Strange Nocturnal Mid-Back Pain

General Discussion
#1

Hi All,

Has anyone here experienced strange back pain since stopping Fin, specifically at night? I’ve had this checked out with three physio’s and all of them are puzzled. One thing to note is I haven’t had an MRI yet as I’d like to avoid this if it’s the Fin as it’ll pick up shit and cost me the equiv of USD$800 for nothing.

Symptoms - The pain only starts at night when I’m lying down in bed at around 3am in the morning. It’s like a dull burning and spasms in the mid-back only, not lumbar, lower or upper back. As if I had overworked it during a gym session for example. It seems to start building over night and gets worse as time passes after 3am, to the point where I can’t even move otherwise it’ll spasm. If I don’t drop an ibuprofen or pain med at this point I can’t ignore it and go back to sleep. As soon as I get up, after 15 minutes the pain is gone and over the course of a few hours the tightness in my back wears off. Throughout the day I’m completely fine, honestly I could bust out a back flip right here no probs, complete mobility with no pinching or pain anywhere, nothing radiating to my legs of feet, no pissing blood…nothing.

I’ve tried everything from different mattresses to different pillows, different sleeping positions etc. I’ve tried eating different foods and playing around with exercise to see what helps it. I’ve only noticed isolating my back during a heavy hypertrophy workout seems to calm it down that night only (wtf?), then the next night it flares up again. The pain has been ongoing for about 4 weeks now with no signs of letting up. Some have suggested stress, my wife is pregnant which might be background stress but apart from that I do f&$k all at work and I’m secure in my position.

I’m a fit guy normally, dead lifts, squats etc, never had back pain in my life. This all started randomly one night 4 weeks ago and that’s it. I don’t understand it but I’m thinking Fin as all the other random shit I’ve has since stopping seems to be linked to it. I’ve done a full blood work recently (before the pain) and nothing turned up, check out this post here for my bloods if you think it might be something linked to it.

Any ideas guys? I and others are completely puzzled. Once you think you’re through the worst of it some BS backpain now hits you down again, specially during sleep where I need it most.

#2

It’s a finasteride bro. Sure 110%

1 Like
#3

Cc @WorriedGuy123

#4

I’ve developed back pain ever since I stopped taking fin, though it’s not anything like the pain you described.

For the first 2.5 months, it felt like my back muscles were getting weaker and weaker every day. First, I was able to stand for several hours without hurting. Then it changed to an hour. Then 30 minutes. Then 15 minutes.
It got to the point where my back would hurt even while sitting, and I had to lay down before 12 PM every day to give my back some rest.

Around the 3-month mark, the pain started getting less and less. I’m able to walk for about 40 minutes without getting pain. If I sit, the pain isn’t there. I don’t have to lay down in the middle of the day to rest my back.
The pain goes away whenever I exercise, which is similar to what you’re experiencing.
Some days, the pain goes away almost completely.

Unfortunately, my doctors were just as clueless as yours. No one knows why…
Give yourself a few more months. It took almost 3 months for me to see some form of recovery.

2 Likes
#5

Thanks all for your responses.

#6

Did you do anything particular for it to subside @WorriedGuy123? Acupuncture, pilates, massage etc?

#7

Bro it’s a nervous i have a pain but the pain is a origin nervous. I live in Swiss bro. You are a Switzerland?

#8

The thing is, i’m not stressed. Honestly. It might be subconscious but seriously, to this point?

#9

The only thing I changed at the 2.5 month mark is exercise. I started to jog for 20 minutes at the start and slowly work my way up to 60 minutes. 2 weeks after starting, the back pain started getting less.
Of course, I can’t say that jogging helped my back. It could’ve just been coincidence.
I’m betting it had more to do with time than jogging, because my back pain is completely random.

Today, for example, is a good day. No pain at all, but I’m sure that this will only last for a day or two before the pain returns.

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#10

Hey, Jezza.

Just wanted to let you know that my back has been doing extremely well this past week. That constant pressure I felt is now gone, and I can walk around like normal without feeling any pain or discomfort in my back.

This improvement came during the week where I stopped exercising, so I’m pretty sure my recovery had nothing to do with jogging.

It took 4 months to get to where I am. ANyway, just wanted to let you know.

#11

Thanks @WorriedGuy123 for the message! Happy to see you come back and provide some reassurance, really appreciate that. I also have some good news of my own to report.

For anyone here that might suffer from this, I’ve detailed some things I did which may or may not have helped over the course of the 6 weeks I suffered from it. I now appear to be completely free of this bulls@#t and am taking nothing for it and have changing nothing in my daily routine to accommodate it.

Things I tried;

  • Acupuncture. Yes I gave this go. I wasn’t too convinced to begin with but I was pretty desperate so gave it a go. I thought to myself, this might help everything else I’m suffering with so two birds with one stone mentality kicked in. I found the best acupuncturist I could find and went. I did in total 7 sessions of 30min each with a very experienced chinese acupuncturist who actually admitted he’d seen others come through his practise with PFS! The acupuncturist also did electroacupuncture, this we did two sessions of and focused solely on my back where this weird pain would manifest during the earling morning.

  • Vitamin C & B. One of my doctors suspected I had not experienced this earlier on due to overloading on both of these vitamins. Unfortunately I’m not sure if this is conclusive as I started taking these again towards the 5th week mark. Once I started I really noticed the severity of the pain reduced considerably. In order to further test this I stopped both of these vitamins at the 6th week mark and haven’t experienced the pain return at all. To be honest, could it have just been time that resolved this? Maybe. I know there’s plenty of research on the effect of these on chronic pain but I’m not 100% convinced. If these symptoms return I’ll definitely reintroduce first vitamin C then later B to see if these really had an impact.

Things that did not help;

  • Magnesium. One doctor suggested maybe I had created a dependency on magnesium during many months of dosing on it for sleep. This doctor suggesting going back on it for a few days to see if it helped. There’s also research on how mag can help with pain management. This did nothing when I tried introducing it around the 3 week mark for one week total.

  • Hot and cold packs. These did nothing for reducing or managing the pain at all in any way, shape, or form. Whatever this was wasn’t impacted by changes in temperature.

Context that might have had an impact;

  • Time. Was just waiting it out the solution? Seems like PFS symptoms are time related so it may have very well been then.

  • Pregnancy. My wife had been in the third trimester of our first child when this pain started and ended. Could the subconscious stress have been the cause? Not sure. During the late stages of pregnancy I also put on a bit of weight, which is apparently normal. That weight may have also been a factor?

  • Weight lifting. Remember, this all started when I returned to the gym lifting heavy weights since the crash. Non of this links to a stress or strain during a workout however it’s worth noting this.

  • Stress. Apart from what’s mentioned above I was not stressed or felt stressed before, during or after this back pain. My crash occurred about 8 months before this pain started, by then I was really on a good path, some stress but very manageable and nothing like what I had experienced 8 months ago.

Hope this helps others.

#12

Hi All, in the end this pain came back. How I fixed this, almost over night was encorporated solutions I found here. For me these were Hamstring stretching before bed and Medicine ball C stretches also. Once I did this, first morning the pain had subsided by 50%, two / three mornings later the issue completely disappeared. So this had absolutely nothing to do with PFS.

Apologies for having wasted everyone’s time.

#13

I have bad back pain too and horrible posture as a result. I find that stretching everything and focusing on my lower back with press ups before bed helps. If I miss a couple days I pay for it at night.

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#14

That’s interesting, would you say PFS caused this or you’ve always had back issues?

#15

I cant be certain one way or another but I do know that after taking finasteride I lost my ability to gain strength. Perhaps my back isn’t as strong as needs to be in order to keep everything where it should be. I forgot to mention that swimming helps as well. It’s the only form of exercise I can do without stressing my body out too much

#16

To close this loop on this one turned out this problem had nothing to do with PFS. I slowly developed LLD (limb length discrepancy) which when corrected made this completely go away.

Hoping this post didn’t mean readers strayed from the path incorrectly.

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