Hi BluesBrother,
What I have trouble understanding is why the particular vascular stress during ejaculation/orgasm should trigger POIS symptoms but not, for example, exercise (although there are some people who experience POIS-like symptoms after exercise).
I am one of those people that used to have exercise-induced flu-like symptoms. But for some reason I don't have them anymore even when I am not taking my supplement stack. There are certain vascular differences between sex and exercise; penile erection being one of them. I believe that the critical area for POIS to be triggered is somewhere in the lower brain area. But in all truth, right now I think that our knowledge of the mechanisms behind POIS is limited by the lack of medical data from POISers.
Currently, there is a thread where some POISers have volunteered their medical documents so that the POIS community and friends of the POIS community can carry out "crowd research" on this disease (please see
Gather and Post Here Your Medical Tests Results).
This thread is inspired by medical data posted to the medical data thread. I have also posted
my medical data and a description of my symptoms there. This is important, because the more POISers post there data, the more answers we can have to questions like the ones you are asking.
One troubling habit I have noticed on several forums (POIScenter, NS, reddit/POIS) is that POISers tend to post their medical results only when there is something unusual or they test positive for some disease. I think this feeds false-positive-hypothesies of POIS. For example, it is well known that lecithin helps many POISers reduce their symptoms. This benefit of lecithin motivates those who have genetic test showing MTHFR mutations (which in some cases don't affect methylation) to post their gene profiles. Those POISers probably have a lot of other normal (negative) medical test results of other parameters that they don't share because maybe they think it was not interesting. But the normal medical results are often more important than the abnormal results. Lecithin can reduce my POIS symptoms, but my blood test show that under-methylation does not cause my POIS (see
12. Methylation/homocysteine blood test:). So even if undermethylation doesn't cause the disease, overmethylation (or some other mechanism) can help it. I did see one POISer (on reddit) with a normal MTHFR gene profile and these genes are usually redundant. This could mean that for every one person who post genetic profiles showing mutations, there could be ten or more people who don't share their genetic profile because they don't see any abnormal mutations or the results disagree with the under-methylation theory. In the scientific community, we call this
Publication Bias. I think Publication Bias is the reason years of POISer experimentation on the forums don't lead to more knowledge of what POIS is. We need normal and negative medical test results just as much as abnormal and positive results to be posted. This will not only allow us to answer questions like yours, but also develop more targeted therapies for the disease.
In your case, you were able to rule out the possibility of
H. pylori being the cause of your POIS because you tested negative for the bacteria. If you had tested positive for the bacteria, no decision could be made about the role of
H. pylori in your case. So your normal medical result actual contain more information. I also tested negative for
H. pylori several times (
7. Gut health and IBS:). Sorry, I have rambled about the scientific method long enough. This is the kind of stuff I talk about on my job, (process of discovery). I am passionate about the approach of using process-of-elimination to rule out everything a disease is not. But thanks to anyone who was patient enough to read all this, LOL!
Regarding the infection hypothesis more generally: I think I first experienced POIS after returning from a trip to Ghana, after which I had some digestive issues (some of which remain). Maybe I have caught an infection there.
If you don't have cold sores (HSV-1), genital herpes (HSV-2) or shingles (HHV-3), then it is probably not those viruses. EBV (HHV-4) and CMV (HHV-5) are associated with gastritis and gastrointestinal ulcers in some cases and can infect endothelial cells. I'm still studying properties of EBV. CMV (HHV-5) and HHV-6 both establish latency in endothelia (digestive tract and blood vessels). There are some bacteria that can be triggered by norepinephrine (
Ref1,
Ref2), but I don't know much about them other than that.
Muon has been posting about bacterial infections, so maybe he knows more about them. I hope this was helpful. Let me know if you have any new ideas or suggestions. I am willing to learn and willing to be wrong.
