Posted by Ron Hill on April 29, 2003, at 10:42:03
In reply to Re: Are there natural Dopamine enhancers? » Ron Hill, posted by Edgefield on April 24, 2003, at 15:26:59
> Ron, how much are you taking? Does it really improve your mood? Thanks for the info.
Hi Edgefield,
I apologize for taking so long to respond. It seems that I have more to do than I can get done these days. To answer your questions, I’ll cut and paste from previous posts and fill in a little more detail here and there. This should give you a pretty good overview of my on-going experience with Enada NADH.
Written during Week 6: Please remember that I’m in the early stages (sixth week) of this Enada NADH trial, so these results should be treated as preliminary in nature. Here’s what I have experienced so far.
I started out taking 10 mg/day of the sublingual formulation (EnadAlert NADH). I felt my atypical depression (low motivation, anergy, anhedonia, hypersomnia) and dysphoric mood states (extreme irritability) begin to lift within thirty seconds after placing the sublingual tablet under my tongue. Within three days, my depression and dysphoric mood states were in complete remission. It snapped me out of a three-month-long deep depressive cycle that I just could not pull myself out of.After ten days, however, this dose (and formulation) induced irritability. So I switched to the enteric-coated Enada NADH “down-the-hatch” formulation. I took one of the 5 mg tablets per day. The irritability immediately stopped and the remarkable AD benefits continued.
However, four weeks into the trial I began to get VERY sleepy about four hours after my dose. Therefore, I skipped my dose for two days. The sleepiness went away on the first skipped day and the positive benefits remained.
For the past two weeks, I have been experimenting with my dosing schedule to find the optimal maintenance dosage for my body. When using 5 mg tablets, the schedule that seems to work best for me is to take 5 mg on day one, skip days two and three, and repeat the sequence starting on day four. When I tried skipping three days, my dysphoric mood states and low motivation begin to reappear on the third skipped day. I ordered some 2.5 mg tablets and they arrived yesterday. My plan is to try 2.5 mg every other day starting tommorrow.Ray Sahelian, M.D., in his book titled "Mind Boosters: A Guide to Natural Supplements that Enhance Your Mind, Memory, and Mood", recommends taking no more than 2.5 mg two or three times per week. His main concerns regarding higher doses are the potential for building a tolerance to NADH and that the medical community doesn't know a lot about this stuff yet. My preliminary assessment is that I'll probably end up taking about 2.5 mg three times per week as a maintenance dose. Time will tell with regard to the dose and whether this stuff has any long-term efficacy.
This may have been more information than you wanted. I can get a little long winded. Knowing what I know now, I would have started by taking 5 mg/day of the enteric-coated product for a week or so to get a kick start, and then I’d titrate down to 2.5 mg every other day. But everyone is unique so your mileage (and dosage) may vary.
Written during Week 7: For those who have been following my trial of Enada NADH, a maintenance dose of 2.5 mg every other day has started to cause severe irritability. I plan to further reduce the dose in hopes of finding a dosage that continues to keep my atypical depression at bay while, at the same time, does not exacerbate my dysphoric mood states.
Written during Week 8: Enada NADH is working well for me. I am still in the process of titrating the dose in the downward direction. I currently take 2.5 mg every fourth day (Take 2.5 mg on day one; skip days two, three, and four; take 2.5 mg on day five). As you know, during the acute treatment phase of my atypical depression, 10 mg/day was a good dose. The amount required for my maintenance dose continues to decline. My long-term steady-state maintenance dose might end up in the range of 2.5 mg once per week. Time will tell.If I take more than I need of this stuff, I become very irritable.
Written during Week 10: I'm still taking one 2.5 mg enteric-coated tablet every four days and I'm thankful that, so far, it continues to do a good job treating my atypical depression.One thing that I do not like about my current dosing schedule, however, is that my mood fluctuates in accordance with the dosing cycle. On the day that I take the supplement (Day One), I feel over-energized and somewhat irritable. Day Two is a good day; focused, motivated, on task, and happy (for the most part). The first half of Day Three is very similar to Day Two, but in the second half of Day Three, I begin to lose my motivation and drive. On Day Four my motivation is markedly lower and I begin to feel a little depressed. The process repeats itself beginning on Day Five when I take another 2.5 mg dose.
I think my results with Enada NADH could be further improved if I could take 0.5 mg every day instead of 2.5 mg every four days. The problem is that the smallest tablet size that I have found on the market is 2.5 mg. Larry, please let me know if you ever see a 0.5 mg sized product on the market.
I could try to divide a 10 mg sublingual tablet into twenty equal portions, but I would need a mortar and pestle, and a scale accurate to a tenth of a milligram or better. In the past, every time I have tried to find a place to buy these simple pieces of lab equipment, I am viewed as a suspected illegal drug dealer. Further, I like the enteric-coated product better than the sublingual formulation because it seems to have a smoother action. So what I would prefer is to be able to buy 0.5 mg enteric-coated tablets.
Written during Week 13: Some of the writings of Larry Hoover and Scott (SLS) prompted me to do some reading on TMG (betaine) and several days ago I started taking about 250 mg/day of it. TMG seems to work in a favorable synergistic way with the Enada NADH. As a result, I am now taking 2.5 mg of Enada NADH only once per week. It’s too early to know how this will all shake out, but so far so (very) good.As you know, Enada NADH has been very beneficial in the treatment of the atypical depressive side of my BP II. But when I was taking 2.5 mg every four days without the TMG I would get irritable on the day I took it and begin to lose my motivation and become depressed on day four of the dosing schedule. Further, it seemed that as time passed the irritability on the front-end and the depression on the tail-end both were getting worse. The recent addition of the TMG has solved this problem (at least for now).
I also have added a few milligrams of 5-HTP administered sublingually on a PRN basis for treatment of any breakthrough irritability. I don't seem to need the 5-HTP very often, and certainly not every day, but when I do need it, it seems to take the edge off nicely. I have adopted the position that one of the keys to using supplements successfully is to minimize the dose and to take periodic "supplement holidays".
Written today (Week 14): Edgefield, as it currently stands I would characterize the effectiveness of Enada NADH and TMG as profound (in my case) and 5-HTP as useful but not necessarily profound. General rule for supplement use (IMHO): More is not necessaily better and less may, in fact, improve the efficacy.As an side, I take many other vitamins, minerals, and supplements. At the top of the list with regard to usefulness is magnesium and fish oil. 1000 mg/day of magnesium really helps my sleep and 20 ml (4 tsp)/day of fish oil helps stabilize my mood.
-- Ron
poster:Ron Hill
thread:221744
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030429/msgs/223139.html