Hi everyone,

I’m a Clinical Assistant to Dr. Ivan Lee, a clinical immunologist at Boston Specialists with a particular focus on Post-Orgasmic Illness Syndrome (POIS).

Dr. Lee’s clinic has been seeing a growing number of patients with POIS, and we’re working to better understand this condition through both clinical care and research. We’re developing more standardized approaches to evaluating patients, tracking symptoms and treatment outcomes, and hope to contribute to future research and publications on POIS.

We know that POIS is still poorly understood, and we’re interested in learning from the experiences of people in this community. We’d especially love to hear about your symptoms, experiences with diagnosis or treatment, what has or hasn’t worked for you, and any questions you think researchers and clinicians should be looking into.

Dr. Lee is currently seeing POIS patients through both telehealth and in-person visits.

You can learn more about the clinic and Dr. Lee’s work here:

POIS: https://www.bostonspecialists.org/pois
About Dr. Lee: https://www.bostonspecialists.org/about-1

We’d be happy to hear from anyone interested in sharing their experience or learning more about our work with POIS.

Thanks!

M19 55kg 170cm

Looking for advice — POIS symptoms and treatment
Hi everyone, I believe I have POIS and I’m trying to figure out what I can do to manage the symptoms.
After ejaculation, I regularly experience:
left-sided abdominal/flank pain, sometimes under the left ribs
severe bloating and gas
nausea and loss of appetite
headaches
anxiety and mood changes
heavy sweating
fatigue
The symptoms can start the next day, and sometimes even 2–4 days after ejaculation. When I don’t ejaculate, I feel completely normal.
For those of you who have been diagnosed with POIS:
What treatment or strategies have actually helped reduce your symptoms? What do you do when an episode starts? And what type of doctor did you see (urologist, allergist/immunologist, gastroenterologist, etc.)?
I’d really appreciate hearing about your experiences, especially if you had digestive symptoms and left-sided abdominal pain like me.

Guys I suffer from POIS since my first orgasm. It happened when I was 13. I was very active kid before that and I remember the moment when I ejaculated for the first time. I felt very relaxed and after that my friends called me to play football I was the best player in our city, but I had no motivation to go outside even. Something weird happened with me and the next day I felt that I lost control of my body I was very tough guy but now felt like I am pussy. Anyway I forced myself to go outside and play football but I had brain fog and lost control of the body and every guy felt like professional footballer and I became noob. That was hard to my ego and since that moment I quit the football and lost all my friends. I am 19 now and I miss that time. I still suffer from POIS. The only way I can control it is semen retention, but wet dreams happens spontaneously and symptoms come back. I really lose hope once that happens. Now I study in university and when wet dreams happen I lose motivation to attend classes at the university, because of brain fog I am starting to doubt and almost always decide to stay at home and then miss a lot of classes and have to work really hard. My symptoms last about 3 days (the hardest day for some reason is the next day after ejaculation) among them are:

• brain fog (that thing annoys me the most, cause I can't focus on math and coding)
• emotional instability
• losing control of the body(it becomes non-plastic and lazy)

How did you cure POIS or at least reduce its impact on your life?

Hi everyone. I'm trying to figure out whether what I've been experiencing for almost 8 years could be POIS, and I would really appreciate hearing from people with similar experiences.

I've had a persistent group of symptoms for nearly 8 years. I'm not sure whether this represents one prolonged condition, or whether my symptoms are repeatedly being triggered/restarted because I masturbate relatively frequently.

At one point, I stopped masturbating/ejaculating for about two months, but I still didn't feel completely recovered. This makes me unsure whether I'm experiencing continuous symptoms or repeated POIS episodes that never fully resolve.

My symptoms include:

• Blurred vision
• Dizziness
• Muscle tension and muscle weakness/fatigue
• Tachycardia / rapid heartbeat
• Palpitations
• Emotional disturbances / emotional instability
• Anxiety and restlessness
• Difficulty concentrating
• Decline in memory
• Cognitive dysfunction / brain fog
• Feeling like my thinking ability has suddenly become much worse
• Throat discomfort
• Irritability
• Bloating / intestinal gas

The cognitive symptoms are probably the most noticeable to me.

Normally, I feel that my thinking is flexible and clear, and I can process things quickly. During these episodes, it feels like my brain suddenly becomes dull or “blocked.” It's difficult to describe, but it almost feels like my intelligence has temporarily decreased. I'm not simply sleepy — it feels like my overall cognitive and emotional flexibility is impaired.

A recent observation about rice

Recently, I noticed something that made me wonder whether diet might be affecting my symptoms.

I ate a relatively large amount of rice for three consecutive days.

On the third day, shortly after eating rice, I suddenly noticed that my brain felt “off” again — the same kind of cognitive dullness/brain fog described above.

That night, I ejaculated.

The next morning, my symptoms became much more pronounced and felt like a typical POIS flare.

So the timeline was:

Several days of eating a lot of rice → cognitive symptoms appear → ejaculation that night → significantly worse symptoms the next day.

I've had a similar experience in the past where I ate a lot of rice for several consecutive days and subsequently developed symptoms that felt like POIS.

I don't know whether rice is actually responsible. It could be coincidence, or perhaps the diet is somehow lowering my threshold for symptoms rather than directly causing POIS.

I'm currently considering avoiding rice for a few weeks and tracking my symptoms.

My main questions

1. Has anyone here experienced long-term or almost continuous POIS-like symptoms?
2. Has anyone continued to have symptoms even after weeks or months without ejaculation?
3. Could frequent ejaculation potentially cause repeated episodes that make it feel like the symptoms are continuous?
4. Has anyone noticed specific foods, especially rice or grains/carbohydrates, making their POIS symptoms worse?
5. Does anyone experience the kind of severe cognitive dullness / feeling mentally “blocked” that I'm describing?

I'm not claiming that I definitely have POIS or that rice is the cause. I'm mainly trying to understand whether anyone has experienced a similar pattern and what helped them identify their triggers.

I’ve been suffering for 10 years now

I don’t know you guys but

After ejaculation, immediate food with calcium 600 mg (calcium carbonate 1500 mg) + Vitamin d 0.2 mg (200 iu) works for me.

(“Immediate”food and supplement is crucial)
By immediate, I mean 5 min max just right after ejaculation.

You are gonna get symptoms for like just an hour and then almost no symptoms for brain, anxiety and muscle weaknesses etc.

And if I was having a pois syndrome from ejaculating yesterday or maybe days before, I can just take one supplement with meal and it will get better within 1-2 hours.

But if you took the supplements in the morning and the symptoms start acting up a little bit in the afternoon because you ejaculated too much or something, take another one with full meal.
It will get you right on lane again.

(For me, I only need to take the 2nd one only for the first day after ejaculation)

ps don’t eat anything that normally breaks your stomach it is crucial because it’s the nutrients we’re talking about here we don’t want to lose any of it. And sleep at least 7 hours+

I wasn’t able to think with dialogues in my brain, weak ass voice not even enough for people to hear moody no charisma and walk with weak legs and bad posture prior to this solution.

It has worked for a month now and I keep ejaculating 3 times per week and except it’s a bit tiring for me, it’s all fine.
But keep it moderate, doing it daily is way too tiring.
If it gets too tiring even 3 times per week for you, take a cup of orange organic juice (with sugar sweet), it will definitely get better.

being a real thing. My doctor said that’s not real at all. I swear though there are times where after I do that I feel awful for days. So tired my eyes can’t stay open, muscles hurt, general malaise. A bunch of issues. Foggy brain and depression too. Other people experience this? It’s awful. I’m also on medications which make me feel bad so I’m not always sure exactly what’s happening. I honestly wish I could just go celibate. It’s not an easy thing to do. I try to keep it to once a week. When I was younger and in high school I would watch corn every day and masturbate. i was told it was fine and could help me sleep. That anything I felt bad was just my mind making me feel that way due to some subconscious feelings about it.

If you are, then please reach out because I am too. I feel like this is my only way.

I never saw it coming. I got on TRT plus HCG hoping that it would make a difference about how I feel after I ejaculate. They didn't help. Plus HCG raised my estrogen up to 85 pg/ml so I had to take an aromatase inhibitor to lower estrogen down. I tried TRT for a year btw, ejaculating still kills me for few days, brain fog, exhaustion, irritability and lack of drive to do anything.

So, once I took 0.25 mg for arimidex eod, my sleep got better and to my fucking surprise, I had both sex and masturbated and I still feel fine... It was weird. Usually I feel my skull is heavy and the need to rest, like you know that feeling of heavy eyelids and internal fatigue. It's not there. That horrendous feeling stopped. Yes, my brain still gets a hit from ejaculation mentally but not as bad as it used to be, not at all. My grip strength didn't weaken too, it's a huge difference. I aactually hate arimidex cause it makes me shed more hair but now I don't know. I don't know if I can advise someone who is not on TRT to take arimidex either, but just sharing what cured me for a while now. Been two weeks no matter how much I have sex I am quite OK.

If I have one complaint, is that my scalp hurts a little and there is medium level of shedding. Not quite happy about that as a tradeoff.

Is it legit?

I have not been active In this community for a long time, and this is going to be my final post.

I have been on Xolair, since around april or may I can’t remember, but I have been taking 450MG every two weeks.

I am about to start taking it every three weeks from now on though.

Being on Xolair has completely eliminated 99% of my symptoms.
The only symptom I have left of POIS is eye burning.

The supplements I take are Vitamin C, Tummeric, I take a multi vitamin B complex every other day, I take esomeprazole, H1 blockers H2 blockers, magnesium glycerinate, fluroster probiotic, a multi vitamin complex, 4,000 IU of vitamin D.

Go back to my original post to see more of what I suffer from.
Since I lasted posted I discovered I also have LPR reflux, and chronic vitamin deficiency, because I don’t absorb vitamins properly.

The main things that have “cured” my POIS is working on regulating my nervous system from my autism, and not trying to push to far past my sensory processing sensitivities, mainly noises but also temperature changes, and other things that I suffer from sensory processing issues from my autism.

The absolute greatest thing to help my POIS has been Xolair!!! It also helps with every other condition I suffer from, besides my ulcerative colitis.

Without taking all the vitamins I take from chronic deficiencies, and exercising along with making sure I don’t experience to much stress, I don’t think I would be as healthy and feel as good as I do though.

I think POIS is a symptom of other things going wrong in the body.
I am not technically “cured”, because this is a chronic disease we all suffer from, but everything I have been doing keeps me symptom free, besides the eye burning.

Disclaimer: consult a doctor, before taking any supplements, and this is just my personal experience we are all different.
Every vitamin I take I am being monitored for from my doctor.

I believe Xolair was the final step, because it is helping my immune system not be as over active, because I used to react to EVERYTHING, besides POIS Xolair has helped my LPR reflux, my asthma, and I am now able to eat rice and oats!! So I have almost a normal diet.

I am still not able to tolerate vegetables and fruit, I have a palatinase enzyme deffiency that I am stuck with for life.
Along with food allergies that co occur with this food issue.

I will reply to any questions anyone leaves at the end of the day, and then I am deleting reddit.

So for short introduction, I have POIS for ~ 8 years already and I have gotten some relief from ditching lactose , nuts honey, sugar and implementing intermittent fasting. This way the symptoms reduced from 7 to basically a day . I have an older post about , you can search it up.

So for a long while I though that I have no issues with gluten , because I did tests for it. I was so wrong , right now gluten free 3 months and my fatique and my POIS is basically gone. Of course if I ejaculate today for example and next day again I still have some symptoms but they subside in one day.

First thing first, if you test for it , the results will be basically worthless. It is estimated that over 70 % of the world population have some kind of intolerance to gluten. You can do it , but you will throw away your money on the window. Trust me that testing for gluten is worthless.

Even if you test negative , do NOT consider that you have no problem with gluten . Some bodies cand take on the abuse of gluten very well and other don't . That's just life, it is what it is . You can whine about it or you can do something about it. The ONLY reliable way to test for this is the old-school way :

For 1 month let go of any sort of gluten , be as strict as possible. I don't refer here just to wheat. Barley , rye and oats all have gluten, don't be fooled by marketing. Search it online and you will see all those foods have gluten. Then after 1 month , ingest gluten (bread, pasta whatever). Observe your symptoms . If you get within 1- 3 hours:

- Brain fog / mood swings

- Fatique

- Sugar cravings

- Dermatitis anywhere on the body

Then it is very likely that you have an intolerance. Now regarding POIS, you can test to see if you got symptoms while going gluten free, but the timeline may be too short.

The big problem with gluten is that it affects you villi's which are small finger - like formations on the surface on your small intestine. These villis are there to absorb as many nutrients as possible . Now gluten is a hard protein for the body to digest, if the body cannot digest it 100%, it will damage the villi's long term. And long term I mean years or decades of silent damage that is happening without you even knowing.

Now imagine if the villis are reduced by number, you cannot absorb properly what you just ate from food. Imagine maybe 50% or nutrients are lost just like that. Plus the foods today are already nutrient deficient, no wonder we all have all sorts of problems . It is just like adding oil to an engine that is leaking it , instead of fixing the leak you just add oil.

What is even worst than that is that is not just food. Anything, including medication is not properly absorbed. So whatever vitamin and/or supplements are you taking right now, your body may absorb only 10 - 20% of it.

I have a strong feeling that POIS is a nutrient deficient disease. All the functional doctors say that basically all the diseases are caused by nutrient deficiencies. Imagine you ate gluten basically your whole life, your villis reduced in number for decades , until something breaks. This break is POIS, but can be other disease. Nutrient deficiency caught up and it manifested in a way or another.

The good news is that the villis can rebuild themselves. The bad news is that it takes a long time to do so, somewhere from 6 months to even 2 years. It may took even longer if the damage is massive. Yes you heard that right, you would need to be gluten free for that amount of time so that your body to recover , it is not a fad diet. There are numerous articles and science literature that explains about this.

So a warm advice for all of you is to just test it , you have nothing to lose .

What works for me is creatine !

Previously I was using vitamin b1 and b6, but I finally found out that b6 was toxic at high doses.

So I keep trying supplements supporting energy levels in the body and creatine was the one!

For me, the root cause is mitochondrial dysfunction.

Germ cells' mitochondria.

Sperm production requires a lot of energy; I don't know why, but if you have pois your body struggles to replenish energy levels for sperm production.

The lack of energy causes free radicals signaling apoptosis and that ends up in pois symptoms: autoimmune reactions, cognitive and psychological symptoms.

The meaning of life is reproduction: if your reproductive cells fail, your life has no meaning anymore, so the body signals auto destruction and that's pois symptoms. The symptoms last until the body replenishes healthy sperm levels.

When I take creatine I found out I have a better libido and increased semen volume due to fast semen production.

My symptoms: debilitating headache, fever, anxiety, depression, skin problems.

Dosages: after ejaculation 3g of creatine per day within 3 days. ( you have to take it each time you O'd )

Creatine is what works for me; if for you it doesn't, there's still hope: keep targeting the mitochondria; mitochondria is the key!

Announcement from Demografx @ POIS Center:

Some of our forum members have expressed concern about their Travel Budget$ to-and-from our POIS Study lab in Los Angeles.

While NORD (our POIS Study sponsor) does not provide travel funding directly, it will help evaluate your needs on a case-by-case basis, and let you know if there are any outside individual(s) or organization(s) who might assist

So just reach out and contact NORD as shown in the information below!

Thank you, NORD!! 

https://preview.redd.it/tpnl3i7pp3jh1.jpg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=290071600d61c3d96c6070bb2e16b828d709a763

For more information, please email informationservices@rarediseases.org or call
(800) 469-0283.

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I visited a doctor who is an MD and has even posted videos about POIS online. To my surprise, he completely dismissed any connection between POIS and gut health. And despite me clearly telling him that I’ve had negative reactions to antidepressants in the past, he went ahead and prescribed Bupropion anyway.

It’s frustrating when you can’t even trust highly qualified specialists.

Just wrapped up the UCLA POIS study with Dr. Prause. Quick rundown:

• She's relaxed, funny, and thorough - walks you through everything clearly
• Involves: a blood draw, 4 saliva samples at different stages, a semen sample, 3 computerized tests, and sensor equipment
• After the study, she reviewed my EEG and temperature results with me, comparing them to the POIS/control groups and any other findings
• They have enough control (non-POIS) participants, but still need more POIS participants - only about 1 a week, and they need 50 total
• Reward: $150 voucher

Form: https://unlcorexmuw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_41R9xP5aZWhi5Ey

Happy to answer questions if you're on the fence.

I have done semen tests twice and both say have bad sperm motility and morphology isn't that much better. I have sex a lot prior to taking the current medicine silodosin that keeps me from ejaculating and not been able to get my finance Pregnant. So I start thinking maybe my body is attacking sperm keeping them from acting normal I read a few things on sites thinking there could be a connection, what you guys I think?

Been a heavy masturbator for quite some time but was living a normal life

From the past one year my masturbation frequency went up to 4-5 times a day and started to experience weird symptoms like severe anxiety, like i am drunk, off balance issues, de realization. Had to leave my job cz of the panic attacks. Ive never experience this before

Are these common symptoms and will abstinence ease these symptoms?

28M

I've seen people on this forum talk about having some really unique and severe cognitive symptoms from POIS, such as forgetting how to do simple things like unloading a dishwasher, using their phone, etc. Basically things that were so natural and automatic before suddenly became difficult, and in some cases it took them weeks or months to properly learn how to do those things again.

Has anyone here actually become genuinely delusional from their POIS symptoms though? When I had POIS my cognitive symptoms were already extremely severe, but when my symptoms eventually changed and became chronic, the cognitive impairment got so bad that I genuinely became delusional and started believing things that weren't true at all, such as believing I was God.

Ik that sounds a lot more like something completely unrelated to POIS. But at the same time, considering how severe cognitive impairment from POIS can apparently get for some people, I wonder if it's possible for that impairment to become severe enough that someone's judgment and ability to properly interpret reality gets affected too. Especially since for me it felt like the worse my overall cognitive symptoms became, the worse my ability to properly judge and understand things became as well.

I'm just curious if anyone else here has ever experienced anything similar, like genuinely believing things that weren't true, having extremely impaired judgment/reasoning, or basically feeling like your ability to properly understand reality was affected during really severe POIS symptoms.

I discovered 500mg-1000mg of phenibut completely eliminated all of my symptoms. It definitely shouldn't be a miracle drug you can take every day as there are high risks of addiction and dependency and horrible withdrawal. But I think if you're mainly abstaining and have an accident and take one then it's fine

points:

All the symptoms have began at 2 years ago, and gradually increased.

not able to walk, having imbalances feels like would fall off any time. Motor functions are drastically reduced (this is giving me extreme stress)

Sleep apneia: whenever sleep in afternoon and try to wake up get paralyzed i am aware that i need to wake up but not able to move my body, usually sometimes happens in the morning also. This has been since last 4-5 years.

Brain Fog not able to think clearly

Memory recall has extremely worsened: not able to hold up thoughts

No libido at all, no erections, no morning wood(have consulted Dr E for this last week gave ayurvedic meds ashwagandha,bramhari etc. These all symptoms are known as Dhat syndrome in ayurveda)

not able to imagine things up

have been masturbating daily for almost 14 years

have stammering problems(genetic), parental neglect academic failures domestic violence at home had consistent anxiety from childhood , used masturbate to offset the stress

currently getting insomnia

brain neurochemistry is totally disregulated

Not able to feel sensory emotions at all.

Have literally felt i have aged dramatically and slowed down

The central nervous system had taken a very big hit.

Not able to feel strength in my hands.

Body is totally exhausted from masturbation

prefrontal cortex in brain is totally exhausted not able to think properly

Not able to sleep only have low wave sleep, which does not at feel like restorative sleep or REM sleep.

This condition is affecting my daily life such as cannot walk, connect, speak etc.

Getting panic attacks due to all these

had consulted doctors before DR SR : gave supplements but i think he failed to understand neurochemical affects on the brain due to masturbation .

Dr S : gave an immunity boosting tablets and some depression medicines.SSRI

Saw your article on the internet about actual side effects on the neurochemistry in the brain.

.

will be leaving my job also not able to keep up with it

Already have sexual disorders ED,PIED etc. Main priority is to get my Brain and motor skill back.

Medical Tests.

MRI NORMAL

VIT D,B12 WAS LOW SUPPLEMENTING FROM LAST 3 MONTHS

CORTISOL 5.1 8MONTHS AGO, CURRENTLY 13 SCALE UP TO 25.