Delving into the sex hormones connection

[Meso]

Antidepressants have an estrogenic nature as I mentioned before. There are even studies showing that a tiny dose of 25 mg Venlafaxine can stop hot flashes in androgen depletion therapy in prostate cancer patients as well as stopping hot flashes in postmenopausal women. Not to mention that some of them can trigger elevated estrogen, prolactin and LH, causing gynecomastia in some unfortunate men. So, it looks to me that they act like SERMs, except that when you quit SERMs, your estrogen gets back to normal level.

Somehow, antidepressant act like irreversible SERMs, but when you quit SSRIs for most people, hormones are within normal range. Which makes me believe that they change estrogen receptor and/or androgen receptor densities.

The common thing they share with PFS is changing serum estradiol versus testosterone ratio for the duration of therapy. But here's what I don't understand: if the receptors are upregulated, wouldn't homeostasis cause an overall decrease in testosterone synthesis as a compensatory reaction? This is not seen here. How about exogenic testosterone? it often worsens the condition.

Personal anecdote:
Prior to any antidepressant intake, I tried Clomiphene briefly for reasons. It made me completely asexual to the point of finding the female genitalia unpleasant to look at. It felt like how PSSD feels like now. I blamed it on elevated estrogen and when I quit taking it, my libido came back with a vengeance. Something to think about.

[Meso]

Has anyone tried Clomiphene? for how long and at which dose? how did it make you feel?

[pii]

How can we fix does receptors ?

[sovietxrobot]

I can't answer your questions but I have some anecdotal evidence that supports your theory. Venlofaxine was terrible for me and I think had some kind of hormonal influence- I had night sweats, weight gain, much higher susceptibility to illness and injury, and much less muscular endurance. I tried horny goat weed, which has estrogenic properties, and it immediately aggravated my PSSD and brought back the symptoms of vastly decreased muscular endurance (I believe this is due to decreased nitric oxide). I had my prolactin checked and it was just outside of normal range, although my doctor said that was normal due to being on escitalopram. But it could also have been elevated due to lowered dopamine availability.

I agree that there is certainly a sex hormone connection, beyond just low testosterone.

[AdvencedResearchPL]

Has anyone tried Clomiphene? for how long and at which dose? how did it make you feel?

I took clomifen 10 tab 50mg without effect. It only gave me greater drowsiness permanently!

[Gameclay]

From what i've seen from searching around, it seems Fluoxetine (and Serotonin in general) have negative impacts on Androgen Receptor expression. Just like Finasteride.

Effect of antidepressant drug (fluoxetine) on the testes of adult male albino rats and the possible protective role of omega-3
http://www.mmj.eg.net/article.asp?issn= ... st=Soliman

Results
Fluoxetine-treated rats showed a highly significant decrease of body and testis weight (P < 0.001). Fluoxetine led to distortion of seminiferous tubules, germ cell degeneration with sloughing, and vacuolation. The interstitium appeared wide containing degenerated Leydig cells, congested blood vessels, and acidophilic material. Fluoxetine induced intense expression of caspase-3, decrease in the mean number of positive proliferating cell nuclear antigen immunostaining, and negative expression of androgen receptor. The recovery group still showed persistence of some changes. Fluoxetine and omega-3 groups showed marked improvement.

Conclusion
Omega-3 alleviates testicular damage induced by fluoxetine more than arresting fluoxetine.

Serotonin regulates prostate growth through androgen receptor modulation
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-15832-5

By western blot analysis we showed that testosterone supplementation induced AR (Androgen Receptor) up-regulation, but 5-HT treatment significantly decreased AR expression either with or without testosterone supplementation (Fig. 2a and b) suggesting that the inhibitory function of 5-HT could be related to inhibition of the AR pathway. Similarly, both the selective 5-Htr1a agonist 8-OH-DPAT, (Fig. 2a and c) and the selective 5-Htr1b agonist, anpirtoline, (Fig. 2a and d) induced a significant AR down-regulation

Finasteride treatment alters tissue specific androgen receptor expression in prostate tissues.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24789081/

CONCLUSIONS: In this study, finasteride decreased the expression of epithelial androgen receptor in a tissue specific manner. The correlation between epithelial androgen receptor and the extent of luminal epithelial atrophy suggests that epithelial androgen receptor may be directly regulating the atrophic effects observed with finasteride treatment.

[barbaar]

The common thing they share with PFS is changing serum estradiol versus testosterone ratio for the duration of therapy. But here's what I don't understand: if the receptors are upregulated, wouldn't homeostasis cause an overall decrease in testosterone synthesis as a compensatory reaction? This is not seen here. How about exogenic testosterone? it often worsens the condition.

If I understood it correctly, on HS the theory is that AR upregulation is a compensatory mechanism for AR action being silenced.

[br-pssd]

Has anyone tried Clomiphene? for how long and at which dose? how did it make you feel?

I took clomifen 10 tab 50mg without effect. It only gave me greater drowsiness permanently!

I have taken clomiphene a few times in the past after pssd and seemed to improve discreetly.
paroxetine is used for menopausal symptoms in women, in doses that used it as antidepressants, I found that relevant to the subject matter discussed.

[anacleta]

sorry if you already know

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29850907
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28179152

[Takemeback]

What do you guys think about SARMs? Has anyone tried it?