Brain fog (damage) thread

WHO is the guy who made that video. Is he on this forum? Sounds alot like a lawyer for Merck, or someone who is very insensitive to PFS, and the devastating life altering illness it unleashes upon sufferers. He sounds it in his video. @4:12 of his video; “PFS victims were PROBABLY inflamed before taking finasteride” lol Probably, huh? Just listen to the TONE of his explanations and his almost belittling, know it all explanation of how PFS is cured and solved. B.S. is what I say.

Ya man. That’s exactly what you’ll find. Doctors know nothing about PFS. They refuse to acknowledge it’s existence. Even my anti-aging doc, who is supposed to be PFS-friendly doesn’t even acknowledge it really. He says it’s just low T. He takes finasteride himself and prescribes it to his patients. (WTF!?.. seriously) He doesn’t understand it, because he hasn’t got it yet.

He said that because he has his patients on T while taking finasteride, they won’t get PFS. Time will tell.

I went to endrocrinologist who prescribed Fin to her male-to-female patients (or maybe the other way around), and she said it’s a perfectly fine drug. No danger. Safe as a sugar pill. That’s why the guy at Bosley said too. He said he’d put it in the water!

Docs hand out finasteride like it’s candy.

As far as taking T, realize that this will suppress your nuts ability to make it’s own T. Some guys who start it need to be on it for life, because after suppressing your nuts, they may not restart T production at the same level that they started from originally. If you’ve started and at some point want to stop, make sure you follow a PCT program, taking HCG and possibly Clomid or Nolvadex to restart your nuts. I have been taking just HCG, which is essentially LH, which tells your nuts to produce T. However, someone just told me that taking HCG suppresses your pituitary glands ability to make LH, so I’m second thinking about whether I want to be on this long term.

But, in any case, I think it’s important for people to try T, Masteron, and HCG just for an educational experience to understand what they do to your body, and how your body reacts, ect. I’ve learned a lot by taking that stuff.

i bet docs told their patients thalidomide was as safe as a sugar pill all those years ago aswell eh,the truth will come out about finasteride eventually…

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Definitely feel as if there’s a fog around my brain, I can actually feel it as a slight pressure on my brain, a thick, airy feeling where it feels ever so slightly heavy.

I feel mainly disconnected from the world. I’m here and functional and experiencing, but everything seems distant, like I’m in a bubble looking out. I’d say I’m anywhere from like 50-60% connected to the world.

My sense of time and place is messed up a bit too. Spatial memory seems a bit affected. Time seems to pass and I seem to understand it, but it’s sort of in a blurry like way, sort of when you’re high on marijuana. I feel like someone has injected my brain with a bit of novacaine through the forehead as well. Sometimes I see myself just doing things, and it scares me, but it’s not really depersonalization.

I refer to all of this more as a decrease in consciousness–like I’m conscious and living and functioning, but I’m just not there. I’m just NOT all the way there.

Wow, this video resembles me

Concentration is awful, reading comprehension is awful, overwhelmed feeling, feels like field of vision and awareness is closing in on itself. All of this is extremely demotivating and you never realized how easy everything was before.

My cognitive symptoms are very similar. The most noticeable symptom is inarticulate speech. I lose my train of thought and have difficulty finding words while I am speaking. It is most obvious when I have to speak more formally. When I talk with friends it is OK to be inarticulate and lack flow but when I speak in more official contexts I reach my cognitive limit. I never used to have this problem before. It is a terrible thing and has a huge effect on my self-confidence, how people perceive me, etc.

The second most noticeable symptom is difficulty writing. It takes a lot of effort to formulate and express ideas as I have to literally force my mind to try to come up with the right words. Especially formal writing is very difficult - in any language. English is not my native language but it is not much different in my native language as well.

In a lot of situations I feel that I have reached my cognitive limit to understand something and yet I am painfully aware that there is something beyond the limit. Sometimes if I concentrate really hard and push against the limit I get a glimpse of what is evading me. This is very difficult and unpleasant though because it leads to headache and a sensation of pressure around my head. I never used to feel like this before PFS.
It seems the limiting factor here is short-term memory.

Everything seems to be happening too fast for me to comprehend fully. Stated differently, I have become slow, except that I am very aware of it. For example, I can’t participate in discussions among several people, nor divide my attention between tasks. I feel cognitively overwhelmed most of the time I am not alone doing nothing.

The so called brain fog for me is manifested by a feeling that there is something in reality that I am not able to understand, that something is evading me, that I am slow to comprehend what is happening, even when nothing is happening. All this puts a barrier between my mind and reality and makes the world appear not real, or as others have put it - as if one is dreaming or is a in a movie.

Another symptom is not being able to maintain eye contact if I am trying to say anything remotely articulate or complex. I never had this before PFS. This again indicates my short term memory is insufficient to both carry out a conversation and maintain eye contact.

Slurring of speech. I think it happens because I am trying to finish saying something really fast before I forget how the thought continues, as I am not able to hold the thought in my mind long enough. Most of the time of course I have the opposite problem - pausing and mumbling - because I lose the continuation of my thought. But every now and then I get a glimpse in my mind of what I am trying to say next so I try to blurt it out as fast as possible before I forget it. Someone else described this as well. I think he said he felt he only had 2 or 3 second lead in his mind before his speech. This looks like a problem of short term memory again.

I feel a lot of fear and anxiety even in trivial situations.

The emotional problems - lack of motivation, ambition, drive, etc - I will leave for a different thread.

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Hi,
As this thread was started in 2011, I would be interested to know if the people reporting issues with “brain fog” back then are still suffering from the same in 2018. It would be good to know if anything got better and why it got better or if there was even full recovery of mental issues in some cases. Thanks.

Hi. still majorly imaired. This must be fixed. Ssri clears fog. But also raises my blood pressure and host of other detrimental side effects. But without it, within 48 hours I’m still brainfoged 6 years later

Decimated life

Still suffering

With empty stomach drink 500ml of water and eat crude crushed garlic, this works for all symptoms so strengthens all the blood vessels of the full system

Most side effects including brain fog are vastly diminished from what I was at my worst. ED and lack of sex drive persist though.

Has anyone noticed the less time you take the drug, the worse the brain fog??

Hey man what type of brain fog did you have?

Depersonalization disorder, Google it if you don’t know of it

Sorry was writing to badluck. I have a little disossociation when in public, but wouldn’t call it depersonalization. I still know myself and and can “feel” myself. It’s more of a visual disconnectedness when I’m outside/in public. Like I just finished a super long run.

In all my years (thirty-one of them) of trying to describe my mental symptoms, reading this is the closest I’ve come to anything similar.

I relate so much to what you say about the flow of consciousness being broken into parts and not flowing. For me, it’s as if an anxious pulse fires throughout my brain as it processes quite ordinary and routine information. The pulse fires before thought, and then deliberate thought goes back and tries to “make ok” the reason for the pulse. Consciousness is being continually disrupted, and my brain is constantly watching itself.

And you are so right, this is not “anxiety” as it is usually experienced. It’s not worry or concern about something, it’s just a “happening” in the CNS, and has no emotional revelance.

Like you, I am in a constant state of alarm. So often I have used the same analogy: that I can be in the most peaceful environment, and yet my body is reacting as if a tiger is about to get me.

And I have nothing else. No other emotions. Nothing else in my life, other than this “thing” happening in my brain. It distorts and comes between everything I do. Absolutely everything. It is the way I experience the world. It’s all I care about: is this thing happening or not? How intense is it? Even as I process the words to write this, the interruption is happening, the surge in my nervous system. Doing anything becomes confused, because every few seconds my brain is responding to a tiger approaching.

Oh - and nobody notices. There’s no external expression of the distress. And it’s not context related, so there’s no escaping it.

Thanks for describing so well. I’m hoping you’ve recovered as it seems you were when you wrote.

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Can totaly agree with this. Exactly the problem that i am also having.

Im unable to create and hold thoughts as I used to. I think that is what makes it hard to think, imagine or remember things. It is also makes it hard to process what is happening infront of me.

Initially I felt a pressure in my head but it cleared up significantly after the one year mark of taking propecia.

I used to be extremly motivated/obsessive about what I was doing but those feelings have gradually faded away as I dont think I have what it takes to achieve what I wanted.

The only thing I dont have is any emotional problems. A couple of years before I took propecia I had a period of deep depression so even if I feel down and frustrated about my situation right now it is not even close to how I was back then.

But im glad that im recovering and feeling a bit better with each month that passes, it keeps me hopeful.

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