Hey guys quick update. Was doing good for a couple weeks, completely cut out alcohol, and things were starting to get back to normal. My sleep (my worst symptom) was improving, being able to sleep 6-8 hours most nights with only 2-3 wakeups throughout. I also noticed my chronic fatigue (which I've struggled with as long as I can remember, even before crashing) isn't as present, which may be due to my new Paleo diet. Also started realizing the decrease in poop frequency which I previously attributed to PFS, is also incredibly common among people who eat Carnivore diet (I eat mostly meat).
However, I started getting overconfident, and had some built up stress from work, and full binged to porn before going to bed, which I had managed to avoid for over a year. I felt terrible, and lo and behold, my sleep symptom was back in almost full force. Woke up literally every hour, feeling like absolute shit. Managed to get 6 hours sleep total but it was terrible, took forever to go back to sleep, etc.
I'm not 100% sure that the return of the disrupted sleep was due to relapsing to porn, or it may be because I ate a shit ton of mangos a couple hours before bed (heard sugar may have a negative effect on PFS sufferers), or who knows. But I wanted to post my experience in the interest of transparency in this journey as well as to possibly help someone out who might be trying to figure out their own symptoms.
After a couple weeks of plateau where things haven’t really gotten better or worse, I’m officially starting my juice feast. Hopefully this will jump start the progress again.
I’m not sure if you can even recover without doing a juice or water cleanse. I feel like I’ve made a lot of progress since my PFS crash by paleo diet and cutting out processed food and alcohol, lifting 3x/wk, and daily supplements, but it seems to have stalled out recently
After the juice feast, going to continue all of the above and start rotating T boosting herbs. I will recover from this shit!
Hey guys, I'm on day 6 of my juice feast (going for 7) and so far I've noticed a couple things: libido has gone down (although this might just be a downswing), sleep has been about the same, have had a couple random bursts of energy as well as random bursts of anxiety/fatigue. Also got a couple headaches the first couple days.
Gave myself an enema yesterday to really clear things out.
For the juices I've mainly been using this recipe: 2 apples, 1 pear, 1/2 lb mixed greens, 1 head celery, 1/2 large cucumber. That makes one juice so I'll make 4 of those per day. I hope my fruit to vegetable ratio was acceptable, or was I using too many fruits?
Happy to report I'm doing much better one week after ending the 7-day juice feast. Sleep and digestion are the most improved. Now able to take proper shits and insomnia has been 80% alleviated aside from still waking up multiple times each night. Mentally doing better than I ever have pre-PFS, which I credit mostly to the paleo diet/elimination of gluten and refined carbs
Biggest remaining problem is physical dick changes and libido, which is still below pre-PFS levels, but I'm hoping that by continuing to follow the protocol, those will recover too. Currently on a 7 day herb cycle and eating paleo/carnivore diet, just ordered a bathmate this week. Also doing nofap indefinitely (hope I can stick to it). Cheers guys
Well done on the juice feast, mate! Hope the gut and sleep improvements hold for you. Keep following the protocol to a T.
I realize this is a late chime in, but for others reading this in the future, there is no proper fruit to veggie ratio. As long as you get in the proper amount of veggies for mineral balance you're fine. The fruit is really to adjust for taste.
That and if you end up doing another one in the near future for some reason, you may want to vary the types of juices you make so that you're not drinking the same juice all day/week long. Variety makes it a little less boring on the palate.
Total Male Optimization "People who say it can't be done shouldn't interrupt those that are doing it"
Hey guys haven't posted here in a while. Hope y'all had a good new year's!
Just wanted give an update that I've improved massively in the short 3 months I've been on the program. In fact I can confidently say I feel better than I ever have pre-PFS!
Especially mentally, emotionally and energy wise. I feel massively positive every day, achieving my goals, and could keep working towards them for hours!
I'm someone who pre-PFS used to always struggled with low energy, lethargy etc. Even after coffee I'd work for an hour and get tired and have to lie down lmao.
I have no idea what specifically caused the boost in mental clarity/energy, but my best guess is probably gluten. Since starting the program, I haven't had a single drop of gluten, grains or any of that garbage. This improvement started when I did my 7 day juice cleanse and have been eating a primarily paleo/carnivore diet since (outside of backloading).
Symptom-wise my sleep is back to normal except for waking up a couple times every so often, nothing serious. This is up from barely being to able to sleep more than 2 hours per night when I first crashed.
My digestion is back to normal as long as I'm strict with what I eat. It's still in a kind of fragile state where if I veer off course my shits will be affected. I noticed in particular that eating high-sugar foods like mango, ice cream, etc. will turn my shit into a semi-diarrhea type state for a couple days. When I first crashed my shits were all this semi-diarrhea type thing, if I could even shit at all. No joke couldn't shit for several days at a time.
Remaining symptoms are mainly libido, which remains quite low, and having a veiny dick. Have read a couple recovery posts where they're back to normal in every category except they still have a veiny dick. So that is unfortunate.
Libido is low but it's always been low because I had a bad porn addiction even before PFS. On the bright side I've been having pretty consistent morning woods. I'm happy to say I'm on track to rid myself of my porn addiction once and for all and shooting for a 200 day nofap streak (currently on day 33)! I even hired a coach to keep me accountable lol.
I'm not out of the woods yet, but the path out of this shit is clear. Thank the lord.
I would like to give special thanks to CDNuts. Without you, so many of us would be stuck with this shit, with no visible way out. I was quite skeptical of your protocol before jumping in because I was wondering why you'd even put it out there with no benefit to yourself. Your selflessness has restored my faith in humanity. Thank you
Last edited by covfefe42; 01-07-2020 at 12:21 AM.
Quick update: have been sticking to the protocol still. Got a Whoop band to track my sleep and heart rate etc. I like to have objective metrics that I can see over time, and it's especially good for tracking my sleep, times I woke up throughout the night, amount of REM/deep sleep etc.
What I've found is that although my sleep is massively improved since crashing, I'm still waking up anywhere from 15-20 times per night. I've asked my non-PFS friends who have a Whoop band and the most they wake up is usually around 5 times per night. So sleep is still kinda fucked but I don't notice it most nights.
Also I slipped up on my nofap streak and fapped a couple days ago. Made it to 67 days but was going to 200 so I'm pretty disappointed with myself. But anyways what I've noticed consistently with fapping is that it fucks up my sleep. I'd been getting 7-9 hours consistently, but on nights where I fap to porn I can barely get to sleep and I'll wake up after like 3 hours, so fapping just sucks all around for me.
I'm guessing it's some sort of combination of the light from the screen fucking up my melatonin, stress chemicals from the feeling of regret afterwards, and maybe the effects of the dopamine overload on the brain.
Another observation I've made is that porn doesn't excite me the way it used to pre-PFS. I've seen a couple posts from others on this board that have experienced the same thing, but I have no idea if that's something to be worried about or not. Who knows but that's been my observation.
Anyways back on the horse and continuing to stick to the protocol!