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Heavy Brain fog and energy fluctuation - history of depression and anxiety

Santino

Senior Member
Messages
209
Update:

Monday: 1.125mg Naltrexone
Tuesdays: 1.125mg Naltrexone
Wednesday: 1.5 mg Naltrexone
Thursday: 1.5mg Naltrexone
Fridays: 1.8-2mg Naltrexone

Everyday at 10pm. I just had side effect regarding my sleep in the first night (woke up, but could sleep well again).
And last night I slept not as deep but I wasn´t awake. I track my sleep with sleep cycle so I know it was not as deep and I has typical pattern of sleep which I always have when I have the flu-reaction.

Since I take the LDN, it seems that the flu like reaction is suppressed (at least a bit). Thursday and yesterday I felt strong, full of energy. I did exercise for the first time after 8 weeks.

Normally I got sick after doing intense exercise in the last weeks. But on Friday I was good. So I exercised again, more intense. Yesterday was very intense.

Today I feel little more symptoms, but it is nothing bad.

Before LDN I very often got sinuses when I went out into the cold. Since taking LDN I seem to tolerate cold without getting sinuses as it seems. But too early to say that is disappeared completely when I take LDN.

My sleep last night was little worse, either because I upped dosage or because I was in a room full of smoke and had fun with people. This often keeps me awake longer than normal when I lie in bed.

Conclusion:
Low dosed Naltrexone definitively has changed something in my body. I feel better. More energy, less pain, less "allergy" or better said: flu like symptoms from food. And this happened after second dose of it.

It is too early to get enthusiastic about it. Because think about me taking NAC: I took it 10 days without any problems and suddenly my body builded sensitivity against it and I got the flu like symptoms from it. I did not notice reacting against THCA for 3 days. Then I noticed that it makes me worse.
And also: It is not that I am symptom-free completely. I also was mostly symptom-free without LDN, but this always were just a few hours or maybe a day. With LDN I have been symptom-free everyday 2 hours after waking up until next morning when I wake up. So the most time of the day.

Especially exercising wasn´t possible before LDN.

So it is very interesting what´s happening right now. I hope that this will take an good end. With good end I mean, that I keep tolerating LDN and that is keeps making things better. If it keeps on dampening down the flu like reaction, maybe I could start taking supplements again like probiotics, vitamins etc. in the near future.

But it´s too early. I often was in that situation and I got disappointed always. So I am very conservative with my expectations.

I even would be happy if LDN keeps me where I am now, because I can exercise and I can outside without getting symptoms...
 

Gondwanaland

Senior Member
Messages
5,095
That is excellent news.

I am worried that you are increasing too fast and I have read that it stopped working for some people. They had to stop using it for several months, then start again all over.
 

Santino

Senior Member
Messages
209
If I experience any (heavy) side effects I will get to previous dose.

Don´t worry: The normal dose (for immune therapy) to start with is 4.5mg. Many doctors start at 3mg and Bihary started with 4.5mg. Normally (for opiod dependency) you take 25mg-50mg and even then the side effects are not that bad in most people. So there is no need to worry because Naltrexone is not toxic. I even thought about upping to 4.5mg. The side effects really weren´t that bad. Maybe they weren´t a side effect at all because waking up at night can happen every now and then...

Also that it stops working is very uncommon. I never read about cases where people had to stop for months. I just read about some cases who had take it every other day to keep it working. If you think about how it works (short time blocking of opiod receptors) it is clear, that it is biochemically very unlikely to build any tolerance to it so that it could stop acting like it should.

Where did you get the information that it stops working?

Maybe people think it stopped working because they get worse again. But that is no evidence for the hypothesis that LDN is not working anymore. It is more likely that their disease is progressing I guess.

But I would have a look into that if you tell me where to look.
 

Santino

Senior Member
Messages
209
hmm...As I said: I also read it here and there...But it is seldom as it seems...And why should I worry about it? Worry doesn´t help to make that any better. It would at it´s best enhance the chance that it won´t work or will stop working.

It is too early to say that LDN works for me as I described in my post. I can say in a few weeks if it made any difference...
 

Santino

Senior Member
Messages
209
Today everything is back...it even feels worse. Because I still just ate rice and chicken and all is back. Yesterday I experienced also more symptoms again but today it's really bad.

Brain fog, flu like symptoms, depression...

So it seems that it just was coincident that I was better for 2 days...:-/
 

Santino

Senior Member
Messages
209
Wow...
I had/have really heavy depression today. It felt exactly the same way I described when I thought I had reaction to magnesium peroxide.

Either it is a reaction to chemicals I eat like magnesiumperoxide or Naltrexone or I dont know.

I also dont know what I should do today. If I should stop with the LDN or wait a few days? But the problem is that this type of depression is oretty severe and it goes habd in hand with brain fog and it feels like I have sinuses and just a weird feeling in my head.

You cannot imagine how bad it feels to taste the feeling of beeing normal (3 days ago for 2 days) and then at once get bounced back to before...
 

Santino

Senior Member
Messages
209
Update:
still the same as yesterday. I have still brain fog and I am depressed.

Yesterday I took 140mg Vitamin C and Magnesium citrate out of desperation. In the past this allergic reaction from vitamin C (with sweating etc.) let me feel sick but it also always was antidepressive. So I tried 140mg and the magnesium citrate, but they did either nothing or made everything worse.

Yesterday I woke up with red eyes. So I did today and I felt the same way in the morning and so I expected that it will get heavier over day like it did yesterday.

So again out of desperation I did a water enema, then green tea + probiotics both as retention enema(I knew that I react to these probiotics with the flu like reaction in the past). Both things did nothing. I even felt that the symptoms faded away before the first enema but I did it anyway.

After that symptoms got worse.

I then took 100mg of Thiaminhydrochloride and 240mg Vitamin C. Immediately after vit c the reaction set on (heat on head and face), but the brain fog also seems to get worse now. It is in the "front" head right behind the forehead.

I don´t notice any antidepressive effect from the vitamin C :-/.

I took 1.125mg LDN yesterday. The brain fog got really heavy after I took it at 10pm. But I don´t know if this was due to LDN or due to the meal at 7pm. I think it got significant heavier after I took it yesterday...

So the question remains if I should stop taking LDN. I was hoping that it would be little better today.

I think I just can find out if I take it again today and see if it get´s better tomorrow. And maybe I will eat no more until I take the LDN to watch if the brain fog really get´s worse right after taking it. Yesterday 2 hours after LDN right before I wanted to sleep it was the heaviest brain fog I ever experienced. And as I said: Woke up in the morning with red eyes as if I smoked weed all night long....
 

Gondwanaland

Senior Member
Messages
5,095
I then took 100mg of Thiaminhydrochloride and 240mg Vitamin C. Immediately after vit c the reaction set on (heat on head and face), but the brain fog also seems to get worse now. It is in the "front" head right behind the forehead.

I don´t notice any antidepressive effect from the vitamin C :-/.
Vit B1 gives me skin rash/eczema.
Vit C is an aromatase inhibitor. Have you looked into that?
You are possibly making allergy worse by taking these.
 

Santino

Senior Member
Messages
209
It´s been a little wonder but 3 hours after the enema+ 240mg vit c (didn´t take vit c long time) + 100mg thiamin (that´s 50x daily advised value which is 2mg) 80% of the symptoms faded away. I took 2x 240mg Vitamin C during the day. Each time I had little flare of the allergy symptoms and after the last dose I felt little sick so I now stopped it at 7 pm.

That was really amazing. There is still some symptoms left but 80% faded away...Amazing for me because I suffered really hard although it were "just" 12 hours yesterday.

I will see how I react to LDN at 10pm. I will do the same tomorrow in the morning (water enema, then prbiotic enema + green tea+ vit c doses and high dose thiamine)
 

Santino

Senior Member
Messages
209
Because I must have severe deficiency after eating just white rice and chicken for 10 weeks and it is needed for carbohydrate energy metabolism. Also during ketogenic diet I avoided many sourced of thiamin.

But aI think that the main effect was the probiotic retention enema. But vit c and thiamin gave me energy...


Used very high dose of each:
B. Longum
L. Rhamnosus
L. Helvetius
L. Plantarum
 

Santino

Senior Member
Messages
209
You dont need to have any concerns because on a normal ketogenic diet you get enough of everything (+you can supplement).

Think about my ketogenic diet: I just ate about 6-7 different foods because of intolerances....

Yesterday 30 min after LdN intake brain fog came back and today is still there despite enema (today I did just retention enema and no cleansing before--> i regret that now...)

Today again I had red eyes in the morning.

My body seems to have trouble with the ldn...

I will try it again this evening. If I have brain fog tomorrow I will do cleansing enema and then retention enema...
 

Santino

Senior Member
Messages
209
Yesterday I took 0.9mg Naltrexone. I thought I have nothing to loose if I lower the dose. I also skipped evening meal.

I still couldn´t go to the toilet after the retention enema. It was a bad idea to not make a cleaning water enema before the retention enema...

This time (after the 0.9mg) the brain fog got not worse 30 min after intake but it was there all day and stayed there.

Today I woke up, again red eyes and after about an hour the brain fog came back. At 10am I had breakfast (rice and chicken + flax seed oil as in 90% of the cases since 11 weeks now). This time I felt even some of the flu like reaction from this meal immediately (this is not normal for me because normally (if I had reaction to rice + chicken + flax seed oil then...) I react to that meal about 1-2 hours later...

So at this moment it is really rare what´s going on with me. I feel like everything can happen every time. This makes me anxious and insecure if I think about that... For me it sometimes feels like my body just does not function anymore and still nobody looked really good at this type of reaction I have...

Because I am so frustrated or insecure I try to find something which helps me to gain control.

So again out of desperation I just took 70mg of niacinamide because I read that it can help with both of my current problems: Brain fog + depression.

Of course I hope that I won´t get the flu like reaction from it but the fact that I could tolerate the thiamine and the reaction to vitamin C was not as bad as I expected gave me the confidence that at least some of the b vitamins are possible for me...


I even would like to try a multivitamin, but I had to find one without vitamin A and beta carotine and AVICEL (cellulose as filler) which seems impossible...
 

Santino

Senior Member
Messages
209
Update:

I am still on 0.9mg LDN. So still very low dose which might not work optimal for autoimmunity. I still have the brain fog as a side effect and it can be pretty severe sometimes during the day. But it is not as bad as it was on Sunday.


Yesterday brain fog was there, too, but I was not that depressed. Today I do not really know yet because it is 8 am but it feels like the same as the days before.

But some things changed now. The most interesting and obvious change is my response to Vitamin C.

When I took Vitamin C before LDN I used to begin to sweat on head and face and get the flu like symptoms. I always had that on higher doses but when I had this crash during the ketogenic diet I suddenly reacted to even very small doses...

Yesterday I took 360mg in the morning, 360mg with lunch and even 120mg at 8pm which normally would have kept me awake because of the allergic reaction. I barely noticed the flu like reaction from Vitamin C yesterday. I notice the reaction still, but it is definitively less at this moment. I slept bad last night because I was often awake for a few seconds and turned around often. So I won´t take Vitamin C again in the evening, but before LDN I would have had night sweating, tight muscles and some symptoms of a flu ...

I took 360mg Vitamin C an hour ago together with 200mg nicotinic acid. I took 70 mg nicotinic acid three days ago, 200mg two days ago and 600mg yesterday. I just notice slightly the heat in my face.

I try the vitamins to fight the brain fog. I ordered all b vitamins except folic acid and b12 and my plan is to take the b vitamins on a daily basis. If I tolerate that I will then try to add b12 and folate.

This sounds great of course, but I have to say that I do not feel good because of the brain fog. Also I still seem to react very badly to vitamin A/beta carotine rich fats.

I just can hope that LDN keeps doing what it is doing now and that my brain fog may lift over time and I can increase the dose.


Recently Chris Kresser summarized what is known about LDN so far and what is his experience with it:
http://chriskresser.com/low-dose-naltrexone-ldn-as-a-treatment-for-autoimmune-disease

I just read a study where they suggest that LDN works on TL4 receptors which is a relatively new finding and which may also explain some of the mechanisms behind LDN...

All in all, LDN seems to be something which everybody with autoimmunity wants to try, especially people with thyroid diseases like Grave´s and Hashimoto´s.
 

Santino

Senior Member
Messages
209
Update:

Still 0.9mg. Still I get heavy brain fog :-(. It is not all the day like it was on the worse Sunday. But it often comes during the day and is there for 3-5 hours and then fades away by 60%.

I was confused that the enema on the monday lifted the brain fog. Confused because i asked myself if the brain fog really was from the LDN then or if it has to do with my digestive system.

Now I can say that it is definitively only from the LDN.

I spontaneous decided to do another 84 hour fast. My last meal was thursday 5pm (huge meal).

On Friday I did 1 water enema, 1 coffee enema (won´t do that again because at this moment I get heavy flu like reaction from it--> so I did when I had my first coffee enema few weeks ago)

Plus I had again probiotic retention enema after that. The brain fog came on Friday also heavily and so it did today. In the morning I was free of it and it came at 2pm heavily for 3 hours.

Today it came at 12 o clock and is there now.

Today my stomach and gut is completely empty. I did water enema in the morning and again probiotic retention enema.

I just hope that the brain fog as a side effect will lift over time but it does not seem to change. Last time I did fast I was completely symptom free at day 2.

I would try an high dose like 3mg but it could me bring the same depression I had on Sunday and that is dangerous...

I will keep u updated...
 

Santino

Senior Member
Messages
209
Why do you think this would be helpful?

My immune response actually is less than all last weeks.

The brain fog was also there before I used the probiotic enema. It even seemed to fade away after I firstly used enema...

I use:

B. longum
L. Rhamnosus
L. Plantarum
L. Helvetius

The last two enemas I also used E. coli Nissle