Arthritis & castration

[Legionnaire (imported)]

I've been reading through the anecdotal reports of people on askapatient.com who've taken drugs used to chemically castrate or to decrease/block androgens such as steroidal antiandrogens and GnRH analogues. It seems that these drugs cause a lot of joint pain in men who haven't previously had it. It appeared to me that more than 50% of the people there had joint pain from the drugs.

Now I'm curious how that compares to surgical castration without the use of hormone replacement therapy. From what I've read so far on the archive there have been some reports of joint related issues and back pain after castration, but so far surgical looks like it has a lot less chance of joint pain.

[unencumbered (imported)]

I've been reading through the anecdotal reports of people on askapatient.com who've taken drugs used to chemically castrate or to decrease/block androgens such as steroidal antiandrogens and GnRH analogues. It seems that these drugs cause a lot of joint pain in men who haven't previously had it. It appeared to me that more than 50% of the people there had joint pain from the drugs.

Now I'm curious how that compares to surgical castration without the use of hormone replacement therapy. From what I've read so far on the forums there have been some reports of joint related issues and back pain after castration, but so far surgical looks like it has a lot less chance of joint pain.

As one who is physically castrated, I have joint, muscle and lower back pain, particularly in the fingers, but I don't know if it's caused by castration or is just coincidental.

[tugon (imported)]

I have been a no T eunuch for over 15 years and have no arthritis. I recently went through a battery of blood work and one of the tests showed I had no RA and very low levels of whatever indicates osteoarthritis. At 57 years of age arthritis does not seem like anything I have to worry about.

[SplitDik (imported)]

The sad fact for those seeking castration is that the body is really complicated and in particular hormones affect multiple systems in the body. Basically, as far as the body is concerned, you have growth hormone as a child, then sex hormones as an adult, and frankly when your body is no longer needed you hit menopause/andropause. In modern times, of course we live long past the menopause/andropause point, but historically it was pretty much about your life expectancy.

Without some sort of these (either growth or sex) hormones active in the body, your skin, brain, muscles, bones, cartilage, arteries, etc. are all adversely affected. The good news is that sex hormones themselves also have adverse affects (with worst being cancer, and then arguably things like hypersexuality, aggression, etc.), so it becomes more of a tradeoff.

But if you look at the long history of eunuchs here, you'll see that the vast majority opt for some TRT as going entirely hormone-less seems to have too many bad effects.

I know you're particularly asking about arthritis, and while I don't know the exact answer, I suspect that it is entirely likely that joint pain of some sort would result from low levels of sex hormones -- just like your bones, skin, etc. suffer.

[kristoff]

For whatever it is worth, I will occasionally go without T for several weeks, sometimes month or three. I keep lots of ibuprofen available, because about week 4 the painful joints appear. Not always easy to live with. For some, the pain diminishes over time, others not.

[tugon (imported)]

I was rereading this thread and one thing I forgot to mention is I feel very little physically. My last psychologist said I was numb which kept me from pain but also from pleasure. Any physical trauma such as my fall with my bicycle down the hill hitting the trees did not keep me form doing what I needed the next day. When my dog threw me off balance and I tumbled backwards down all the steps head first I went to work the next day. While my lab work told me not to worry about arthritis I do not know if I would feel it if I had it.

[unencumbered (imported)]

For whatever it is worth, I will occasionally go without T for several weeks, sometimes month or three. I keep lots of ibuprofen available, because about week 4 the painful joints appear. Not always easy to live with. For some, the pain diminishes over time, others not.

I first noticed sore joints and muscles while using an antiandrogen but it seems to be more pronounced and common now that I have been castrated, especially after doing physical labor or exercising, even though I am on a low dose of supplemental T. The worse of it is in the fingers. It's not so bad that it affects my ability to function throughout the day. If I need to take anything for it, I use Naproxen, which seems to help alleviate it a lot.

[janekane (imported)]

A very common form of misunderstanding is, for those who cannot live without the (archaic?) Latin words, "post hoc, ergo propter hoc." While I find that I can live without the archaic Latin words, I did manage, somehow, to learn some of them.

In plain (or in Midwest U.S. Plaines English (I used to live in one of the Plaines States, in Flatland Illinois)), that Latin phrase is, in English, the logical fallacy (not a phallusy) "After this, therefore, because of this."

To illustrate this logical fallacy:

In 1986, I had two serious surgeries, first my orchiectomy, and second, my total colectomy with ileorectal anastomosis. The colectomy was done on an outpatient basis with only local anesthesia. A urologist, now deceased, told me how I might set about to persuade a vasectomy surgeon to do an orchiectomy as a way of reducing my cancer risk. The urologist told me that there would never be any hint of his talking with me about an orchiectomy in my chart in his medical practice, and that he doubted that any vasectomy surgeon would be willing to put any mention of my orchiectomy in his charting of treating me. After calling many vasectomy clinics, my wife and or I came upon a licensed doctor whose dad had died of prostate cancer which, plausibly, could have been prevented (meaning that his dad would have died of something else, plausibly at a notably greater age), who, on being shown the instruments (Elastrator and bands), agreed to the orchiectomy.

That story, which can be found, told a tad differently, in my dissertation, contains several events in a temporal sequence. With sufficient surgical skill and technique, a bilateral orchiectomy can sometimes be done so expertly that a person can undergo a bilateral orchiectomy late one day and be at work the next day as though nothing of importance had happened. That was how my orchiectomy went.

Many men who do not undergo any form of castration develop joint problems, sometimes at comparatively young age, many men who undergo castration in any form develop joint problems only at advanced age or never.

I developed a left ankle joint problem last summer, it has been gradually healing ever since. I was mowing our back yard in an area where our tractor-mower would not work because of apple trees, and some critter had dug a small den that was not visible through the grass, and my left ankle was injured.

If I had not been castrated in 1986, I suppose my ankle would not have been injured that way last summer because I would, my best wild guess has it, have died from cancer long before that, or any comparably timed event would have happened.

I do not use correlation methods when a method based on a scientifically observable process is available. Male ancestors of mine for whom I had data in 1986 never, never ever lasted to the age of 74. Is my being alive, and not dead like them at age 74 the result of my orchiectomy and colectomy surgeries in 1986? The best scientifically observable process model I have yet to find as though answers, "Decidedly, yes!"

I understand that the use of chemical castration began in the mid 1940s. In 1986, I rejected chemical castration because of my concerns, as a theoretical biologist, about how that could have undesirable homeostasis effects that would be less desirable for me than the undesirable homeostasis effects of surgical castration.

Perhaps the following little diatribe may help explain my view, perhaps not?

Suppose I am presented with a two-way choice, which I shall call Choice A and shall label A and its purely dichotomous alternative I shall call Choice B and label B.

Suppose I try out A and, after 30 seconds, something happens that makes A appear to have been a really bad choice, while I consider what might have happened had I chosen B and that "looks" vastly better. However, every effect of A was forever completed 30 seconds after I tried A, so every effect for all eternity and beyond of A was over and done with 30 seconds after I chose A.

As 30 seconds is not much time, having found A to seeemingly have been a bad choice, I go back to the point of choosing and try B instead. Indeed, 30 seconds after choosing B what has happened is vastly better than what happened 30 seconds after I had chosen A.

However, the effects of B are not forever finished in 30 seconds. Nor finished in 30 minutes, nor in 30 days, nor in 30 years, nor in 30 million years. B is not over an done with until 30 billion (British billion) years, when the total effect of B finally turns out to be beyond immensely worse than the total effect of A.

To really know whether A or B was the better choice, I would need to measure every effect of both A and B without error, so as to get a perfectly accurate score for both A and B and decide at the point of choice whether to go the way of A exclusive-or B.

Alas, when I was at the point of choosing A or B, I DID NOT HAVE THOSE SCORES, and, if I have those scores, I AM NOT AT THE POINT of choosing A or B.

I makes my choices and I takes my chances as I takes my chances and I makes my choices. I have never found a better way to live.

For myself, as a decently informed theoretical and applied biologist (i.e. a bioengineer), I rejected chemical castration based on my understanding of my family medical history. People with a notably different family medical history may well decide that chemical castration is a better choice. Either way, what will happen following surgical castration, chemical castration, or no castration is impossible to determine without error of some sort or other.

Perhaps some day the human genome mapping process will totally unriddle, for each individual person, not only the genes that make proteins, but also the mistakenly labeled "junk DNA" that now appears to be essential for the regulation of the activity of genes that make proteins. That human genome mapping effort appears to me to be many orders of magnitude more complex and difficult than the human genome protein generating mapping that has already been accomplished.

To borrow a phrase from the late neuropsychiatrist, Dr. Abraham A. Low, "knowing that I don't know is, for me, a secure thought."

If I don't know something, I will either learn it, or knowing it is not actually relevant to my life.

Now, let A be my 1986 bilateral orchiectomy and let B be everything other than my 1986 bilateral orchiectomy.

B never happened, I have no way to know what B would have been, because B never was.

I can concoct absurd stories.

Suppose, instead of getting my orchiectomy on that summer day in 1986, I had decided to visit a friend after work and had driven on an Interstate highway to get to my friend's house, but been met with a collision on the Interstate highway and been killed. Because I was getting my orchiectomy and was not on that Interstate highway, the collision in which I was killed in 1986 never happened.

"Imagination on fire," is what I understand that Dr. Low tended to label that sort of (tragically misguided?) thinking...

What if there are folks who develop joint pain as a direct result of castration, chemical, surgical or whatever else works? What if there are also folks who develop joint pain without any form of castration? What if there are many such folks for which cannabinoids are the one and only optimal "medication," for treating joint pain, and such folks live where joints are criminally illegal?

I often wonder whether any greater crime against humanity can ever be possible than the Adversarial System of Law and Jurisprudence...

How great is the joint pain of people who have been sentenced to living in the joint for smoking joints in an effort to control the pain of their socialization-trauma-generated disjointed lives?

[Legionnaire (imported)]

While my lab work told me not to worry about arthritis I do not know if I would feel it if I had it.

Thanks, this is useful information. And I'm very jealous of you lol. I'm hypersensitive to physical pain and it keeps me from doing much of anything. It's also probably part of the cause of my masturbation addiction since I'm also apparently hypersensitive to physical pleasure.

[kristoff]

If you can feel muscle pain, you can feel arthritic pain. Some get it, some don't. You're one of the lucky ones.