Hi all - I’m not really sure this is the correct forum to ask this, but I know there are many with expertise around, so thought I’d ask anyway.
Used to be an averagely muscular gym-goer, 36yo, life was perfect until last September when I took Finasteride (8 pills) over a month.
I’ll spare the details of the story. But it’s horror in ways you can’t imagine. I hope none of you ever take this, dutasteride, Saw Palmetto, SSRIs etc or anything to block DHT/5ar. Really, don’t do it and risk trying to live like this and lose EVERYTHING you are and have.
Currently though, piecing things back together. As some might no, prevailing theory is desensitised androgen receptors. I was wondering (and finally at my questions) at just using something like sulforaphane and/or rosemary to try and destroy as many ARs as possible over a few cycles - if I did that, how long do they take to regenerate and are there further consequences to potentially doing this?
Thanks any and everyone for any advice or pointers. I hope this finds you all well and it’s ok to ask this.
what was the actual issue because i’ve been on finasteride for nearly 1 year now at 1mg a day & have shown no sides & it’s done wonders for my hair lol
Oh mate please please don’t do it to yourself. I took 8 pills split over a month. Got just a little ED one night, for the first time ever in my life, and thought “Oh well, not risking those scary sides all the scare-mongers who talk of sides get, so I’ll play it extra-safe and just drop it and shave my head. Hey ho.”
I was then perfectly fine, for two weeks.
And then the ED came back. And then I started to not sleep. And then the anxiety started. And then I couldn’t think but for the HORRIFYING DREAD PANIC that kept rattling on and on and on. My dick didn’t work and doesn’t. And it very very quickly dawned on me that the side effects you hear about in edge-cases and disbelieve probably wholeheartedly are happening to you.
And there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
I lost 10kg this last six months and all my lifts are down. I SOMEHOW kept my job but all I could do was despair - that’s literally all I could do, for the first three months. Despair like you’d never imagine.
I used to be a Thai boxer, occasional prohormone runs but nothing major. Was doing good, good career, fiancee (gone since.) I thought I’d seen it all or at least enough of life by 36 to have things figured out.
I never imagined anything like the horror of this. I never conceived of ANY POSSIBLE WAY all that could leave and I’d be here, getting flabby and losing all my muscle and void of all the emotional subtlety and ‘connection’ to the world, and a dead shrinking dick.
I would give literally everything I have to go back in time and never take it. If someone could give me a pill that would cure me back to normal but kill me after a year I’d take two of them, just to be rid of this. Forget something as trivial as hair!
Classic presentation of PFS. The onset of symptoms is textbook. Unfortunately nobody has an answer to how it can be fixed. Psychotherapy is used to repair relationships, which can be helpful. But the medical side? I haven’t seen anyone with a real solution.
Per Physio, you can replenish androgen receptors using Carnitine. Maybe that can help you somewhat.
You need labs dude. You will need to optimize your hormone profile first, then its a long road after that. Check out some PFS boards, I don’t remember where it is now, but there is a guy who recovered from your exact situation.
I’m sure you can find it, its fairly detailed. He took lots of vitamins and stuff, but the overall gist of it was Whole foods, exercise, no sugar, no caffeine, no alcohol. There were lots of other supplements if I remember also. That’s where I would start.
Don’t dread, just start doing something to fix it. It might be a long road but its attainable. I think it said a few years, maybe less.
Thanks fellas. Yes, have had multiple bloods, member of solvepfs/propeciahelp/raypeat/hackstasis, Genova tests and tried many many things since last year. Got a little better, but only a little, either through my efforts or over time.
Interested in the approach though specifically (if anyone does know ofc!) of destroying AR with sulforaphane (for example) and wondered at the specific processes involved in AR regeneration should I explore that.
Cheers for the encouragement - unfortunately it’s really not that simple. I think you either mean Chi or Cdnuts, who both recovered. There’s no consistency with recoveries nor any proven method to do so, and some things that improve some crash others further. It’s all a bit of a crap shoot tbh.
EDIT - sorry, I’ll flesh this out a bit more. Thanks again for replying. Yes I’d read as much, I think ALCAR specifically. Do you know if this is a ‘global’ action on AR or local to any tissues? My thinking is ofc destroy the LOT, feel like shit for a few weeks, then slowly repair. My hoping is that’ll also re-balance the inverse relationship with 5AR1 in the brain and 5AR2 action, but I really don’t know.
If you have or know of any studies on AR regeneration (either with or without supplements) then this could be a good piece of the puzzle! I’m not uncovering anything and this is pretty specialist, so thought I’d ask the experts (being veteran crew AAS users ofc.)
It is. And I do mean to terrify you and everyone in this thread with just how life is for me now.
I think since April there’s been three suicides on the forums. Three we know of anyway. The trickle of suicides is reasonably regular and I really don’t blame any of them, I know why they do it - definitely not for me though, I’ll find a way out of this.
Baylor (large privately funded set of research studies) are releasing their findings soon. Off the back of that there may be a solution or treatment. Just in case any desperate googlers happen upon this, there is reason to keep hoping. If not, tribulus cycles and exercise and clean eating seem to feature in lots of recoveries. If not, many of us are experimenting and might stumble upon something.
Thanks for coming back with that, very very helpful. Do you think they’d regenerate from nothing though, or sustained destruction? I guess every cell is replaced over time, so in the end it’d happen. At least then we (PFS folks) could rule out the AR specifically, and it’d lend weight to the epigenetic silencing of ARs if not. Then again, if it were that simple everyone would get better over about 8 years, and we’ve some 20 year sufferers.
I have some bloods and dates below:
Test - 17.1 nmol/L (8.64 - 29 R) (27/2/19)
SHBG - 62 nmol/L (18.3 - 54.1 R) (27/2/19)
Free test (calc) - 0.229 nmol/L (0.2 - 0.62 R) (27/2/19)
Progesterone - 0.706 nmol/L (Range: < 0.474) (5/3/19)
DHT - 1.20 nmol/L (Range: 0.33 - 3.01) (5/3/19)
As is usual in PFS, sky-high Progesterone and SHBG, the rest low-average (free test aside ofc but that’s the SHBG I’d imagine.) Most of us are like this. Thing is, increasing androgens or balancing hormones rarely does anything, sometimes makes people worse even. All seemed to be pointing to silencing of the AR. We’ve (thanks to independent studies) discovered those with PFS have enormous AR density, but they just do little or nothing. Along with low neurosteroids and spinal fluid steroids.
Not specifically. Have tried boron for SHBG but not sure it helped much. Fact is, if hormones even were in range, it just doesn’t seem to help barely anyone in PFS. The problem is suspected to be the AR themselves, already hugely overexpressed in PFS and we believe epigenetically silenced.
Also of note some people in PFS feel markedly worse increasing test/dht.