I have been taking Selegiline for my PFSymptoms since 01/13/2015 and have logged how I feel each day while on it. For people searching in the future and for overall knowledge I’m going to post my experience here just as it happened.
Selegiline (Anipryl, L-deprenyl, Eldepryl, Emsam, Zelapar) is a drug used for the treatment of early-stage Parkinson’s disease, depression and dementia. In normal clinical doses it is a selective irreversible MAO-B inhibitor.
I started off taking Selegiline at 5mg prescribed by doctor for three days and then moving to a low dose of 2.5 mg a day as per a suggestion from “light at the end” in this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7026
I continued 2.5 mg for around thirty five days where I didn’t feel that I was having any improvement or if I was, it was too small to notice anything. I then went on 10 mg for three days (to get levels up) and the continued with 5mg doses thereafter and have continued that dose ever since. Around this same time I was also taking Armour Thyroid which eventually led me to feeling very lethargic and brain foggy so I had to discontinue, during this time I was unsure if it was the selegiline or the Armour so I removed the thyroid meds (anticipating it was the cause of the lethargy) and kept the selegine and began to feel very good after about two weeks, these positive effects have continue.
I would estimate my overall well being before selegiline to be around 65% of PRE-fin symptoms and could guess it is now around 75%-80% which is a good improvement. My friends and girlfriend have made comments about how I seem to be feeling better. For those of you who are looking for a libido boost I should note that this has not budged my libido. However, I am continuing to take progesterone at 20mg-40mg daily which is known to inhibit DHT so that could be effecting my libido, and from other peoples reports I would say it is a good chance this is the case.
In a nutshell I have been using progesterone for almost exactly a year now (cycling) and so I have a very good idea of where my baseline is while on it. I did not feel this good until I added in the selegiline. I should add that I have also been changing my sleep cycles during this time (earlier to bed, earlier to rise) which could of done nothing, or added benefit or possibly (but unlikely) be the soul cause of me feeling better. I mention this only because I want to not leave out any changes/variables.
Going forward I’m going to remove the progesterone and see what happens if I’m on Selegiline by itself. Maybe there is a synergy between the two but I am curious to see what happens with my libido if I get off progesterone. I really believe there may be something here that could possibly sustain us a higher level until we get cured.
To anyone reading this I don’t want to create any false hype, while this has made me feel much better but I am not cured, at this point it’s about symptom management and trying to get as much of my life back as possible. I’ll log my progress (or lack thereof) here.