I am starting to believe that EVERY person is affected by the sides but in different ways, perhaps negligble. Which makes me think we are low in something perhaps. I was fine for 9 years, but since the first pill I took I no longer got nocturnal and AM erections. Nor did I dream any sexual thoughts for 9 years. Honestly, maybe 2 years before my crash while I was still on finasteride I thought to myself, hmm is it wierd that I never dream of sex anymore? I dismissed it as just getting older and being sexually active but no no. I have also heard of people stopping and having no sides and resuming sexual dreams again. we should definitely try to reach out to the users who are on finasteride and point out these things. I understand you feel great on finasteride butā¦Hey do you still dream of sex? Hey do you still get night time erections? Hey do you still get morning erections?
Couple of things. Where you regularly taking propecia when the crash happened. In other words it wasnt early on after a few weeks or immediately upon cesation of the drug years later?
I have a theory which I have stuck by, and will continue to stand by since I have joined this site. That is we are all Type A, sort of obsessive compulsive, driven, focused, extremely sexual people. High anxiety due to perhaps generally lower levels of progesterone in the brain. Lower levels would not only explain our very common and united personality types (progesterone is known to be a calming/anti-anxiety) but also why most of us, if not all of us have our hair!!! We all seem to shed but not the typical male pattern baldness. So might point is that finasteride is known to reduce allogpreganalone via the progesterone to allopregenalone pathway. This might reduce the amount or balance of progesterone to estrogen in the brain. Now add the extra stressor or giant anxiety we did seem to experience and boom!! The crash, a recognizable ACUTE phase moment where our hormones drastically shift, the imbalance occurs where the ratio of estrogen to progesterone in the brain is altered and the cascading side effects on neurotransmitters all the way down to estrogen dominance and low testosterone. So your idea would actually be even more evidence for my overal theory. My mother has extremely low progesterone so it runs in the family, she also has high anxiety. They are finding a link now between the both.
finally, playing devils advocate, one could argue that most people are stressed out an anxious as we are young and have much anxiety so you could theortically find just as many people on finasteride who are unaffected that experience amazing amounts of stress
i had full on male pattern bladness (early stages) when i took this drug, so in my case, i do not really fit into that aspect of your theory, i did not use it as prevention as you say, i was definately loosing hair ā¦ also, i am a very serious case of pfs and have been wrecked beyond words ā¦ not sure what it all means, but like i am saying i do not tie into that aspect of your theory
i took propecia (for slightly thinning hair) for 4 years without any problems apart from a very small dip in libido and erection was only about 90 percent,but i thought these were the side effects that were mentined on the leaflet which came with the propecia and that if i decided to quit they would go away after a couple of weeks etc like it said in the leaflet so i wasnt concerned,the drug was doing what it said and i wasnt losing anymore hair and i still had a great sex drive as id had since about the age of 11 with no problems,i was happy and content over the 4 years i was taking propecia then in 2007 i was under huge stress at work and especially at home (then i crashed hard),never felt anything like it before in my life,ive often wondered if the high stress i was feeling at the time contributed in some way to my crashā¦
Lennon- where u loosing hair rapidly when you decided to take the pill?
rapidly is a loose definition, but i would yes, the pace seemed to pick up some so i tried to address it by taking this āsafe and effectiveā pill
I think higher levels of stress and anxiety led many of us to take Finasteride in the first place (and yes, I certainly could see how it would have contributed to the early age hair loss). I mean I inherited the majority of my genes from my mother it seems, excludingā¦ the ability to develop a penisā¦ and she has taken meds for anxiety and depression for years. She has always had thin/thinning hair for that matter. To me, the link between the anxious personality type and eventual PFS victim has a ton of merit. I certainly fit that category, and have thought all along that it is a more common link between all of us than some people will realize or acknowledge. Sure, I donāt doubt there are exceptions.
On my two years on the drug, the only side effects that stood out (unfortunately, I only connected the dots afterwards) were terrible, unexplained anxiety and (at the end of the two years) bouts of moderate to severe depression. Okay, my testicles got very painful when sexually excited sometimes, and Iām sure my libido dipped more than I realized, but occasional, crippling panic attacks that I could not explain mostly summarized my side effects while on Propecia. I just hope this avenue is investigated thoroughly, as I think this certain personality type is very prone to being hit hard by Fin.
I will also say that we are a class of people who spend too much time in our heads. I think (lol) we are thinkers, and overthinkers. I challenge a lot of you to try and live outside of your normal thought patterns, and outside of your head more often, and see what it does for you. This has brought about the best time periods in my PFS years. Obviously I am not able to continue this, because low and behold, here I am, but I believe breaking thought patterns (especially through mediation) holds value for us. I truly believe this.
Donkeyboy, welcome to my theory! Yes, we are all anxious types, we over rationalize and ruminate likeā¦women! There is some modern science that suggests women have harder times forgetting about stuff and moving forward in a recovery because the they tend to cling to negative thoughts and ruminate instead of taking positive steps to get better. Lower levels of the anti-anxiety, calming hormone progesterone have been attributed to this. I think we all had natural inherited low levels of progesterone in our brains and somehow we were greatly affected by the affects of finasteride. My mother and myself are very anxious, she was put on progesterone years ago due to low progesterone.
youngbuck, I tend to agree that there is more to this than we just took fin and were predetermined to crash. There are to many of us who jumped on and off the drug without incident. In some cases other factors involved may have pushed us over the edge, and I refer back to a thread I started a couple of years ago which was given short thrift, but now looks increasingly on target as we speculate the epigenetic and neurological elements to this. viewtopic.php?f=32&t=2951
I know a lot of almost āstraight edgeā guys crashed, but around the time I quit I partied more in a month than I probably had in the previous twelve, rarely exercised and spent more time alone staring at a computer screen away from work than I had before. I am one of many who crashed after drinking too, the next day.
Periods of intense sun and heat have helped me a couple of times too, in fact I even had a mild crash last year a week after sunbathing where I had bad joint pain and hot flashes, similar to the fin rebound. Going on holiday had helped me get back a solid sleep before that.
I wonder that a lot myself. My crash seemed to coincide with me finding this forum and losing my shit. Sometimes I wonder if I still would have crashed without that huge shock to my system.
can we have a better jock than this one?
Hey youngbuck21, I did 20 sessions of hyperbaric oxygen therapy last june-july. I did not see much improvement, but I donāt know if Iād be worse now if I didnāt do it. I donāt feel it made any change in my sexual functioning to be honest. Its still shit down there. At the time I was eating very healthily and exercising. My testosterone increased a little, but thats it. And months later, it dropped back down to around 250. But again, I donāt know if Iād maybe get worse over time if I didnāt? I donāt know.
The video you posted about DCA is interesting. Why do you need DCA and hyperbaric oxygen therapy though, why not just try DCA?