Welcome to our community. Please fill in the following template as a way of introducing yourself, and helping others to understand your background and situation.
What specific drug did you use (finasteride, dutasteride, saw palmetto, isotretinoin/Accutane, fluoxetine, sertraline, citalopram, leuprorelin, etc…)?
Dut
What dose did you take (eg. 1 mg/day, 1 mg every other day etc.)?
0,5mg
For how long did you take the drug (weeks/months/years)?
~ 1 month
How did you quit (cold turkey or taper off)?
Cold turkey
How long into your usage did you notice the onset of side effects?
1 hour
Aqui está a tradução da sua lista para o inglês:
I don’t speak English, so I translated this using ChatGPT. Apologies for the list being a bit disorganized.
I think I’ve never had a “crash.” I have about 20 symptoms, but none of them are severe or even close to that.
I only know I have PFS because of the similarity with the symptoms and because some characteristics can only be explained based on the Baylor study, and most of the ones I have today appeared in the week after I stopped the medication.
My current symptoms
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Watery semen (sometimes it becomes normal)
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Prostatitis (depends on what I eat, and usually happens if I ejaculate or defecate without taking magnesium beforehand, for some reason I don’t know)
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Semen with a fatty liquid (disappeared when I reduced the amount of rice in my meals)
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Fasciculations (mainly in the leg and shoulder)
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Terrible night vision
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Daytime vision varies in quality, most of the time it’s fine, but I have difficulty focusing, like visual snow
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Lower abdominal pain (rarely happens, this is probably related to the pudendal nerve, it happens sometimes when I’m stressed)
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Electrolyte deficiency, for some reason my magnesium is always low, even though I replenish it through my diet
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HPA axis dysregulation
(When I get stressed, my face gets very oily, my joints crack, my mouth stops producing saliva, and I used to have a metallic taste in my mouth. I also can’t yawn completely when I’m stressed.) -
Insulin/glucose problems
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Fasciculations
One hour after taking the first dose, I already felt a significant worsening in my vision, brain fog, penile pain, and joint sensitivity (I can’t explain it, it’s like when you rest your hand while sitting on the bed, and the joint feels sensitive. I think this is common, but I only noticed because it happened along with the other symptoms). These were the same symptoms I had during almost 1 month of DUT use. I decided to stop because they didn’t go away, and then I started reading about PFS. I got really scared and began waking up in the middle of the night sweating, fearing a "crash." Apparently, the second day after I stopped taking the medication, I woke up after about 2 hours with my neck trembling and cold sweating (waking up sweating when I’m very nervous is something that has happened to me before, a few times). No new symptoms appeared. In the afternoon, I felt a sharp pain, like the penile pain I felt during treatment but stronger. Then my penis became cold, and I developed ‘Hard Flaccid.’ This lasted for about 1 week. I think the penile pain and ‘Hard Flaccid’ are related to the prostatitis I developed. During this period, I was so nervous that I didn’t even try to masturbate. I only did it 1 week after stopping, and the semen was normal but had something solid and yellow in it. This happened twice and then improved. Other symptoms appeared over time, so I’m not sure if I had a crash. Waking up trembling happened for a few days and sometimes still happens today, maybe because I developed ‘Reactive Hypoglycemia,’ because this and other symptoms improved whenever I ate something and returned after 3 hours (the neck trembling with a cold sensation only happens in the morning and goes away when I eat something). So, when I ate, it almost eliminated all symptoms, except for other side effects like trembling muscles and something like neuropathy when I tried taking caffeine. During the week I stopped, the penile pain increased, and it hurt almost any position I lay in. This passed with time.
Brain fog also disappeared with time.
The only symptoms from when I was taking the medication that have persisted in some way are:
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Penile pain, but different. Before, it was a frequent stabbing pain, now it’s just a discomfort and it’s rare.
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Terrible night vision
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During use, I had a sensation that my teeth were pulsing, so I developed what I have now, which is a sensation that my mouth doesn’t close properly, as if my teeth were misaligned. This changes during the day. I think it might be related to insulin/glucose as well.
One hour after using DUT, I also developed a cognitive issue. I was playing video games, and it felt like my brain was taking longer to process images. It became difficult to play or read messages if they were moving. It felt like everything was happening 3 times faster, and my brain couldn’t keep up. My vision for anything used to be perfect, so I noticed this very quickly. This issue recovered almost 100%, I’d say, right after the first week I stopped, but it was very impactful while I was still using.
So basically, it’s like all the side effects I had during the use of the medication have improved, and what persisted were the symptoms I developed between 1 day and 1 week after stopping.
I tried to avoid anything that’s a 5ARI, and my diet is very limited.
It’s been almost 5 months since I stopped, and my symptoms seem to improve slowly. I reduced my carbohydrate intake a lot, which on one hand made me lose a considerable amount of weight, but on the other hand, it seems to have improved my symptoms a bit. Honestly, I don’t think much has changed in the last 4 months, only a few things have improved.
My symptoms aren’t as severe as many others here, I only know I have PFS because of the similarity with other people’s symptoms and also the issue with insulin and the HPA axis being somewhat addressed by the Baylor study.
Symptoms I had at the beginning that I dont have anymore:
Regarding the HPA Axis:
When stressed, I felt a pain between my chest and abdomen, I felt a pain in my neck that seemed to worsen if I looked down (when i moved my head to look down and not just my eyes)
Probably about insulin/glucose:
Sometimes, when I ate, my vision became more sensitive to light.
Depending on what I ate, I felt a sharp pain in my penis, and then if I was going to ejaculate, there would be something in the semen, like a oil. It’s probably the prostate that’s being affected, but the pain feels penile because it’s psychosomatic.
I ate cake one day and developed diarrhea for 4 days, with gas and burping that lasted about 2 weeks.
When I went 3 hours without eating, I developed brain fog, stress, joint cracking, and some other symptoms I don’t remember, all of which went away when I ate anything.
If I got stressed during that time, I also felt dizzy, as if I lost my balance when walking.
Other changes I noticed are that my hair became very oily for a while, my face too, and my ears produced a lot of wax. This changed in the last 2 months, I’d say, and now I’m back to how it was before. It only changes when I get stressed, then it becomes oily again, both my hair and face."**
Aside from the fasciculations and the night vision, many times I feel almost asymptomatic. I hope to fully recover.
What (if any) treatments have you undertaken to recover from your side effects since discontinuation of the drug?
low carb