Author Topic: What is POIS? (from Wikipedia)  (Read 164 times)

truthaboutpois

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What is POIS? (from Wikipedia)
« on: April 05, 2015, 10:43:16 am »
Post orgasmic illness syndrome (POIS) is a rare condition characterized by debilitating symptoms following orgasm that last for a few hours to several days. The phenomenon was first described in 2002.

Symptoms
Symptoms usually appear within half an hour of orgasm and resolve after a few days. The person experiences mental symptoms, physical symptoms, or both. Common mental symptoms include cognitive dysfunction, intense discomfort, irritability, anxiety, craving for relief, susceptibility to nervous system stresses (e.g. common cold), depressed mood, and difficulty communicating, remembering words, reading and retaining information, concentrating, and socialising. Physical symptoms include severe fatigue, mild to severe headache, and flu-like and allergy-like symptoms, such as sneezing, itchy eyes, nasal irritation, and muscle pain. Affected individuals may also experience intense warmth or cold.

Diagnosis
Waldinger says this condition is prone to being erroneously ascribed to psychological factors or hypochondria. In a 2010 British Medical Journal case study, Dexter links a form of coital headache with POIS, and references a science forum in which thousands of sufferers (a number which is rapidly growing) have detailed their condition. Dexter's patient was found to have low progesterone.

Management
Affected individuals typically avoid sexual activity, especially orgasm, or schedule it for times when they can rest and recover for several days afterwards.

Two people have been treated using hyposensitation techniques for semen allergies. One person, who had been symptomatic for 27 years, was treated norethisterone, half an hour before, and in the minutes just after orgasm.

Pathophysiology
Most recently, in early 2011, Professor Waldinger and collaborators further characterized POIS, proposed a specific immunological mechanism, and empirically supported their hypothesis on 45 Dutch Caucasian males. This study concluded that both Type-1 and Type-4 allergy to male's own semen contribute to symptoms of the illness.

Dexter speculates that POIS could be caused by a lack of progesterone, a powerful neurosteroid, or a defect in neurosteroid precursor synthesis. In the latter case, the same treatment may not be effective for different sufferers. Different sufferers may have different missing precursors, ultimately leading to a deficiency of the same particular neurosteroid, causing similar symptoms.

An array of more subtle, lingering symptoms after orgasm, which would not constitute POIS, may contribute to habituation between mates. They may show up as restlessness, irritability, increased sexual frustration, apathy, sluggishness, neediness, dissatisfaction with a mate, or weepiness over the days or weeks after intense sexual stimulation. Such phenomena may be part of human mating physiology itself. Habituation to a mate can drive the search for novel mates (the Coolidge effect).

One researcher suggests that the symptoms may be produced by an autoimmune reaction against any of various hormones or other substances secreted during and after sex. Another suggests that chemical imbalances in the brain may cause the symptoms.

It is difficult to demonstrate a causal relationship based on patient reports.

Sexual activity for the first time may set the stage for an associated asthmatic attack or may aggravate pre-existing asthma. Intense emotional stimuli during sexual intercourse can lead to autonomic imbalance with parasympathetic over reactivity, thereby causing release of mast cell mediators that can provoke postcoital asthma and/or rhinitis in these patients’.
« Last Edit: April 06, 2015, 07:00:59 am by truthaboutpois »

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