Warning about *dark* chocolate/cocoa/cacao (or foods containing high amounts of 5ar inhibiting flavonols)!

Yeah, your opinion is useless. No one cares.

plastic bottles are fine

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Trazodone causes me QT Prolongation for sure. I have a diagnosed partial AV block. This limits many of the sleep drugs like the anti-psychotics. Seroquel is a no no also. Ambien, Lunesta, Benzosā€¦ all are ok but not sustainable. Oleamide seems to work ok and acts on the canabanoid receptors. Kava kava can be pretty powerful but Iā€™m not sure what if any cross tolerance it has with other things that are GABAgeric or Benzo.

immagine

Yes. We recommend staying away from any Flavonoids, they are very very dangerous.

I have been avoiding:

-soy sauce
-tofu
-teriyaki sauce
-brown rice
-green tea
-blueberries
-now chocolate

Ugh, this sucks. Green tea used to make me feel great and I love it, but not worth the risk I guess

3 Likes

Wednesday night:

Meditated for 35 min before bed. Palpitations at bedtime. Could only sleep for 2 hours at a time. Woke up for 4 hours, went back to sleep for 2 hours, woke up again for almost an hour, etc, etc.

How long should I expect to endure this for??? Will I ever go back to baseline??? I canā€™t take it, I feel like this will finally end me.

So it turns out almonds and pistachios are the only nuts that contain flavanols, isohamnertin and quercetin. What a fucking curse this is. Canā€™t eat anything healthy, and if you do, you might completely lose your sleep drive and even end up killing yourself.

1 Like

Getting muscle tightness symptoms again, now in new areas of the body.

Day 9:

Slept a little over 2.5 hours again and couldnā€™t go back to sleep. I slept again for 3 hours after being up for a few hours like the past few days. I have been meditating before bedtime almost every night for the past 5 days. Meditation doesnā€™t seem to work for sleep maintenance but works very well for sleep latency in my case.

I have no more anxiety about sleep. I get palpitations when I wake up from my ā€˜secondā€™ sleep. Initial time to fall asleep is decent. Still getting muscle weakness and tightness. Very tempted now to get a script for mirtazapine or a non SSRI AD to help stay asleep. Donā€™t know if I should try to see an endocrinologist?

Day 16:

What the fuck. I still have palpitations every night before bedtime. I still awoke a little after 3 hours of sleep as Iā€™m typing this after failing to go back to sleep for over half an hour. I also woke up at 4 hours last night.

Not sure what Iā€™ve done wrong. Might have overdone cardio and/or had a handful of pistachios and a huge leafy salad last with some grapes, apples, and oranges last night. I did have a tablespoon of sorghum daily for a week with my oatmeal but then I stopped. This bullshit is giving me orthorexia. I am completely fed up with this. I just might cave and ask to get on mirtazapine this week.

No all Flavonoids are 5-alpha reductase inhibitor, example Hesperidin and Diosmin. I am going to try both starting tomorrow.

1 Like

Update:

20 days later. Every single night I get palpitations one to two hours before bed time. Woke up after not even 1.5 hours of sleep and Iā€™m wide awake. This is utter insanity. Never experienced such unholy insomnia in my life. This feels even worse than the first round of insomnia I got from taking finasteride. I was slowly recovering from that too. I had many days when I was about to get enough sleep albeit broken, even sometimes being able to sleep through the night and had decent energy for the day.

If anyone else thinks that Iā€™m exaggerating or that itā€™s all in my head, feel free to do exactly what I did to prove me wrong. Take finasteride or have had persistent sides from it, then take a heaping tablespoon of Navitas cacao nibs for a few days daily.

I think Iā€™m just going to a doctor today and ask for mirtazapine and risk getting PSSD.

In such a dark place right now, could I get some words of positive encouragement here?

Iā€™m really sorry to hear that youā€™re struggling.

Iā€™m sure youā€™ve tried lots of different methods to work this out. Sometimes Iā€™m not sure thereā€™s anything you can do but wait it out. I had sleeping problems before all this started. The advice given to me was that if it wasnā€™t going to happen then perhaps I should just do something productive. Maybe get out of bed, do something, read a book. Watch TV. Tidy your room. Paint something. Catalogue every post ever made on propeciahelp about sleep problems, substances that have worked. Substances that didnā€™t. Make a chart of the results. The what is up to you. Getting stressed out about not sleeping is ironically quite likely to make you less likely to sleep.

Most people with sleep problems here have had improvements down the line.

Thank you, Greek. You know, I always find comfort in your words of encouragement. At this point, I expect these awakenings every night, so I am somewhat mentally prepared for them as long as itā€™s not something crazy like waking up only after 1 hour of sleep. I wonder if having taken l-theanine before bedtime caused some of those earlier awakenings.

For the past few days my mood is actually OK despite still going through this hell. And throughout all this time I was still able to laugh. Iā€™m still optimistic that this just a minor setback. I believe this will all be behind me and itā€™s just a matter of time.

1 Like

Not to over update, but last night I was about to sleep for over 4 hours at a time before awakening. Still took me hours to go back to sleep but itā€™s an improvement. My ejaculation is worse now I think. It just dribbles out. The cocoa beans initially improved my ejaculatory force and now itā€™s worse than before. I am getting muscle stiffness in my arms and left leg. On the bright side, no new sides to speak of.

Maybe consider taking a rest from sex. That increase in sleep is good news, in my opinion. I find everything gets better or worse at once, hopefully your sleep improvements will continue and youā€™ll feel better.

Day 28:

Still woke up a little over 3 hours and canā€™t go back to sleep. The palpitations have decreased, but muscle symptoms persist.

Foods usually arenā€™t strong enough AR inhibitors to really cause problems.

Finasteride/Saw Palmetto/Isotrentinoin and specific drugs are just on another level.

3 Likes

Iā€™m sleeping once every 10 days so donā€™t worry you have enough sleep to keep you in the game. :grinning: Stay positive keep depression and anxiety down and your doing the best you can.

1 Like

My dude, no ordinary diet contains that much flavonols a day or eating cacao nibs in general. 5ari is 5ari, no matter if it comes from saw palmetto, resveratrol from berries and grapes, dark chocolate, or your momā€™s spaghetti. The dosage makes the poison. You eat enough of any of that, you get burned. Maybe I wouldā€™ve even done much worse if I had taken saw palmetto instead, I wouldnā€™t want to find out. But I got burned from this nonetheless. Refer to axolotlā€™s post in this thread and other peopleā€™s accounts of doing worse with chocolate. I ate megadoses of it because it was pure cocoa solids. If you donā€™t believe me, feel free to do what I did and test it out yourself. Iā€™m sure you wouldnā€™t want to because youā€™ve been where Iā€™ve been and would never wish to go back there.

Check my post history. I havenā€™t posted in months when I posted this thread because I was doing fine. My sleep was back to baseline mostly. My muscle symptoms were all gone. Both that and the finsomnia re-emerged after three days of taking a heaping tablespoon a day of this shit. My sleep hygiene is fine, I donā€™t worry or get anxiety about my sleep. I meditate and exercise everyday. But like clockwork Iā€™ve been waking up almost every night at around 3 hours of sleep wide awake out of the blue.

Chart below as posted before is from labdoor. I took almost two tablespoons of Navitas Naturals Cacao Nibs a day: