What has provided temporary ~100% return to normal for you?

Therapeutic Efforts
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#1

Accutane user here who went on ~1.5 courses before stopping cold turkey ~6 years ago. Exact same symptoms as PFS btw.

I’ve only had two instances where I felt like I was cured completely.

First instance: took antibiotics for a wisdom teeth extraction. About ~12 hours later I had a rock solid erection comparable to my former self as well as the libido (and this is with extreme pain and shock from my teeth extraction pain!). The effects seemed to last for about two weeks. The tapering off coincided with me partying fairly hard that weekend with bad food and alcohol.

Second instance: second day of carnivore diet. I had been miserable all day and all of a sudden I felt a return to normal. My erection quality was maybe 90-95%? I continued my strict carnivore diet for 3 additional weeks but I lost this effect by the third day. Interestingly, I was able to sustain maybe ~70% return to baseline with high libido and a relatively good erection for about 1 week AFTER ending my carnivore diet and returning to a low carb diet but not during my diet.

Explanation:

day 1 of carnivore - no change
day 2 - 95%
day 3 - 50%
days 4-21 - 0% again
end carnivore diet
days 1-7 - ~70%

These instances lead me to think that we can at least partly recover from PFS/PAS by resolving some underlying gut microbiome issues. Others have also reported some temporary relief with antibiotics as well on this forum. My understanding of this is also due to the fact that accutane users suffer later in life from gut issues like Crohn’s disease as well.

#2

I started to chew all my food down til it was liquified basically before swallowing. Took me twice as long to finish a meal. Within a few days, I was feeling much better, it thought holy shit. Then a few days went by and I started feeling real bad and then I crashed mentally.
I think my cortisol levels tanked and that was what did it. Something as basic as chewing food properly shouldn’t have had such a dramatic impact.

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#3

P.L.A.C.E.B.O.
Stop telling this bs or who see us and don’t knows PFS, will think we are just crazy

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#4

Are you saying you don’t believe there’s a gut microbiome component that might play a role in PFS/PAS?

I don’t see how you can dismiss it outright as placebo when there are others who have also seen some improvements albeit temporary or not 100% with things like keto/carnivore as well as antibiotic usage.

Also, I’m not some idiot with IBS after accutane stating we need to eat some kale and feel better. I have 100% overlap in symptoms with PFS despite having never touched any hair pills.

#5

When I’m coming down with a cold. Even morning wood returns to a degree

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#6

Same for me - getting a cold fixes everything.

I’m sorry but I’m with @Rb26dett, chewing your food 20 times is not a treatment.

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#7

Actually it’s more like 40 - 50 times . Have you tried it or read up on it? I wouldnt knock til you do either one. It’s good for strengthening the bbb, lowering inflammation, absorbing nutrients, energy etc. I would consider it a healthier, cheaper option than everything else on this forum. Also the OP is asking for self induced temporary relief from symptoms which I have contributed. I dont think the unpredictable nature of catching a cold is relevant unless you’re going around kissing toilet seats on planes.

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#8

When you get flou, your immunitarie system slow down. IMO, Our condition is 90% autoimmune disieses. If our antibodies stop to fight us, to fight the flou (or maybe the flou comes because immune system is lowered), we can feel better and the lighter cases, feel 100% recovered.

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#9

I’ve made same experience like betweenjobs.
Was improved very much for a week after that return to baseline without crash.

#10

I doubt the gut microbiome plays a role in PFS.

#1, it is very unlikely you felt “90%” better on just 1 day of carnivore. How can we trust you to quantifiably measure the degree of your PFS anyways? Will the average, non researcher person be able to tell the difference between 25%, 50%, and 75% “recovery”?

#2, How would 1 day of carnivore diet effect your gut microbiome? What likely happened if the lack of carbs caused a spike in androgen sensitivity, or had some other positive effect on your androgen receptors that pushed you in a positive direction temporarily. It is not a “cure” nor is it a “recovery”. It’s just like how most PFS users feel better while sick, I think it’s because their immune system goes down while they are sick and that pushes their androgen receptors in a positive direction.

PFS is not a chronic infection, it is not an issue with gut microbiome, your gut microbiome has a negligible effect on your libido and most importantly finasteride, isotretinoin, antidepressants, ect have little to no effect on your gut microbiome. Any measurable effects you may present to me in studies can be explained by how the immune system is effected by PFS.

#11

You are close but still wrong. Being sick not only lowers immune system but also decreases testosterone and most other hormones. Which makes the receptors more sensitive (or pushes them in just a general positive direction) which is why we feel better temporarily while sick.

#12

I’ve never heard about cold or flu reducing testosterone levels, any sources?

#13

I’m also someone who took a year of doxycycline (yeah, I know, I know) for acne right before taking accutane (ugh it hurts to even write this) so I guess you might be right. But after finishing my 1.5 courses I had problems like seb derm and oral thrush which fucked me up pretty bad whereas I didn’t have those problems before.

What I do know is that our gut microbiome plays a role in hormone production. This might also explain how antibiotics might give some temporary therapeutic benefits. I feel like there has to be some gut component that affects us if it makes at least accutane users susceptible to IBS and Crohns, no?

To me it looks like all the theories we have with DHT or 5AR2 are just dead ends. Doesn’t it make sense to see what leads to temporary relief and try to work out a solution from there instead?

#14

I think things that give a temporary relief are things that modify the androgen receptors and immune function. Your carnivore diet did not effect your gut microbiome in the first few days. The no carbs put your body into ketosis which decreases T and makes receptors more sensitive.

But you can go ahead and do things that “mess” with your gut microbiome. People have been proposing this for years. There are posts from 2008 that claim Minoxidil-induced PFS was “proof” that it was a gut microbiome issue because “Minoxidil does not effect androgens.” Now studies show that Minoxidil actually destroys the androgen receptor and 5a-R2 transcriptional activity just like Finasteride does. (Albeit despite not reducing DHT levels - this has nothing to do with DHT directly)

#15

I’m interested in that you use the word “destroy”. What is your view on the AR de/re sensitizing hypothesis? Do you think it is rubbish because the receptors have irrepairably been killed off or do you think it might be possible somehow?

#16

There is absolutely nothing interesting about me using the word “destroy” because that’s exactly what Minoxidil does.

“ Dissecting the underlying mechanisms, we found that minoxidil interfered with AR-peptide, AR-coregulator, and AR N/C-terminal interactions, as well as AR protein stability. Furthermore, a crystallographic analysis using the AR ligand-binding domain (LBD) revealed direct binding of minoxidil to the AR in a minoxidil-AR-LBD co-crystal model, and surface plasmon resonance assays demonstrated that minoxidil directly bound the AR with a Kd value of 2.6 μM. Minoxidil also suppressed AR-responsive reporter activity and decreased AR protein stability in human hair dermal papilla cells.”

It’s compromising the AR on a transcriptional and protein level. The effects that can have long term after applying generous amounts 2x a day for 6 months I don’t know. So far, it looks like people have had success with both desensitizing and resensitizing.

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#17

There’s too many connections to the gut and mircobiome to ignore its relation to PFS. It’s possible that PFS from 1 pill can be gut related. Or side effects that happen after symptom free months following discontinuation.

On the curezone site, the guy said he was cured from PFS, and listed brain fog, ED, etc by a diagnosed and treated e. Histolytica infection.

Hormones and the immune system are connected. Older guys may have been exposed to light parasitic infections more often in their healthy, non finasteride damaging days, and developed immunity.

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#18

I had a good window of symptom relief with an antibiotic years ago. That was in my worst days too.

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#19

That’s a very fascinating read. https://www.curezone.org/forums/am.asp?i=2359277 for those interested.

#20

When I have temporary recoveries, my stools harden more like old times, otherwise they’re soft and nasty. I had a 3 day mini symptom remission recently and I was going to announce that I was cured lol. My stools were harder and I rubbed one off a few times. Now I’m back to soft stools, ED, depression, low libido