[continued from previous message]

On about day 45 I saw my first urologist. I barley got a word in before he cut me off. "What is wrong with you today?" is all he would say. I never even got out a medical history over 10 words. He did a DRE and proclaimed that since my urine sample was
negative and since my prostate wasn't hot that no infection existed. He went on to say that I never had an infection and should have never taken antibiotics. He tried to frighten me by stating that I could permanently injure myself if I didn't stop the
antibiotics immediatly.(Some truth to that statement.) I then told him about how the fever broke after starting Levaquin and about the chills and fever but he kept interrupting me and telling me I had Prostadynia. So I left and called my two personal
doctor friends who directed me to find a new doctor. (If I had listened to the urologists I would certainly have been sick and totally miserable for the rest of my life. Yet Levaquin killed the libido each time I took it. At the end I was left with a
body that was very low in total testosterone and had to do a jump start to get the endocrine hormones working again. Levaquin is well known for damaging the ability to produce testosterone yet no doctor I know will admit it. Almost every man I have
spoken with who used Levaquin for 30 days or more has suffered a significant loss of libido while on the antibiotic.)

The day after the urologist examination my prostate swelled up bigger than I had ever experienced before. I decided to stay on Levaquin another 5 days until the swelling went down even though I didn't have pain this time. As it turned out this was a
great idea.

A few days after I went off Levaquin I started to get sick. At first I thought it was a cold but then pains started up all over my body mostly in the groin and from two hot spots in the lower groin straight down into my testicles. OUCH! This happened
over the Christmas holidays and when I was out of town. I was off antibiotics for 10 days before I was able to get back in to see my family Dr. The pain in the groin and testicles was bad but not as bad as the fatigue. I could hardly climb a flight of
stairs without huffing and puffing. I had chills constantly. Sleeping was my only comfort. I was so miserable that I would lay on the bed thinking: "This must be what it is like to die."

My family Dr.wanted me to go back on Levaquin but I refused. (Quite foolishly I might add.) I was scared to use it again after 50 days of continuous use and some side effects of painful joints. I started on Erythromycin at 1330 mg per day. This stuff
made my stomach sick all the time but it stopped the progression of the disease. After 10 days my fever broke and I was almost symptom free again in the prostate but not in the rest of the body. I had pain all over the groin and even a hot spot under the
left arm. Miserable! Totally miserable!

My next medical visit was with a different urologist. He was the first urologist I could get in to see at a different clinic than urologist number one. My doctor's office had to beg and fight to get me the appointment with only a 10 day wait.. The result
was pretty much the same as urologist number one except this one listened a little and then inferred that I was a liar. By this time I had finally figured out that the fish odor was coming from the semen and not a skin infection. The urologist said that
fish odor was common with semen. (Wrong!) But my fish odor was now gone after 90 days of antibiotics. Again I was diagnosed with prostadynia and told that antibiotics were useless, all without any tests. In hindsight I should have demanded a sonogram to
look for an abscess.. I explained the chills and fever and pain all over my body but he just said it was a coincidence. He also diagnosed my groin pain as a hernia. (Another piece of bad advice. No hernia existed. The false positive was caused by
infected muscles in the groin. I have been checked by multiple doctors since and I promise that I have no hernia.) His advice was to take pain medication much the same as urologist number one. He offered a test that would have him stick a periscope up my
penis just to look at my bladder. I told him that such was foolish because my problem was in the prostate and not in the bladder. To that he agreed. (So why did he offer? Money!) (If I had listened to the urologists I would certainly have been sick and
totally miserable for the rest of my life.)

Neither urologist ever mentioned that an anaerobic infection is very difficult to culture and that such requires different antibiotics than the average infection. Jerks and pricks indeed!

I again went home and ignored his advice staying with the antibiotics for another week. I then in total desperation started taking two antibiotics at the same time. I researched drug interactions on the net and found that Erythromycin and Levaquin have
no known interaction. I took a half dose of Levaquin and 3/4 dose of Erythromycin. In just 3 days all the pain left my body. It killed the infection so fast that it shocked even me. I did this technique for a total of 7 days. Don't do this yourself. This
is life threatening behavior. Totally foolish. Mixing antibiotics may also create antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. (I tell you this to show how desperate I really was.)

I was healed after some 100+ days of antibiotics.( Or so I thought.) I was still using saw palmetto at about 4000 mg of raw fruit per day and had been since day one of antibiotic use. I slowly reduced my usage to 1500 mg per day before some soreness
returned. I chalked up the soreness to my dihydrotesterone. I could live with this much discomfort since a couple of tylenol would solve the problem. (Big mistake!)

Things went great for about 6 weeks until the girlfriend was over for a weekend with sex 3 days in a row. A greater soreness started which turned into increased problems with urination and ultimately a fish odor about the semen. I know the first time I
noticed the odor that the infection was back. I was so depressed. In the last 6 weeks I had found a renewed health. I felt 10 years younger. My workouts were easier and sex was wonderful.(Is there such a thing as bad sex?)

I called in for a Levaquin prescription but this time my doctor wanted me to stay on it for 30 days even though I was asymptomatic in just 7 days. Actually in just 3 days it was under control and I felt I was cured after 7 days but this time I changed
the system to include both prostate drainage and emptying the prostate when the antibiotic blood level was at its peak. Drainage was painful at first with a lot of expressed fluid but as the days went by the pain left and the fluid became less and less
down to nothing. The relief was noticeable in just 24 hours. I dropped the saw palmetto completely with no increased urgency of urination or swelling and experienced a spurt in healing .(It became obvious that saw palmetto was not only masking my pain
but was inhibiting the antibiotic treatment by shrinking the prostate.) Pain was present from the massages but he symptoms were disappearing with each massage.

After the 30 days of levaquin I changed to clindamycin 150 mg for 3 times a day and 14 days.. I changed because we had suspected an anaerobic bacteria since correlating the fish odor with the flareups. It worked! even though I thought I was cured many
mild symptoms disappeared and a fever broke on the second day of Clindamycin use. (I woke up soaking wet on the second night which I correlate to the breaking of a fever.) It was obvious that I either had not killed the bacteria completely or there were
several bacteria responsible for the infection. At this point I had no symptoms. To this date and all the other times I experienced mild soreness in the afternoons and some mild points of pain in the groin and testicles. What a relief to be pain free.
The lesson is that unless you are completely pain free there may be bacteria lurking.I had constantly attributed my chronic and very mild complaints to dihydrotestoserone but that was wrong!

Within a week after going off clindamycin I had a relapse starting in the right testicle and moving up to the
prostate and urinary tract along with fever chills and fatigue. This time I immediatly set an appointment with a third urologist who turned out to be a wonderful person. He put me through a sonogram which revealed evidence of past inflammation and
confirmed that the prostate was healed. At this point I suspected that my complaints were not seeding from the prostate but to the prostate. The digital rectal exam started a throbbing pain into the right testicle and no burning or swelling in the
prostate. After a PSA was negative I started on Clindamycin again for 30 days at 900 mg per day. This was difficult as it produced diarrhea within 2 days. I had to go on a rice and apple sauce diet for a week until the acidophilus seemed to kick in and
stabilize. I also used ibuprofen to help with the gas pain in the colon.

The breakthrough came on the 3rd day of clindamycin when I did a self examination of my pelvic area and discovered two small lumps around what I call the right inguinal ring. This is the spot where the testicular muscle and tubes enter the abdomen. The
next day I went septic again with all the symptoms of a whole body infection. It appears that the bacteria was encapsulated in such a way that any palpation with the finger would break it open and let it drain. Much the same thing happened with the
prostate. The symptoms disappeared within 2 days unlike before when I was on the wrong kind of antibiotic. The prostate infection turned out to be the easiest part of the infection to cure with locating the other seeding cyst as the more difficult task.

After some 10 months of antibiotics (6 kinds of antibiotics for a total of 220 days) I was finally cured. Still the clindamycin caused a colitis and required 7 days of metronidazole. A burning pain remained in the left lower colon which required some
laxative treatment for a couple weeks but eventually resolved. After a couple of years I finally went on Difulcan and Nystatin for 90 days with a no sugar and no carbyhydrate diet to cure the over growth of yeast, candida albicans infection, in my colon
caused by all the antibiotics. I probably had this candida syndrome all my life but the antibiotics for 10 months made it much worse. I had used acidophilus for years but it never completly cured the yeast issue. The antifungals alone did not cure the
problem. I maintained the anti-fungal diet and use enzymes to keep the candida under control until I found a cure. See: http://www.oocities.com/hcraiga/candidacure.html I also did 20 days of Clomid to bring back the testosterone level to normal after
Levaquin. Later I used Effexor ER for 30 days at a very low dose to restore testosterone production again.

The moral of the story is that main stream American medicine is out of touch with the needs of the prostatitis patient. My successful treatment was primarily the result of research on the internet and trial and error treatment.. These healing techniques
have been around for 30 years yet are ignored and laughed at by our American doctors. The second best research resource was from Sweden, Germany and then the eastern block countries. Germany has conducted a lot of research with herbals as a supplement to
conventional medicine.

Ironically the Dr. with the best advice was a general practitioner and the worst advice came from a pair of experienced urologists. If I had listened to the urologists I would certainly have been sick and totally miserable for the rest of my life.
Nevertheless if I had proper testing I probably could have been cured in two to three weeks of antibiotics instead of 220 days worth.

Am I permanently cured? Yes, of this infection at least. If it happens again I have a method of quickly getting it under control when it flares up. Most men who get this type of infection must constantly be on guard and hit the infection fast and hard
when it flares up. Still, I am cured with no signs of infection for years. The fallout was from secondary infections including colitis, yeast and secondary hypogonadism caused by levaquin and the prolonged use of many antibiotics.

I now use anti-DHT,vitamins, minerals and anti-estradiol supplements and alternate for good measure. I have also dropped coffee and started a low carbohydrate diet. See recipes on the hormone web page. http://www.oocities.com/bill3320/hormones.html

P.S. The girlfriend did eventually leave me for a younger man, as they all do. Years after the fact, 2008 I discovered that Splenda, the artificial sweetener aggravates my prostate. I have seen a few posts confirming my suspicions. But, this is not a
condemnation of Splenda just an observation that many things in the diet can aggravate the prostate. Splenda made the prostate sore and caused me to cease certain herbs and medicaitons. Too early to tell if there is permanent damage.

More information on Candida or Fungal infections of the digestive tract can be obtained here: http://www.oocities.com/hcraiga/candidacure.html
and here: http://www.oocities.com/hcraiga/candidacure.html/


*****


http://www.oocities.org/bill3320/

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[continued from previous message]

Theory: since valium is a very effective muscle relaxant perhaps its prolonged use is a substitute for physical drainage of the prostate. In essence a chemical drainage.

21. ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION in large quantities has been known to provide temporary relief of prostate swelling and pain. Whether this is due to bactericidal effects or its muscle relaxing nature is unknown. Perhaps alcohol is toxic to the weaker anaerobic

bacteria. (Perhaps it just transfers the pain to the head. Joke!) This is not a good long term solution and not endorsed.

Beer is the worst alcoholic beverage that you can drink for prostate issues. Never consume any beer or malt beverage when suffering from prostate issues.

22. SLEEP as much as you can and drink a lot of water. Fighting an infection takes a lot of common sense. Eat good foods and avoid alcohol and caffeineated drinks. Keep your stress at a minimum and laugh as much as you can. I swear on a bible the the

most effective pain killer, when my symptoms were at their peak, was a funny movie that made me laugh. I hear this same type of story over and over. Don' get confused and feel that stress causes prostatitis. Stress clearly will aggravate such but rarely
causes a case of prostatitis

23. QUINOLONE AND JOINT PAIN: The most effective antibiotic for prostate infections is from the quinolone family (levaquin, cipro, Tequin etc.) because of the high absorption rate into prostatic tissue and the broad spectrum activity. Still a common

side effect is the severe joint pain which must be reported to your treating doctor immediately. Many also note a loss of libido with long term use of Levaquin caused by lowered levels of LH and Testosterone (secondary hypogonadism). Some believe that
treatment with clomid or tamoxifen citrate can cure the secondary hypogonadism and chronic fatigue caused by Levaquin. Best to avoid the drug if you have any loss of libido when on the medicine. (Tequin has not been as bad as others some say but i heard
that it is being criticized for kidney damage. Tell me your Tequin story if you have the time.) Take your medication at night time when physical activity is over and then the next morning use 2 ibuprofen or aspirin which will help relieve the joint pain.
This works best with levaquin because it is taken one time per day. Never engage in physical activity or heavy exercise within 8 hours after a dose. See your doctor any time you have a reaction to medication. Many report such side effects as permanent
yet in my case the joint pain was short lived.

MALE ANDROPAUSE AND HORMONE BALANCING
(Hormone replacement is inaccurate for men as it is actually hormone balancing which men must accomplish.)

This section has been moved to its own page due to overwhelming demand. Please link to this page and the hormone page below. It will help get listings on other search engines.

24.- 28..http://www.oocities.com/bill3320/hormones.html

WEBMASTER: bill3320@yahoo.com

29. MY TWENTY DAYS IN HELL COMPLIMENTS OF MY FRIENDLY UROLOGIST (This really happened to me! Darn!)

I will tell this story in chronological order of the actual events but be assured many facts were discovered only after treatment had ended. Parentheticals will help the reader with this history. My treatment lasted about 10 months and included 6 types

of antibiotics for 220 days of antibiotic therapy.

About 10 years prior to 2000 when I was married I contracted a prostate infection from my spouse. She had sores in her mouth when she performed oral sex. The next day i had a rash which developed and a foul fish odor. The rash was probably a secondary

opportunistic fungal infection that flared when the bacteria was killing my immune system. Prostatitis symptoms developed shortly there after. The problem seemed minor and would go away after two weeks of antibiotics. The infection was an an-aerobic
bacteria that caused a foul fish odor about the semen and sometimes would even cause a skin infection on the glans. (The skin infection may have been fungal/candida related caused by stressed immune system.) It didn't bother me too much. I treated
several times over the years for a few weeks with antibiotics. (At the time I didn't associate the fish odor or skin infection with a prostate infection. How foolish!)

In mid year 1999 my body did a little trick on me by increasing the production of dihydrotestosterone. This is the normal change in my family at age 44. My brother at the exact same age had the same turn of events. This new hormone racing through my

body forced my prostate to start growing and initiated a terrible series of events.

I began having pain and swelling after sex that would last 3 to 4 days. It grew worse. Soon even ibuprofen and Tylenol wouldn't help. I would get sick with fever, nausea and chills if I had sex just 2 days in a row. I was constantly run down and

fatigued. I finally broke down and sought treatment when the swelling became so bad that it felt like I had a golf ball in my rectum 24 hours a day.

My family doctor put me on a double sulfa drug (TMP-SMX) which made me sick in just 2 days. I then changed to doxycycline and was on it 2 times for 14 days each to no avail. Finally he put me on the one a day Levaquin tablet. My fever broke in just 24

hours but the progress was very slow.

After 20 days on Levaquin I did some research on prostatitis sticking mainly to the USA medical studies. I found one article that recommended emptying of the prostate often when on antibiotics. I then researched the medication Levaquin and discovered

that it had a short half life in the body of just 7 hours and hit its peak at about 1 hour. So I called my trusty girlfriend and asked her for help. (A medical necessity mind you.) She willingly complied. I would take my pill with a large glass of water
and then fool around after a one hour wait. This worked wonderfully as Levaquin was a one a day tablet. In just 3 days the swelling was completely gone. I had had little reduction in swelling over the past 20 days. Thus, in just 3 days of this technique
I had greater improvement than in the prior 20 days. Yet the knife like pain continued.

On my next visit to the family Dr. he foo fooed me on the idea that emptying the prostate helped. He said there was no medical data that would confirm my outcome but that it did make sense.

For the next 10 days I continued the program as much as I could stand but found less and less improvement. Still at the 40th day mark I was 98% symptom free. That 2% scared me and my Dr. So an appointment was set with a urologist.

On about day 45 I saw my first urologist. I barley got a word in before he cut me off. "What is wrong with you today?" is all he would say. I never even got out a medical history over 10 words. He did a DRE and proclaimed that since my urine sample was

negative and since my prostate wasn't hot that no infection existed. He went on to say that I never had an infection and should have never taken antibiotics. He tried to frighten me by stating that I could permanently injure myself if I didn't stop the
antibiotics immediatly.(Some truth to that statement.) I then told him about how the fever broke after starting Levaquin and about the chills and fever but he kept interrupting me and telling me I had Prostadynia. So I left and called my two personal
doctor friends who directed me to find a new doctor. (If I had listened to the urologists I would certainly have been sick and totally miserable for the rest of my life. Yet Levaquin killed the libido each time I took it. At the end I was left with a
body that was very low in total testosterone and had to do a jump start to get the endocrine hormones working again. Levaquin is well known for damaging the ability to produce testosterone yet no doctor I know will admit it. Almost every man I have
spoken with who used Levaquin for 30 days or more has suffered a significant loss of libido while on the antibiotic.)

The day after the urologist examination my prostate swelled up bigger than I had ever experienced before. I decided to stay on Levaquin another 5 days until the swelling went down even though I didn't have pain this time. As it turned out this was a

great idea.

A few days after I went off Levaquin I started to get sick. At first I thought it was a cold but then pains started up all over my body mostly in the groin and from two hot spots in the lower groin straight down into my testicles. OUCH! This happened

over the Christmas holidays and when I was out of town. I was off antibiotics for 10 days before I was able to get back in to see my family Dr. The pain in the groin and testicles was bad but not as bad as the fatigue. I could hardly climb a flight of
stairs without huffing and puffing. I had chills constantly. Sleeping was my only comfort. I was so miserable that I would lay on the bed thinking: "This must be what it is like to die."

My family Dr.wanted me to go back on Levaquin but I refused. (Quite foolishly I might add.) I was scared to use it again after 50 days of continuous use and some side effects of painful joints. I started on Erythromycin at 1330 mg per day. This stuff

made my stomach sick all the time but it stopped the progression of the disease. After 10 days my fever broke and I was almost symptom free again in the prostate but not in the rest of the body. I had pain all over the groin and even a hot spot under the
left arm. Miserable! Totally miserable!

My next medical visit was with a different urologist. He was the first urologist I could get in to see at a different clinic than urologist number one. My doctor's office had to beg and fight to get me the appointment with only a 10 day wait.. The

result was pretty much the same as urologist number one except this one listened a little and then inferred that I was a liar. By this time I had finally figured out that the fish odor was coming from the semen and not a skin infection. The urologist
said that fish odor was common with semen. (Wrong!) But my fish odor was now gone after 90 days of antibiotics. Again I was diagnosed with prostadynia and told that antibiotics were useless, all without any tests. In hindsight I should have demanded a
sonogram to look for an abscess.. I explained the chills and fever and pain all over my body but he just said it was a coincidence. He also diagnosed my groin pain as a hernia. (Another piece of bad advice. No hernia existed. The false positive was
caused by infected muscles in the groin. I have been checked by multiple doctors since and I promise that I have no hernia.) His advice was to take pain medication much the same as urologist number one. He offered a test that would have him stick a
periscope up my penis just to look at my bladder. I told him that such was foolish because my problem was in the prostate and not in the bladder. To that he agreed. (So why did he offer? Money!) (If I had listened to the urologists I would certainly have
been sick and totally miserable for the rest of my life.)

Neither urologist ever mentioned that an anaerobic infection is very difficult to culture and that such requires different antibiotics than the average infection. Jerks and pricks indeed!

I again went home and ignored his advice staying with the antibiotics for another week. I then in total desperation started taking two antibiotics at the same time. I researched drug interactions on the net and found that Erythromycin and Levaquin have

no known interaction. I took a half dose of Levaquin and 3/4 dose of Erythromycin. In just 3 days all the pain left my body. It killed the infection so fast that it shocked even me. I did this technique for a total of 7 days. Don't do this yourself. This
is life threatening behavior. Totally foolish. Mixing antibiotics may also create antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. (I tell you this to show how desperate I really was.)

I was healed after some 100+ days of antibiotics.( Or so I thought.) I was still using saw palmetto at about 4000 mg of raw fruit per day and had been since day one of antibiotic use. I slowly reduced my usage to 1500 mg per day before some soreness

returned. I chalked up the soreness to my dihydrotesterone. I could live with this much discomfort since a couple of tylenol would solve the problem. (Big mistake!)

Things went great for about 6 weeks until the girlfriend was over for a weekend with sex 3 days in a row. A greater soreness started which turned into increased problems with urination and ultimately a fish odor about the semen. I know the first time I

noticed the odor that the infection was back. I was so depressed. In the last 6 weeks I had found a renewed health. I felt 10 years younger. My workouts were easier and sex was wonderful.(Is there such a thing as bad sex?)

I called in for a Levaquin prescription but this time my doctor wanted me to stay on it for 30 days even though I was asymptomatic in just 7 days. Actually in just 3 days it was under control and I felt I was cured after 7 days but this time I changed

the system to include both prostate drainage and emptying the prostate when the antibiotic blood level was at its peak. Drainage was painful at first with a lot of expressed fluid but as the days went by the pain left and the fluid became less and less
down to nothing. The relief was noticeable in just 24 hours. I dropped the saw palmetto completely with no increased urgency of urination or swelling and experienced a spurt in healing .(It became obvious that saw palmetto was not only masking my pain
but was inhibiting the antibiotic treatment by shrinking the prostate.) Pain was present from the massages but he symptoms were disappearing with each massage.

After the 30 days of levaquin I changed to clindamycin 150 mg for 3 times a day and 14 days.. I changed because we had suspected an anaerobic bacteria since correlating the fish odor with the flareups. It worked! even though I thought I was cured many

mild symptoms disappeared and a fever broke on the second day of Clindamycin use. (I woke up soaking wet on the second night which I correlate to the breaking of a fever.) It was obvious that I either had not killed the bacteria completely or there were
several bacteria responsible for the infection. At this point I had no symptoms. To this date and all the other times I experienced mild soreness in the afternoons and some mild points of pain in the groin and testicles. What a relief to be pain free.
The lesson is that unless you are completely pain free there may be bacteria lurking.I had constantly attributed my chronic and very mild complaints to dihydrotestoserone but that was wrong!

Within a wee...

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