorry for your long suffering. I can resonate with many of your longstanding issues and have few key questions, if you don’t mind.
Spstricken is not on hops extract and to the best of my knowledge he never tried hops extract or anything else that increases estrogen or agonizes the estrogen receptors
I took the hops extract
We are both saw P-PFS
I’m also curious about spstricken’s estradiol levels
Thanks for clearing this up @5-alpha-victim . What is your opinion on hops? I’ve come across mixed opinions with some claiming it lowered testosterone.
I have an elder brother who also took saw palmetto 5 years ago and suffered symptoms similar to @spstriken . Sadly, my brother is still not recovered and is on pristique. I’m highly suspicious chronic inflammation lies at the bottom of this.
I’m saw p-PFS as well. I actually took it twice . Once at age 26 and once at age 29. The first time I got all the sexual sides. I second time I got the digestive and insomnia sides
Is your brother on any of the forums ?
pristique is a class of medications known as SNRIs, or serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors.
Did this drug help him ?
Hope extract binds to the estrogen receptor and acts as as estrogen. It helped me the first two times I took it with some of the sexual sides. I’m on it currently without seeing the benefits so far that I got the first two times. In Saw P-PFS increasing estrogen seems to help us
thank you guys. I am not recovered but I am not suffering either the way I was before starting VitD3. Unlike many guys here who are sufferings but do not get worse or have sexual sides only, my case was very serious. I was getting worse and worse every day and was feeling very close to death. Thanks God I am now at a stable level where I can do daily chores and laugh with other people although underneath problems still exist but to me this all is very big improvement.
As far as I remember my E2 was never very high, always below the upper level. I have not done blood tests for many years, simply have no interest now.
Unfortunately, my bro doesn’t believe SP may have been the cause for his deterioration and thinks it’s all neurological/stress. He says pristique has given him his life back after being on it for a year, but I’ve seen him aging rapidly. I feared for him but if he’s fine with whatever he’s on then so be it.
I , on the other hand, hate to band aid my longstanding problems and would rather attack them at the root. Low estrogen (E2 in particular) remains to be an issue for me despite trying left and right to raise it to at least 20 pg/ml. Oddly enough, taking DHEA for two weeks raised it (alongside libido) but then I got low Cortisol symptoms. My DHEA-s was also extremely low last time I had it tested.
It seems some get better when increasing estrogen some and some get worse. There is certainly a pattern with estrogen in 5 of us saw P cases where we lower estrogen and get worse. Does not sound like spstricken makes 6 for our pattern of saw P cases because it does not sound like he has seen the same pattern. But then again it does not sound like he has taken aromatase inhibitors, DHEA, DHT pro hormones or anything that agonizes estrogen receptors. So without having had trialed these things how would you know.
That’s interesting that taking DHEA increased your estradiol and improved the sexual sides. Did you go by feel when concluding that the DHEA increased your estradiol or did you get labs done to confirm the increase in estrogen during the time you seen improvements in the sexual sides ? Which sexual sides specifically did the increase in estrogen from the DHEA improve ?
What symptom specifically did you connect with low cortisol at the same time?
pristique being a serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor is interesting because there is a theory that poor orgasm may be linked to issue with the norepinephrine receptor. Do you know if your brother got the sexual sides and then took pristique and improved in them ?
My brother never brings up his sexuality but I can tell he had problems. This is off the records but he’s always been the one chasing random skirts on the street yet that wasn’t the case during his hardship. I can notice his attitude has changed for the better during family gatherings, he’s more engaged, social with more sense of humor. He brags about pristique but I can’t really say. I mean he’s persuading my younger sister to give it a try for her own personal issues so it must be working for him.
Low E2 has been the bane of my existence for the past 3 years and I’m yet to figure out what’s driving it so low. Out of hundreds of supplements, DHEA was the only one that measured up. I was on 15-20mg/d for about 2 weeks, IIRC, and did before/after bloodwork. My E2 level went up from mere 11 pg/ml to 28 pg/ml at the time. My libido returned full-swing, I could finally fantasize and get random boners. Sadly, I also noticed symptoms that include lightheadedness, fatigue, stomach aches, and sleepiness. I figured these were probably due to low cortisol. That said, I’ve also been on plethora of other things so my symptoms may have been due to something else.
Reading up on DHEA, it appears that doses of sub 15mg/d are androgenic whereas >15mg/d doses are estrogenic in men (i.e. tend to converts to E2). Whilst I loved the initial effects, it had given me a clue where to look as long as low E2 is concerned.
@5-alpha-victim
Very interesting
Respect for doing everything the way you do it with locking in on an experiment and doing before and after testing.
If we had more of us doing this I think we would have different variants of PFS established.
Giving your positive experience with increasing estrogen on DHEA this may be something you want to consider:
It contains “4 DHEA”. The product gets good feed back. It’s a “pro hormone” claimed to increase testosterone and for the Saw P-PFS guys getting good results by increasing estrogen get good results on this product. Based on what I read this “4 DHEA” converts to testosterone to a higher degree then regular DHEA which means in theory we should see even higher amounts of testosterone to estrogen conversion on this.
Two other Saw P-PFS guys get good results from this product specifically and we assume that it’s due to the increase in estrogen.
I’m about to run a trial of it for my first time starting at the end of this week. I’m going to run before and during labs to see exactly what the 4 DHEA is doing to my testosterone and estrogen. If it helps my sexual sides I’ll be hoping to see a correlation with increased estrogen in this trial.
I’m a little nervous because this product can shut down your natural T production and I have been herb cycling for years to help maintain good natural T levels. So for my first time in a long time I’m coming off the herbs and I’m going to risk shutting my self down for this trial. I’ll have the herbs ready to go as soon as I’m done running this.
If I get even as good results from this that I got on my first two trials of hops extract which agonizes estrogen receptor alpha I’ll consider it a success with further establishing that in certain cases increasing estrogen helps. From here my goal will be trying to figure out if there is any specific value on a test that can distinguish us as being a PFS case that gets benefits from increasing estrogen. Obviously the idea is to have some type of way to know or at least have a better idea as to who will get worse and who will get better from increasing estrogen before you try it. One value I have my eye on right now is the potent estrogen receptor beta agonist 3b-diol. I’m flagged low in plasma 3b-diol. I wonder of you are as well. Spstricken is lowish in 3b-diol as well. If we could get two of us with confirmed low 3b-diol who both get improvements in sexual sides from increasing estrogen confirmed on labs now we are getting somewhere
In my mind this is how we beat PFS. It would take a major group effort though. Let’s face it one guy increases estrogen and gets worse. Then warns everyone else that increasing estrogen makes PFS worse. So no one else try’s it again. That’s the problem everyone goes about treating PFS with a “blanket approach” and fails because it’s not a “blanket problem”. If we had listened to the “blanket statement” that “increasing estrogen makes PFS worse” we would not have discovered that in our own cases it actually can make us better. We both now have a solid path to explore further for our own cases and we found this path by not viewing PFS as being ABC went wrong so we need to do DEF
Spot on @5-alpha-victim ! Couldn’t have said it any better. I echo your opinion on the “blanket approach”. I’ve been repeating myself saying that PFS isn’t a disorder of singular origin. Fin results in PFS but so does SP, AIs, SSRIs, accutane and what have you. How symptoms overlap is staggering. I wholeheartedly understand the urgent need for a universal treatment as in the case with vaccinations, but living with this disorder for so many years and experimenting with hundreds of supposedly tried-and-true supplements and whatnot have taught me this is NOT the case. That’s why I resorted to my own historical data to track down abnormalities. I tried to get bloodwork not only during my bad times but also during good times. E2 and DHEA-s were strongly correlated with my libido, motivation, assertion, assertion and well-being. It appears that increasing E2 in such a way T/E2 is balanced is the way to go for the low E2 subset of PFS.
That said, I came across many fellow sufferers with apparently high E2 but I can’t speak for them since I haven’t been there myself. I tried to do some digging about 4-DHEA and it seems it’s the synthetic version of DHEA that converts to T (and thus E2) at a more effective rate, in theory. Regular DHEA in doses of 15-25mg/d for 2-3 weeks wasn’t suppressive to T, well at least in my case, but I’m not sure how this translates to the synthetic 4-DHEA.
Is there anyone on this forum who had experience with 4-Andro/4-DHEA?
I completely agree with everything you have said here.
I’m not sure if anyone on this forum has tried
4-DHEA. I will do a search on this forum and see.
In the meantime I have also dug a little deeper into 4-DHEA. Here is what I found:
4-DHEA converts to 4-Androstenediol.
Regular DHEA converts to 5-Androstenediol.
4-Androstenediol has a higher conversion rate to testosterone then 5-Androstenediol
Interestingly the 5-Androstenediol that regular DHEA converts to is believed to have a higher aromatase rate to estradiol then the
4-Androstenediol that 4-DHEA converts to. I did not know this…
So maybe we still end up getting more estradiol conversion from the
4-Androstenediol compared to the
5-Androstenediol because we are getting more testosterone from the 4-Androstenediol
Another explanation could be the exact enzymes responsible for converting the
4-Androstenediol into testosterone. In other words different enzymes may be responsible for 5-Androstenediol’s and 4-Androstenediol’s conversion to testosterone and this could possibly influence Estradiol’s conversion rate maybe ? I’m trying find a good steroid pathway chart that shows both 5-Androstenediol’s and 4-Androstenediol’s conversions to testosterone to get a better idea as to if this specific point makes sense. I do know that there is also a pro hormone called “1-andro” that these body builder type guys take to get their testosterone up.
This particular “1-andro” product they say does not convert to estradiol after the
“1-andro” converts to testosterone. Not sure why but I’m thinking along these lines when trying to figure out why exactly 4-DHEA’s conversion to 4-Androstenediol converts to testosterone with a subsequent lower conversion to estradiol then 5-Androstenediol. There is an explanation I’m just not sure if the explanation is enzyme related. I’ll have to do more research. For now I do know that two other Saw P-PFS guys get improvements on the 4-DHEA and they think it’s because of the increase in estrogen. One of these two guys got cured completely and believes that the 4-Andro cycles he did played a big part in his recovery. Both of these people are on a different forum.
I have my 4-DHEA. I’ll be beginning the trial as soon as I get my labs done. Then I’ll run more labs on cycle so we can see exactly what it’s doing. fingers crossed
This is super interesting. Frankly, I wouldn’t worry too much about the higher E2 conversion rate since playing with the dose alone can do this on either supplements. As I said earlier, regular DHEA in doses of 15-25mg/d was enough to drive up E2 to 28 pg/ml after 2 weeks, more or less. There’s also a sweet spot for E2 that achieves optimal T/E2 ratio. Going beyond that delicate point would likely result in high E2 issues that are similar to low E2 ones in more ways than one.
I’d suggest you also test for DHEA-S to see where your basal level at. Mine was at the rock bottom and DHEA did raise it. I think 4-Andro provides some 60mg 4-DHEA per serving. I would start real slow (~15mg/d) for a few days and see how I do before titrating up the dose. E2 is involved in numerous bodily processes and being a bodybuilder for 20+ years has taught me that it’s critical to male libido. I think maintaining its level at an optimal range for a while would eventually normalize a number of crucial-to-recovery things such as: gut microbiome, brain BDNF, body fat%, serotonin, dopamine, other hormones, etc.
Awesome info in this thread. Thank you for sharing that.
My labs got delayed by a day but I am getting them done in the morning and will start the 4 DHEA tomorrow. I have not made any final decisions on dosing yet but will likely start low and work my way up.
Years ago I recall getting tested for plasma DHEA sulfate and mine was normal.
Interestingly more recent salvia hormone testing discovered that I am low in Pregnenolone sulfate <1 pg/ml (reference range: 1-23 pg/ml) which is seen at the very beginning of the cascade with Pregnenolone going to Pregnenolone sufate via the ST enzyme which also converts DHEA to DHEA sulfate. On the sterioid cascade chart I attached you can see pregnenolone going to pregnenolone sulfate and DHEA going to DHEA sulfate via the “ST” enzyme. So maybe we have something wrong with this enzyme as well as the aromatase enzyme.
Regarding low E2, it’s a tricky issue. Took me years trying to fathom the root cause and came up with potential scenarios:
I am feeling hugely better after stopping Gluten. My bloating has reduced to 40% to 50%. After a long time colon swelling and pain has reduced.
My Celiac test has been negative. Also I have not heard of anyone in my immediate or extended family with celiac. Maybe this kind of gluten intolerance is undocumented in Medical field.
Hi. Just want to share something with you. If you have a reaction to gluten, you probably have it to some other food. Because it is an underlying process that makes you intolerant to something. I don’t think you have resolved the root cause. Maybe you have temporarily suppressed it with VitD. So I suggest you discuss it with your doctor. Take care.
Thanks.
I already have discussed and Celiac test was negative. Also celiac is not in our family or extended family.
This is common to Benicar users as well . If you google Benicar+ Gluten you will see people become gluten intolarant with negative Celiac. I thing our P450 enzyme has altered .P450 has major role in the metabolism of Gluten and detoxification.
It’s called NCGS (non celiac gluten sensitivity). It’s not very good understood yet, but it’s certainly documented.
hey spstriken. i’m not sure i can private message you, but could you leave me a way to contact you? thanks
sp1"at"live.ca =>you know what you have to edit here.
