Posted by LOOPS on December 13, 2004, at 19:28:43
In reply to Re: Fish Oil for depression - How long waiting period?, posted by Mistermindmasta on December 13, 2004, at 17:04:38
I can't tell you how much this has been my experience too!
I was recently doing a wholefood mostly vegan diet which was pretty low in fats - only fats coming from grains and fats that were naturally present in vegetables/beans/bread etc. I then started supplementing with fish oil - around 3-4g omega 3 and bam, the difference was pretty dramatic. It cleared up my OCD pretty much right away. I'm not snapping at my hubby and am much more laid-back, plus the negative little voices are gone, and my self-consciousness is much less round people. True, I am also taking lithium orotate and sjw, but I started the fish oil from a clean slate before these, and still there were improvements on fish oil alone (although not 'quite' enough immediate ones to not do anything else - if my progress continues I am going to phase down/out the sjw, but will keep on the lith because it has absolutely no side-effects).
Ok, so then there was a week when I was eating high-fat, which was mostly eggs, chicken, some fish, butter etc etc (needed the B12 and fats for awhile). During this week I went downhill quite suddenly. It seemed like either I needed more fish oil, or something in the other fats was impeding my progress with the fish oil.
So it definitely must be the fish oil working with a low-er fat diet.
So the answer for me is carry on eating those beans and quinoa and veggies and take the fish oil! I also supplement the old lecithin when I'm not eating eggs as I believe lecithin is also very underrated when it comes to dispelling anxiety and aiding the brain's cell membranes.
Dopamine - I have no idea how fish oil does this - but I'm much more 'up' in a dopamine-type way - almost like how I should be normally I suppose, rather than failing to get any enjoyment out of life and obsessing about the smallest thing. Also, the dopamine effect works in a much more different way to say, tyrosine, which seems to have a very fixed, driven aspect to its effects, which I don't like, and makes me angry.
Seems dopamine has different effects in different parts of the brain maybe. Fish oil seems to make me more reactive to stimuli which would activate serotonin or dopamine - I can get a high off a situation which before would have just left me numb when I couldn't get 'happy'.
I will say, the first few weeks I did feel a little 'manicky', but this did indeed pass, and it felt within 'normal' boundaries (i.e. I didn't feel unnaturally stimulated). Since then I haven't 'come down', just feel like I'm getting back to that normality we all dream about, like when I was a kid and didn't have the cares of the world wrapped tightly around me.
Hail the fish oil is what I say - it does seem to work, but you have to take enough (I do anyway).
Loops
poster:LOOPS
thread:427722
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20041212/msgs/429070.html