I am finally getting the dreaded 'sides' + question

[Obsidian]

Well what's to say? I was having awesome success with Propecia for nine months. It stopped my hairloss and starting thickening and regrowing hairs on the hairline and now this.


So as some of you know, I have been worried about reflex hyperandrogenicity as of lately. Well I have noticed body hair increasing which had previously been thinned out with Propecia. Along with that the pimples/oil that had been long gone since starting (thanks to Propecia) is coming back and lets not forget the increased hair thinning/agrressive SD :thumbdown2: . Anyway since last Friday I have been tapering off my dose to .5mg everyday but before that Friday, I noticed something that I feared and hoped I would never get along with RH, the dreaded 'brain-fog'. Anyway, I plan to stay on .5mg for another week and a half and then go down to .25mg for a week or two and then go off it to get my blood tests done.

This blows just because I was having a lot of success. :thumbdown2:


Has anyone gotten sides and gone off Propecia due to sides/RH and gotten back on it with success?

 

[ghg]

I too had very aggressive SD while I was on finasteride... I mean the scalp itching was unbearable and it felt like nothing could help it.

 

[Obsidian]

Well the thing is it didn't start in till I got out of the scalp. Before that, my scalp was in great shape even better shape than it was during my teen years. I don't know what happened but the brain fog is gone unforutnatley the rest of oily/ S.D. infused scalp still exists along with other R.H.-like symptoms. :thumbdown2:

 

[barcafan]

Bloodwork wont help if he doesnt have baseline tests.

Listen to your body, if you're sure you're feeling these things then stop the drug. Read up on propeciahelp.com

Propecia doesn't sit well with some people, like alot of other drugs.

 

[Obsidian]

I'm not going to stop cold turkey especially when I have been on it this long.

 

[Obsidian]

Oh I don't deny the side effects are real. Yet, most of the time they go away if you stop using it and a lot of it has to do with fear mongering about finasteride. Everyone acts like this drug is rat poison but then doesn't act the same way when they shove fast food or tylenol down their throats. :jackit:

 

[ghg]

Oh I don't deny the side effects are real. Yet, most of the time they go away if you stop using it and a lot of it has to do with fear mongering about finasteride. Everyone acts like this drug is rat poison but then doesn't act the same way when they shove fast food or tylenol down their throats. :jackit:

Fast food never affected my erections, sperm count or chest size.

 

[barcafan]

Oh I don't deny the side effects are real. Yet, most of the time they go away if you stop using it and a lot of it has to do with fear mongering about finasteride. Everyone acts like this drug is rat poison but then doesn't act the same way when they shove fast food or tylenol down their throats. :jackit:

What do these people (and there's quite a bit of them) have to gain by fear mongering the side effects of finasteride? sh*t, i was one of them and im glad i'm off, i got lucky and im pretty much back to normal, some others weren't quite so lucky. My 2 cents, its your body do whatever you want. You've been warned of the potential effects.

 

[Deathcab]

Are some of the side effects permanent? And which ones? I thought they went away if you stopped taking the meds?

Deathcab

 

[Mew]

Are some of the side effects permanent? And which ones? I thought they went away if you stopped taking the meds?

viewtopic.php?p=495718#p495718

viewtopic.php?p=489095#p489095

 

[Deathcab]

Thanks for the info Mew. And now Im stumped. Should I risk it or not...

 

[Mew]

if you have an understanding of how finasteride works, then you wouldn't be concerned about permanent side effects because finasteride has an extremley short half life of six hours so within a few days of stoping the drug your body will return to the same testosterone dht balance it had previously

You clearly do not have an understanding of how the drug works. After a single dose, DHT is inhibited for more than a week. Additionally, it can take up to 30 days for the 5AR2 enzymes which have been bound to Finasteride to disassociate, effectively irreversibly inhibiting them unless new 5AR2 is synthesized by the patient.

I am not discounting the fact the vast majority of people who take the drug do not have issues or side effects -- all I and others are saying is that, for those that do, there is a minority of men who for whatever reason do not recover to their former selves even after discontinuing the medication.

The problem is, there is no way to tell before you start treatment which camp you might be in, and thus your personal risk when it comes to trying it. You can try and get your bloodwork taken before for baseline purposes, and do an Androgen Receptor CAG repeat test to evaluate your potential response via http://www.hairdx.com, but really... this drug affects us all differently due to genetics and 5AR2 allele variants. More discussion on this here: viewtopic.php?p=493814#p493814

That is the risk we all take -- wether Merck is forthcoming about the true percentage of risk from their drug, or what is permanently at stake, is another question however.

 

[Mew]

If your hormone levels return to baseline then, I just don't understand why the side effects wouldn't subside.

Neither do we, and without competent medical research, we won't know what the de facto reason is. The fact is, the drug affects a multitude of systems, pathways and organs in the body, not just "DHT"... which makes pinpointing where the problem(s) lie that much more difficult.

Hence the existence of propeciahelp.com, to try and piece things together from research as best we can as laymen, to try and reverse engineer, find clues about mechanisms of action, and give docs a starting point on where to even begin their investigations.

I would like to understand the scientific theories behind this, but I feel like alot of the theories on propeciahelp are hyped up

I agree that everyone has their own personal pet theory, and some of it is just way out there.

That said, there are two theories in particular which have yet to be tested for, but which many believe may hold the key to unlocking the mystery:

- testing for 5AR2 activity post-finasteride via genital skin fibroblast cultures, to verify wether or not we have acquied a form of permanent 5AR2 deficiency post-finasteride (ie, perhaps 5AR2 never regenerated after stopping Finasteride in those tissues it was inhibited in).

- Androgen Receptor mutation/downregulation/desensitization testing post-Finasteride, due to epigenetic changes to the AR, AR expression or gene expression caused by loss or return of DHT after taking the drug... leading to a form of androgen insensitivity syndrome, whereby either T or DHT a) no longer binds to the AR correctly post-finasteride or b) after binding, T/DHT do not exert androgenic effects correctly downstream from the AR at the genetic/molecular level.

I can go into further details but I think that should be enough for now.

 

[barcafan]

It's not that black and white, it's extremely complicated.....

When you mess with your endocrinology, there's always a chance that something can go wrong, as there's soooooooo many different checks/feedback mechanisms your body has to maintain homeostasis. If somewhere down the line, one of those checks/feedbacks gets thrown off or something, then the whole system can get fucked up. This can all start frm your body detecting your shortage of DHT/5AR2, then starting to react or compensate for it.

anyways dude, i can tell you're worried that it may happen TO YOU, so you're doing all you can to tell yourself otherwise. We'll see if you sing a different tune if sh*t hits the fan for you...

 

[Nuli]

finfighter, you remind me of the poster "Flavio". He was always praising propecia in every post he made. Later on, I saw a post about his ED medication problems. LOL