Fanjeera, well you're in too deep haha. Does finasteride at 1mg/day actually decrease prostate volume though? My understanding is that 5mg was required this is why Merck set this dose. This ensured that 5-ar2 was blocked for long enough as finasteride has a short half life, but also that enough was blocked in prostate tissue. Serum DHT levels don't always coincide with lower tissue DHT. As obviously testosterone enters the tissue where the enzyme is produced locally.
I don't understand why whouldn't serum DHT reveal the effect in the prostate also. 5 mg lowers DHT only a little bit more than 1 mg. 5ar2 is so prevalent in the prostate, so if you take finasteride, you can be sure it's the first place where it has its effect. Here's proof:
http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/r?dbs+hsdb:@term+@rn+98319-26-7
Finasteride's half life doesn't matter very much, because the small proportion that actually hits the enzyme blocks it irreversible -- finasteride is a non-competitive inhibitor. A very big part of it really flushes out of you with a day, but the inhibiting goes on for a few days until the 5ar2-finasteride complex is dead.
And even if it doesn't work on the prostate, nobody has yet studied the 5ar2-rich seminal vesicles, which give 2/3 of the semen and the viscose fructose-rich part. It probably has more to do with the ejaculation distance also, which for me has became shorter.
you took Finasteride for nine days? Are you kidding me? Permanent side effects after 9 days? The finasteride would barely have even got into your system, let alone have shrunk your prostate/vesicles.
did you read what Wuffer wrote upthread about guys taking one pill and claiming that they felt sides in a couple of hours. I agree, BS IMO.
side effects are common when first taking it, but subside if you continue, as your body adjusts. Too many times I hear of guys feeling sides at the beginning, getting freaked out, coming on here and reading the horror stories, and then stopping, therefore ruining their chances of keeping their hair. It's pretty selfish of people to deter and frighten others off finasteride without any solid facts actually, under the guise that they're on some noble crusade to stop people from lethal side effects. I'm very glad I wasn't around here when I started on finasteride.
as for having watery semen 3 years after taking finasteride for 9 days... I find that highly dubious. Were you intamitely familiar with the consistency of your semen 3 years ago? Are you sure you haven't just convinced yourself it's changed in appearance?
The finasteride gets into my system the day I take it.
http://books.google.ee/books?id=v0Q...cc4ykDF_-F3h8&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false (page 400) -- DHT drop after a single dose of finasteride. The effect lasts for more than a week, though, 99% of the drug is out of your system. Finasteride is not a combetitive inhibitor: the moment it gets near the 5ar2 molecul, it clamps and never lets go. The difference between 5 mg and 1 mg is so small -- I'm pretty sure there are not many differences in tissue DHT levels either.
Of course, the change in my semen didn't happen right away, but after a few days of taking it. Perhaps 4?
And yes, I have been checking my semen every time since then hoping and wanting it so badly to finally go back to normal. It just doesn't: it's less viscose, it has transparent parts in it, it's lesser in volume and it doesn't fly as far. It's permanent. And I even believe it to be more due to seminal vesicle atrophy.
And again: even if the volume of the organ is normal, there might be structural changes in the tissues, which leads to obstructions in the seminal plasma ducts, perhaps, or some other type of pathology. I remember a study that proved this.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8846625 -- "
A single dose of finasteride suppresses serum DHT levels for up to 4 days, longer than would be expected from the serum terminal elimination half-life (t1/2z) of the drug: this is probably due to the high affinity that finasteride has for the 5 alpha-reductase enzyme."
