Hi everyone! I hope everyone is doing well! Let me ask you guys some questions!
This thread will talk about a reaction I had to my own semen. I strongly advise that you please speak to a medical professional first if you are interested in trying anything that you read on this thread and about semen allergy and the diagnosis of it, even if they don’t know much about semen allergy.
My semen reaction to my hands incident occurred about 2 months ago. While I was masturbating, I got semen on my right hand and I thought I had something in my room to wipe it off. I tried to run over to my restroom hoping nobody would see my hand, but the restroom was occupied. So I had to go back to my room and wait. As I was waiting for about 4 minutes, I started getting a burning and itching feeling on my right hand and I had to grab a piece of paper from my room to clean some of the semen off my hand. My hand was still itching a little after I removed the semen. When I looked to see how my right hand was, there was a scar, the trail where the semen was placed. I do not remember seeing other scars on my right hand aside from that one scar. I suffered from my usual POIS symptoms. Unfortunately, I was not able to take a photo of that scar. I did not suffer from any new or severe symptoms as a result of this incident.
Recently, I decided to do an experiment with 1x Benadryl tablet taken before 30min of ejaculation. I placed a little bit of semen on my middle and pointer finger from the left palm and on the back-left side of my left hand. I then placed a larger amount of semen on the back-right of my right hand. After 4-5min of placement, I did not feel any burning or itching and there was no scar like the last incident. Instead, I got a rash on the back of my right hand. The only allergy symptoms I got from this POIS episode was a stuffy nose, a rash, and 1 minute of itching. I got itching from my right hand that lasted for about 1 min after 20 minutes of the semen placement and did not get anymore itching since then. Unfortunately, I was unable to get any before photos (experimented with only 4 hours of sleep and I know was important), but I did take photos of my hands right after the reactions with my hands clean, after 8-9hrs of sleep, and a picture of my hands after 2 days of the experiment. After my 8-9 hours of sleep, I felt a slight decrease in brain fog/focus and muscle tension but that is about it. I did not suffer from any severe or new symptoms as a result of the experiment.
I will link the photos below:
Photos of semen reactionAs you will see on the photos, Benadryl may have prevented further symptoms from occurring on my left hand then on my right and I am certain that I will also get symptoms on my left hand with the just the right amount of semen.
NOTE: If you are going to test for this, I recommend doing this near a sink or other water source with hand soap to clean the hands immediately if a reaction were to occur.
Why does this happen to me? Do I have an allergy to my own semen? Does this reaction correlate with my POIS? If so, what are some options I can discuss with my doctors? All feedback will always be discussed with my doctors first! Will people without POIS also get the same reaction from their own semen? These are questions that I asked Dr. Irwin Goldstein and Dr. Barry Komisaruk and they did not know why I got these reactions and suggested that I ask POIScenter. Dr. Goldstein is recommending that I try corticosteroids if there is an element of allergy to POIS, but I wanted to ask these questions first before trying it. I know that one concept of POIS is that it is an autoimmune disorder.
Edit: About 2 weeks ago, I discussed this incident again this time with Dr. Komisaruk and Dr. Goldstein together and Dr. Komisaruk did say that what I get are allergic reactions and if you ever had a serious allergy, that those are all kinds of feelings you get like being cranky, irritable and foggy, which I do get. They said that corticosteroids like Medral and Prednisone and antihistamines could help.
Dr. Komisaruk also mentioned that it could be an internal allergic reaction, that maybe passes through the urethra. If the semen is released from the prostate, it does get into other parts of the body. Could this be playing a role in my POIS symptoms?
Thanks for reading! And remember, your health is always first!
EDIT 09/2021: The reaction to my own semen can happen to people without POIS, and may not be sufficient evidence as to why I have POIS, at least in my case. (Reference Jia Yin:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25630453/). I believe that my POIS was developed because of a strong masturbation and porn addiction, which would have nothing to do with my semen.