Originally Posted by
LetsGo
I guess it’s time for another update.
I’ve been on a big downswing since about a month ago, when my last upswing ended. The downswing has intensified and I don’t get morning wood at all now. I got the nice juicer that I ordered, and although TMO says to use a blender, I think it’ll be fine to use a juicer to make your daily juice if you prefer that method. I always took the blender and nut milk bag technique as a suggestion.
I’ve been feeling pretty anxious lately, particularly this last week. In the last 2 days I only got about 4 hours of sleep each night. I’ve been staying up at night Googling some stuff about an unrelated issue:
Brief Diversion - feel free to skip
So last week, I went for a hair transplant consultation in NYC and the surgeon (and his protege surgeon) said that there’s a 40% chance that I have an extremely rare type of hair loss that usually only happens in post-menopausal women, and he’d need to do a biopsy to get more info. It’s called FFA and it causes the vellus hairs (the very thin baby hairs) to die, and then the regular hairs die as well, although a few stragglers are left behind as the baldness moves backwards from your hairline. However, in my case, it’s following a traditional male pattern baldness path, and not a straight line like it normally does with FFA.
With FFA, there’s scarring under the skin, and some research papers have speculated that it could be caused by insufficient DHEA causing a certain fat-related enzyme not to activate. This then causes the fat cells in the scalp to die and scar up, killing your hair. This disease was first reported in the early 1990s, and almost never hits men (especially not men in their 30s.) Maybe most men have too much test and DHEA to get affected, and I got FFA because of PFS, but I’m not sure. I don’t remember hearing of anyone else with PFS who has FFA. Anyway, the upshot is that if I have FFA, I can’t get a transplant, despite having the money and donor hair, because the FFA would just destroy the transplant within a few years.
Also, FFA may end up destroying my eyebrows, which have always been thin. (It can also wipe out your pubic and armpit hair, but I don’t care about either of those.) If that happens then I’ll probably get “microblading” which lasts about a year and seems to look more realistic than eyebrow tattoos. I’d be a bit leery of getting permanent eyebrow tattoos because I don’t know how realistic they’d look and I’d worry about having to live with any mistakes that the tattooer did. But I will absolutely not go with a “no eyebrows” look, period. I will find a way to address my eyebrows if I lose them. And if I have to rock a shaved head look, I would just have to find a way to get used to a very different-looking man in the mirror, or hide under an expensive fake hair system to try to look younger and more attractive.
The main thing doctors use to stop FFA is dutasteride or finasteride, which are completely unthinkable for me. There are also steroid injections (not anabolic steroids) and some other things they can try. I don’t officially know that I have FFA, he said it was a 40% chance, but after doing research it seems more like a 99% chance to me. I don’t have any vellus hairs in my balding front, so I don’t see how it’s possible that I could have regular male-pattern baldness. I had no idea that you were supposed to have vellus hairs in your balding regions, no wonder the red laser stuff didn’t regrow anything. I’m not sure if its even possible to have male pattern baldness without those miniaturizing vellus hairs, but somehow my surgeon still said it was 60% likely to be male pattern baldness. (This is the one time in my life where I’m hoping I have male pattern baldness, lol.) I also have a huge very thin area about the size of the palm of my hand, on the crown area. Not sure if I have vellus hairs back there or not.
If I can’t get a hair transplant, then I will eventually have to decide between shaving my head or getting a “hair system”. But we’re not at that point yet. I’ve been looking back at old photos of myself from my 20s; I was really handsome, and I’m way less handsome now. Sometimes I feel washed-up, but I have to keep my spirits up as best as I can. I think there’s still a lot of happiness that I can have, and I want to hurry up and reach that point. (My great afterlife fantasy is that someday I’ll get to relive my life, making better choices. But in the here and now it’s incredibly important to forgive myself / not carry a grudge against myself, and develop unconditional self-love.)
I should find out the results of my biopsy on 2/19 or 2/22. If it somehow turns out that I have male pattern baldness, I’m not jumping into surgery like I originally planned to, I’ll want to see a certain dermatologist who sees a lot of FFA patients and get his take on it. Whatever it is, I will deal with it and honestly recovering from PFS is more important to worry about.
Back to recovery stuff
I think the tribulus that I have is garbage. I got the one from bulksupplements.com, and I should probably find a better brand. I was reading that “medi-herbs standard process” is far and away the best kind, and that “vemo herb” is also good but not as strong. The Standard Process stuff can only be purchased in person, at certain chiropractors and naturopath doctors, and it’s over a dollar per pill. Apparently regular tribulus is garbage; they make it out of the tribulus fruit. Supposedly the active ingredient only develops in Bulgarian & Slovakian grown tribulus, and only in the leaves and stems, not the flower or fruit. Most of what is sold in the US is therefore worthless. The stuff that actually works ends up costing 50 cents a pill or $1.50, or even $2. Which is all completely fine, I just want to get the good stuff.
Right now I’m in the middle of a heavy downswing, where I don’t seem to have any libido at all and days go by where I’m not even thinking about women or masturbating. In times like this, it feels like my progress has been erased, and it doesn’t feel like my upswings are bringing me to higher baselines and then building up to a higher upswing, like they’re supposed to. It just feels like I have upswings 4 or 5 times per year and that’s it. I would need to go back and re-read my thread to see if that’s true, but emotionally, that’s what “feels” true today. (I’m just in a melancholy mood.)
Almost exactly 2 years ago I did my first juice feast, except I had used frozen fresh-made juices that I had shipped out to me. I think I still did make good progress at first, and was thinking and hoping that this would be a quick 6 month ride. However, I didn’t get the full and proper benefits from my juice feast, because I was using frozen juices. But when I was temporarily on a broth diet due to mono, after that was when I had my biggest upswing ever. I had morning wood for like 8 months in a row! I’m wondering if I will need to do semi-regular juice feasts a few times per year, but if this gives me my morning wood back then I will feel like that’s a good platform to recover the rest of the way.
I’m thinking I should do 2 weeks of juice feasting, possibly 3. I’m not going to do 45 days like CD did, though. I’ll do 2 weeks and see where I’m at. I know CD said he did many water fasts and juice feasts throughout his recovery, so I’m not sure if perhaps it’s not a one and done thing for me. I never had these kinds of lows after my accidental broth fast, except several months after my gym closed due to Covid.
The other significant thing is that my boss has hinted at the possibility of me replacing him when he eventually retires (maybe this year, maybe next year, I don’t know), but I really want to have my own law firm and live in NYC. Also, I’m not so sure that I’d get picked, since my co-worker is a higher salary grade than me. I really don’t like this small city, and I don’t know that I could ever find the love of my life here. Besides, if my business does even somewhat decently, I should be making at least $200k, which is a lot more than I’d earn in the government supervisor role. I need to keep pushing, despite exhaustion and low hormones, and find a way to make my dreams come true.
I’ve spent about $400 on my ads (which are finally working) this month, and got 2 leads, neither of which has panned out so far, but I have to keep going. My therapist said that at a certain point, I may just have to jump in and move to NYC and make it all work there, rather than building a “proof of concept” up here and then moving down to NYC when I know that my business blueprint works. I’ve sunk about $6k into the business for startup costs so I’m somewhat reluctant to just try to get a regular associate job; I would absolutely prefer to just make a go of this on my own, be my own boss, and make good money doing something that I enjoy. Get into a nice relationship and recover enough from PFS to be able to enjoy sex, and finally start enjoying my life.
Anyhow, I’m exhausted. I’m going to drag myself over to the grocery store to buy a bunch of fruits and vegetables. In a perfect world, tomorrow I will start my juice feast. If not, then it starts on Friday or Saturday at the latest.