I went to a hair-transplant surgeon today, because I already visited this forum ages ago and figured that propecia wasn’t for me and wanted to get hair grafts instead. Only thing is the guy just tried pushing propecia for an hour straight, saying that out of his 2500 patients only 10 reported a sexual problem and that this went away after stopping propecia. He basically said I was wasting my time with hair transplants if I wasn’t going to take propecia. He was constantly bringing up previous research in support of the drug, but for me personally I like to look at the research for myself. I study psychology and all we do is research and write reports and review research and then conduct statistical analysis of the data, so simply giving me an off-hand statement doesn’t cut it. From the sounds of it, the studies could have so many extraneous variables and how they would even go about measuring the dependent variable acurately is beyond me. Number one rule of research is: research never ever proves anything! Research can suggest, research can show correlation, but it can never prove anything.
He did say however that people who take the drug everyday are over-dosing. He recommends 1 tablet 2 or 3 times a week, because there is no added benefit in any more then that. He wrote me out a prescription but I really don’t think I’ll get it filled.
As for problems people are experiencing here. I see a lot of people with physiological symptoms and test proving this, however don’t be so quick to then say because the problems are physiological, they don’t have a psychological basis. It has been shown in reseach study after research study that psychological factors affect your physiology. All I’m saying is that it may be the case that the physiological symptoms are a result of the psychological processes going on. And of course it works the other way around, physiology affects psychology. For example a person forced to hold their mouth in a smiling position will find a t.v show funnier and more enjoyable then a person who is forced to make a indignant expression. Crazy how our minds work I know.
Now I’m not saying that all your cases are due to psychological effects, however there is a very high chance that your psychological processes are either partially the cause of your symptoms, or your psychological processes are inhibiting recovery from those symptoms. Trust me they will have a part to play, even if it’s not the majority, it may still be something to look into.
I’ll give my own personal story of how my psychological processes were inhibiting my sexual performance. This was years ago, I was 19 and a virgin, I had thinning hair. I started taking minoxidil, however after 2 months on it I started dating a girl and we started fooling around. However because I hadn’t done anything like that before I found it hard to get it up. I was extremely nervous and anxious. This went on for months. I blamed minoxidil for my problems and stopped using it (however there is no way minoxidil was to blame for these problems). After a few months I finally got over my nervousness, lost my virginity, and never looked back. But at the time I really blamed minoxidil for my problems. Now I’m back on minoxidil and have absolutely no problems with the ladies haha.
There is the psychological phenomenon of association. This is beneficial when you touch a hot stove top, you touch it and you associate that action with the following adverse affects. However this process can sometimes go wrong, where you wrongly associate a problem with a stimulus. This is because usually a person will associate something significant with the most significant and new stimulus to them. For example there was a case where a woman ate a steak for lunch and then later on in the day she ate sushi. The woman ended up with food poisoning. She never had sushi before so she associated this adverse affect with the new unfamiliar stimulus. This was all well and good, but after she recoved she re-heated a left over steak from the meal from the previous day, and what do you know she once again got food poisoning. The food posioning had nothing to do with the sushi, but rather the steak. However the interesting thing is, to this day the woman can still eat steak, but she has a strong psychological association between sushi and food poisoning, and now every time she has any contact with sushi she feels sick and can’t eat it.
It could therefore be the case that propecia was either the wrong stimulus for your problems, or it could be that giving it too much credit for your problems may in fact be counter-productive.
This is because the brain is a very strong machine. If you believe something is true, your body will respond. This can result in learned-helplessness. For example if you’ve ever had the experience of looking for something, lets say the salt and pepper. You look for it but you just can’t find it, and you start saying “I can’t find the bloody salt and pepper anywhere at all, I just can’t!” And then someone comes along and shows you where it is, and it was right in front of your face. But it was due to your beliefs that caused you to be unable to find it. This is because when the mind says “I can’t do it” the body tries to agree with your mind because it doesn’t want to disagree and cause conflict.
So what I’m saying is that if you have a belief that ‘propecia will cause impotence’ then it is very likely that you will experience these symptoms. And if you were going to experence these symptoms anyway, it is likely that your belief will make the symptoms twice as bad. This could also be true for those still experiencing symptoms after you’ve stopped the drug. If you believe that you are impotent and this cannot be helped, then it is very likely that you will never recover. There is a big difference between believing that you are an impotent person, or that you are a healthy person experiencing short-term impotence. Your beliefs are key, and you have to be careful what they are in order to avoid self-fulfilling prophecies.
Anyway I don’t want any of you to get me wrong, because I believe the symptoms you are experiencing are very real. However I also believe that your psychological processes may be partially to blame, and that changing your beliefs about what is going on may really help a lot of you to speed up recovery. I’ve discussed how your brain can work against you, but it is also true that if you use it right it can work for you. Even if you have very real physiological problems, a positive psychological outlook will help your recovery from even these very real problems.
I also had one question about propecia. I go to the gym a lot and I’m trying to build muscle, would propecia be counter-productive? Because steroids boost your dht, but propecia takes it away. It’s kind of like I have two competing goals, keeping my hair and building muscle. I don’t take steroids by the way, was just making a point.
Anyway that’s all I had to say. Sorry for the amazingly long first post, just wanted to give you guys some possible explanations and possible ways to help you guys recover faster. Also should I even bother testing out propecia for myself with 2 tablets a week, or should I avoid it all together?
Cheers
Tim.