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Some of the most prescribed drugs today are SSRIs.
They’re anti-anxiety and anti-depression drugs such as Prozac and all the others.
There is fresh evidence that many, if not most, men taking these drugs will experience severe sexual dysfunction.
This information has been buried, concealed, and ignored by the drug companies for a long time.
But it is finally getting out into studies.
However, doctors don’t seem to be aware of it.
And I know of no doctor advising people about the sexual side effects.
The question isn’t whether or not these drugs have terrible side effects for men.
The question is whether the side effects ever stop even after you stop taking these drugs.
This is a good reason to go in with your eyes open.
You want seriously to consider whether you want to take any of these drugs.
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So first, let’s see how these anti-anxiety and anti-depression chemicals work to destroy the male hormone system:
These are rat studies, but these rat studies run very closely parallel what happens in humans.
Now, allopregnanolone is required to have a good mood and to feel good about the world.
It’s a brain chemical that is so important that it has drug companies foaming at the mouth.
They’re desperate to figure out how they can create patentable drugs that increase allopregnanolone.
However, these antidepressant chemicals lower allopregnanolone in the brain.
Our results indicate that the SSRIs fluoxetine, sertraline, and paroxetine decrease the conversion into allopregnanolone 10- to 30-fold.
That is an enormous reduction in allopregnanolone.
A 10 to 30 fold reduction means that you don’t get the mood elevating natural benefits of allopregnanolone.
But it gets worse.
The conversion of various male hormones in the male body is extremely important.
And as the study finds:
Both fluoxetine and paroxetine also affected the conversion of DHT to androstanediol whereas fluoxetine further affected conversion of androstanediol to androsterone.
This very bad because they show how these SSRIs are interfering with male hormone health.
Here is a further study showing the problems.
This study comes from Iran where they are not beholden to the drug companies.
This study looked at 86 male patients up to the age of 50 years old, all of whom had erectile problems.
All were depressed and all had been taking these SSRI drugs.
These 86 men were matched against two similar groups of men.
One of those matched groups were on SSRIs but had not experienced sexual problems.
The third matched group were similar men who had not taken SSRIs and had normal sexual function.
12% of the men who had no sexual problems had abnormal male hormones.
43% of the men who were on SSRIs, but reported no sexual problems, had hormone abnormalities.
And 79% of the men on SSRIs who were experiencing sexual problems had abnormal male hormones.
What was wrong with the men who had abnormal hormones from SSRIs?
The subjects taking SSRIs had significantly lower serum levels of LH, FSH, and testosterone.
LH and FSH are important hormones that come from the pituitary.
And they tell the male body to produce more testosterone.
So these men had low testosterone, but their bodies were not signaling for an increase in testosterone.
Not good.
Another abnormality was high prolactin levels.
Prolactin goes along with estrogen and lower sex drive.
It lowers performance and causes many health problems in men.
You want prolactin to be low, not high.
SSRIs are the worst thing for men’s hormones.
They decrease testosterone.
They mess with the signals for raising testosterone.
And they cause increased prolactin in the male body.
The question is whether the harm is reversible or not.
I don’t think anybody really knows.
But if it were me, I would work with my doctor to get off of SSRIs.
I’d look for other ways to increase my mood and remove depression.
There are natural means that work wonderfully.
So I’d adjust what I eat and take supplements to improve my testosterone and sexual performance.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18626269
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors directly alter activity of neuro steroidogenic enzymes
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC23979/
What is different between the interactions of Zoloft and those of these other ssris? I was on Zoloft for 6 months to a year as a kid and now have severe Gynecomastia