New member - chronic cognitive/emotional POIS issues, need advice

[CuriousCharacter]

Hello everyone!

I'd just like to start by saying that I just discovered POIS yesterday, so forgive any ignorance I may have on these matters.

Also, this is extremely TL;DR, but I figure that extremely detailed anecdotes are useful for debugging what's going on inside us.

I've been dealing with some chronic emotional/cognitive symptoms, all of which seem to significantly worsen for 2-3 days after orgasm/NE:

• Brain fog
• Depression
• Low motivation
• Social anxiety
• Poor cognitive function
• Disconnection from bodily sensations
• Emotional disconnection
• Fatigue (laying in bed most of the day)

I also have some physical symptoms as well. I'm not sure if these are related to POIS, but they're certainly associated with chronic inflammation:

• Chronic costochondritis (I've had this for over a year, but it became substantially worse after consuming ashwagandha, which is an immune-system activator)
• Remarkably tight hips and thoracic spine for a 30 year old male who was consistently lifting weights five months ago
• Neck pain (stretching and using decent posture helps a lot)
• Teeth grinding (recently I woke up and felt like I had sand in my mouth... not good)

Many of these symptoms are always present, but ejaculation makes them 100% worse.

I have found considerable relief from the following:

• Not ejaculating (I've had a small handful of orgasms throughout the past three years... it's not uncommon for me to go a couple months without release)
• Meditation and breathing exercises (I attended to a 10-day vipassana retreat earlier this year, and all of my symptoms disappeared while I was there)
• Galantamine (I was interested in lucid dreaming and discovered by accident that galantamine in the morning substantially improves my cognitive function)
• NSAIDs (I am taking high-dose ibuprofen, which was prescribed to me for costochondritis, and I feel like it is vastly improving my condition)
• Magnesium (600-800mg daily wipes away the anxiety and allows my muscles to finally relax)
• Zinc (It could be a placebo, but a high dose of zinc seemed to drastically increase my testosterone recently)
• Nicotine (I've never been a smoker, but I started experimenting with nicotine toothpicks... seems to compensate for a lack of acetylcholine while boosting dopamine and serotonin)
• Fasting (my symptoms improve dramatically if I haven't eaten for over 24 hours)
• Ketogenic dieting (although I feel like I need to drown myself with water and electrolytes to not feel crappy on it)
• Psilocybin (I'm not recommending this to anyone, but it does seem quite effective at boosting serotonin, increasing bodily awareness, activating the vagus nerve and releasing trauma and muscular tension)
• 5-HTP (not as effective for me as psilocybin, but I definitely feel an effect at low doses when my mood is low)
• L-tyrosine (has helped tremendously with motivation, but has made me extremely angry once, perhaps by crowding out serotonin)
• Cold (cold showers seem to improve my well-being, while warm showers and contrast showers seem at best neutral)
• Exercising, being active and stretching (I have a treadmill desk, and try to hit the saltwater pool at my gym frequently for some light exercise and mobility stretching)
• Massage (another vagus nerve activator)

After manically perusing this forum yesterday, I have a general idea of what supplements I should take, what foods I should avoid, etc., but I'd really appreciate your take on it. Please tell me if I'm missing anything essential, or if any of this seems potentially dangerous.

Daily supplements:

• Vitamin D - 10,000 IU *
• Magnesium Citrate - 400-800mg, depending on anxiety levels and muscular tension
• Zinc - 60mg
• Thorne Stress B-complex
• Iodine - 225mcg
• Krill oil - 2500mg
• Quercetin - 500mg
• Spirulina - 1 teaspoon
• Green Vibrance greens/probiotic supplement - 1 scoop

I am also taking high-dose ibuprofen for costochondritis, and if it does not go away within the next few days, I will experiment with CBD oil as a safer treatment.

* Note regarding vitamin D: I have a vdr mutation that results in a diminished ability to process vitamin D, and have read a couple theories proposing that vitamin D deficiency may be a contributing factor to POIS. Thoughts? Is 10,000 IU daily reasonably safe for someone with this condition?

As-needed supplements, consumed only when I'm unable to function reasonably well:

• L-tyrosine (when motivation is nonexistent)
• 5-HTP (when mood is sour)
• Huperzine A (I figure this is a safer alternative to galantamine)
• CDP-Choline or Alpha-GPC (when Huperzine A isn't enough)
• Nicotine toothpick (when I need that extra boost)

Food staples:

• Turmeric bone broth protein
• Green tea
• Chopped ginger (raw)
• Apple cider vinegar
• Caprylic oil
• Psyllium husk

Diet:

I've been following a low-carb ketogenic diet combined with intermittent fasting for much of the past two years.

I've found that I lose water and minerals very quickly in ketosis. I need to constantly pour huge glasses of salt water in my face in order to not feel crappy.

Fasted ketosis seems stressful on my body, and I suspect that it may have introduced some mineral deficiencies. High-dose magnesium has helped me more than any supplement I've experienced with. Could this be a leaky gut issue? I'm not sure what to make of this.

Oh - and another interesting thing about fasted ketosis. I've done a number of 2-3 day fasts, and once I hit the 24 hour mark, my symptoms improve DRAMATICALLY.

I've found that carbs (such as sugary fruits) improves my mood (probably because insulin increases tryptophan absorption), but it also makes me tired and incapable of functioning in the real world (probably because of high insulin-sensitivity).

Note that I've always had allergies, so I took Zyrtec once a day for most of my life. However, ketosis seemed to relieve me of my allergies, so I stopped taking it. Perhaps this was when the POIS symptoms really started kicking in?

This is my diet plan going forward:

• Low carb diet (keto)
• Meals throughout the day to prevent mineral depletion
• Lectin avoidance (no dairy except maybe pastured butter, no grains, no legumes, etc.)
• Consumption of anti-inflammatory foods (several scoops of turmeric bone broth protein daily)

The Battle Plan

I figure that the diet and supplementation should help, but I'm curious what else I should be doing to fight this dis-ease.

I'd like to have the ability to safely achieve orgasm again, but I'm naturally cautious about experimenting, since a wet dream just took me out for two days. Is there any protocol (niacin, anti-histamine, olive leaf, fenugreek+garlic, ginger, etc.) that seems more fitting for my situation? Or is this something you just have to go through the pain of trial and error to discover?

Is there any real cure that has been pulled off successfully by more than a couple people? Throughout my manic research on POIS yesterday, I read various anecdotes about POIS being cured permanently through a few different methods:

• High-dose vitamin D (30k IU daily, monitored by a doctor)
• Eating a diet consisting mostly of probiotics and prebiotics
• Wim Hof-style holotrophic breathing
• And obviously, semen hypersensitization therapy...

Is there any sort of consensus for what this illness is, and how to cure it? Is there anything else I should be doing?

I really appreciate any help you can give me.

[Nas]

Welcome to this forum CuriousCharacter
You seem to have handled your POIS quite well without even knowing you have POIS.
I personally do not have the capability to take as much supplements, so I do not have a "cure" and not a 100% relief method. But I do get some boost from an anti-inflammaion/vasoconstrictor stack of medications: Propanolol, Paracetamol, Aspirin and Indomethacin, plus I take Mestenon for boost.
POIS is one strange illness, there are many different relief methods that worked for some and didn't work for others. So many different explanations, and so many different tests.
Honestly until we can get a professional team of researches to make a complete research on the causes of POIS, no one knows what POIS is for certain; there are so many symptoms that can be different from one person to other, and the medical consensus is that it some sort of allergy and they mainly focus on  allergy like symptoms. Many here in this forum would tell you that the main issue in POIS are the cognitive symptom which are soul sucking and can have huge negative implications on our personalities and social life. Many of us do not believe that POIS is an allergy issue rather a full immune response, either auto-immunogenic or natural but we do not know to what exactly; I personally believe it's because sperms enter the blood vessels through leaky epithelial barriers. Some beilieve it's a dormant virus that is triggered by stress.
Generally no one thinks desensitization is a good plan, since it's only weakening the immune system to otherwise a natural immune response to semen.
Lastly, everyone should do tests and look for abnormalities; this is our only way of searching for solid progress for what's wrong with us, otherwise we are stuck with theorizing and hypothesizing.

[dizzy]

Hi CuriousCharacter,

I have a few of the same symptoms as you have, for instance tight neck and teeth clenching (bruxism).

I also did some experimentation.

What helps me a lot is to keep the jaw relaxed at all times. This takes some effort (especially when at work), but after a few days I noticed great relief, so I'm continuing this practice. I also do the Wim Hof breathing, to get myself into a more relaxed state (this helps in combination with the jaw relaxation also). Relaxing the cranium/forehead helps too.

Nofap also helps me, as does abstaining from watching porn, and even abstaining from thinking about anything related to sex.

I'm currently taking a bunch of supplements that are in Nanna's protocol. I also take B5, manganese, zinc, vitamin D, inositol, chromium. Sometimes methionine helps.

I've tried different types of magnesium, and found that magnesium glycinate and magnesium chloride work best, so I'm taking them both every day. Sometimes I combine with a bit of B2 (riboflavin) because this combination is said to help with migraines (and tension headaches are one possible explanation for my type of POIS).

I've also tried huperzine A, and it worked for a few days but then it gave me a terrible dry mouth/throat. I tried it again somewhat later, and got the same effect.

I also tried nicotine lozenges and patches (I'm a non-smoker), but they made me feel weird so I stopped the experiment after 2 days or so.

For improving mood I eat a can of sardines. 5-htp also works, but dosing is difficult to get right for me (too much makes me more depressed).

A bowl of cornflakes (kellog's brand) and milk with a few grams of inositol (tastes like sugar) gives me a positive boost. I don't know why. Beetroot juice gives me a boost too, but it's not very consistent/reproducible. Inositol cures the red eyes I get directly after orgasm.

Anyway, everything I wrote is anecdotal, and without any theory. I just try supplements according to what I read, and keep the good ones, and drop the ones that don't work. Not sure if that is the best strategy, but so far I'm feeling a lot better than before (though there is room for improvement and more consistency).

[CuriousCharacter]

Hi Nas, thanks for the feedback. I'll try to get a full suite of tests done shortly and share the results... provided the tests aren't too pricey. I'm self-employed and my health insurance doesn't cover much of anything.

Dizzy - it looks like we're doing a lot of the same things. The point about relaxing the jaw and forehead makes a lot of sense to me. I tend to carry lots of tension in my face. I just started experimenting with relaxing my head/face and psoas/sacrum in the morning, combined with deep holotropic breathing, and I feel like it's improving my quality of life by about 50%.

It's interesting that methionine helps you. I just found out that I have a heterozygous MTHFR mutation and was considering methionine restriction.

[dizzy]

Yes, I replied because I noticed some overlap in symptoms and approach

By the way, have you tried supplementing with boron?

Reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4712861/

Quoting:

Boron significantly improves magnesium absorption and deposition in bone, yet another beneficial effect of boron’s inhibition of 17?-estradiol degradation. Thus, boron is a factor in magnesium’s myriad beneficial effects. Magnesium’s importance, in bone alone, is illustrative of the widespread ramifications of boron insufficiency.

I'm noticing a positive effect at 9mg per day. But it is not consistent in my case, the effect lasts up to about three days, so now I'm looking for cofactors that might be depleted when using this supplement.

Regarding MTHFR, I'm not sure how seriously to take the 23andme type of analyses. If you look on SNPedia, then you find that for any given SNP, about 10-30% of the population has that SNP. This would mean almost everybody would be in serious medical trouble, which of course isn't the case. Also, if your SNP is heterozygous (as opposed to homozygous), that means that you have at least 50% of that particular gene working properly, which I suppose would mean that you should be doing okay. Of course, 23andme doesn't record all possible alleles (only a relatively small subset based on references in the literature), so in theory a gene could be broken even if 23andme doesn't say so.

That said, I have a homozygous SNPs in COMT, VDR taq, MTRR, BHMT. And heterozygous SNPs in MTHFR, BHMT and CBS (to name a few).

[CuriousCharacter]

Interesting. I might get some boron. It would be nice to not have to take so much magnesium. The fact that it boosts T and prevents kidney stones is also nice.

Regarding MTHFR, I'm not too sure what to make of it. SelfDecode gives me an A+ for methylation. GeneticGenie says I have a homozygous VDR mutation, and a few heterozygous mutations that affect methylation. I take it all with a grain of salt.