• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

Completely eliminated my severe anxiety symptoms with three supplements!

Lotus97

Senior Member
Messages
2,041
Location
United States
if turmeric is Maoi ,then it means,i m taking maoi regularly as in India we used about an avg of 30gms of turmeric in our daily food,also I am taking SSRI for last 13 yrs,but it has worked good for me,as far i hv heard maoi nd ssri can not be tolerated together,so how turmric is a maoi.
I agree with Living Dead. If the SSRIs are working you might want to just stay on them. I know some people are eventually able to go off their meds, but I need SSRIs for my depression. I've tried a lot of supplements and SSRIs are the only thing that helps. Maybe you'll at least be able to cut back or eliminate your anxiety meds even if you have to stay on the SSRIs. I find if my mood suffers everything else in my life seems to fall apart.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
If the amygdala is inflamed, wouldn't it be less active, rather than overactive (I really don't have a clue, but that made more sense to me)

There is a whole theory that I have been working on to biochemically explain how generalized anxiety disorder arises in ME/CFS, and perhaps in general. You can read the ideas I proposed here and here.

Briefly, my theory is that brain inflammation can involve chronic microglial activation (CMA), and CMA causes lots of glutamate to be created in the brain, and this glutamate may then cause chronic overstimulation of the NMDA receptors. If this NMDA receptor overstimulation occurs in the amygdala, you are going to get generalized anxiety disorder, according to my hypothesis. If this glutamate-driven NMDA receptor overstimulation occurs in other parts of the brain, other mental symptoms may arise.

And in terms of these other mental symptoms, interestingly, Marco has recently proposed a theory on Cort's new ME/CFS blog, hypothesizing that many of the symptoms of ME/CFS are driven by NMDA receptor overstimulation and/or a glutamate/GABA neurotransmitter imbalance. See Marco's articles here and here. In particular, Marco proposes that the sensory gating deficit in ME/CFS (ie, sound, light, etc sensitivities) is due to glutamate overload.

Though whereas I have pointed a finger at chronic microglial activation as a main cause of the glutamate excess (and this Japanese study indicates that CMA does occur in ME/CFS), Marco has hypothesized that it is the glutamate clearing mechanisms in astrocyte cells in the brain that are at fault, so that glutamate is not effectively cleared, leading to glutamate excess.
 

Dreambirdie

work in progress
Messages
5,569
Location
N. California
Sinusitis and Anxiety Symptoms Link

One other important thing to consider about the close proximity of the sinuses to the brain is that the arterial blood supply for the brain's amygdala actually runs directly through the sphenoid sinus prior to arriving at the amygdala.

The amygdala's blood supply comes from the anterior cerebral artery, which is a branch off the internal carotid artery that runs through the sphenoid sinus.

Thus pro-inflammatory cytokines, and pro-inflammatory bacterial toxins like LPS, deriving from a sphenoid sinus infection/inflammation and entering the bloodstream will run directly into the amygdala via this anterior cerebral artery.

This could be a contributing factor. AND there is also the fact that the bacteria from sinus infections drips into the stomach as post-nasal drip, which can cause gut dysbiosis and inflammation there.
 

Lotus97

Senior Member
Messages
2,041
Location
United States
I found out that inositol helps with phospholipid synthesis. I wonder if that's part of the reason it becomes more effective over time.
 
Messages
37
u guys hip lotus living dead, are technically very sound as far knowledge abt supplements and brain functioning,am i with doctors here.
 

Lotus97

Senior Member
Messages
2,041
Location
United States
u guys hip lotus living dead, are technically very sound as far knowledge abt supplements and brain functioning,am i with doctors here.
Thanks, but no. I've had to become my own doctor after 15 years of illness due to lack of competent professional help
 
Messages
37
i have visited my physictrist yesterday,and asked him abt these supplements,but he totally ignored me and said he can not tell me any thing else other then allopathic medicines,he said he know he know abt these supplement as much i know and also said this is not their field.
 

Lotus97

Senior Member
Messages
2,041
Location
United States
i have visited my physictrist yesterday,and asked him abt these supplements,but he totally ignored me and said he can not tell me any thing else other then allopathic medicines,he said he know he know abt these supplement as much i know and also said this is not their field.
That's to be expected from most doctors. Like I said, I've had to become my own doctor. I do find that I still need prescription antidepressants and sleep medication so I don't discount modern medicine. My current doctor is in integrative medicine so she's at least more openminded than most.
 
Messages
37
I m taking 1 spoon flaxseed powder 1/4 spoon turmeric daily at bed time for last 2 week,feeling comfortable with gastrict problem,now as i also want to taper off my med in long term of ocd n depression,anxiety i.e fluvoxamine,venlafexamine nd clonazapam 1.5 mg,i want to add another supplement,i have option of NAG or inostoil capsules which is available as packet of 650 mg cap,KINDLY ADVICE ME FOR WHICH ONE SHOULD I GO ?
 

MeSci

ME/CFS since 1995; activity level 6?
Messages
8,231
Location
Cornwall, UK
Haven't got time to read the whole thread, and not sure if I have already said this here, but I found that reducing intake of grains and sugar plus taking l-glutamine and sodium bicarbonate reduced my anxiety significantly, and the jittery, tense feelings returned when I inadvertently over-consumed carbs again for a couple of months, so I think it was at least mainly (maybe completely) the carb reduction that reduced the anxiety. I'm looking forward to getting back to that novel feeling of calmness again after getting my carbs low again. Having been anxious and hyper all my life, I had thought that it was just a personality trait; I never imagined that it could have been due to the wrong diet, probably combined with dysfunctional carb digestion which itself could be due perhaps to a genetic or congenital abnormality. It all fits in with the leaky-gut theory of ME.
 

Lotus97

Senior Member
Messages
2,041
Location
United States
I m taking 1 spoon flaxseed powder 1/4 spoon turmeric daily at bed time for last 2 week,feeling comfortable with gastrict problem,now as i also want to taper off my med in long term of ocd n depression,anxiety i.e fluvoxamine,venlafexamine nd clonazapam 1.5 mg,i want to add another supplement,i have option of NAG or inostoil capsules which is available as packet of 650 mg cap,KINDLY ADVICE ME FOR WHICH ONE SHOULD I GO ?
I can't really help you with specifics, but if you are going to go off your meds only do one at a time and gradually reduce your dose rather than stopping it abruptly. And I'd save the antidepressant for last if you do want to go off it. Going off that first could make a person very unstable.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
i want to add another supplement,i have option of NAG or inostoil capsules which is available as packet of 650 mg cap,KINDLY ADVICE ME FOR WHICH ONE SHOULD I GO ?

Try the NAG.

(Inositol will not work at a low dose of 650 mg, this will be a waste of time).
 
Messages
37
at last i have ordered 1/2 kg of inositol@powder from ebay.in,but it is going to be havy on my pocket,it cost me around 3000 rupees@indian currency,i am expecting good result from it.
 

JES

Senior Member
Messages
1,320
It so happened that I've struggled with the same anxiety issues as Hip during the past 10 years or so. At first I went the usual route, was offered anxiety medication and it worked well for a while. The problem with this type of medication for me was that, after a certain period, say 2-3 months or sometimes longer, its effects would start to subside. As I've later learned this is a common phenomenon of any SSRI medication usage, which basically means you have to either upper the dosage or change into another type of SSRI. This only serves as a viscous cycle as you eventually end up at the max dosage and out of further options. This may take years for some persons, but for me it was rather a matter of months. Besides this, the medication offered resulted in side effects, mainly sexual, but also cognitive, in which I literally felt dumber after staying long enough on a certain medication (luckily this effect turned out reversible). At this point it became clear that SSRIs (at least for me) only treated the symptom instead of the underlying problem.

The last couple of years I have spent a lot of time looking for alternative, natural treatments. What brought me to think about the inflammation/anxiety connection was that I've suffered from a weird neurological symptom as well, which includes pain and tingling of my legs and hands. No doctor has ever been able to diagnose any specific neurological disease, but I was almost certain that this, call it "nerve inflammation" I had, was related to my anxiety. This again brought me to think that both of these issues were symptoms of an underlying viral/bacterial infection. I found a doctor who was willing to run a test on a number of bacterial infections, which revealed I had somewhat high antibodies for Mycoplasma. I was given a long course of antibiotics (even tried a couple of different), but this absolutely changed nothing to either my anxiety or nerve issues. This has therefore lead me to believe that the issue is viral.

Finally few weeks ago I stumbled by accident across flaxseed oil capsules in a local shop. This was one thing I hadn't tried since fish oil is always the advertised one in my country, which I've been taking since long, with little improvement. To my big surprise, I noticed almost straight away after taking flaxseed oil that something was different. My thoughts were more organized, I felt a weird sense of calm which I hadn't experienced in years. About 80% of the "extra" racing thoughts I always had seemed gone which meant I literally felt like reborn.
I've now been using the product for a week, and I still seem to notice more improvement. It's not as if everything is cured, but the difference is remarkable. The dosage I've been using has been very small even, only 2 capsules a day, which is almost certainly less than 15 ml in liquid form. It really does make me wonder what ingredient in specific resulted in this improvement, as it cannot be the EPA/DHA that is present both in fish and flaxseed oil.

After reading this thread I will most definitely try all of the supplements posted here, once I get a handle of them. Ultimately I would like to go one step deeper and understand exactly what virus might cause this and how to improve my immune system's response to it. But I'm afraid it will take a long time before I get anywhere close to the answer...

Btw, at the moment I am only taking flaxseed oil, vitamin D (40 microgram, for general health) and a supplement called carnosine which is very popular in my country (seemed to help a bit with anxiety as well, but nowhere near the flaxseed oil effect).
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Hi JES. I am pleased the flaxseed oil is working.

In terms of an underlying infection, you might want to read the full set of symptoms I developed after catching a virus, which are described here on my web site. These symptoms include severe anxiety, and constant pins and needles. My guess is that the virus I caught is an enterovirus. Enteroviruses are very hard to test for in long term infections.
 
Messages
37
i
It so happened that I've struggled with the same anxiety issues as Hip during the past 10 years or so. At first I went the usual route, was offered anxiety medication and it worked well for a while. The problem with this type of medication for me was that, after a certain period, say 2-3 months or sometimes longer, its effects would start to subside. As I've later learned this is a common phenomenon of any SSRI medication usage, which basically means you have to either upper the dosage or change into another type of SSRI. This only serves as a viscous cycle as you eventually end up at the max dosage and out of further options. This may take years for some persons, but for me it was rather a matter of months. Besides this, the medication offered resulted in side effects, mainly sexual, but also cognitive, in which I literally felt dumber after staying long enough on a certain medication (luckily this effect turned out reversible). At this point it became clear that SSRIs (at least for me) only treated the symptom instead of the underlying problem.

The last couple of years I have spent a lot of time looking for alternative, natural treatments. What brought me to think about the inflammation/anxiety connection was that I've suffered from a weird neurological symptom as well, which includes pain and tingling of my legs and hands. No doctor has ever been able to diagnose any specific neurological disease, but I was almost certain that this, call it "nerve inflammation" I had, was related to my anxiety. This again brought me to think that both of these issues were symptoms of an underlying viral/bacterial infection. I found a doctor who was willing to run a test on a number of bacterial infections, which revealed I had somewhat high antibodies for Mycoplasma. I was given a long course of antibiotics (even tried a couple of different), but this absolutely changed nothing to either my anxiety or nerve issues. This has therefore lead me to believe that the issue is viral.

Finally few weeks ago I stumbled by accident across flaxseed oil capsules in a local shop. This was one thing I hadn't tried since fish oil is always the advertised one in my country, which I've been taking since long, with little improvement. To my big surprise, I noticed almost straight away after taking flaxseed oil that something was different. My thoughts were more organized, I felt a weird sense of calm which I hadn't experienced in years. About 80% of the "extra" racing thoughts I always had seemed gone which meant I literally felt like reborn.
I've now been using the product for a week, and I still seem to notice more improvement. It's not as if everything is cured, but the difference is remarkable. The dosage I've been using has been very small even, only 2 capsules a day, which is almost certainly less than 15 ml in liquid form. It really does make me wonder what ingredient in specific resulted in this improvement, as it cannot be the EPA/DHA that is present both in fish and flaxseed oil.

After reading this thread I will most definitely try all of the supplements posted here, once I get a handle of them. Ultimately I would like to go one step deeper and understand exactly what virus might cause this and how to improve my immune system's response to it. But I'm afraid it will take a long time before I get anywhere close to the answer...

Btw, at the moment I am only taking flaxseed oil, vitamin D (40 microgram, for general health) and a supplement called carnosine which is very popular in my country (seemed to help a bit with anxiety as well, but nowhere near the flaxseed oil effect).
i m taking flaxseed power for last 20 days not befitted yet,im taking around 1 teaspoon at bed time.