I’m not stressed at all. I had a bad reaction to stress for about 3 months after taking the drug. After that sleep improved, anxiety improved, and panic attacks went away completely.
BTW stress has very little effect on sperm count or testosterone. I don’t think it’s the cause, but is tied into the reaction of whatever is altered.
to answer your question very politely, stress is not the root cause of permenant finasteride side effects
Absolute rubbish.
I have read some articles about people who have post traumatic stress disorder from combat and a lot of them suffer from anhedonia like us but don’t see much else in common
fanjeera, I took the drug for 9 years and felt a million bucks, 2 days after i quit I had a total hormonal crash. I didnt suddenly become stressed. However, I will say that I do believe stress hormone, particulary cortisol plays a role in all of this.
Well here is food for thought
What if an elevated level of stress hormones like cortisol induces something similar to PTSD? I wonder if that’s possible
Stress hasn’t caused my testicles to almost dissapear and continue shrinking. I wasn’t stressed at all, I quit propecia and my body completely crashed within 2 weeks. This is 100% finasteride that has wrecked my body.
stress causing hypogonadism is the biggest joke of the time. I can ask countless questions here but don’t think should waste anybody’s time on such foolish threads.
IMO, some of you miss some points here.
1-Fin is known to lower neurosteroids, the same neurosteroids involved in PTSD as an example, and maybe it reduces those neurosteroids to a greater extent (the results from the Neurosteroids conference is clear).
2-I assume most of us got really scared by reading the forum and for a long time, worsening the condition.
3-Our condition has strong analogies to the one of victims of sexual offence (where the offender is Merck in our case).
4-Worst, sexual offender’s victims do not generally end up with physical modifications; we did and this generates more fear.
5-Sexual offender’s victims get PTSD, and it’s the worst PTSD scenario, where victims do take the most time to recover, if this ever occurs. It requires profound intervention.
6-PTSD generates strong body symptoms, normally localized in the offended part of the body.
7-PTSD generates strong cognitive problems.
8-One of the causes of those symptoms is ADRENERGIC HYPERTONE, generating constriction/tension (in our case the pudendal area, impotence)
9-What is the most useful drug in combating the sexual symptoms of PFS? Alpha Blockers from what I know! some people here say that they almost got back to sexual normality under alpha blockers. Am I wrong?
10- What are alpha blockers? α-adrenergic-antagonists!! and what is the most prescribed alpha blocker to ease the symptoms of PTSD? MINIPRESS
11-PTSD generates nervous system hyperactivity too
12-antidepressants do not work on PTSD patients.
13-Hypogonadism can be an additional factor contributing to a lack of healing. IMO it should be treated, but gently.
IMO, Fanjeera is not completely incorrect. But I think that fin modifies a lot of things, then the normal healing process cannot occur because of excessive problems, one being a “PTSD like” condition . My penis doesn’t hurt, didn’t shrink, doesn’t have varicous veins in it because of a PTSD like condition, but because it cannot heal possibly, who knows exactly why. It is obviously all very complicated, and what I wrote was not an attempt to explain everything. But the stress (I think we are at the level of PTSD, where even attenuating the stress doesn’t work to get cured) theory is not completely to be discarded to explain a lack of healing. It could explain worsenings too. Some PTSD patients get worse over time.
If you want to learn more on PTSD, I suggest reading
The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook: A Guide to Healing, Recovery, and Growth
PS-PTSD is a condition where memories get dissociated and are being sticked on the workbench. No additional cognitive task is allowed to be processed effectively until the infos in the workbench are extensively processed, and… … accepted 
which is obviously very difficult in our situation.
if it is true then what are you doing here. you should see a psychiatric.
You didn’t read the first point maybe. I am not saying that our symptoms are caused by stress. Please try understanding my post and learn what an awful disease is PTSD.
I am having good improvements lately, maybe daily heavy exercise, maybe techniques learnt from the book. I am learning now. Then I will see…
I won’t comment your tone.
I think it’s a combination.
Stress certainly makes my symptoms a lot, lot worse. The first thing to go is my sleep and then the usual symptoms appear everywhere but far worse.
I have been jobless for 14 months. have not stress obviously only for being jobless but no other stress. But I am as sick as before.
stress can not give you
Gynecomastia
can not give you diffuse body hair
can not give you numbness.
the list goes on.
I know the list. You don’t read what I write. Many of our symptoms and “deformities” are due to other causes, they cannot be due to neurosteroids. This was generated under fin or at fin withdrawal, most probably because of hormone inbalances.
I talk of a PTSD LIKE condition because other than the effect of fin on neurosteroids, most of us have been scared to trauma and for a lot of time and this generates a terrible couple with the aformentioned neurosteroids condition, which itself has analogies to PTSD. Our neurosteroid levels and whatever it follows can easily disrupt and/or prevent normal HPTA function and healing. If you don’t believe this, you’re in mistake.
And I repeat, from a psychological viewpoint of PTSD, you generally cannot recover by simply removing stress and relaxing. Our situation is surely a bit different, but I am quite sure the most of us had a strong psychological trauma because of pfs, and our chances of recovering are lower if we don’t suppress the trauma in an efficient manner. Even if you feel relaxed, still your nervous system is hypersensitive because of the trauma, and releases stress molecules in strong excess even if you are not aware of it.
That thing about alpha blockers should make you reflect.
Stress actually can change how you feel your body, so numbness could go down from the list. An andrologist even told me that the numbness I was describing is a typical stress related symptom and that some men have an obsession to that region of the body and start imagining that kind of stuff when depressed.
And stress itself also lowers the levels of neurosteroids in the CSF, so that finding in the latest study is probably a consequence not the cause.
How can you be so sure Fanjeera? I remember when you claimed to be 100% recovered. If you truly believed you were recovered, you would have been happy that you were out of this mess and not depressed. But here you are still suffering.
Those levels are so low that I really doubt about this. IMO fin + “stress” did the mess with neurosteroids. Still some symptoms might be due to stress/ptsd, others however are clearly consequences of the hormonal actions of finasteride.
If you think the depleted levels of neurosteroids found in the CNS from that study is an affect and not the cause you are a complete moron.
We can discuss post trauma symptoms when a cure for PFS is found. This IS the trauma.
Exactly how low are they? I haven’t still seen the full study with the exact results. I have asked for it many times. There’s only the abstract.
I’m not so sure about it anymore. I have grown so dependent and interested on this topic that I just can’t let go (deciding to study medicine was a mistake also probably). I often still think my semen is not the same and penis sometimes feels different (perhaps light or numb). Though, I’m about to get the diagnosis of pudendal neuropathy (explains the different sensitivity and less shooting ejaculate), which ironically is the problem for many people here. And I’m also seeing a psychiatrist who says that the difference in feeling is due to stress.