After reading most all of these posts I find myself in tears. My son is 23 yrs. old and has been experiencing most all of your same symptoms. Started about 6 months ago, and we have been to many doctors, including a urologist, but no one can give us an answer or hope. He is now having feelings of suicide, says the doctors can't help and he can't continue to live with this. Was at the ER last night, again all blood work and urine came back negative. Made another appointment this morning with another urologist, can't get in until mid March. I don't dare tell him this yet for fear of what it will do to his mental state.
His symptoms include:
feeling of shrinkage but at the same time feeling his penis is hard
problems in urinating
very sensitive penis head
feeling that his penis has no blood flow
numbness in his penis
not able to achieve an erection
He is having major anxiety during this and the symptoms are becoming more frequent.
It is killing me, as his mother, not to be able to help get him find the help that he needs! On top of all this, he just graduated from college, now has no job or health insurance. I was able to purchase a short term policy for major medical, but this is now considered a "pre existing" condition - so no coverage.
Suggestions?
Hey guys,
I'm from Germany so don't deal too severely with me if my words are not that clear to you ;-)
I don't want to list my symptoms because I would only repeat anything already written in here. I've read the whole thread and it was very interesting. I'm glad finding this forum - in German-speaking communities you cannot find so much about this problem. A fate which can be easily described statistically *g
Anyway....I'm not a doctor but as a natural scientist I hope I can see things in the right light. I've read so many interesting things in here. There are diets which helped person 1 perfectly but failed completely for person 2 - doctors did not find any physiological problems and so on.....
What we should concentrate on is an important fact: Our main symptoms did not evolved but appeared rapidly. This means that we can almost exclude food/lifestyle related things. In case of ED, urologists often use this information to differentiate between physical and psychological causes and I am the opinion that our problem is mostly of psychological origin. Stress and anxiety can easisly cause pelvic tension which and our symptoms are a secondary effect. Every person has got its personal psychosomatic Achilles heel and this may be ours.
Now let me explain why I think so:
Some of you wrote things like
- "When I urinate and release the muscles it releases the retraction."
- "once i pee and is lengthens out and softens i feel fine and not panicky or worried at all"
- "Only the alpha blockers do anything for me."
etc.
I guess that 'muscle tension' is a good description for all of that.
Furthermore I will tell you my story: My physiological problems are so flamboyantly related to matters with my new girlfriend that I don't really believe that they are physiological. More exactly I have a subconcious fear of loss of her. I am convinced in that because years ago I developed a phobia which made it impossible having a relationship with a women. A psychotherapy brought my anxiety to light and the phobia was defeated.
In moments we are together and she does/says things which make me feel comfortable that I am part of her future my symptoms are better up to completely gone. This lasts the following day but come back afterwards. I hope that the symptoms will go away in a few weeks when we adapted to each other. If she would dump me, the symptoms would last 2 weeks and then they are gone I think. I know this because she did once a few months ago ;-)
Nevertheless I have an appointment at a urologist just to make sure that there is no physiological problem and to verify my hypothesis. If the problem persists I will try to learn some relaxing strategies like autogenic training, Feldenkrais of special gym to relax the pelvic base.
To condense my words, in my opinion I and some of you here suffer from chronic pelvic tension. It must not be due to psychological reasons but it may be.
That just my personal opinion. Please tell me what you think about it!
Cheers
BritBloke, congrats man! Hope all stays well for you! Your post is great news for many of us.
If you don't mind, could you please go into more details about your journey. Which meds do you think helped the most and which the least? What combination do you recommend? how often and for how long?
Were you consistent with sex/ejaculation once a week or did you cheat sometimes? When did you first start feeling erections again?
I am just starting out on the same path that you took, and your advice will greatly be appreciated.
Again, thanks and best of wishes.
UPDATE! MAYBE THIS WILL WORK FOR YOU
After several months I now feel I've got back to 95% normal in terms of flaccid consistency and size, and erectile/sexual function.
It's been a long journey and I've used quite a combination of meds:-
- Xatral/alpha blocker (10mg daily)- to relax muscles and veins down there
- Cialis (lwo dose 2.5mg daily) - to promote regular erections
- L-Arginine - precursor amino acid to help erections
- Tribulus - to promote testosterone production
- Zinc - also promotes testosterone
- Regular warm wraps (e.g. rice sock, hot water bottle)
My strategy has been to get as many normal erections as possible, but at the same time to limit actual sexual activity and in particular limiting ejaculation to only once a week. By limiting sex and at the same time taking various supplements which boost testosterone and help erections, so if you can get back into feeling horny (I'd lost the ability for at least 3-4 months) it seems to give life back to the old fella and the positive changes have followed on for me. I now have no adverse after effects following sex/masturbation (before it caused worse symptoms for up to a week). I've also really limited alcohol intake and spicy/hot food over this period as I found that these seemed to make things worse the day after ... but now these don't seem to affect it any more (hurrah!)
I think for me at least, the solution was to ensure as much 'regular function', i.e. getting good blood flow through and getting natural hormones helping the process. Needless to say, after such terrible experience where at various points I was completely freaked out, I am now much more relaxed (which in itself helps) but taking a lot more care of my unit in future!
I hope this helps you guys anyway and best of luck in getting back to normality.
Cheers
B
just to say, I've tried every supplement and herbal product, nothing makes any difference. Only the alpha blockers do anything for me.
Hey man,
I can definitely tell you marijuana had nothing to do with this.
It's good to hear that Viagra gets you back to 100%. I just wanted to ask you how often you rely on Viagra for this? and have you experienced any side effects?
I'm going to start experiementing with supplements and then probably move to alpha blockers and viagra. Just want to know how dependant on this I could be and what the side effects are like.