Hi everyone,
I had a bad case of prostatitis about a year ago. My urine tests never showed bacteria, but I still took several antibiotics, including levofloxacin, which really affected my body, especially my gut. It helped a little, but never fully. Looking back, I feel it was the worst decision I could have made, but I was desperate at the time.
I was like 70-80% better for a year, but a few weeks ago, the burning + pain came back with the classic “sitting on a golf ball” feeling. Since I was never really 100%, I suspected my case is a non-bacterial / functional prostatitis, possibly related to pelvic floor tension and oversensitive nerves.
I did some research and found that medications like nortriptyline may help with oversensitive nerves that can contribute to different types of pain. I spoke with a psychiatrist about nortriptyline and started on a very low dose, 10 mg. To be honest, I did not specifically say I was considering it for prostatitis symptoms. I had used other antidepressants before and simply mentioned that I wanted to try this one at a very low dose. From what I understand, 10 mg is well below the usual antidepressant dose (30+ mg).
After about a week, my pain is completely gone. Not only the prostatitis pain, but my gut also seems to be much better. It makes me think that many of my symptoms may be related to oversensitive nerves triggering all kinds of reactions in my body. I know the medication may just be controlling the symptoms rather than “curing” the root cause, but it gave me my quality of life back. And, most importantly, it kept me from taking another round of antibiotics out of desperation.
edit[1]: just to add, I also changed some habits, like reducing coffee, increasing water to 2-3L, stretching daily, and taking long hot showers to help relax my pelvic muscles. That said, I had tried these things before and the results were not very significant, so I see them more as a maintenance routine rather than a cure for the problem
My takeaway: if your tests don’t show bacteria, don’t rush into antibiotics out of desperation. Talk to your doctor about non-bacterial causes and options for nerve-related pain, such as nortriptyline.
TL;DR: Antibiotics didn’t help me long-term and caused very bad gut issues. Nortriptyline 10 mg helped my non-bacterial prostatitis symptoms a lot in about a week.