Posted by Melanie-00 on January 10, 2011, at 14:53:00
In reply to Re: Non-prescription therapy for anxiety (GAD): ideas?, posted by mrtook on January 10, 2011, at 9:50:20
Hi All,
Thanks for your continued interest in this thread.
I didn't want to experiment with too many supplements at once because it would get too confusing and expensive. I decided to try NAC (N-acetyl-cysteine) and Rhodiola rosea (RR).Currently, I am taking 2400 mg of NAC per day (1200 mg bid). And 600 mg per day of RR (300 mg bid) (a very high dose). I worked my way up to these doses slowly over a matter of weeks and will give more details on that later. However, I plan to stay at these doses for now, and I doubt I will go any higher.
If there is an effect from these supplements so far on my anxiety, it has been subtle. My anxiety is still pretty bad. But I also am in a stressful situation.
I plan to report back to you all once I've been on both supplements long enough to know whether there is an effect or not. At the very least, maybe my experience can be useful to someone else. For the NAC, I have heard it usually takes about 9-10 weeks to start seeing results, and for the RR, I've heard one should wait at least a month or two (though usually it kicks in quickly ..or so I've heard).
I should note that NAC is not an ordinary choice for anxiety. The reason I decided to try it is because recent research suggests it may help with trichotillomania, which I also suffer from. I'm hoping that if it helps with trichotillomania (and related disorders like OCD), then it will also help with my generalized anxiety, if my anxiety issues happen to be related at all to my trich. I also control my trichotillomania with inositol (6 g tid), but the inositol doesn't seem to help my mental state beyond helping me to not pull my hair out. Plus the inositol powder is expensive compared to the NAC. So if the NAC can help with my trich, then at the very least I hope to reduce my inositol dosage.
Anyway, I hope to have a better sense of the efficacy of these supplements in a few more weeks ...
Thanks again for your comments and suggestions.
poster:Melanie-00
thread:973355
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20101202/msgs/976466.html