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I'm posting this here in case it can be informative to others. This is an explicit, masculine thread, so if you have the maturity of a 12 year-old, read no further.
Some of you may have noticed the image in my signature. It's a nofap counter which probably helps as a visual reminder to myself. Nofap is an internet-sprung movement that advocates that many young men have a distorted sexuality and other problems due to years of p**rn->masturbation->orgasm, in my case an average a little over ~2x/day, sometimes higher, since I was ~13. A lot of people have tried abstinence for months-to-years and found great resolution to their personal problems including the ability to have sex with real women, improved memory, improved mood, and better personal relations with real women, see here for a brief review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oFVOJf0TzY
and here in the links for a comprehensive review:
http://yourbrainonporn.com
I'm not sure that I believe any of the "science" involved here, as is the case for most of what passes for medicine. I do however believe the correlations and the testimonials, so I'm willing to give this a try.
My background is I've had erectile dysfunction since I was ~23, which started right around the time that I had depression, was gaining weight, was getting into harder (albeit still relatively vanilla) p**rn, had my first good relationship, and was dealing with burnout. I had my lowest term GPA at University when that happened, by a substantial margin. To give you an idea, my TGPA was 2.61, and I think it was the only semester out of 8 where I scored below 3.50. Doctors looked at my profile and assumed I had depression/anxiety issues (I probably did), and assumed this was the cause of my sexual dysfunction (probably not). I can get erections, but not that often, sometimes never, they're usually imperfect and never last long.
I went to doctors and for years their advice was try antibiotics, try anti-depressants, try these v**** supplements, and so on. For example a urologist I saw in Columbus, Ohio thought I had prostatitis and gave me antibiotics. The cialis for example does seem to help (a little), but I was young, I don't think this was the issue for a man aged 23-32 (the past 9 years) with no other clear health problems. I had my blood measured at some point, and it was completely fine, my testosterone levels on two different indicators were ~19 and ~550, my SHBG was ~24, my cholesterol and glucose were normal, and so on, and all of this was ~9 months ago when I was ~20 lbs heavier. I'm getting more blood work done in a couple weeks, including prolactin, but I expect a null result. The doctor said if these tests come back normal he'll refer me to a specialist. So I'll probably be seeing a specialist. The other "conventional" treatment I've tried and am trying is weight loss, I've dropped from ~245 lbs at my peak (13 months ago) to around ~200 lbs (I'm 5'11) -- which is the weight I had when this started. I found numerous studies on pubmed demonstrating a modest correlation between obesity and ED, though I have not found any decent causal explanation for this. Maybe the problem will clear up magically as I hopefully work my way down to ~180 lbs in the next three months, I don't know.
ED is also the reason I'm not on finasteride / dutasteride / RU58851 / CB0301. It's not responsible to take an anti-androgen when I already have one of the side effects. It could prevent me from understanding what's going on and fixing it.
I've tried a combination of l-arginine+pine bark extract as recommended by the internet, I saw no effect. That's the only herbal remedy I've tried. There seems to be a "ginseng" for every Asian country, and I have not tried those. I did notice an improvement when I started taking Blackmore's Biozinc, but it only lasted a few days.
I'm willing to try this as one of the most common alternative therapies out there, which is nofap, given the huge number of successful testimonials. I reiterate that the so-called science doesn't seem satisfactory, with various comments about dopamine, desensitisation, sensitisation, edging, et cetera that sound like pseudoscience. But that's all right, it's the same with real medicine whereby doctors often prescribe drugs in spite of having no idea how they work.
I tried this around early March this year, and never made it past 3 or 4 days. I'm now up to 20 days with the aid of amitriptyline, a tricyclic anti-depressant that helps with sleep. I think that helping with sleep can help me reduce my dependency on masturbation, though I plan to eventually cycle off as I don't like anti-depressants. I have not noticed much change after 20 days ... sometimes I get morning wood (used to be never). I get an occasional, maybe one a day, ~80% erection from fantasy, but they don't last long, though that's more vitality than I had a few months ago. My big surprise is that I've neither flatlined (which happens to a lot of people by this time), nor had a wet dream. I would have figured that going a week without an ejaculation would lead to an automatic wet dream, but apparently not.
Some people with testimonials heal after 2 months, some heal after 6 months, some don't (which means they probably have another problem). I hope that I don't heal quickly. I will also continue with the bloodwork/standard medicine up to a point, continue with the weight loss, weightlifting, and better diet. I may try a water fast, when I was perusing propeciahelp forums a while back I read that one guy cured his ED with a 14-day waterfast:
http://www.propeciahelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6142
I did not get my ED from finasteride unless I was poisoned by a third party source 9 years ago, which seems unlikely. But perhaps the same principle applies. Elsewhere in the forum somebody compiled all the water fast cases on the forum, and it seems like it cured half of them. I'm likely to try an intermediate water fast at some point in the next few months.
Some of you may have noticed the image in my signature. It's a nofap counter which probably helps as a visual reminder to myself. Nofap is an internet-sprung movement that advocates that many young men have a distorted sexuality and other problems due to years of p**rn->masturbation->orgasm, in my case an average a little over ~2x/day, sometimes higher, since I was ~13. A lot of people have tried abstinence for months-to-years and found great resolution to their personal problems including the ability to have sex with real women, improved memory, improved mood, and better personal relations with real women, see here for a brief review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oFVOJf0TzY
and here in the links for a comprehensive review:
http://yourbrainonporn.com
I'm not sure that I believe any of the "science" involved here, as is the case for most of what passes for medicine. I do however believe the correlations and the testimonials, so I'm willing to give this a try.
My background is I've had erectile dysfunction since I was ~23, which started right around the time that I had depression, was gaining weight, was getting into harder (albeit still relatively vanilla) p**rn, had my first good relationship, and was dealing with burnout. I had my lowest term GPA at University when that happened, by a substantial margin. To give you an idea, my TGPA was 2.61, and I think it was the only semester out of 8 where I scored below 3.50. Doctors looked at my profile and assumed I had depression/anxiety issues (I probably did), and assumed this was the cause of my sexual dysfunction (probably not). I can get erections, but not that often, sometimes never, they're usually imperfect and never last long.
I went to doctors and for years their advice was try antibiotics, try anti-depressants, try these v**** supplements, and so on. For example a urologist I saw in Columbus, Ohio thought I had prostatitis and gave me antibiotics. The cialis for example does seem to help (a little), but I was young, I don't think this was the issue for a man aged 23-32 (the past 9 years) with no other clear health problems. I had my blood measured at some point, and it was completely fine, my testosterone levels on two different indicators were ~19 and ~550, my SHBG was ~24, my cholesterol and glucose were normal, and so on, and all of this was ~9 months ago when I was ~20 lbs heavier. I'm getting more blood work done in a couple weeks, including prolactin, but I expect a null result. The doctor said if these tests come back normal he'll refer me to a specialist. So I'll probably be seeing a specialist. The other "conventional" treatment I've tried and am trying is weight loss, I've dropped from ~245 lbs at my peak (13 months ago) to around ~200 lbs (I'm 5'11) -- which is the weight I had when this started. I found numerous studies on pubmed demonstrating a modest correlation between obesity and ED, though I have not found any decent causal explanation for this. Maybe the problem will clear up magically as I hopefully work my way down to ~180 lbs in the next three months, I don't know.
ED is also the reason I'm not on finasteride / dutasteride / RU58851 / CB0301. It's not responsible to take an anti-androgen when I already have one of the side effects. It could prevent me from understanding what's going on and fixing it.
I've tried a combination of l-arginine+pine bark extract as recommended by the internet, I saw no effect. That's the only herbal remedy I've tried. There seems to be a "ginseng" for every Asian country, and I have not tried those. I did notice an improvement when I started taking Blackmore's Biozinc, but it only lasted a few days.
I'm willing to try this as one of the most common alternative therapies out there, which is nofap, given the huge number of successful testimonials. I reiterate that the so-called science doesn't seem satisfactory, with various comments about dopamine, desensitisation, sensitisation, edging, et cetera that sound like pseudoscience. But that's all right, it's the same with real medicine whereby doctors often prescribe drugs in spite of having no idea how they work.
I tried this around early March this year, and never made it past 3 or 4 days. I'm now up to 20 days with the aid of amitriptyline, a tricyclic anti-depressant that helps with sleep. I think that helping with sleep can help me reduce my dependency on masturbation, though I plan to eventually cycle off as I don't like anti-depressants. I have not noticed much change after 20 days ... sometimes I get morning wood (used to be never). I get an occasional, maybe one a day, ~80% erection from fantasy, but they don't last long, though that's more vitality than I had a few months ago. My big surprise is that I've neither flatlined (which happens to a lot of people by this time), nor had a wet dream. I would have figured that going a week without an ejaculation would lead to an automatic wet dream, but apparently not.
Some people with testimonials heal after 2 months, some heal after 6 months, some don't (which means they probably have another problem). I hope that I don't heal quickly. I will also continue with the bloodwork/standard medicine up to a point, continue with the weight loss, weightlifting, and better diet. I may try a water fast, when I was perusing propeciahelp forums a while back I read that one guy cured his ED with a 14-day waterfast:
http://www.propeciahelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6142
I did not get my ED from finasteride unless I was poisoned by a third party source 9 years ago, which seems unlikely. But perhaps the same principle applies. Elsewhere in the forum somebody compiled all the water fast cases on the forum, and it seems like it cured half of them. I'm likely to try an intermediate water fast at some point in the next few months.
