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Serotonin and/or Acetylcholine and gut motility

South

Senior Member
Messages
466
Location
Southeastern United States
@SherDa Your recent post on another forum about serotonin and gut motility was really interesting. I wondered if other people would be interested in discussing this, so here's a new thread specifically about:

Serotonin and/or acetylcholine and their effects on gut motility

Some of us have constipation predominant IBS here, including me, and others have the D predominant IBS (wish we could just average us all together to result in normal :)

Serotonin in the body, and acetylcholine in the body, each have effects on gut motility, and each of these can be affected by certain supplements, but there's not much discussion online yet from real people experimenting with this idea.

I'll add more as I dig up my notes. Anyone?
 
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South

Senior Member
Messages
466
Location
Southeastern United States
Hope you don't mind, Sherda, I'm posting some of your recent post from the other forum here, for the edification of our wonderful readers!

"I don't know how I've been reading about GI motility for months and haven't seen this sooner....
.....All of the symptoms above just disappeared..... (http://lightchiro.com.au/nutrition/mental-health/)) Anyway, now that my guts are really in great working order, I guess I'll try to make sure they're filled with some serotonin producers and resistant starch/fibers....

...To increase acetylcholine, I take:
Acetyl-l-carnitine (to donate the acetyl group)
Choline source (either plain choline or alpha GPC or sunflower lecithin, all seem to work)
Manganese
Thiamine (I like the Solgar 500 mg (super potency)

....This is generally enough to stimulate colonic motility but electrolytes are also really important and sometimes limit things. I taste-test electrolytes by using 1/8 tsp of the following in 1 cup of warm water (testing each separately not mixed together). If it tastes sweet or delicious or just like good refreshing water, then that seems to indicate a deficiency in that electrolyte. If it tastes awful, then I don't need it....

For magnesium taste test, I use Epsom salt.
For potassium taste test, I use Now potassium chloride powder.
For sodium taste test, I use Real Salt.

I don't know of a taste test for calcium, but my calcium is frequently low, especially if I'm taking vitamin K2, so even though calcium has a reputation for being constipating, I find it relieves colonic dysmotility. .....

.....My colonic dysmotility is a combo of low acetylcholine and low electrolytes. ....

...Just taking the acetylcholine supplements helped me for a good long while but eventually I needed to manage electrolytes too. I've been using this protocol since January, and I'm disappointed that I still have to manage it, but at least it has never failed me."
 
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*GG*

senior member
Messages
6,389
Location
Concord, NH
@SherDa Your recent post on another forum about serotonin and gut motility was really interesting. I wondered if other people would be interested in discussing this, so here's a new thread specifically about:

Serotonin and/or acetylcholine and their effects on gut motility

Some of us have constipation predominant IBS here, including me, and others have the D predominant IBS (wish we could just average us all together to result in normal :)

Serotonin in the body, and acetylcholine in the body, each have effects on gut motility, and each of these can be affected by certain supplements, but there's not much discussion online yet from real people experimenting with this idea.

I'll add more as I dig up my notes. Anyone?

Seems like my gut in the last week is turning into more Constipation IBS. Thought it was cheese a couple of weeks ago. But have not had much cheese, only a couple slices in a sandwich lately.

Or wonder if not being on LDN for a month or longer now is what is catching up to me?

GG
 

Skippa

Anti-BS
Messages
841
IBS-D here. Due to the muddle in my mind of when exactly I started SSRIs I'm not sure whether to blame the pills or not (it was very very close).

Since I'm on SSRIs for life, I found that

1) omeprazole took the crippling pain of the D away, although not the frequency or occurrence.
2) opiates first normalised the D, but have now made me IBS-C!

Wish I'd found some natural options before getting dependent on the meds, so I guess OP it's well worth exploring.
 

TigerLilea

Senior Member
Messages
1,147
Location
Vancouver, British Columbia
After being put on Amoxicillin back in March and developing antibiotic associated diarrhea I now have a mild case of IBS-D. Mine isn't a problem unless I eat more than a couple of servings of fruits and veggies. Forget about getting the recommended 5 to 9 servings daily. Since getting the 10 day diarrhea I feel almost like a different person. My CFS symptoms are much worse now; the fatigue, PEM, muscle pain, headaches. For the first five months I had absolutely no motivation to do anything. Thankfully, at least that symptom has gone away. I am once again taking 5-HTP and probiotics to try and increase my level of serotonin. I thankfully don't suffer from depression but feel somehow that my serotonin was affected when my gut bacteria took a hit.
 

Lolinda

J'aime nager dans le froid style Wim Hof.. 🏊‍♀️🙃
Messages
420
Location
Geneva, Switzerland
Hello @Gondwanaland :) My approach is very similar to that of @SherDa
It is also based on alpha-GPC (= AGP-choline). For the whole thread, see here, for a summary of the finally successful protocol see here.
It cured my motility issues, reduced my POTS, and several more niceties :)
I do not think it is better or worse than anyone else's protocol for the same purpose... But the emphasis of my protocol is on avoiding risks & side effects. I barely tolerate any supplements, so thats the main point: how to get the usual acetylcholine benefits w/o paying a price elsewhere.

Essentially, I replace acetylcarnitine by simple tasty vinegar (I like most the red wine vinegar :) ) because carnitine has a side effect of being eaten by gut bacteria. It feeds SIBO, if you have some (I do). And thiamine I used before, improved motility indeed, but caused neuropathy, so I leave it out and it works without it too. The main point is that I take the choline transdermally, because, again, it is eaten by gut bacteria (to a whooping 60%!!), thus increases SIBO. But there are a few more tricks such as how to balance acetylcholine and serotonine, increase dosages damn slowly, etc.

- enjoy :)
 
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Messages
88
Zinc can be helpful for diarrhea. I don't have any particularly great links to share on this, but Google probably does.
 

South

Senior Member
Messages
466
Location
Southeastern United States
Constipation-type IBS as a lack of gut motility is a problem for many people.
This is the type that is lack of gut motility (not necessarily hard stools). It is not solved by more fiber, whether soluble or insoluble.

Acetylcholine as a possiblity:


I have this type of IBS, yet a few times in my life when I've taken a supplement that happens to affect acetylcholine (unknowingly by me at the time), I'll temporarily get normal gut motility, and won't have to take any herbal laxative. After a few days of that nice honeymoon, the slow gut motility returns though: my body seems to adapt to the supplement.

The supplements that have done this for me are manganese, and another time vinegar (after having avoided vinegar for a few weeks, suddenly added it back in food). Both play a part in the complicated acetylcholine process in the body.

Actual choline supplements like the following don't help my gut motility at all, for some reason:
phosphatidylcholine
lecithin
choline bitartrate

But I took those choline supplements by swallowing them, and maybe what @Lolinda says about bad gut bacteria eating these may be a problem for me. Sometime I'll try them transdermally instead.

Serotonin probably not my issue, although it may be for other people:


I don't get any improvement in gut motility when I take 5htp or tryptophan. But some people do.
 
Messages
88
I had a clunky start with acetylcholine-supportive supps. I would take them, they would work well for a few hours and then I would be right back to having low ACh symptoms that were sometimes even worse than before. I had to take them a few times throughout the day, whenever they wore off, basically. I guess I was comfortable doing this because I realized my diet was horribly low in choline, my choline-related SNPs were potentially limiting and I had so many low ACh symptoms. And my response to them was so strong, so I felt they were really key.

Like if I have a strong response to a supplement (or a group of supplements needed to support a specific function), then I pursue that route until I feel I'm starting to get repletion (like the response over time becomes less strong and I feel I'm starting to "max out" on the benefits I'll get from those nutrients). Then I reduce to more of a maintenance dose.

When I read about others' experiences with ACh-boosting supps on nootropic forums, I saw a lot of people who thought they are having a bad reaction to the supps, but if the symptoms they complained of matched low ACh symptoms, then I thought maybe they were just quickly using up all the ACh they made and now they were low again?