UK guy, sufferer of 10 months, story and recovery plan

Hi, English -

First, thank you for adding your story to this board and giving further hope to PFS sufferers. Also, congrats on your girlfriend’s pregnancy.

I’ve read through your posts and I don’t seem to see any specifics about medications to help with sleep, although you mentioned that nothing works. It sounds like you’re pretty much against sleep meds. Did you try anything, such as GABApentin? If so, what were your experiences with it and the dosage, etc.?

From your post on 09/05/14 it sounded like your sleep issues have resolved without medication, through good sleep hygiene such as waking up and going to bed at consistent times. Is this the case, and if so, how long did it take you on your current regimen before your sleep started to improve, and how long until it was resolved?

Hope to hear back from you soon, not only with answers to these questions, but to hear about the progress of your recovery! Thanks.

Hi English,

Just wondered how you were getting on with everything and if you had, had any further improvements?

Cheers

I’m looking for updates too. Please keep posting or send pm.

Yes English, how are you doing?

Your posts are an inspiration and are founded in sound logic.

Please let us know how you are doing, I hope all is well.

Hey, English, one more thing. These moments when you feel 100% is like pre - fin state?

Hey guys just to update everyone on English he posted on a bodybuilding website that has some PFS guys on it that he is fully recovered. Apparently he changed his password on here and forgot it and asked someone post his recovery on here. The guys on the bodybuilding website don’t really like PFS guys “taking over” their board so out of respect for them I’m not going to post a link but these are English’s exact words.

"Hi all,

I am aware that a load of people from PH read this thread. I’m happy to say i’m fully recovered now from the term pfs and have been for the best part of 6 months, in fact every week i feel better and better because i continue with the same healthy lifestyle etc.
I would like please if someone from PH could copy and paste the following post and put it into the recovery section of PH. I can’t do this myself because in order to stop myself from logging in there and reading scary stories, i changed my password and e mail to a fake one that i could never use/remember! I think it’s important to give those guys hope as all they are surrounded by is misery. Here it is - i would be grateful if whoever does it replies to confirm it’s done. I am never going on there again! :

I am English, which was my original PH login. I am happy to say i am now fully recovered, despite being among the worst affected. I reflect on my posts now and i see that when i was saying i was maybe 70% recovered, that i wasn’t at all. Recovering has been very hard, yet actually, with the benefit of hindsight, it should be a relatively easy journey for anyone.
I will outline here how to recover, but most reading this will not believe me, because you want -subconsciously- your condition to be this mythical PFS thing that is not your “fault”. A small percentage will believe me and you will recover relatively easily and quickly, because actually this illness and also recovery is founded in belief. Here is a list outlining what created it and what you do to get out of it, and before you start on it, feel free to go back through all my posts on PH under my screen name English - you will see that i decided to recover, and then did, and by the way, another guy “entropy” did the same thing same time with me, and guess what, he’s fine too now:

1- PFS begins when you become worried/concerned that your dick suddenly doesn’t work after the lowering of DHT results in an imbalance of estrogen/testosterone, and probably a host of other chemicals in your body, and you realise that you are not so taken by attractive females
2- You either shit yourself and become ridden with anxiety and “crash” or you gradually get yourself deeper into depression and start suffering from anxiety related stuff
3- If you are anything like me and a shit load of others, you start reading all the horror stories on the web and on PH, and one day your fine, the next you have sunk into a deep depression and suffer servere anxiety. These things reduce your sex hormones, just as these conditions do in any normal person, except you have started from an already imbalanced state, so it’s a perfect storm, 50% of your own creation, well done us.
4- As a result of this perfect storm, your skin, muscle/build, suffer and your sexual issue worsen, you lose feeling in your dick, your balls get smaller and often even your penis changes shape due to a mixture of low sex hormones and low receptivity to those hormones. Your anxiety worsens, you think your life is over, and some end their lives, sadly.
5- It does not have to be that way, getting your life back is a simple process, however to you it will seem very hard at the time. I hope my words make it easier. Many have recovered fully from a similar set of steps, like cdnuts, chi, mitch and i read about 30 similar recoverys on PH and the wider web all told. The thing is though, almost none of them understood why they recovered, yet the common denominators formed a very clear plan, which i followed and later i happened across a book that basically told me why it worked. If i had read that book immediately, my journey would have been much easier. It took me around 18 months to fully recover, it would have took me 6 to 12.
6- Read this book, do it ASAP: “You are the placebo” by Joe Dispenza.
7- Now you understand how deep depression/anxiety/unhappiness can downregulate hundreds of good genes and create real physiological changes, now you can believe in why this recovery plan works.
8- Now begin your recovery plan. I will tell you what i did in the following steps, however, amazing as it may sound to you guys grasping at straws and searching for chemicals or herbs or trying to follow CDNUTS plan to the letter, thinking that you must take pro-hormones, you don’t particularly need to every single thing, you can leave some out and insert others that you like better, it doesn’t matter, as it is about switching back on the downregulated genes and getting back your hormone profile via a healthy body and mind. Your DHT expression is fine, and you have everything you need to recover. I am not going to re-write the book i mentioned, so you must read that to understand my points here.
9- Mentally relax, drop the battle, it’s going to be fine, just understand that it will take time, you must get your thoughts slowly back to what they used to be, looking forward to stuff. Mentally rehearse playing your favourit sports etc. - read the book!
10- Eat as organic as possible, drop sugar and all processed foods
11- Exercise, mostly weights as you will eventually gain muscle and you will gain confidence as a result. Head towards the 5x5 type workout, however still do cardio, because this is about full body fitness
12- Join a club, socialise, laugh, watch comedies. Personally i joined a table tennis club and i love it now
13- Have a project, succeed at work as best you can, laugh at yourself, and basically live life like your fine, you are fine you crazy prick, you just need to improve each week!
14- Personally i rotated the t boosting herbs and at one point - as per this post - i boosted my hormone balance by taking low dose AI. Nothing wrong with expediting the hormone process if you are smart and cautious. Don’t take just E lowering herbs, you need to balance them out with others have a different action. But the bottom line that you don’t need to take any at all. For me they have been a mental crutch and probably not much more.

NOTE - don’t do anything that can harm you because you don’t need to take big risks. Personally i dabbled with prohormones but got scared each time i used them for more than a week due to them apparantly being suppressive, so i binned them. My recovery had absolutely nothing to do with the handful of days i took them. Many guys are obsessed by them because CD took them, however these guys ignore all the other recovery stories that didn’t involve them. This is because the condition makes you crazy/depressed/anxiety ridden, and in this state the human way is to look for a silver bullet.

Seriously guys, it is as easy as that. The easiest yet also the hardest thing in the world is to simply drop the mental battle and just go about your day, yet that is the biggest component, add that to time, a great diet and lifestyle, laughter, a project, family, friends etc. and you will recover. If you don’t believe me, sadly you won’t. Belief doesn’t happen over night though, you can create it by reading these words and those of other recovery stories, stop reading scary words, develop your recovery plan that you believe in, then over a period of months, you will notice tiny signs of improvements, maybe your skin, maybe a small sexual improvement, or in energy, this adds more belief and your regimen intensifies, and like a snowball you grow back to your old self.

How am i now? I am back to my old self. Out of 30ish symptoms, i just now have achy feet. I lost alot of mass including feet and hands and my feet never quite returned to normal. CD still has tinitus (one of the biggest causes of tinnitus is stress) I also have maybe a few more wrinkes on my face than i would have had, however i look pretty good again, i am a new father to a 3 month old boy, my girlfriend is 15 years younger than me and i have a great life. I am also quite wealthy now as one of the things i did after getting this bullshit term pfs was to say to myself “fuck this, if i am going feel shit for years then i am at least gunna create something to show for it when i am better” I did, and a business i started during this period is now worth millions.

What i am saying is that you have a choice of how you respond to this. For example when i felt so shit i slept no more than 2 broken hours a night, and my body shook all day from anxiety, my mind was fogged, and recall bursting into tears once when i couldn’t peel an egg (all this alongside losing over 2 stone of muscle and not being able to get it up) - what did i do? I booked a weeks walking holiday in Wales which i knew would force me to walk, to talk, to do. I swam in the sea every day, sometimes in the dark. I still have a cold shower every morning. I did a shit load of crazy stuff, that in itself was largely unnecessary, but i did it all to move my focus to recovery, to a plan, to a mission which allowed me to ignore my symptoms because i had a plan to get rid of them.
Most of it is mental, but it takes many months, sometimes a year or two of doing the right thing to finally achieve the correct mental state that allows your body to follow. You don’t realise how far you’ve gone into the wrong mindset until finally you’re recovered, so you need patience.

Above all, relax, stop making such a fucking meal of it. Together you crazy fuckers are collectively taking everyone down together, get a grip, get real, it’s not all over for you.

Finally, i am nearly 41, have a broken back which limited what i could do. I was one of the eldest, which helped me because i have lived a bit and i knew that just because everyone in a particular group is saying the same thing, it does not necessarily make it so. This is pack mentality and the guys that break it can follow a new route. Many of you guys are in your 20’s / early 30’s so physically you are in a better position to recover, there is no reason for you not to.

So step 1- read that book…

I hope this helps some people out there.

Oh, and just to be clear, i am not going to answer a single question. If you have questions, it is because your mind is beset by doubt, depression, anxiety and you’re looking for a silver bullet, or your looking for reassurance that this or that particular symptom will go away. These are behaviours you must get rid of. Did you look for reassurance every 10 seconds when you were healthy? No, so i am not going to continue this unhealthy process by joining in on a Q+A. Everything you need to recover is written above because it is not an exact thing, you have to make your own plan, find your own belief, do it your way, but always with healthy mind, body, lifestyle type of approach. Don’t ask, because i won’t reply, in fact i probably won’t even read your question because nowadays i don’t do forums for months at a time. I wish you all the very best though. Not luck, you don’t need that."

1 Like

Guess he can be moved into the recovery section… really don’t think my brain fog is caused by me “becoming worried that my dick won’t work.” My dick was actually fine when the fog set in…

Yeah needless to say I disagree that PFS is triggered by anxiety but his recovery seems to have similar themes as the others. Healthy diet cutting out gluten, dairy, and sugar. Exercise regularly. Have a positive mental attitude (i don’t doubt a positive mindset can help with recovery). Either way its definitely exciting and motivating to see another person recovered by putting their body in an optimal position to heal itself.

Hi guys,

This is “English” and i came back to post on the recoveries board. I had to re-register though due to changing both my e mail and username to effectively ban myself from forums maybe 18 months ago. Unfortunately i find that i can’t post on recoveries probably due to the system thinking i’m a new member or whatever, so thought while i’m here i would post on my old thread.

First up, glad my recovery story got re-posted from the other forum, but really it should be on the recoveries board and hopefully Mew will move it there.

I’ve just read what i wrote and i stand by it all. One of the replies above mentions how anxiety couldn’t cause brain fog as his dick was fine when he fogged up, and i agree that in that case it was not anxiety, in that case it would have been simply a hormone imbalance.

Hormone imbalance, anxiety, chronic stress: They all lean on each other and cause these issues and/or make them worse and before you know it you’ve spiralled into an abyss that you can’t see the way out of. It is hard to get out, but you all can, you just need to follow a plan similar to mine or CD’s, in fact what i did was to a large degree based on him and chi.

CD and i have been friends for around a year now, and i have been fixed for 6 months or more. He can vouch for my recovery and we are setting up a business together to provide free information and support to you guys. CD recently posted looking for applicants to take part in free coaching and you should consider applying. In the future we look to make money from the massive under-optimised middle aged market place by using our experience and knowledge of male optimisation. For PFS guys we will provide all the information for free in an easy to digest package, but to those who want it - and believe me there are plenty - we will be offering weekly one to one coaching and personal advice and motivation for those who want to pay for our time.

So that’s it, i tried to post in recoveries and will try again via Mew as it was weighing on my conscience somewhat given that i’ve criticised others for not posting their recoveries in the correct section in the past.

I’ll be around for no more than 7 days max for some questions providing they’re not the normal negative bs.

Hey Mew or whoever is moderating this post,

My conscience has made me come back to post in the recovery section as i am now 6 months fully healed or more, in fact i am better than ever now.

Trouble is i’ve had to re-register due to changing my e mail and password a year ago as part of a strategy, so now i can’t PM you or post in recoveries.

I would be grateful if you could post the following in the recoveries section for me, as i recall very well how depressing it was to have this illness and then see that almost no-one had recovered, yet actually that is not the case. It would be good as well if you could upgrade me so that i can respond to Q’s. I only have time and inclination to be around for a week or so so i really don’t want to be waiting here and posting until i get naturally upgraded etc. Here is my recovery story:

I am English, which was my original PH login (can’t login as that anymore for various reasons). I am happy to say i am now fully recovered (various current and ex users of this forum can vouch for my recovery including CDSNUTS), despite being among the worst affected. I reflect on my previous posts now and i see that when i was saying i was maybe 70% recovered, that i wasn’t at all. Recovering has been very hard, yet actually, with the benefit of hindsight, it should be a relatively easy journey for anyone.
I will outline here how to recover, but most reading this will not believe me, because you want -subconsciously- your condition to be this mythical unfixable PFS thing that is not your “fault”. A small percentage will believe me and you will recover relatively easily and quickly, because actually this illness and also recovery is founded in belief. Here is a list outlining what created it and what you do to get out of it, and before you start on it, feel free to go back through all my posts on PH under my screen name English - you will see that i decided to recover, and then did, and by the way, another guy “entropy” did the same thing same time with me, and guess what, he’s fine too now:

1- PFS begins when you become worried/concerned that your dick suddenly doesn’t work after the lowering of DHT results in an imbalance of estrogen/testosterone, and probably a host of other chemicals in your body, and you realise that you are not so taken by attractive females
2- You either shit yourself and become ridden with anxiety and “crash” or you gradually get yourself deeper into depression and start suffering from anxiety related stuff
3- If you are anything like me and a shit load of others, you start reading all the horror stories on the web and on PH, and one day you’re fine, the next you have sunk into a deep depression and suffer servere anxiety. These things reduce your sex hormones, just as these conditions do in any normal person, except you have started from an already imbalanced state, so it’s a perfect storm, 50% of your own creation, well done us.
4- As a result of this perfect storm, your skin, muscle/build, suffer and your sexual issue worsen, you lose feeling in your dick, your balls get smaller and often even your penis changes shape due to a mixture of low sex hormones and low receptivity to those hormones. Your anxiety worsens, you think your life is over, and some end their lives, sadly.
5- It does not have to be that way, getting your life back is a simple process, however to you it will seem very hard at the time. I hope my words make it easier. Many have recovered fully from a similar set of steps, like cdnuts, chi, mitch and i read about 30 similar recoveries on PH and the wider web all told. The thing is though, almost none of them understood why they recovered, yet the common denominators formed a very clear plan, which i followed and later i happened across a book that basically told me why it worked. If i had read that book immediately, my journey would have been much easier. It took me around 18 months to fully recover, it would have took me 6 to 12.
6- Read this book, do it ASAP: “You are the placebo” by Joe Dispenza.
7- Now you understand how deep depression/anxiety/unhappiness can down-regulate hundreds of good genes and create real physiological changes, now you can believe in why this recovery plan works.
8- Now begin your recovery plan. I will tell you what i did in the following steps, however, amazing as it may sound to you guys grasping at straws and searching for chemicals or herbs or trying to follow CDSNUTS plan to the letter, thinking that you must take pro-hormones, you don’t particularly need to every single thing, you can leave some out and insert others that you like better, it doesn’t matter, as it is about switching back on the down-regulated genes and getting back your hormone profile via a healthy body and mind. Your DHT expression is fine, and you have everything you need to recover. I am not going to re-write the book i mentioned, so you must read that to understand my points here.
9- Mentally relax, drop the battle, it’s going to be fine, just understand that it will take time, you must get your thoughts slowly back to what they used to be, looking forward to stuff. Mentally rehearse playing your favourite sports etc. - read the book!
10- Eat as organic as possible, drop sugar and all processed foods
11- Exercise, mostly weights as you will eventually gain muscle and you will gain confidence as a result. Head towards the 5x5 type workout, however still do cardio, because this is about full body fitness
12- Join a club, socialise, laugh, watch comedies. Personally i joined a table tennis club and i love it now
13- Have a project, succeed at work as best you can, laugh at yourself, and basically live life like your fine, you are fine you crazy prick, you just need to improve each week!
14- Personally i rotated the t boosting herbs and at one point - as per this post - i boosted my hormone balance by taking low dose AI. Nothing wrong with expediting the hormone process if you are smart and cautious. Don’t take just E lowering herbs, you need to balance them out with others have a different action. But the bottom line that you don’t need to take any at all. For me they have been a mental crutch and probably not much more.

NOTE - don’t do anything that can harm you because you don’t need to take big risks. Personally i dabbled with prohormones but got scared each time i used them for more than a week due to them apparently being suppressive, so i binned them. My recovery had absolutely nothing to do with the handful of days i took them. Many guys are obsessed by them because CD took them, however these guys ignore all the other recovery stories that didn’t involve them. This is because the condition makes you crazy/depressed/anxiety ridden, and in this state the human way is to look for a silver bullet.

Seriously guys, it is as easy as that. The easiest yet also the hardest thing in the world is to simply drop the mental battle and just go about your day, yet that is the biggest component, add that to time, a great diet and lifestyle, laughter, a project, family, friends etc. and you will recover. If you don’t believe me, sadly you won’t. Belief doesn’t happen over night though, you can create it by reading these words and those of other recovery stories, stop reading scary words, develop your recovery plan that you believe in, then over a period of months, you will notice tiny signs of improvements, maybe your skin, maybe a small sexual improvement, or in energy, this adds more belief and your regimen intensifies, and like a snowball you grow back to your old self.

How am i now? I am back to my old self. Out of 30ish symptoms, i just now have achy feet. I lost alot of mass including feet and hands and my feet never quite returned to normal. CD still has tinitus (one of the biggest causes of tinnitus is stress) I also have maybe a few more wrinkes on my face than i would have had, however i look pretty good again, i am a new father to a 10 month old boy, my girlfriend is 15 years younger than me and i have a great life. I am also quite wealthy now as one of the things i did after getting ill was to say to myself “fuck this, if i am going feel shit for years then i am at least gunna create something to show for it when i am better” I did, and a business i started during this period is now worth millions.

What i am saying is that you have a choice of how you respond to this. For example when i felt so shit i slept no more than 2 broken hours a night, and my body shook all day from anxiety, my mind was fogged, and recall bursting into tears once when i couldn’t peel an egg (all this alongside losing over 2 stone of muscle and not being able to get it up) - what did i do? I booked a weeks walking holiday in Wales which i knew would force me to walk, to talk, to do. I swam in the sea every day, sometimes in the dark. I still have a cold shower every morning. I did a shit load of crazy stuff, that in itself was largely unnecessary, but i did it all to move my focus to recovery, to a plan, to a mission which allowed me to ignore my symptoms because i had a plan to get rid of them.
Most of it is mental, but it takes many months, sometimes a year or two of doing the right thing to finally achieve the correct mental state that allows your body to follow. You don’t realise how far you’ve gone into the wrong mindset until finally you’re recovered, so you need patience.

Above all, relax, stop making such a fucking meal of it. Together you crazy fuckers are collectively taking everyone down together, get a grip, get real, it’s not all over for you.

Finally, i am nearly 41, have a broken back which limited what i could do. I was one of the eldest, which helped me because i have lived a bit and i knew that just because everyone in a particular group is saying the same thing, it does not necessarily make it so. This is pack mentality and the guys that break it can follow a new route. Many of you guys are in your 20’s / early 30’s so physically you are in a better position to recover, there is no reason for you not to.

So step 1- read that book…

I hope this helps some people out there.

Well here I am… Back after my hiatus posting late at night. I just want to say that I totally support your message. I also think Mew should move this to the recovery section. Let me start by saying I have been considering posting something very similar to the post above. I knew however that it would raise all hell and people wouldn’t believe me. I wanted to be sure that I had recovered first, before I drop these contentious views. Let me just say that I have no idea who English is. I obviously know of Cdnuts but I haven’t communicated via PM with him for years. The following are my own conclusions. Please let me tell my side of the story.

If anyone doubts my credentials, have a browse through my posts. I took Propecia for about 11 years from the age of 15. Let me say that my life has been pretty much shit. Its still kind of shit to be perfectly honest. The two Propecia symptoms I have had have been low libido and crippling anxiety. When I say crippling, I am not fucking around. I mean anxiety that has pervaded every fibre of my being, it has been in the back of my mind inhibiting me from enjoying time with friends, having a partner, performing well in a job, and even being with me when im alone. Its eroded my self confidence due to its unpredictable nature.

And yes, Low libido too. Ive hooked up with a few girls here and there (about 1 year ago around 4 in a 1 month period) but in general i’ve been single and alone. My last girlfriend was when I was about 23, and I am now almost 34. Ive gone stretches of 5-6 years without having sex. Obviously, this has made me deeply unhappy. I remember telling myself though that If I could only get rid of this brain fog even if libido stayed low I could live a good life where I help people, have friends and enjoy myself.

Sooo propecia. Ive done plenty of “natural” cures and none ive stuck with for an extremely long time. Ive always been against medication. The only thing that I have stuck with is going to the gym. In the last year ive packed on a fair amount of muscle, I can bench 120kg, squat 180kg and deadlift 200kg (approx). Which isn’t elite or anything but i’m proud of this.

ok i’m rambling, bare with me - now to the meat and potatoes.

I obviously thought Propecia had caused all of this, the brain fog, the horrible pressure in my brain, the fatigue, inability to think clearly etc. It was epigenetic gene changes, low receptor sensitivity, low dopamine expression, sleep not working properly etc etc. I knew it was something like this without understanding the science at all. This particular knowledge that I was “fucked” led me to the darkest pits of despair, the same depths that have unfortunately led to people killing themselves.

But I kept trying, nofap, meditation, reading blah blah. One day only about 1.5 years ago I finally came across a book by a women called Claire Weeks. It was a book about anxiety. Claire weeks was an Australian doctor, and she was saying something remarkable. She was saying that anxiety is caused by your own attempts to fix it. The cycle is created because you do not accept anxiety. She termed what she called - second fear. Second fear is the fear of fear itself. The cycle of anxiety is maintained because you start worrying about anxiety itself. For me this was a revelation, it made sense. I kept reading and came across the anxietynomore blog ran by a guy called Paul. He was basically saying the same things. Anxiety is made a huge deal for the person so they tell themselves mantras, they use avoidance, they try to control their thinking. Instead the person should let go and accept it.

I still feared that my anxiety was due to propecia but this made sense, so I thought why not lets try. Something amazing started to happen. I started to get little moments of peace, followed by shitty days of worry and set back. But each time I saw the light shining through I started to realise that this is actually going to work. I continued in this vein until almost by miracle, my anxiety is gone entirely now. I had stumbled upon the miracle cure to anxiety, and the medical model and self help books have got it so wrong.

So my story runs parallel to English’s story. I thought Propecia was causing my anxiety and I was wrong. The huge constellation of symptoms associated with it (depersonalisation, brain fog, fatigue, strange pressure in my forehead, blurry vision, terrible responses to stress are all gone now. Well I still respond a little poorly to stress but i’m still desensitising a nervous system that was in flight mode for 10 years, that’s normal.

This made me think, shit how many other people on propeciahelp are also affected by this. The idea that you are broken forever is basically the most terrifying thought I could imagine. Please don’t think i’m trying to minimise the drug as I still hate it deeply. I totally agree with English - Propecia DOES have negative effects. I see it the same way, Propecia probably did make me vulnerable and wonky, it caused my anxiety at the beginning but I kept it going to some extent with my fear. I know what you’re probably thinking - ‘this is all well and good sennex, but im not anxious’. Well I cant talk for you, but are you depressed? Depression and anxiety can be covert, you can have them and not realise. What english and CDNUTS are saying is clearly true, do not underestimate the power of a thought or belief.

I came to the same conclusion as English. What is the thread between all the people who have recovered? I personally think its belief and having a plan. People truly believed they were on the right path, and that they were fixing themselves. What may have really happened is they have inadvertently let go of the worry and allowed hope back. It became a self fulfilling prophecy for them.

So about the sex hows that you ask? Well my libido does still seem low. Is this because of Propecia? I’m not sure. One thing to consider though is that I AM DEEPLY WOUNDED NOW. You do not go through this shit for years unscathed. I don’t yet feel like a worthwhile person, and the anxiety around sex is immense due to past failures. Years ago I had a girl in my bedroom and I had a perfectly fine boner. I had a thought of worry and down it went, not to return. She lay in the bed with me and we fooled around and I was so anxious she ended up leaving. Failures. Not my only one. Do I sound like someone who would love to have sex? No… I am very flexible of mind and I will be kind to myself working towards anxiety first and being aware of how my cognitions effect my performance. Perhaps as anxiety disperses through my system i’ll start to sleep even better. Who knows what will happen? To be honest I even expect it.

If there is one thing I want anyone who reads this to take from my post. Whatever you think even if you think its all bullshit, please be open to the idea that you can fuck yourself up by worrying/analysing and indulging in self pity. You can cause yourself so much distress and you might not be conscious of how bad it is. The meaning has been internalised as knowledge for you. I do believe that by letting go a little bit even if you don’t lose all your symptoms you can get so much better. I am certain that the body heals better when you aren’t as depressed or anxious.

Its amazing, i’m still fucked up in some ways (probably trauma related rather than propecia) but not by anxiety which is mind blowing. Im sitting in uni lectures thinking basically nothing, able to concentrate. I’m talking to people again without fear. I walk into a shop and i’m calm. I don’t anticipate social and work events with dread I just go to them. Its like I have been given a new lease on life. My anxiety wont come back, I know it in my heart. I’ve been anxiety free for about 3 months now. My promise is that i’ll keep going and i’ll tell you any more healing that happens, because its still early stages yet.

Hey Sennex,

Thank you for posting, you are making the biggest step to full recovery, controlling your anxiety by simply letting go and living normally. Your sexual issues will fix too but you’re right that the mental wounds run deep, and i suggest that when you with a girl and it’s getting to the bedroom phase, explain to her first some of your troubles in this area, then you can relax and fool around without pressure, accept that it might not work, then it will!

You must stick with the exercise, and include some cardio but not too much, and number one thing for you now is to reduce inflammation in your gut to the minimum possible. Your stress will have left you with gut issues that you may not even know about, and inflammation in the gut causes cytokines to bind to androgen receptors which blocks T from working and also makes anxiety and brain fog far more likely. Start by cutting out most foods from your diet, cut out gluten completely, cut out all foods from the deadly nightshade family, cut alcohol completely. So… start by drinking bone broth and L Glutamine only for 3 days to reduce inflammation, then go on to the new diet, after 30 days you will feel like a new man. You can then start introducing more foods back in. But all the time, drink bone broth and L glutamine through the day, and never stop that. I suggest you stay gluten and alcohol free for a couple of years at least and start rotating foods with the seasons (as we are meant to do) to avoid the naturally occuring pesticides like lectins renewing gut issues of the past.
I did the above just recently, and although i was already in good shape, i feel unbelievably good right now. All of us are intolerant or sensitive to certain foods, especially pfs guys who are stressed to fuck, and if you read most sufferers accounts, one big common denominator is generally gut issues or pre-existing gut issues. Then if you read all forced natural recovery stories like mine, you will note that we all overhauled our diet so that is basically paleo like which is good for the gut.
You should read this blog (there are 5 articles i think) from a guy called Josh who is very clever, he decided to recover and researched the fuck out of it, he recognised the issues were gut and thyroid led, and he recovered fully inside 2 years. There is real science in his blog that helps with belief, but you should combine exercise, mental techniques and also the herb rotation strategy of CD too once you have sorted the gut issues that Josh talks about along with thryoid (which is easily fixed)
pfshealing.com/post-finaster … lammation/

Once you’ve done the above you should at some stage get a thyroid panel done as most pfs guys stress leads to one or both A- Gut issues and B- Thyroid issues
Either of these issues will lead to all or most of the typical pfs sufferer. If you sort your anxiety and diet out, chances are your thyroid will rectify itself, but check TSH, T3 and T4 to be sure a few months into your new diet - And, make sure you eat as organic as possible.

All pfs men who sort mind, gut, diet, exercise in the right way using the right method, consistently for 1 to 2 years will recover completely or very close to, and i’ve coached a number of guys to this point already, so has CD, and the journey starts from realising that it is not “pfs” at all, it is simply the pill that you knew would fuck your hormones over, plus massive stress at losing various parts of you at cessation or during, plus resulting thyroid failure, plus massive continuing anxiety causing gut issues which release cytokines (inflammation markers) bonding to androgen receptors etc. – It’s the same downward spiral experienced by many other conditions, yet most guys here and on the web talk about it like it’s unique - it’s absolutely not. If anyone shits themselves for months and/or years they lose every essense of themselves too, the only difference with propecia/saw palmetto/ fin/dut etc. is that those drugs start you off from that perspective so everyone blames them for their continuing issues.

Funny how almost no older guys suffer from this isn’t it? Even though probably 70% of propecia users are older men using it for prostate cancer. Do people seriously think a 50 year old male doesn’t mind brain fog, anxiety, sexual anonimity? Of course not, but these guys have bigger fish to fry, so they don’t shit themselves when they take the drug as they are thinking about eliminating the cancer, and they expect the sexual symptoms because the doc warns them of this. Then their cancer reduces or goes and these people are very happy despite their likely sexual issues from taking 5mg of propecia a day. They stop the drug but because they are happy at progress (because stopping the drug means cancer has abated) they miraculously cure of the issues young guys keep within a few weeks, except it’s not miraculous is it, it is what you would expect given the body follows the mind.

So in summary, it’s all about belief, about reading nothing but recovery stories, about pondering my above paragraph regarding older guys suffering in no such ways (there will be some of course but i have read of literally no-one over 50 on these kinda forums) and when you have belief, as sennex now does, you can make progress with sorting out gut issues, mind issues, body, thyroid etc. and if you do it in a very casual relaxed fashion, it’s surprisingly easy.

From a ted talk: “how heavy is this glass of water?” replies from the audience are stuff like “5oz” “not very heavy” and the reply from the speaker is “its light if i hold it for a minute or two, but it becomes cripplingly heavy if i hold it for hours, days, months, years at a time”
The speaker is talking about worry and anxieties.

Guys, put the glass down and just live your lives while doing the things I talk about, the same things that CD talks about, and just about every other “forced” recovery story out there - and there are plenty.

I might come back in a day or two and will offer a reply to anyone who posts that is not a twat, after that i’m gone for good as i’m living my life like never before right now, and my future will not include this forum, but i did want to give back some, and i hope i’ve done that, well i’ve tried my best anyhow.

1 Like

Hey English,

Good to hear from you and thank you for replying! Your post has got through to me about the importance of diet, and I am starting to take measures towards altering it. I do have digestive problems like gas, loose stools very often. I very rarely drink alcohol, i’m starting with giving up nightshades and most gluten. Ive tried gluten free for about 6 months before, I was very strict but I didn’t observe a huge change. That being said its not that I do think it will help so I will try give it up. Unfortunately gluten is in almost everything so its very tough to totally give it up. I’m also taking L-Glutamine now. So with this bone broth where did you get the bones from? Do you just use leftover bones from meat you have for dinner? Ive never tried bone broth before.

I read Josh’s page and I do think he is onto something. Ive always “thought” that diet was important, but your post has made me seriously consider how important it really is. :slight_smile:

Cheers

Hey Sennex,

I’m sorry but i’m going to disappoint you somewhat with my comments on your diet. In summary, you are trying very half heartedly and that is pointless, you will have literally no chance whatsover of progress with your current mindset. You can’t cut out gluten to some degree or start to cut other things out and expect much to happen. You’ve clearly identified gut issues and this is consistent with most pfs guys, and when they don’t have symptoms that still doesn’t mean there is not massive inflammation causing androgen insensitivity.
Look, you’ve got to commit. I’ve been fully recovered for maybe 8 months now and i still follow the regimen that got me here 100%. I love doing it and it makes me feel and look better than ever, yet you’re suffering still and you’re not even committing to the correct diet to sort your gut issues out.
You have leaky gut like almost all pfs guys. You must cut out all gluten, all dairy, sugar, all nightshade family, all beans and legumes, almost all nuts and seeds (read up on nuts and seeds you can eat) and even may fruits. Do this for 60 to 90 days while constantly drinking bone broth and L glutamine (not mixed) also eat 5 cloves of garlic a day raw and eat tons of ginger. Brew your own fermented drinks and drink piles of it. Do not buy yoghurts because you can’t be bothered, it doesn’t work as they have all sorts of crap added.
I get grass fed / organic meat delivered monthly and i brew up the bones overnight for bone broth.
You must eat as organic as possible, so if possible get an organic veg box delivered weekly.
Before you start all this, fast on bone broth and probiotics (not dairy ones) only for 3 days which will help reduce inflammation alot before you start.
The point of this is to completely fix your leaky gut, stop the cytokines from binding to your androgen receptors which result from gut inflammation.
To do this you have to commit 100%, it is a complete change of diet and lifestyle. You will feel miles better within 10 days though and that will give you encouragement.
After 60 to 90 days, start re-introducing foods, but not gluten ever again. Keep drinking bone broth twice a day, along with taking daily fermented drinks and foods. Do this for life.
Doing this will change your life if you accompany it with positive and relaxed mindset and androgen increasing exercise. Oh, and make sure you take calcium with magniesium glycinate as a supplement with food each day as tough to find enough calcium from this diet otherwise.
Doing what CD, myself, chi, and many many others did is very hard and life changing, but if you want to fully recover naturally within a year or two, this is what you’ve got to do.
OK, that’s me, i’ve come back to this site, reported my complete success and stuck around for questions. It is a shame Mew won’t put me on the recovery board (fuck knows why) as many more would see it there, but shit happens.
If any of you guys want more help, please follow cdsnuts post on his recovery thread in relation to him and i being in business to help guys (not just pfs guys) and you can apply to cd for free personal coaching by us, and you can visit cd’s website too which will be launching in a couple of months. From there you can get all the info you need in one place and buy coaching from us.

Good luck to you all, but honestly, you don’t need it, you just need to commit to the regimen we talk about, day in, day out, for years - it makes you feel great and return to full health, it’s worth it.

1 Like

“I’m sorry but i’m going to disappoint you somewhat with my comments on your diet. In summary, you are trying very half heartedly and that is pointless, you will have literally no chance whatsoever of progress with your current mindset.”

I’ve actually taken huge steps in the last week, i’ve totally avoided nightshades and gluten, stopped drinking soft drinks, I rarely eat dairy anyway. Ive lost about 5kg and basically feel like total shit. The problem I have is getting enough carbs for the gym, basically all I can think of is eating huge amounts of vegetables? The problem for me is the gym has become one of my most favourite things, I have lots of friends there, it de-stresses me and gives me purpose. Berating me and asking me to basically give this up is not going to be easy.

Semex how is this protocol going for you, Are you still sticking to it and have you noticed improvements?

I agree with English re leaky gut but are all leaky gut test(s) worth considering e.g. NHS gut lining test or others?

English 1 & others,

Thank you for your great posts. On Feb 16th, I went on pfshealing.com and had the opportunity to read the article on inflammation. Then I wanted to go back to the website on the next day to read more articles, but since then, the website is gone. The web address is for sale…

From the article I read (inflammation) the guy seemed quite scientific, and I would have liked to read more about what he says about supplementation… By any chance, would any one of you have saved the articles written by Josh Abrhams and could share them?

Thank you,
Charles

1 Like

English I remember reading Joshs articles, they were very good and backed with science, shame the website has now expired :frowning:

Fuck CD biggest scam artist going

1 Like