Hypo don’t put words in my mouth !! What I have is no respect for you and everything I said was directed at you and you only. Don’t go grouping in guys with Ed, Gyno, etc. The fact is I get quite a few private messages looking for PCT advice. You would be surprised how many of them mention you in a negative light.
So now show me a study where the majority of men who use propecia have lower T. A simple link will be just fine to show everyone here you weren’t talking out of your ass, like usual.
People I’m here to tell you if Hypo leaves you will be losing a great asset to this forum. Jim I’m sure you know some stuff but I have not seen you go out of your way to really help us here. Just look at the blood level post and you will see who has gone out of their way to help. You have not been here for awhile. The first thing back and you are picking a fight with Hypo again. I’m not saying your points are’nt worth hearing, but you are very argumentative. And your wasting everyone’s precious time and energy. You will be long gone and Hypo will still be hear helping people. Just look at the last 2 weeks for example.
Sorry hypo, but you are wrong about this one. Finasteride does increase testosterone by inhibit DHT. There is even a study about it somewhere.
JH
Clinical studies showed men treated with PROPECIA had increased mean testosterone and estradiol levels (approximately 15%), but these levels were within normal physiologic range.
From http://www.propecia.com/finasteride/propecia/hcp/prod_data_highlights/safety.jsp
Im sure someone who can search on pubmed could come up with the actual study.
JH
I believe finasteride gives you a temporary boost to testosterone levels when you first take it but that then wears off. I don’t have proof but I think testosterone levels may even go down or at least the androgen ratio will worsen in the long run.
There are a lot of reports from people into bodybuilding who experience considerable reductions in lean muscle mass after taking fin.
People need to read ALL that is written, not skim and miss fundamental points.
Testosterone IS often severely affected by finasteride. When you come off of it, you often seen suppression of the HPTA and lowered levels of both total and more crucially free testosterone.
If anyone is suggesting otherwise I think they should peruse the bloods section of this website and view peoples pathology.
On finasteride peoples androgen to estrogen ratio is lower given the increases often seen in SHBG and estradiol as well as the drop in DHT and awful symptoms cause people to discontinue the drug and it is then that finasterides long term effects on the HPTA are felt.
When off finasteride testosterone is very often adversely affected.
The whole point of this thread was that people were suggesting the DHT is the long term issue. I am saying that is doubtful and that if any endocrinologist thinks otherwise they can prescribe Andractim DHT to test their theory.
We can easily agree that finasteride causes low testosterone post use. I was only commenting the fact that you called the increase in testosterone, rubbish. I dont think many of us knew you were talking about post use. If you reread the start of the thread, you will see I was talking about T levels while on finasteride.
JH
Too often people on this website are chasing their own tails round and round and round again in circle after circle. Half baked theories are postulated day in day out that are pure guesswork that have absolutely no scientific grounding whatsoever.
The questions abound;
Could it be this theory that has just came into my head, how about another idea- could it be that?
No one seems to want to deal in what is known and what can be done and if you try and deal only in the proven science and dare to call a spade a spade then you are insulted off the site.
Wild speculation equals acceptance on the site, no matter how wild it is, insane or inane- no one insults you for it. Being honest, pragmatic and dealing in the medical reality on the other hand gets you into bother, it poos on peoples dinner, it ruins half baked theories and we can’t have that can we?
How many of these wild theories have forwarded anyone’s situation on this site?
That is a rhetorical question because the answer is none and it will always remain none. This is not an episode of diagnosis murder, you can’t just sit around and work it out.
We have known proven effects of finasteride, we know that it reduces free testosterone via one mechanism or another. If we focus on that and how it should be correctly rectified then we can alleviate and in some cases completely remove the problems induced by finasteride. If more information comes to light that is proven by the medical community we can take that on board and look to see how we can use that proven information to help us further….
But what we cannot do is find answers ourselves to extremely complicated medical endocrinology. No one here is going to discuss potential alterations in androgen receptor response or nureotransmitter alterations etc and suddenly shout eureka!
You are not going to have an idea based on what some guy called Dave said and suddenly have a eureka moment and discover “THE ANSWER”.
You will find no answer at all this way and help no one.
So this type of comment which is typical here (sorry J89 nothing personal just highlighting an attitude on the site).
Is part of the problem not the solution.
I know that the known endocrinology, the known problems and resolving them might not always provide answers for people. But in dealing in scientific/medical reality, I can help improve people’s lot and potentially fix people’s problems, often at least alleviate problems. So it might be mocked or dismissed for not providing all the answers, but one thread where you help someone with pathology that can make a difference is worth a thousand of these threads that help no one and never will.
Engaging in this thread one last time….I’ll leave people to it then.
In this thread, which is it to be?
Are people saying that DHT is the problem or are they saying it is testosterone?
I explain the situation with DHT and say ok well test the theory by having Andractim DHT prescribed, I also say that testosterone IS adversely affected. I make this point because people have been suggesting that it is not a testosterone problem in the long term but a DHT problem.
Then I am told that testosterone is not adversely affected and that it is higher on finasteride.
Now I already know what the situation is both on and off the drug but the point is this;
Where is any of this getting anyone?
So testosterone appears to be fine on finasteride, so what?
Does that mean that the answer is finasteride then?
You see this is rubbish like I said, because it is utterly irrelevant what testosterone is ON the drug given your DHT level on it.
The symptoms tell you that, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that finasteride is not an answer to the very problem it caused.
The finasteride lowered the DHT levels and that left you with terrible symptoms. Then you stop the finasteride and then DHT usually recovers but then testosterone and crucially free testosterone is left low, usually as a result of suppression of the HPTA, sometimes due to elevated SHBG and estradiol sometime not.
The “long term” almost invariably means coming off of finasteride, that is why you are here.
And what does finasteride cause in the long term?
It causes the problems with the hormone that I have already explained and the long term problem tends to be the darn hormone I have stated as in testosterone as opposed to DHT.
You can go back to the theories now and I will leave the thread alone.
P.S
Some people here have problems right under their noses, but sail to far away places in search of answers.
Maybe if a few guys club together and talk about gene expression someone can work out a formulae for androgen receptor alteration on the back of a beer mat for a as yet unknown synthetic medication that could be somehow cooked up that would be favorable in rectifying finasteride based problems. I have a magicians cape with big sleeves if required
I’ll try to tell you what I think about all this. My and many others symptoms started while ON finasteride, when our T levels were higher than normal. Then we got off the drug, our T level fell, but our symptoms persisted. Then if T levels were the cause, how come we also felt bad on the drug?
I’ll anwser that myself. Maybe it was because our DHT levels were low while on the drug, so our total androgens actually were low on the drug, even though our testosterone were a bit higher.
Now we are off the drug, we have both low T and low DHT, but assuming our 5ARis OK, TRT will increase DHT as well as T. The interessting question now is: do we get better now ou T and DHT is increased. I doubt it.
No, ofcouse not. (I have not read about anyone talking about getting back on the drug to fix our problems)
JH
I wish I knew how you guys quote passages. Awhile ago on this same thread I asked what happens to our hormones when we are on fin and everything is going as fin is suppose to work. No one replied. but in hypo’s post on 3/31/07 @ 6:21pm I finally get an answer. Thank you. I think it’s important to know what happens “normally” before you can answer what happens in the abnormal cases.
Just click the “quote” button at the top right of the post you want to quote. You’ll notice that by pressing that button you see some quote tags in square brackets, [], before and after the message. Just follow that syntax.
Thanks JC but how do you only qoute part of a post. I had already tried what you said but could only qoute the entire post. It’s tough being computer illiterate. You young people are probably laughing at me. I’d ask my kids but i don’t exactly want them to see this.
Basically for every piece of text you want to quote you need to follow this:
[ quote=“grail”] any text you want to quote goes here [ /quote]
[ quote=“grail”] you can quote some more text here if you’d like [ /quote]
You need to remove the space after the “[” in the above example for it to actually work. You can replace “grail” above with any username and you can have as many quotes as you want, like I have 2 above.
[/quote]
Grail, just highlight the text you want to quote with your mouse cursor (hold down left mouse button and select the text), then press QUOTE button.
Your selected text will automatically be placed in quote tags for you.
If pointing out that he was wrong (again) is picking a fight than so be it. Would you rather nobody challenged him when he’s wrong ?
Now let me get this straight. You said before that reports Propecia raises T are rubish, now you say when you come off Propecia T levels drop. So which one is it ?
As you can see from my blood tests they did drop, back to the range I was in pre-Propecia.
If Propecia was really the poisin you make it out to be you would have 500,000 guys on this board. What Propecia does to a select “few” is unknown. I don’t have the answer, Doctors don"t have the answer yet and guess what, Hypo doesn’t have the answer either.
You know the situation now on Propecia because it was pointed out to you that it raised T, 3 days ago you claimed it lowered it.
Do you just like to make stuff up ? A lot of guys have problems and have normal free T , E2 and SHBG.
You only have a handfull of blood tests to deal with, how could you possibly come to any conclusion ?
Feel free to throw in a link to any of your statements. My guess is you will either ignore this or write some 20 minute post with multiple qoutes avoiding giving a straight forward answer
Nobody has the be-all, end-all answer to Post-Finasteride side effects. Regardless, please share with us what YOU believe could be the issues that prevent some men from recovering.
I would expect no less from someone like yourself stating you have extensive experience with hormonal treatments, designing cycles and PCT. Surely you must have SOME theories?
Same goes for you Jim, back up your claims with some proof and links. Otherwise this will fall into tit for tat arguing once again with no facts to back anything up.
Anyway I don’t think Hypo will be responding to any of this so it may all be a moot point anyway. Either way, post your ideas on what you think the problem may be, as well as some proof of YOUR CLAIMS – or don’t post at all.
The rest of us aren’t as well educated in this arena and would benefit from the knowledge you can share, via factual studies, links etc.
BTW, I’m surprised you’re back after you decided to quit this board in the first place by your own volition. Care to explain (besides “I’m just here to ‘correct’ Hypo”)?
Mew PLEASE feel free to ban me. If not then don’t question me when I correct a poster who has no idea what he is talking about.
I posted my thoughts many times. Run 500mg /week of cyp with 1/2 mg 2x’s a week of Arimidex for 8 weeks with proper PCT. If you still have ED issues during the cycle after week 3 you can 100 % rule out T, free T, DHT and E2 issues. E2 will be low and everything else will be through the roof and you should be thinking about sex 24/7.
VERY safe cycle and what do you really have to lose ?
BTW, I was aked my opinion and posted it, if you don’t want to try it then fine, no need to go any further.
I’m sure he won’t answer my questions also because he is wrong. He may go off on some 20 minute post to confuse some people but he won’t reply to me.
Hypo wants me out of here because nobody else calls him out when he is wrong. Trust me he likes knowing much more than anyone on the board. If he really wanted to help people he would be on a good men’t health forum but he would get exposed there so he stays where he is safe.
Like I said before chief, it’s your forum feel free to ban me