What is the general consensus on why finasteride shut down our T production?

General Discussion
#1

Seriously, is it mainly an estrogen thing, or is it something that just can’t be explained?

We know that in a normal mechanism of action finasteride actually increases T levels, I could imagine excess estrogen being converted from this extra amount of T as a reason for side effects while on the drug, but why did things stay fucked even after quitting? This does not happen to the majority of men, what is different about us that caused this??

Also as I have been successful in raising my T levels… my hair looks better than ever if you can believe it. I seriously think having healthy T levels is helping my hair out, isn’t this supposed to be contradictory to what has been said? What the fuck is going on?!?

I wonder if there was some sort of hormonal problems that we had to begin with, which was actually causing our hair loss, and propecia just threw everything out of whack. As ridiculous as it sounds, there’s some reports of men actually regrowing frontal hair with arimidex, check out the following link:

http://www.farrellmanual.com/drugs/arimidex.htm

I think I’ll be posting a poll question shortly.

#2

Because the HPTA axis (link between Pituitary gland and testes) is disrupted for good after excess Testosterone in the blood for a long time. Just like a bodybuilder.

#3

How long before this is permanently disrupted?

#4

It varies from person to person… There isn’t a defined time frame for this. I would define it like this: The longer you expose your system to exogenous Testosterone (in our case extra testosterone that wasn’t being converted to DHT), the higher the risk of having HPTA damage. Also, your risk increases along with the amount of extra T circulating.

Also, it doesn’t mean your Hpta axis is damaged unless your T levels are really low for your age.

#5

This guy mentions something critical that evolves in my mind too.

The point is that I feel much worse now then I have ever felt on Propecia or Dutasteride. Non of those drugs actually made me feel as bad as I do now. I never felt so much flatened in the emotional and sexual part of me.
Since I quit these drugs things went much better, but in the long run my senses went much much worse. I do not really know if this is related to theses drugs that I was using years ago. I can imagine that Propecia might trigger something, something that was inside my.

Just like Bigsoftie my latest thought is about the excesive hairloss that I actually had that motivated me to go on Propecia. And just like Bigsoftie I wonder why there was an excessive DHT, what caused it? Maybe this excessive hairloss was due to a preexisting condition of something that we actually threw out of the basket with Propecia.

I do not know but if it was only about the mechanism of Propecia or Dutasteride action I would remain the same how I felt while I was on it (which did not really feel that bad). The point is that this what I feel is different, it is worse, much worse.

Another thing is something that I am very confident of is the fact that I was absolutely normal when I stopped Dutasteride. Everything returned to how it was and I decided to use SOY isoflavon instead of these medications. I thought it would be easier and maybe safer if it works for me. It worked for hair, but I started feeling much worse, weird with these topical soy based solutions. Actually I remember that I had my first visit with endo after I felt very strange with this application, when this feeling remained for a week or two…

I do not know but things look really strange especialy that my hormonal profile is of the 18 years old male. S***it!

Now the thing that I want to investigate is what actually casued this: HYPERADRENALISM (alopecia…etc) or whatever, because here may be the answer what happend then.

Last visit my endo said there is nothing more he can do. I am a perfectly healthy male from the hormonal point of view. He also said that even if there was less DHT it would be still ok and this “zombie” feeling is not about 5 alpha reductase/dht or whatever like this.

When I actually reminde how I felt on Propecia… my Gosh… he might be right because I felt ok, 1000% better, did not visit endo or enything because there was no issues, I was dating girls, had a normal social life… if Propecia would be causing this after years from discontinuing it would be just crazy. Like my endo said, there must be something else going on…

#6

In my situation for example. I grow muscles on propecia, felt really really good but had sexual sides, not horny.

We know that propecia makes T jump up abit. about 20% but we also have ppl on this site who demonstrates a Testosterne reduction after quitting of alot more than the 20% increased during treatment. I cant recall who but remember reading some1 with 1000+ on propecia but dropped down to 300+ after disscontiued the drug.

If 300+ was his baseline b4 propecia then T jumped a whopping 200% or so. This is not very likely in my opinion.

I think some ppl just have sensitive system so when he started propecia his body tried to produce alot more T to compensate for the reduction in dht. Maybe from 600 to 1000 (guessing but u get the idea).

Now the body made be able to work in this overdrive state for awhile but after a while it cant keep up the jobb.

Meanwhile the liver is trying to up the 5ar enzyme to get the dht up, that dont work cause with fin in the system it just get bound up so the reduction in dht stays more or less the same.

At the same time aromatize is getting alot of new food in the Testosterone flood, so in time estradiol goes up and shbg follows accordingly.

Now when our body is finally saying its had enough the T lowers again and we start feeling sluggish and depressed, now t has prolly gone down some and the testicles may show it, as mine did. We realize we need to try and get off this shit cause we arent feeling to good. Lets say at this point T has dropped to 4-500 (guessing again).

Fin is slowly exiting our system and we feel that surge in dht / androgen and the body starts feeling okay, another week or 2 the exessive 5ar enzyme drains your now quite low Testosterone by converting to much of it to dht. Dht is also quite suppresive at the hypothalamus so the combination of the increased estrogen and now massive loads (demonstrated by lots of guys in here) of dht lowers T down to hypogonodal levels. We start feeling really bad now and as time goes by different symptoms start popping up. Some might even exp a crash.

For some progesterone kicks in to lower dht at the expense of weakend adrenals for some this dont happen. Either way the body is not working efficently and we are paying a dear price.

This is what i think happend to me. Can i prove it ? NO!

The flaw in this theory is that exessive dht is suppose to make you loose hair and this aint happning for many. What id like to know tho is, do we know that the benefits on hair from propecia is by reduced dht? or is it the actual increase in testosterone or estrogen? Grasping for straws ofc.

#7

I thought that DHT is the males natural anti-estrogen. Your theory is interesting, but I question where you state that a rise in DHT causes a rise in estrogen which in turn lowers testosterone. In my opinion, it would have to be a extremely high DHT level to have this effect. I’d expect the DHT transient experienced may perhaps lower estrogen, which unturn raises testosterone … (assuptions are made re: FSH and LH and GnRH and genetics governing testicular activity, immune system, reaction to environmental hormones).

I don’t know much about this, but I question if 5a-r inhibitors share the suicidal characteristics of anti-estrogens; ie: when taking finasteride or dutasteride, if the same dosage is taken for an extended period, are more 5a-r recepters made to restore the HPTA to ones genetic value?