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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 9 of 9. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by blueberry on January 1, 2006, at 15:23:40
Tyrosine...nice warm energizing feeling comes on very quickly, wears off quickly, but later in the day returns as uncomfortable anxiety. Creates fear when I wake up in the morning.
L-Phenylalanine. Milder than tyrosine, but the same overall effect. Not comfortable at all.
DL-Phenylalanine. A smoother warm mildly energizing feeling the comes on quickly, but later in the day turns into a loud heartbeat and an overall sense of fear...easily startled when the phone rings. Not cool.
D-Phenylalanine. A nice comfortable warmness for hours, but later turns into fear, loud heartbeat, easy to startle, big time insomnia.
Pynogenol. Real nice effect the first day. I thought this was the magic. But the second day, nothing. Third day, nothing. Still taking it though.
Ginkgo biloba. Real nice activating effect, feels noradrenergic, beginning in just about an hour and continuing most of the day. Almost too much, even though it was only 60mg. No idea if it will continue.
GABA. No effect of any kind.
GabaCalm (Gaba, taurine, glycine, tyrosine mixture). Mildly calming on the first dose, but a second dose is too much creating some mild depression. (this happened to me with magnesium glycinate too, so maybe it's the glycine)
Chromium picolinate. Feels adrenergic. Comfortably activating. Several trials at pubmed indicate that it modulates serotonin, tryptophan, and norepinephrine function and has led to significant improvement and remission in some people. Doses needed are 400mcg to 800mcg.
High dose B6 (not the regular kind, but the active P-5-P kind) and zinc. Can't feel anything. Up to 40% of alcoholics and mood disordered people though have some deficiency in metabolising B6 and zinc into neurotransmitters, and they need more.
5HTP. It has an overall numbing effect on depression, but doesn't at all fix my depression. It just numbs it out and in some ways makes it worse by squashing out norepinephrine.
Tryptophan...we'll see. Just switched from 5htp to tryptophan today.
High protein meals. To get more production of norepinephrine and dopamine. I haven't noticed anything in particular.
High dose fish oil. I haven't noticed anything in particular. Have taken it for years.
Most of the above trials involved low to medium doses and were stopped immediately if there were any bad effects.
If all else fails, I'm going back to St Johns Wort! Nothing every worked as good. But last time I tried it, it was with prozac and zyprexa. Next time it will be all by itself or mixed with a little 5htp...the combo worked wonderfully many years ago before my bossy psychiatrist got mad at me about it and put me on serzone instead. Stupid.
For now, I'm hoping the gingko will have a repeat performance going forward. In most trials, a common side effect is a general overall activating effect, and I like that. Just have to avoid getting overactivated into restlessness. Also, in one trial with healthy people, they reported better memory in addition to better mood on the single day of the trial.
Based on everything I've tried, and based on my 10 years on precription meds, I think for me it is not a matter of having more neurotransmitters, but rather getting them to fire, to release, to activate. They just seem to be sitting there not doing anything.
Just some odd notes here for anyone to ponder.
Posted by linkadge on January 2, 2006, at 15:04:46
In reply to Comments on my recent supplement trials., posted by blueberry on January 1, 2006, at 15:23:40
Just a note. When I came off an SSRI, generally nothing worked for a while.
I have been slowly improving though, and feel more stable than I have in a long time. My brain is much more senstive to supplements and herbs than it was 8 months ago.
SSRI's seem to be quick fixes, whereas nutritional supplements can take a lot longer to have a positive effect.
For example, see this study.
http://www.moodfoods.com/moodfood.htm
The vitamin supplements proved to have an effect on mood, but only after a significant amount of time.
I guess, just some courage to not give up on them completely.
Linkadge
Posted by blueberry on January 2, 2006, at 18:52:11
In reply to Re: Comments on my recent supplement trials., posted by linkadge on January 2, 2006, at 15:04:46
Thanks for the comments and reassurance. I'm definitely not giving up, but rather weeding out the things I can't tolerate. The ones I can tolerate, I'm sticking with those. So far they include tryptophan, high B6 p-5-p, high zinc, high chromium, high dose fish oil, small dose ginkgo, and a high protein diet. All the phenylalanines and tyrosine made things worse.
I must admit, and am surprised, that after 10 years of heavy duty meds, I am actually holding my own pretty well with just the above supplements. No worse than meds and in some ways a little better. It's frightening though, I mean after so many years, the drugs were like safety blankets. Even when they didn't work well, at least you knew what to expect from day to day. But now, yikes, my security blankets are gone.
Posted by linkadge on January 2, 2006, at 19:15:07
In reply to Re: Comments on my recent supplement trials. » linkadge, posted by blueberry on January 2, 2006, at 18:52:11
Thats the only way to do it unfortunately for the most part, trial and error.
Linkadge
Posted by ghuber on January 2, 2006, at 22:16:57
In reply to Comments on my recent supplement trials., posted by blueberry on January 1, 2006, at 15:23:40
Blueberry,
I find your review of the supplements quite interesting to say the least. I've experimented with supplements a great deal in the last five years, and consider myself quite knowledgable concerning the topic. I've tried many things, but now I am quite careful about what I ingest. I believe last year I winded up causing a reoccurance of my OCD symptoms after almost a year no symptoms following the withdrawl from a year long course of antidepressant treatment.
In particular, when I started to relapse, I was taking 2,000mg of L-Tyrosine daily and 12,000mg of Inositol and a multi-v. Looking back, I believe that the admission of only a dopamine and nor-e precursor without a serotonin precursor caused my problem -- This unbalanced combination likely caused the relapse due to the depeletion of serotonin and strong elevation of dopamine.
I also believe the Inositol caused a hypersensitivity of the serotonin receptors in my brain. Why you might ask? Because when I went back on AD treatment last year (During the relapse), I was unable to tolerate a 2.5mg dosage of Celexa. Prior to the admission of the Inositol (Which lasted over a year) I was able to tolerate 30mg.
Anyway, after another year on SSRI treatment, I am now back off as of last week. I'm only taking a multi-v right now, but plan to add L-Tryptophan in later this week. This time I hope to swing the balance of neurotransmitters in favor of serotonin, not dopamine.
Be careful what you take, supplements CAN have some very strong effects.
G
Posted by Sarah T. on January 4, 2006, at 1:02:08
In reply to Re: Comments on my recent supplement trials., posted by linkadge on January 2, 2006, at 15:04:46
> Just a note. When I came off an SSRI, generally nothing worked for a while.> > > Linkadge>> >
Hi Linkadge. When you say that nothing worked for a while, how long was it before things started to work again?
Posted by Sarah T. on January 4, 2006, at 1:04:38
In reply to Re: Comments on my recent supplement trials., posted by ghuber on January 2, 2006, at 22:16:57
Hi ghuber.
You said that you were unable to tolerate even 2.5 mg of Celexa after you'd been on Inositol. What sort of symptoms of Celexa-intolerability did you have?
Posted by linkadge on January 5, 2006, at 20:17:44
In reply to Re: Comments on my recent supplement trials. » linkadge, posted by Sarah T. on January 4, 2006, at 1:02:08
For about 3 months coming off SSRI's, I exerpience a whole range of emotional problems that seemed unresponsive to most supplements.
The thing was that there were parts of my brain that had seemed to have become dormant on SSRI's. They started to scream out as I discontinued, but eventually a ballence came back.
After this time, I started to notice that my brain became a lot more responsive to anti-anxiety supplements, and alternative treatments for depression.
Linkadge
Posted by Sarah T. on January 5, 2006, at 23:14:05
In reply to Re: Comments on my recent supplement trials., posted by linkadge on January 5, 2006, at 20:17:44
This is the end of the thread.
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