Did anyone else have Achilles pain, heel pain, or posterior calf pain while taking the drug or when you stop it?
If there is specific timeline of the with PFS onset?
is it changed or it same as at beginning?
how do you describe this pain?
what make it worse?
any alternations in intensity, is it correlate with other PFS symptoms?
I heard that there some kind of subset of people report worseing of symptoms after MRI, so can you tell what area was targeted by MRI spine cord or brain? is there someone who get worse after ct scan as well?
Its like body in full agony mode but brain completely numb to it
it's only me? even more some stuff seems make this pain worse but you can't understand what actually is and completely unaware
I have trying acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, seems like it significantly helps with peripheral PSSD symptoms, like problems with thermoregulation dry mouth dry eyes stuff and muscle weakness as it help with urination, GI mobility yes it did not affect anhedonia or other related stuff, for now combo Pyridostigmine low dose + flurdrocotisone low dose, have very positive effects for me overall
specifically selected Pyridostigmine because it act only on periphery seems like didn't cross BBB
Did someone any reaction from spicy food, pepper red pepper, ginger, cinnamon etc.
what are effects on you any worsening or no effects or maybe rebound stuff
Did someone any reaction from spicy food, pepper red pepper, ginger, cinnamon etc.
what are effects on you any worsening or no effects or maybe rebound stuff
what happened is there any updates?
seems like effects are stable but if stimulation missing 2+ weeks effects slowly fading but another session at this point instantly snap it back, overall seems like 2+ m remission kinda good results, yes sensitivity in sexual regions still absent, but in other places it alot better, my friend got diagnosed with SFN , for now i wait when I can do SFN test as well
I had normal response before getting syndrome, now it absolutely absent, it's only me?
before I got PSSD i had normal response, after no response at all its only me?
Anyone here also have problems with balance? For example, before the getting syndrome, I could easily stand on one leg with my eyes closed. Now it’s absolutely impossible, I immediately lose my balance.
Does anyone have this problem?
Anyone here also have problems with balance? For example, before the PSSD, I could easily stand on one leg with my eyes closed. Now it’s absolutely impossible, I immediately lose my balance.
I just noticed that some component is missing in this sensation. This happens, for example, if someone sat on a leg too long or somehow cut off the blood supply. Because of this, I feel it less. I constantly "sit-off" a part of the body and I understand this only later and not right away. It’s like before there was a burning sensation here, but now it’s completely absent as a component. in this "pins and needles" sensations
I just noticed that some component is missing in this sensation. This happens, for example, if someone sat on a leg too long or somehow cut off the blood supply. Because of this, I feel it less. I constantly "sit-off" a part of the body and I understand this only later and not right away. It’s like before there was a burning sensation here, but now it’s completely absent as a component. in this "pins and needles" sensations
My muttering/reasoning, or how I assumed that TMS might work before I tried the TMS protocol.
there's already a mountain of theories about this. Epigenetics, hormones, mitochondria, gut, serotonin. Many explains something and sometimes a lot , but I keep bumping into the same thing: almost none of them really deal with the genital numbness stuff in a way that makes sense to me. Like, that symptom is right there, very specific, very weird. People tend to focus on the cognitive stuff because that ruins your life the most, I get it.
But any explanation that glosses over why the most nerve-dense part of the body goes completely silent... and in very precise and specific way I don't know, feels like something's missing.
So I started poking around the peripheral nervous system instead. Just weird sensory stuff most people wouldn't notice. I tried using different chemical probes on numb areas - things that hit specific nerve fibers through specific receptors.
What I found was... strange , I guess. Most things worked fine. But there was this some kind of pattern that kept showing up: it seems like there problems with TRPV1 (capsaicin) C-fibers and, to a lesser extent, TRPM8 (menthol) on Aδ fibers.
The C-fibers seemed messed up in a strange way - delayed responses, weird remapping, delays get worse the farther you go from the spine. in contrast to the menthol response, though? almost every time still there. Not always, but often enough to make me wonder.
And here's the thing I started thinking about: C-fibers aren't just pain. They do affective touch - the kind that actually feels good, the "emotional touch" thing. They're huge for body perception, for feeling like you're actually located inside your own skin.
So thinking about it was:
What if some trigger (SSRI, finasteride, whatever) damages these specific fibers. Not all fibers, just these. For some reason. And maybe the damage is also length-dependent, so the longest ones (genitals, feet, hands) get hit hardest. I tried to check this by doing capsaicin tests over my whole body:
face, hands, legs and saw different delays everywhere. Could be a fluke, but it kept repeating.
I asked a few other people to try the test. Most didn't bother. Ended up with maybe 2-4 people's data, so take that for what it's worth. But it seemed to fit the same rough pattern.
I honestly can't tell you why these specific fibers would be targeted. metabolic? specific anatomy? etc..
No idea. But I've been trying to think through what would happen if a person lost a big chunk of their C-fiber input and how that might affect cognition, sensation, autonomic function, hormones. Just as a small thought experiment.
So here's a rough Q&A-ish list of what I suspect might be going on.
Genital numbness? Longest C-fibers in the body, most vulnerable so they got hit first also this type of fibers small and mostly unmyelinated type and also quite long in some places.
Also, erogenous zones are dominant precisely along the C fibers, so when a damage goes along those C-fibers, there aren't many other nerve endings there from the very beginning, as a result, numbness in these zones will be the most noticeable. - also this happened in nipples as well
Delayed capsaicin burning? Possibly axonal component or failure to hit pain-threshold due loss of this fibers;
Menthol still works? Different fiber type (Aδ). Maybe less metabolic demand or a different transport system. Not always spared but often enough.
Touch that stopped feeling good? Those are CT afferents, a subtype of C-fibers. If they're damaged, a hug might feel like just pressure. No warmth to it eg especially this pleasantness gone.
Anhedonia, emotional flatness? C-fibers project to insula and cingulate - key areas for emotion and body awareness. No input, maybe those areas go into some kind of sleep mode due loss of stimulation or some kind of maladaptive change to try find loss signal, causing downstream shutdown from sensory area to deeper areas of this brain structures and psychological stuff essentially such a loss - like sensory deprivation ppl go absolutely insane - because of this kind of stuff
Dizzy when standing? Baroreceptor C-fibers from blood vessels might not be signaling. Brain doesn't know pressure dropped. No reflex. You feel fading out.
Heat intolerance? Thermoregulatory C-fibers possibly broken. Hypothalamus fire blind. You overheat before you even notice. so sweating reflexes are fail as well, Especially this fibers main regulatory fibers for body temperature response
Crash after eating? Visceral C-fibers from gut might not be telling brain "digesting, send blood here." So you get dysautonomia and collapse. often you can drop into reactive hypoglycemia due of loss of correction from cortisol reise brain don't get that glucose falling until it's too late and then you get adrenaline spike and crush after feeling even worse
High renin, normal/low aldosterone? That pattern looks a bit like spinal cord injury. Maybe central autonomic disconnect from missing peripheral input. aldosterone was there but it don't get relished properly at needed time
again brain don't hear body or react with extreme delay or if stimulus is strong enough to hit this threshold
Tremor, weakness? Motor cortex needs sensory feedback to work cleanly. Without C-fiber input, output might get noisy and sloppy think about it like micro-correction that make movement smooth instead of jittery.
Also brain need to know when you start to move muscles to adjust blood flow as well as metabolism etc also this must wake up motor areas of the brain from sleep state but if there no signal this don't happening
Brain fog? Somatosensory cortex and insula are arousal hubs. If they're asleep due loss of peripheral stimulation,that can slow everything down eg you don't get this signal what to focus for or what body experience on this moment.
So that's the rough idea. It's just a model that seems to fit a lot of what I've seen in myself and a couple of others. The rTMS helping would make sense if the cortex is in lockdown/sleep mode - you bypass the broken input, force the gate open. Even if the fibers themselves aren't fixed yet. at least it starts to hear those last one a little better after that
I don't know the exact mechanism. Why C-fibers specifically? got such a hit. And some people with PSSD seem to have almost normal capsaicin response but still bad genitals maybe because genital fibers are so long they fail even when trunk fibers hold up. Or maybe I'm just wrong about parts of it.
But for now the pattern keeps showing up. My friend has it. The neurologist saw it. Could be coincidence. Could be something else entirely.
I'm not saying this is the answer. Just saying it's worth looking at. And nobody seems to be looking because it doesn't fit the brain-first story everyone's used to.
That's all. A guess.
This protocol really worked for me and a friend of mine with PSSD; perhaps others here can provide feedback if you manage to try it.
if there is a who have anhedonia or a loss of emotions
My muttering/reasoning, or how I assumed that TMS might work before I tried the TMS protocol.
there's already a mountain of theories about this. Epigenetics, hormones, mitochondria, gut, serotonin. Many explains something and sometimes a lot , but I keep bumping into the same thing: almost none of them really deal with the genital numbness stuff in a way that makes sense to me. Like, that symptom is right there, very specific, very weird. People tend to focus on the cognitive stuff because that ruins your life the most, I get it.
But any explanation that glosses over why the most nerve-dense part of the body goes completely silent... and in very precise and specific way I don't know, feels like something's missing.
So I started poking around the peripheral nervous system instead. Just weird sensory stuff most people wouldn't notice. I tried using different chemical probes on numb areas - things that hit specific nerve fibers through specific receptors.
What I found was... strange , I guess. Most things worked fine. But there was this some kind of pattern that kept showing up: it seems like there problems with TRPV1 (capsaicin) C-fibers and, to a lesser extent, TRPM8 (menthol) on Aδ fibers.
The C-fibers seemed messed up in a strange way - delayed responses, weird remapping, delays get worse the farther you go from the spine. in contrast to the menthol response, though? almost every time still there. Not always, but often enough to make me wonder.
And here's the thing I started thinking about: C-fibers aren't just pain. They do affective touch - the kind that actually feels good, the "emotional touch" thing. They're huge for body perception, for feeling like you're actually located inside your own skin.
So thinking about it was:
What if some trigger (SSRI, finasteride, whatever) damages these specific fibers. Not all fibers, just these. For some reason. And maybe the damage is also length-dependent, so the longest ones (genitals, feet, hands) get hit hardest. I tried to check this by doing capsaicin tests over my whole body:
face, hands, legs and saw different delays everywhere. Could be a fluke, but it kept repeating.
I asked a few other people to try the test. Most didn't bother. Ended up with maybe 2-4 people's data, so take that for what it's worth. But it seemed to fit the same rough pattern.
I honestly can't tell you why these specific fibers would be targeted. metabolic? specific anatomy? etc..
No idea. But I've been trying to think through what would happen if a person lost a big chunk of their C-fiber input and how that might affect cognition, sensation, autonomic function, hormones. Just as a small thought experiment.
So here's a rough Q&A-ish list of what I suspect might be going on.
Genital numbness? Longest C-fibers in the body, most vulnerable so they got hit first also this type of fibers small and mostly unmyelinated type and also quite long in some places.
Also, erogenous zones are dominant precisely along the C fibers, so when a damage goes along those C-fibers, there aren't many other nerve endings there from the very beginning, as a result, numbness in these zones will be the most noticeable. - also this happened in nipples as well
Delayed capsaicin burning? Possibly axonal component or failure to hit pain-threshold due loss of this fibers;
Menthol still works? Different fiber type (Aδ). Maybe less metabolic demand or a different transport system. Not always spared but often enough.
Touch that stopped feeling good? Those are CT afferents, a subtype of C-fibers. If they're damaged, a hug might feel like just pressure. No warmth to it eg especially this pleasantness gone.
Anhedonia, emotional flatness? C-fibers project to insula and cingulate - key areas for emotion and body awareness. No input, maybe those areas go into some kind of sleep mode due loss of stimulation or some kind of maladaptive change to try find loss signal, causing downstream shutdown from sensory area to deeper areas of this brain structures and psychological stuff essentially such a loss - like sensory deprivation ppl go absolutely insane - because of this kind of stuff
Dizzy when standing? Baroreceptor C-fibers from blood vessels might not be signaling. Brain doesn't know pressure dropped. No reflex. You feel fading out.
Heat intolerance? Thermoregulatory C-fibers possibly broken. Hypothalamus fire blind. You overheat before you even notice. so sweating reflexes are fail as well, Especially this fibers main regulatory fibers for body temperature response
Crash after eating? Visceral C-fibers from gut might not be telling brain "digesting, send blood here." So you get dysautonomia and collapse. often you can drop into reactive hypoglycemia due of loss of correction from cortisol reise brain don't get that glucose falling until it's too late and then you get adrenaline spike and crush after feeling even worse
High renin, normal/low aldosterone? That pattern looks a bit like spinal cord injury. Maybe central autonomic disconnect from missing peripheral input. aldosterone was there but it don't get relished properly at needed time
again brain don't hear body or react with extreme delay or if stimulus is strong enough to hit this threshold
Tremor, weakness? Motor cortex needs sensory feedback to work cleanly. Without C-fiber input, output might get noisy and sloppy think about it like micro-correction that make movement smooth instead of jittery.
Also brain need to know when you start to move muscles to adjust blood flow as well as metabolism etc also this must wake up motor areas of the brain from sleep state but if there no signal this don't happening
Brain fog? Somatosensory cortex and insula are arousal hubs. If they're asleep due loss of peripheral stimulation,that can slow everything down eg you don't get this signal what to focus for or what body experience on this moment.
Altered drug response or extreme paradoxical reactions?
In short most psychoactive drugs don't create feelings out of thin air. They tweak signals that are already there. They turn knobs on systems that are already humming. If the input from the body is mostly silent - because C-fibers are dont give any perception if there's nothing too tweak. The drug is just spinning dials on a dead radio. amplifying silence or noise as well as causing paradoxical reaction after that it most likely make autonomic dysfunction worse due its effect on peripheral - and loss of this brain body correction and response on it
then again dramatic shifts sometimes giving paradoxical window after drug effect ended as most clear example seen in SSRI's in case of PSSD - eg stopping then starting drug again very often causes
short window on start and short window on stop
This doesn’t explain windows?
Yes seem like it actually does, as such example strong inflammatory response, sleep deprivation, or something can irritate these endings, or, as in the case of an illness, the somatosensory cortex is activated much more strongly, so to speak, to cause a rise in temperature etc. Also, any sufficient stressor metabolic/physical can cause window. I noticed that when i got blood for analysis, my symptoms suddenly improve for a very short period of time. just fact get injected by needle, actually there funny post related to this
https://www.reddit.com/r/PSSD/comments/1na2vno/got_stung_by_honeybees_and_got_strong_morning_wood/
So any strong stress on body, significant hormonal changes, includes this as well as fasting etc.
essentially poking somatosensory cortex via rTMS directly do this more precise it wake it up for some time
but this does not affect the anomalies and delays in the periphery, nor does it affect the anesthesia of the genitals or the place where sensitivity is lost, in other places it gets better overall more sensitive
So that's the rough idea. It's just a model that seems to fit a lot of what I've seen in myself and a couple of others. The rTMS helping would make sense if the cortex is in lockdown/sleep mode - you bypass the broken input, force the gate open. Even if the fibers themselves aren't fixed yet. at least it starts to hear those last one a little better after that
I don't know the exact mechanism. Why C-fibers specifically? got such a hit. And some people with PSSD seem to have almost normal capsaicin response but still bad genitals maybe because genital fibers are so long they fail even when trunk fibers hold up. Or maybe I'm just wrong about parts of it.
But for now the pattern keeps showing up. My friend has it. The neurologist saw it. Could be coincidence. Could be something else entirely.
I'm not saying this is the answer. Just saying it's worth looking at. And nobody seems to be looking because it doesn't fit the brain-first story everyone's used to.
That's all. A guess.
As reference
My muttering/reasoning, or how I assumed that TMS might work before I tried the TMS protocol.
there's already a mountain of theories about this. Epigenetics, hormones, mitochondria, gut, serotonin. Many explains something and sometimes a lot , but I keep bumping into the same thing: almost none of them really deal with the genital numbness stuff in a way that makes sense to me. Like, that symptom is right there, very specific, very weird. People tend to focus on the cognitive stuff because that ruins your life the most, I get it.
But any explanation that glosses over why the most nerve-dense part of the body goes completely silent... and in very precise and specific way I don't know, feels like something's missing.
So I started poking around the peripheral nervous system instead. Just weird sensory stuff most people wouldn't notice. I tried using different chemical probes on numb areas - things that hit specific nerve fibers through specific receptors.
What I found was... strange , I guess. Most things worked fine. But there was this some kind of pattern that kept showing up: it seems like there problems with TRPV1 (capsaicin) C-fibers and, to a lesser extent, TRPM8 (menthol) on Aδ fibers.
The C-fibers seemed messed up in a strange way - delayed responses, weird remapping, delays get worse the farther you go from the spine. in contrast to the menthol response, though? almost every time still there. Not always, but often enough to make me wonder.
And here's the thing I started thinking about: C-fibers aren't just pain. They do affective touch - the kind that actually feels good, the "emotional touch" thing. They're huge for body perception, for feeling like you're actually located inside your own skin.
So thinking about it was:
What if some trigger (SSRI, finasteride, whatever) damages these specific fibers. Not all fibers, just these. For some reason. And maybe the damage is also length-dependent, so the longest ones (genitals, feet, hands) get hit hardest. I tried to check this by doing capsaicin tests over my whole body:
face, hands, legs and saw different delays everywhere. Could be a fluke, but it kept repeating.
I asked a few other people to try the test. Most didn't bother. Ended up with maybe 2-4 people's data, so take that for what it's worth. But it seemed to fit the same rough pattern.
I honestly can't tell you why these specific fibers would be targeted. metabolic? specific anatomy? etc..
No idea. But I've been trying to think through what would happen if a person lost a big chunk of their C-fiber input and how that might affect cognition, sensation, autonomic function, hormones. Just as a small thought experiment.
So here's a rough Q&A-ish list of what I suspect might be going on.
Genital numbness? Longest C-fibers in the body, most vulnerable so they got hit first also this type of fibers small and mostly unmyelinated type and also quite long in some places.
Also, erogenous zones are dominant precisely along the C fibers, so when a damage goes along those C-fibers, there aren't many other nerve endings there from the very beginning, as a result, numbness in these zones will be the most noticeable. - also this happened in nipples as well
Delayed capsaicin burning? Possibly axonal component or failure to hit pain-threshold due loss of this fibers;
Menthol still works? Different fiber type (Aδ). Maybe less metabolic demand or a different transport system. Not always spared but often enough.
Touch that stopped feeling good? Those are CT afferents, a subtype of C-fibers. If they're damaged, a hug might feel like just pressure. No warmth to it eg especially this pleasantness gone.
Anhedonia, emotional flatness? C-fibers project to insula and cingulate - key areas for emotion and body awareness. No input, maybe those areas go into some kind of sleep mode due loss of stimulation or some kind of maladaptive change to try find loss signal, causing downstream shutdown from sensory area to deeper areas of this brain structures and psychological stuff essentially such a loss - like sensory deprivation ppl go absolutely insane - because of this kind of stuff
Dizzy when standing? Baroreceptor C-fibers from blood vessels might not be signaling. Brain doesn't know pressure dropped. No reflex. You feel fading out.
Heat intolerance? Thermoregulatory C-fibers possibly broken. Hypothalamus fire blind. You overheat before you even notice. so sweating reflexes are fail as well, Especially this fibers main regulatory fibers for body temperature response
Crash after eating? Visceral C-fibers from gut might not be telling brain "digesting, send blood here." So you get dysautonomia and collapse. often you can drop into reactive hypoglycemia due of loss of correction from cortisol reise brain don't get that glucose falling until it's too late and then you get adrenaline spike and crush after feeling even worse
High renin, normal/low aldosterone? That pattern looks a bit like spinal cord injury. Maybe central autonomic disconnect from missing peripheral input. aldosterone was there but it don't get relished properly at needed time
again brain don't hear body or react with extreme delay or if stimulus is strong enough to hit this threshold
Tremor, weakness? Motor cortex needs sensory feedback to work cleanly. Without C-fiber input, output might get noisy and sloppy think about it like micro-correction that make movement smooth instead of jittery.
Also brain need to know when you start to move muscles to adjust blood flow as well as metabolism etc also this must wake up motor areas of the brain from sleep state but if there no signal this don't happening
Brain fog? Somatosensory cortex and insula are arousal hubs. If they're asleep due loss of peripheral stimulation,that can slow everything down eg you don't get this signal what to focus for or what body experience on this moment.
Altered drug response or extreme paradoxical reactions?
In short most psychoactive drugs don't create feelings out of thin air. They tweak signals that are already there. They turn knobs on systems that are already humming. If the input from the body is mostly silent - because C-fibers are dont give any perception if there's nothing too tweak. The drug is just spinning dials on a dead radio. amplifying silence or noise as well as causing paradoxical reaction after that it most likely make autonomic dysfunction worse due its effect on peripheral - and loss of this brain body correction and response on it
then again dramatic shifts sometimes giving paradoxical window after drug effect ended as most clear example seen in SSRI's in case of PSSD - eg stopping then starting drug again very often causes
short window on start and short window on stop
This doesn’t explain windows?
Yes seem like it actually does, as such example strong inflammatory response, sleep deprivation, or something can irritate these endings, or, as in the case of an illness, the somatosensory cortex is activated much more strongly, so to speak, to cause a rise in temperature etc. Also, any sufficient stressor metabolic/physical can cause window. I noticed that when i got blood for analysis, my symptoms suddenly improve for a very short period of time. just fact get injected by needle, actually there funny post related to this
https://www.reddit.com/r/PSSD/comments/1na2vno/got_stung_by_honeybees_and_got_strong_morning_wood/
So any strong stress on body, significant hormonal changes, includes this as well as fasting etc.
essentially poking somatosensory cortex via rTMS directly do this more precise it wake it up for some time
but this does not affect the anomalies and delays in the periphery, nor does it affect the anesthesia of the genitals or the place where sensitivity is lost, in other places it gets better overall more sensitive
So that's the rough idea. It's just a model that seems to fit a lot of what I've seen in myself and a couple of others. The rTMS helping would make sense if the cortex is in lockdown/sleep mode - you bypass the broken input, force the gate open. Even if the fibers themselves aren't fixed yet. at least it starts to hear those last one a little better after that
I don't know the exact mechanism. Why C-fibers specifically? got such a hit. And some people with PSSD seem to have almost normal capsaicin response but still bad genitals maybe because genital fibers are so long they fail even when trunk fibers hold up. Or maybe I'm just wrong about parts of it.
But for now the pattern keeps showing up. My friend has it. The neurologist saw it. Could be coincidence. Could be something else entirely.
I'm not saying this is the answer. Just saying it's worth looking at. And nobody seems to be looking because it doesn't fit the brain-first story everyone's used to.
That's all. A guess.
as reference
My muttering/reasoning, or how I assumed that TMS might work before I tried the TMS protocol.
there's already a mountain of theories about this. Epigenetics, hormones, mitochondria, gut, serotonin. Many explains something and sometimes a lot , but I keep bumping into the same thing: almost none of them really deal with the genital numbness stuff in a way that makes sense to me. Like, that symptom is right there, very specific, very weird. People tend to focus on the cognitive stuff because that ruins your life the most, I get it.
But any explanation that glosses over why the most nerve-dense part of the body goes completely silent... and in very precise and specific way I don't know, feels like something's missing.
So I started poking around the peripheral nervous system instead. Just weird sensory stuff most people wouldn't notice. I tried using different chemical probes on numb areas - things that hit specific nerve fibers through specific receptors.
What I found was... strange , I guess. Most things worked fine. But there was this some kind of pattern that kept showing up: it seems like there problems with TRPV1 (capsaicin) C-fibers and, to a lesser extent, TRPM8 (menthol) on Aδ fibers.
The C-fibers seemed messed up in a strange way - delayed responses, weird remapping, delays get worse the farther you go from the spine. in contrast to the menthol response, though? almost every time still there. Not always, but often enough to make me wonder.
And here's the thing I started thinking about: C-fibers aren't just pain. They do affective touch - the kind that actually feels good, the "emotional touch" thing. They're huge for body perception, for feeling like you're actually located inside your own skin.
So thinking about it was:
What if some trigger (SSRI, finasteride, whatever) damages these specific fibers. Not all fibers, just these. For some reason. And maybe the damage is also length-dependent, so the longest ones (genitals, feet, hands) get hit hardest. I tried to check this by doing capsaicin tests over my whole body:
face, hands, legs and saw different delays everywhere. Could be a fluke, but it kept repeating.
I asked a few other people to try the test. Most didn't bother. Ended up with maybe 2-4 people's data, so take that for what it's worth. But it seemed to fit the same rough pattern.
I honestly can't tell you why these specific fibers would be targeted. metabolic? specific anatomy? etc..
No idea. But I've been trying to think through what would happen if a person lost a big chunk of their C-fiber input and how that might affect cognition, sensation, autonomic function, hormones. Just as a small thought experiment.
So here's a rough Q&A-ish list of what I suspect might be going on.
Genital numbness? Longest C-fibers in the body, most vulnerable so they got hit first also this type of fibers small and mostly unmyelinated type and also quite long in some places.
Also, erogenous zones are dominant precisely along the C fibers, so when a damage goes along those C-fibers, there aren't many other nerve endings there from the very beginning, as a result, numbness in these zones will be the most noticeable. - also this happened in nipples as well
Delayed capsaicin burning? Possibly axonal component or failure to hit pain-threshold due loss of this fibers;
Menthol still works? Different fiber type (Aδ). Maybe less metabolic demand or a different transport system. Not always spared but often enough.
Touch that stopped feeling good? Those are CT afferents, a subtype of C-fibers. If they're damaged, a hug might feel like just pressure. No warmth to it eg especially this pleasantness gone.
Anhedonia, emotional flatness? C-fibers project to insula and cingulate - key areas for emotion and body awareness. No input, maybe those areas go into some kind of sleep mode due loss of stimulation or some kind of maladaptive change to try find loss signal, causing downstream shutdown from sensory area to deeper areas of this brain structures and psychological stuff essentially such a loss - like sensory deprivation ppl go absolutely insane - because of this kind of stuff
Dizzy when standing? Baroreceptor C-fibers from blood vessels might not be signaling. Brain doesn't know pressure dropped. No reflex. You feel fading out.
Heat intolerance? Thermoregulatory C-fibers possibly broken. Hypothalamus fire blind. You overheat before you even notice. so sweating reflexes are fail as well, Especially this fibers main regulatory fibers for body temperature response
Crash after eating? Visceral C-fibers from gut might not be telling brain "digesting, send blood here." So you get dysautonomia and collapse. often you can drop into reactive hypoglycemia due of loss of correction from cortisol reise brain don't get that glucose falling until it's too late and then you get adrenaline spike and crush after feeling even worse
High renin, normal/low aldosterone? That pattern looks a bit like spinal cord injury. Maybe central autonomic disconnect from missing peripheral input. aldosterone was there but it don't get relished properly at needed time
again brain don't hear body or react with extreme delay or if stimulus is strong enough to hit this threshold
Tremor, weakness? Motor cortex needs sensory feedback to work cleanly. Without C-fiber input, output might get noisy and sloppy think about it like micro-correction that make movement smooth instead of jittery.
Also brain need to know when you start to move muscles to adjust blood flow as well as metabolism etc also this must wake up motor areas of the brain from sleep state but if there no signal this don't happening
Brain fog? Somatosensory cortex and insula are arousal hubs. If they're asleep due loss of peripheral stimulation,that can slow everything down eg you don't get this signal what to focus for or what body experience on this moment.
So that's the rough idea. It's just a model that seems to fit a lot of what I've seen in myself and a couple of others. The rTMS helping would make sense if the cortex is in lockdown/sleep mode - you bypass the broken input, force the gate open. Even if the fibers themselves aren't fixed yet. at least it starts to hear those last one a little better after that
I don't know the exact mechanism. Why C-fibers specifically? got such a hit. And some people with PSSD seem to have almost normal capsaicin response but still bad genitals maybe because genital fibers are so long they fail even when trunk fibers hold up. Or maybe I'm just wrong about parts of it.
But for now the pattern keeps showing up. My friend has it. The neurologist saw it. Could be coincidence. Could be something else entirely.
I'm not saying this is the answer. Just saying it's worth looking at. And nobody seems to be looking because it doesn't fit the brain-first story everyone's used to.
That's all. A guess.
My muttering/reasoning, or how I assumed that TMS might work before I tried the TMS protocol.
there's already a mountain of theories about this. Epigenetics, hormones, mitochondria, gut, serotonin. Many explains something and sometimes a lot , but I keep bumping into the same thing: almost none of them really deal with the genital numbness stuff in a way that makes sense to me. Like, that symptom is right there, very specific, very weird. People tend to focus on the cognitive stuff because that ruins your life the most, I get it.
But any explanation that glosses over why the most nerve-dense part of the body goes completely silent... and in very precise and specific way I don't know, feels like something's missing.
So I started poking around the peripheral nervous system instead. Just weird sensory stuff most people wouldn't notice. I tried using different chemical probes on numb areas - things that hit specific nerve fibers through specific receptors.
What I found was... strange , I guess. Most things worked fine. But there was this some kind of pattern that kept showing up: it seems like there problems with TRPV1 (capsaicin) C-fibers and, to a lesser extent, TRPM8 (menthol) on Aδ fibers.
The C-fibers seemed messed up in a strange way - delayed responses, weird remapping, delays get worse the farther you go from the spine. in contrast to the menthol response, though? almost every time still there. Not always, but often enough to make me wonder.
And here's the thing I started thinking about: C-fibers aren't just pain. They do affective touch - the kind that actually feels good, the "emotional touch" thing. They're huge for body perception, for feeling like you're actually located inside your own skin.
So thinking about it was:
What if some trigger (SSRI, finasteride, whatever) damages these specific fibers. Not all fibers, just these. For some reason. And maybe the damage is also length-dependent, so the longest ones (genitals, feet, hands) get hit hardest. I tried to check this by doing capsaicin tests over my whole body:
face, hands, legs and saw different delays everywhere. Could be a fluke, but it kept repeating.
I asked a few other people to try the test. Most didn't bother. Ended up with maybe 2-4 people's data, so take that for what it's worth. But it seemed to fit the same rough pattern.
I honestly can't tell you why these specific fibers would be targeted. metabolic? specific anatomy? etc..
No idea. But I've been trying to think through what would happen if a person lost a big chunk of their C-fiber input and how that might affect cognition, sensation, autonomic function, hormones. Just as a small thought experiment.
So here's a rough Q&A-ish list of what I suspect might be going on.
Genital numbness? Longest C-fibers in the body, most vulnerable so they got hit first also this type of fibers small and mostly unmyelinated type and also quite long in some places.
Also, erogenous zones are dominant precisely along the C fibers, so when a damage goes along those C-fibers, there aren't many other nerve endings there from the very beginning, as a result, numbness in these zones will be the most noticeable. - also this happened in nipples as well
Delayed capsaicin burning? Possibly axonal component or failure to hit pain-threshold due loss of this fibers;
Menthol still works? Different fiber type (Aδ). Maybe less metabolic demand or a different transport system. Not always spared but often enough.
Touch that stopped feeling good? Those are CT afferents, a subtype of C-fibers. If they're damaged, a hug might feel like just pressure. No warmth to it eg especially this pleasantness gone.
Anhedonia, emotional flatness? C-fibers project to insula and cingulate - key areas for emotion and body awareness. No input, maybe those areas go into some kind of sleep mode due loss of stimulation or some kind of maladaptive change to try find loss signal, causing downstream shutdown from sensory area to deeper areas of this brain structures and psychological stuff essentially such a loss - like sensory deprivation ppl go absolutely insane - because of this kind of stuff
Dizzy when standing? Baroreceptor C-fibers from blood vessels might not be signaling. Brain doesn't know pressure dropped. No reflex. You feel fading out.
Heat intolerance? Thermoregulatory C-fibers possibly broken. Hypothalamus fire blind. You overheat before you even notice. so sweating reflexes are fail as well, Especially this fibers main regulatory fibers for body temperature response
Crash after eating? Visceral C-fibers from gut might not be telling brain "digesting, send blood here." So you get dysautonomia and collapse. often you can drop into reactive hypoglycemia due of loss of correction from cortisol reise brain don't get that glucose falling until it's too late and then you get adrenaline spike and crush after feeling even worse
High renin, normal/low aldosterone? That pattern looks a bit like spinal cord injury. Maybe central autonomic disconnect from missing peripheral input. aldosterone was there but it don't get relished properly at needed time
again brain don't hear body or react with extreme delay or if stimulus is strong enough to hit this threshold
Tremor, weakness? Motor cortex needs sensory feedback to work cleanly. Without C-fiber input, output might get noisy and sloppy think about it like micro-correction that make movement smooth instead of jittery.
Also brain need to know when you start to move muscles to adjust blood flow as well as metabolism etc also this must wake up motor areas of the brain from sleep state but if there no signal this don't happening
Brain fog? Somatosensory cortex and insula are arousal hubs. If they're asleep due loss of peripheral stimulation,that can slow everything down eg you don't get this signal what to focus for or what body experience on this moment.
So that's the rough idea. It's just a model that seems to fit a lot of what I've seen in myself and a couple of others. The rTMS helping would make sense if the cortex is in lockdown/sleep mode - you bypass the broken input, force the gate open. Even if the fibers themselves aren't fixed yet. at least it starts to hear those last one a little better after that
I don't know the exact mechanism. Why C-fibers specifically? got such a hit. And some people with PSSD seem to have almost normal capsaicin response but still bad genitals maybe because genital fibers are so long they fail even when trunk fibers hold up. Or maybe I'm just wrong about parts of it.
But for now the pattern keeps showing up. My friend has it. The neurologist saw it. Could be coincidence. Could be something else entirely.
I'm not saying this is the answer. Just saying it's worth looking at. And nobody seems to be looking because it doesn't fit the brain-first story everyone's used to.
That's all. A guess.
As reference
at this point seems like effects are stable, but what interesting anorgasmia got worse despite everything is significantly better, maybe because at this point whole body sensory response make this specific the most affected signal more weak so brain didn't get proper que from there, despite better libido, and this makes sense because delayed or altered capsaicin response stay the same, if we try target by homogeneous map specific areas responsible for genitalia sensory input i get libido spike, overall 90% symptoms still managed for me and my friend, as well as drug response and anhedonia...
don't know what to do at this point i think only kinda possible stuff in this case is stem cell therapy or somethin, for me this extreme somatosensory failure leading to maladaptive brain change due it try to correct lost or significantly distorted signal from peripheral nervous system
