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Pulsing tincture?

ScottTriGuy

Stop the harm. Start the research and treatment.
Messages
1,402
Location
Toronto, Canada
In late May my ND gave me a tincture that I took a spoonful-ish twice a day on an empty stomach:

glycyrrhiza glabra 90ml
astragalus membranosus 250ml
codonopsis pilosula 78ml
eleuthrococcus senticsosus 82ml

It worked great! I felt less sick, had more energy, worked up to walking an hour a day during the next 3 weeks then crashed - I have not felt as well since.

Just over 3 weeks ago I stopped taking the tincture. I had read a little bit that pulsing may be more helpful. My intent was to stop for 1 month, but on Sunday I was feeling particularly fatigued so decided to start up with the tincture again (so had a 3 week break). I'm already feeling better.

If I'm to take a pulsing approach, what approximate schedule would be most helpful?

I'm thinking 4 days on / 4 days off. (I know from my triathlon training days that it takes my body about 4 days to recover from a hard workout before its ready for another hard workout. Flawed thinking no doubt to apply it to tincture.)

Experience / thoughts / insights?
 

jop

Messages
20
Location
New Zealand
I also took something with astragalus and felt it became less effective after about 3 weeks. Zinc was great for about 5 days..... The honeymoon effect seems to be something a lot of people experience with new sups, there's something going on that's worth looking into. Even with antibiotics, pulsed dosing has appeared for a long time in treatment of ME/CFS, particularly C. pnumoniae, but not exclusively. It is also currently used in antibiotic regimes to clear chronic S. Aureas. Why? (In fact, only this Monday I tried to persuade an infectious disease dude to let me do pulses of antivirals between the pulses of antibiotics he prescribed me for my chronic staph problem. (Didn't go well. He then refused to treat the staph and started talking about GET. He can go GET F.....!).

The two explanations for the honeymoon I've seen on the forum are that either 1) the body is driving towards an atypical homeostasis, so we get a brief lift from shifting it but it will fight back or 2) effective supplements are restarting a process that then depletes something else, which causes us to fall over again. Maybe both factors? Any other explanations you have seen or can think of?

I noticed that @tandrsc used a time scale of only weeks to add new sups to the regime she developed. Speculating wildly, did she perhaps keep challenging the flawed homeostasis over and over again till it gave up? Maybe the timescale and process of constantly adding or changing sups that shift away from a flawed homeostasis was more important than the final supplement regime, which is in the end a selection of herbs that help main aspects of ME/CFS, for which there are plenty of alternatives.

@Hip has some impressive lists of stuff that might be worth trying in this way. Might be worth rotating between the effects targeted as well as quickly testing and discarding sups. My guess is that underlying viruses, gut issues, methylation blocks etc would need to be addressed before this would be worth a try. I intend to experiment with strategies like this after completing the basics as per hip's roadmap and @caledonia's suggested sequence of IIRC, GABA/glutamate balance, gut, methylation, detox....which I now can't find.....

Just randomly thinking out loud here......probably will regret doing it in public.....
 

caledonia

Senior Member
This is where self muscle testing can be helpful.

Basically just popping in so you can see my signature link which goes to a page of my documents and important links.

In "Start Low and Go Slow" (I think) there is a link to a video that shows how to self muscle test.
 
Messages
93
Location
UK
@jop - In answer to your question I'm not really sure

If I don't notice a difference within a month then I can't tell if any change is due to the supplement or whether it's just a good or bad patch in the nature of the illness.

I have also heard that pulsing might work better, but this hasn't been the case for me. If I stop taking something then it stops working. If something stops working then it never works again.