[Z_one]

Hi all,

Since people experiencing severe POIS symptoms are similar to temporary or permanently disabled individuals (depending on severity of the symptoms); I was wondering how many of you have been affected at work ; lost a job or unable to get a new one because of POIS ?

I personally used to find it very hard to hold a professional status while acting like a zombie half the year.

[hurray]

Yes, it makes work very difficult, especially in jobs where you have to communicate with other people. For years I would wait until Friday night before orgasm, giving me the weekend to (mostly) recover. Of course, that meant I had a crappy weekend My symptoms are mostly cognitive.

I have found fenugreek to be very helpful to me during POIS, but it also makes me much more sociable (even charismatic!) when I don't have POIS. So I suspect it is alleviating the symptoms rather than curing them. (Probably adds estrogen/oxytocin to my system).

On an unrelated note, I have always found that my symptoms from POIS were greatly decreased if I got extremely drunk before orgasm. Now for obvious reasons, this can in no way be regarded as a helpful cure due to all the other negative side-effects of such behaviour.

But it is well known that getting drunk weakens the immune system greatly. Which would fit in perfectly with Dr Waldinger's new evidence - if my immune system is unable to "fight" the semen/pre-ejaculate allergy due to me being drunk, then my POIS symptoms become less severe.

Alcohol exposure stimulates the hypothalamus to produce corticotropin­releasing hormone (CRH). This triggers the pituitary gland to secrete adrenal corticotropic hormone (ACTH), which in turn stimulates the adrenal glands to release glucocorticoids. At high levels, glucocorticoids signal white blood cells to alter cytokine production, suppressing inflammatory and immune responses

[mellivora]

The idea that semen might cause a reaction in healthy males occurred to me too. It was also acknowledged in the second paper from Prof Waldinger and his team.

"a limitation of our study is the absence of a skin-***** test with autologous semen in a control group"

the paper also states

"there are no valid data over the prevalence of POIS and the immunogenic/allergic response of healthy males against their own semen."

The hypothesis of a 'gap' seems a good one. I guess an MRI scan might show up a gap? Although a gap might be tiny or just some damage to a lining making it porous somehow.

In my very brief readings whilst it seems to be the case that  immune reactions against autologous sperm have been recorded in the past, its important to make the distinction between sperm and semen (fluid containing the sperm). As has been noted on the forum already, semen has a variety of constituents from several glands. It would be interesting to know if any of these constituents are unique to semen or if they are all found elsewhere in the body where blood can contact them. It could be sperm that are the problem or some other substance in semen (sorry if that is repetition of what others have posted).

My POIS has seen some improvement over the past 12 years and I wonder if that could partly to do with a  lessening of an autoimmune reaction over time through repeated exposure - a less refined exposure than Dr Waldinger's proposed treatment. I'd be interested to know how many other people have had a lessening of symptoms over time. I've been much more restrained in trying different remedies than most people here and I'm confident my symptoms have lessened over time without any specific medication and I've always tended to eat pretty healthily. Perhaps I eat a little less sugar now than in my first couple of years of POIS and perhaps I am generally less stressed. I've little doubt that stress makes my POIS worse and sometimes when I'm not in POIS if I let myself get very stressed I can feel a little of a POIS state in the brain. How that fits in I'm not sure.

I agree, POIS is now on many more people's radar and is being investigated by a dedicated team which is perhaps the most significant thing. And amazing contributions have been made right here.

[daveman]

it is quite possible that injections of semen could cause the type of antibodies that attack and kill sperm like which is common in vasectomy patients.  the sperm in the injections of semen could cause one to actually become sterile.

Yes, in this regard, check out this study, which discusses damage that can be caused by the injection of guinea pigs with their own sperm/testis:

http://www.reproduction-online.org/cgi/reprint/22/1/119.pdf

And, in the same regard, this article is somewhat scary!

http://ihealthbulletin.com/blog/2007/02/13/vasectomy-may-lead-to-dementia-from-autoimmune-brain-damage/

I am really worried now.  These are EXACTLY the types of cognitive symptoms I get.  I am sure this is autoimmune now. 

My only comfort is that we seem to recover from the aphasia; it is not chronic.  Maybe no 'permanent' damage is being done?

I think you're right now, semen could be mixing with blood somewhere along the way to ejaculation, causing this reaction. This also supports the 'subsequent ejaculation' recovery that we've sometimes noticed...

In respond to this message, i want to WARN EVERYBODY TO START REDUCING the frequency of their orgasms.
i have pretty much being in pois for the last two years because of NE and because of that i gave up on trying to control myself so i have been ejaculation however i felt. This last week i succeded in stoping NEs and that wierld pois feeling around the body is gone but not the BRAIN FOG.  I hope my pois just takes longer to dissapear and not that am doing permanent damage to my body.  
Is there a way to check out if brain neurons are still normal.

CC.... I've had these kinds of thoughts too at times, in my case I thought POIS was killing my kidneys, cloudy pee and all that. But I remembered that there have been those who have had POIS for 20 or 30+ years, and they're not mentally ill (right Demo?). Don't read one silly article that represents an absolute extreme and think it's for you. Besides SiteAdvisor said there was something fishy about that site too!!

There's a lot of evidence that POIS is mostly transitory. Maybe not 100%, but not deathly destructive either.

Perhaps it's safe to be conservative, but not to extremes either. We have to live and we ARE only human.

My kidney problem, was caused by NSAIDs. As soon as I quit taking them, the kidney symptoms cleared up. Oddly enough I probably did more damage to myself with those than POIS has done to me.

So hope you can find a decent and healthy rythm, and come back to life [][].

[daveman]

Is there a way to check out if brain neurons are still normal.

I have always thought functional imaging (e.g. fMRI) would be good for investigating POIS.  

I worry about permanent damage too.  We can take some comfort from anecdotes here on the forum.  There are people here on the forum with cases similar to mine, but they have suffered for much longer, and they still seem sharp.

I think it would be useful for Waldinger (or someone) to do thorough neuropsychiatric cognitive assessments of patients IN and OUT of POIS, so that we could see precisely what the cognitive problems are.  We will then have a more precise description of the problem, which in itself will be useful for understanding, but it will also be much easier to relate POIS to conditions we know more about.  This could lead to treatments.

This is strictly subjective, but it feels, in-POIS, like I've "lost some memories, creativity, ideas, talent, etc.". But when I'm out-of-POIS, it...ALL COMES BACK!

Wish this could be investigated.

that's the way it worked for me too. That my mental abilities come back fully when I'm out of POIS. But I should say, the POIS worsened my tendency toward depression and made it more severe- but it's treatable with medicine. My cognitive ability came back fully though.

I used to get all cognitive abilites back even when i went months without recovery but now that did not happen.
I remeber someone else talking about how they initially recover but takes them a while to get back to 100%. Hopefully that is what is happening.

For what it's worth, my last session, which I'm in the middle of now, is proving to me somthing I have thought for a while. I have a 1,1,3 cycle. Where I can "O" two times after 1 week and then the third lasts 3. The long cycle is a killer..... When you don't recuperate after the week, you start to feel the "paranoia". What's happening? Why aren't I coming back? I was day 4 yesterday and was experiencing depression similar to day 2. My brain still feels wanangled!! I'm probably not going to come around for another week! But after the previous "O", I was clear and clean after 2 days!

If I stuck to 2 week sessions, I'd probably be much better and stable.


But I do always seem to come around.... as long as my wife doesn't start batting her eyes too soon!

[daveman]

Well, one can easily investigate the (short term) cognitive changes in and out of POIS.  There are lots of carefully formulated assessments for doing something like this.  Standard neuropsych evaluations.  I would guess these are also used for making diagnoses.  I hope to see them in the next POIS study.

Made me think.... you can feel how it would be. Just sitting down to one of those in POIS would boggle the mind!

Out of POIS would have to be "no problem".

Of course the interesting part would be what the POIS free test would show.... on effects over the "good" mind.

[Guthrie]

I remember having had very painful testis trauma several times when I was under 10. Sometimes when I biked I braked strongly I slide of the saddle and falled on the bike frame. Maybe this caused my POIS. This would be so dumb.

I wonder the same about the trauma of an undescended testicle (eventually corrected surgically).

Gap creation?

I also experienced trauma to my testicular region, when I was around 12.  It involved some bleeding (blood-testis barrier?), but then it seemed to have healed fine.  But perhaps it left an internal 'gap'?

[mellivora]

I can't remember suffering any particular testicular trauma, certainly not anytime near when POIS began. I used to do a lot of cycling though- perhaps gradual saddle damage over time??!

[hurray]

I wonder if anybody on this forum has tried statins? Apart from having positive effects re cholesterol, lowered risk of heart attacks and strokes etc, they also suppress the immune system.

Other than POIS, I am very rarely ill (averaging perhaps 1 day off per year during my working life) - maybe my immune system is TOO strong?

Deliberately lowering my immune system might sound stupid (and probably is), but I am very curious as to what effect it would have on my POIS symptoms. I would urge you not to try this yourself. But I might give it a try myself, see if there are any positive effects.

[rock27]

This last week i succeded in stoping NEs and that wierld pois feeling around the body is gone but not the BRAIN FOG.  I hope my pois just takes longer to dissapear and not that am doing permanent damage to my body.  
Is there a way to check out if brain neurons are still normal.

CCconfucius, how did you stop NE?

[CertainlyPOIS]

This last week i succeded in stoping NEs and that wierld pois feeling around the body is gone but not the BRAIN FOG.  I hope my pois just takes longer to dissapear and not that am doing permanent damage to my body.  
Is there a way to check out if brain neurons are still normal.

CCconfucius, how did you stop NE?

I am not sure if it works 100% percent yet because i did not have one of my old recoveries where i am super hyper and i am definately doomed for an NE or "special" dreams.  But this is what i do.

The preliminaries;
I have cut down on eating and dont eat to heavy or drink before going to sleep.
I avoid porn and sexual thoughts during the day, they come back to hunt you in dreams.

what i do in bed;

I sleep on my stomach, sleeping on my back is sure way for me to have an NE. The french paper martin88 brought also talked about increase frequencies of NEs while sleeping on back.
To prevent me from moving during the night i use an heavy object to squeeze my self on to a small section of the bed(make sure there is no room to move and object is to heavy to push away)

I sleep in an oversized jeans pants, i normally wear a 36 but i sleep in a 46 us pants. When i sleep i try to avoid any contact between my member and skin so i tuck it towards the open space between my spread legs. When i wake up in middle of night i Make i sleep back in the same position.

[Z_one]

Yes, it makes work very difficult, especially in jobs where you have to communicate with other people. For years I would wait until Friday night before orgasm, giving me the weekend to (mostly) recover. Of course, that meant I had a crappy weekend My symptoms are mostly cognitive.

I have found fenugreek to be very helpful to me during POIS, but it also makes me much more sociable (even charismatic!) when I don't have POIS. So I suspect it is alleviating the symptoms rather than curing them. (Probably adds estrogen/oxytocin to my system).

On an unrelated note, I have always found that my symptoms from POIS were greatly decreased if I got extremely drunk before orgasm. Now for obvious reasons, this can in no way be regarded as a helpful cure due to all the other negative side-effects of such behaviour.

But it is well known that getting drunk weakens the immune system greatly. Which would fit in perfectly with Dr Waldinger's new evidence - if my immune system is unable to "fight" the semen/pre-ejaculate allergy due to me being drunk, then my POIS symptoms become less severe.

Alcohol exposure stimulates the hypothalamus to produce corticotropin­releasing hormone (CRH). This triggers the pituitary gland to secrete adrenal corticotropic hormone (ACTH), which in turn stimulates the adrenal glands to release glucocorticoids. At high levels, glucocorticoids signal white blood cells to alter cytokine production, suppressing inflammatory and immune responses

Thx for the feedback Hurray,,,,was very helpful indeed....

Regards,

[monkeyboy]

I've had an odd experience that my brain doesn't go back to 100% until after I have had an NE. I abstain for about a week or two my brain function goes back to about 80-90% normal and won't go all the back until I have had an NE. As for worries for the loss of cognative abilities over time from pois I have had that concern myself but it's been the opposite result for me. One my pois symptoms is complete loss of concentration that causes me to daydream uncontrollably and I have found that that has excercised my brain to the point that I am actually increasing in cognative ability from it but can only notice the full effect if I'm sober from pois. Another aspect of my pois symptoms that I havn't heard you guys having is just being aroused is enough to invoke pois symptoms and brain fog in me why is that happening to me?

[demografx]

I'd be interested to know how many other people have had a lessening of symptoms over time.

Over a 30+ year period of having POIS (before my POIS treatment), my symptoms gradually worsened somewhat.

[demografx]

I have always thought functional imaging (e.g. fMRI) would be good for investigating POIS.  

Counterpoints, ever since you brought up the idea of fMRI for POIS (2 years ago?), I have been fascinated with the possibilities! Too bad it's so dang expensive, though.

[demografx]

Prof. dr. Waldinger's 2011 abstract is publicly available:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21241453

[jplewin]

Hi everyone...

Is there any member from South America? I'm from Chile, and would like to meet personally a POIS sufferer from the region, so we can do something about here. If anyone knows, please tell me.
Thanks a lot

JP

[daveman]

Hi everyone...

Is there any member from South America? I'm from Chile, and would like to meet personally a POIS sufferer from the region, so we can do something about here. If anyone knows, please tell me.
Thanks a lot

JP

I live near Rancagua. La Punta, San Fransisco del Mostazal. I'll bet that's pretty close to where you are!!

[horizon]

Here are some doctors, who have been involved with (/or written about) semen allergy treatment.
Dr Ronald Simon, an allergist at Scripps Clinic, in San Diego, http://www.health24.com/news/Allergy/1-889,38331.asp

http://allergycases.org/2008/07/semen-allergy-diagnosis-and-treatment.html
Dr.V Dimov, M.D., Assistant Professor, Allergist/Immunologist, University of Chicago;
Dr.A. Bewtra, M.D., M.B.B.S., Professor, Creighton University Division of Allergy & Immunology
Reviewer: Dr.S Randhawa, M.D., Allergist/Immunologist, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

[lauracostis]

Back in August we talked about the potential for the male anti-consceptive!! This now seems like a VERY good option for a quicker solution to the allergy problem.

The product stops the production of sperm by tricking the system into thinking that the coffers are full. A subtle and not even potent combination of testosterone and progesterone. Similar to, but different than TRT that replensihes the coffers quickly (like Demo's case).

Could it be that TRT produces levels enough to prevent sperm production all together?
Or could it be that TRT produces full and complete "O"s more cosnsitently therefore exposing the system to lesser pressures and residues that cause leakage in "the gap".

I say this because as we have recently said. Some of us have epxerienced shorter POIS sessions with full and complete "O"s. If there's a gap and no backpressure but good flow through, perhaps the leakage is limited. And in some the gap may require greater pressures to produce "leakage". It IS strange, but if all the ducks are lined up right, and there's also a "push" through the orgasm, one might think that there'd be more pressure. But you can feel when it's good, it flows cleanly despite the pushing.

If the p3n1s is soft and doubled-up, it doesn't flow, there's much more internal pressure and the back-flow stays inside.

Just a couple of ideas on why TRT might work!

the male contraceptive treatment that i proposed with progesterone and testosterone only stops the production of sperm and also some other hormones that are associated with their production.  Dr. Waldinger did his experiments with semen because he does not have the resources to separately test all the components of semen.  i can only imagine that sperm would be the most likely part of semen to cause a reaction. 

the male contraceptive would be an excellent start for someone to see if sperm and the neuro-endocrine chemicals associated with their production are causing are problem.  All the studies i read said the treatment is safe and that no side effects were reported at all, which is quite unbelievable. the only problem is that there is no pill made for the male contraceptive that is out on the market yet.  You would have to go see and endocrinologist and he would prescribe two prescriptions for progesterone and testosterone that you would have to take together.  I have an study that shows many of the different hormone combination that have been tried and the results as they apply to stopping sperm production.  what happens when your on the treatment is that when you ejaculate semen comes out, but no sperm.   
for anyone who does not know the difference, sperm are the little critters from your testis that swim and make a girl pregnant.  semen is a mixture of sperm with other fluids, your semen on the treatment will be absent of of sperm.  it is sperm antibodies that can result from a vasectomy and not semen anti bodies.