Boron: anti-inflam., helps brain, bones, cal/mag absorption, sex hormones, anti-cancer, raises SOD

[Mary]

"Nothing Boring about Boron": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4712861/

It apparently has enormous benefits for so many bodily processes, seems almost too good to be true, but you never know. It helps with even more things than listed in the title, including vitamin D. I think it is helping my skin. I was bruising very easily on my arms, each time I'd bump into something (which was quite often! ) and now my arms are clear - I think it's strengthened my skin. I'm taking 6 mg. a day (at night after dinner) of this.

 

[Mel9]

"Nothing Boring about Boron": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4712861/

It apparently has enormous benefits for so many bodily processes, seems almost too good to be true, but you never know. It helps with even more things than listed in the title, including vitamin D. I think it is helping my skin. I was bruising very easily on my arms, each time I'd bump into something (which was quite often! ) and now my arms are clear - I think it's strengthened my skin. I'm taking 6 mg. a day (at night after dinner) of this.

Sounds promising. I might try it, although I noticed in the table that avocados are high in boron.

An avocado a day might be more palatable? Would that be enough to make a difference?

 

[Mary]

Sounds promising. I might try it, although I noticed in the table that avocados are high in boron.

An avocado a day might be more palatable? Would that be enough to make a difference?

It might be - it would certainly be more palatable! I just looked at a food chart. It said that 100 grams of avocado would have 2.82 mg. of boron. So depending on how much boron you wanted, it might or might not be enough.

I was just surprised that boron had so many functions! It's so important for magnesium utilization and so many of us have problems absorbing magnesium, I thought boron might be quite helpful for members here.

I have to take high doses of several nutrients (folate, methylfolate, P-5-P, B1) so would not be surprised if I might do better with a higher dose of boron than the standard 3 mg.

 

[sb4]

I have been taking borax on and off for about 2 years now. When I first started taking it, it helped my insomnia massively.

 

[Hip]

I get major emotional adverse effects from even normal supplemental doses of boron (eg 3 mg daily).

I have the blunted emotions symptom of ME/CFS, and every time I've tried boron, my emotions were greatly boosted, but in a horrible melancholic way, so that I feel just deeply sad emotions, and I also get a greatly increased sense of emotional vulnerability and loneliness, and also increased emotional timidity (almost an autistic timidity of people) .

In this flood of emotion caused by boron, there are also some positive emotions as well, which is nice (because normally I am quite emotionally flat), but the overriding emotions are negative ones such as melancholia and a vulnerable and lonely feeling. The loneliness feeling is very strange because even when I am with friends or family, there is still a terrible sense of loneliness.

This adverse effect appears in me after about one week of supplementing with boron at 3 mg daily. I am fine with other mineral supplements; it's only boron that causes this issue. Once I stop supplementing with boron, these adverse effects slowly dissipate and disappear after around one week.

This may just be an idiosyncratic response which will not appear in most other patients, but I thought I would mention it just in case it does occur in some people.

 

[pamojja]

This may just be an idiosyncratic response which will not appear in most other patients, but I thought I would mention it just in case it does occur in some people.

Indeed, in my case taking in average 7 mg/d Boron for the last 10 years didn't cause any melancholia. But for example lower than normal testosterone increased to the mean of normal. Took however many years. Also my case is different in that I usually don't experience any anxiety (only very pronounced in and after meditation retreats, actually described as a stage of insight in literature, where one also has tools how to deal with it in positive ways).

 

[drob31]

@Iritu1021

 

[Abha]

I have been taking borax on and off for about 2 years now. When I first started taking it, it helped my insomnia massively.

Hi sb4....
How much borax are you taking daily?Do you mix it with water?

 

[sb4]

Hi sb4....
How much borax are you taking daily?Do you mix it with water?

I just take a pinch with my finger and thumb right before bed. No water though the taste is pretty bad.

 

[Mary]

I have been taking borax on and off for about 2 years now. When I first started taking it, it helped my insomnia massively.

That totally makes sense, because boron is supposed to greatly increase absorption of magnesium, which is crucial for sleep. I had insomnia for years and when several months ago I pretty much doubled my magnesium intake, and cut my calcium by half, I started sleeping better almost immediately. (though I still take a cocktail of supplements for sleep, but they work much better now)

Do you know how much boron was in the borax you took? I'm wondering if boron might be more bioavailable in the form of borax.

 

[pamojja]

Do you know how much boron was in the borax you took?

Usually Borax contains 11% Boron.

 

[Iritu1021]

I get major emotional adverse effects from even normal supplemental doses of boron (eg 3 mg daily).

I have the blunted emotions symptom of ME/CFS, and every time I've tried boron, my emotions were greatly boosted, but in a horrible melancholic way, so that I feel just deeply sad emotions, and I also get a greatly increased sense of emotional vulnerability and loneliness, and also increased emotional timidity (almost an autistic timidity of people) .

In this flood of emotion caused by boron, there are also some positive emotions as well, which is nice (because normally I am quite emotionally flat), but the overriding emotions are negative ones such as melancholia and a vulnerable and lonely feeling. The loneliness feeling is very strange because even when I am with friends or family, there is still a terrible sense of loneliness.

This adverse effect appears in me after about one week of supplementing with boron at 3 mg daily. I am fine with other mineral supplements; it's only boron that causes this issue. Once I stop supplementing with boron, these adverse effects slowly dissipate and disappear after around one week.

This may just be an idiosyncratic response which will not appear in most other patients, but I thought I would mention it just in case it does occur in some people.

@Hip Have you tried to push through it or did you always stop as soon as those symptoms appear? I had a similar initial depression and intense sadness with lithium and than it dissipated after about a week or two and took my depression with it. I think that when you spend a long time detached from your feelings, you first have to process a tsunami of negative emotions that have bottled up within. In fact, it seems like every step toward my recovery was associated with an initial strong surge of negative emotions. Have you seen the movie Inside Out? It explains how recovering from depression requires feeling sadness first before you can get to joy again.

On other hand, the feeling of loneliness and isolation (which I've had at one point too) does sound pathological and it's very disturbing so I can see why you might now want to push through that.

 

[Hip]

@Hip Have you tried to push through it or did you always stop as soon as those symptoms appear?

They were quite horrible mental symptoms, and my main concern was that once triggered they might never go away. Thus as soon as I figure out that boron was the culprit, I stopped it.

There are other supplements and drugs that I have found which temporarily bring my emotions back online, and when they come back online there are never negative emotions.

If I take one of these emotion-restoring supplements, I can then watch a romantic or melodramatic film, and where appropriate the movie will then often bring tears to my eyes — a nice emotional response that I would not get unless I took the supplements. So when my emotions do come temporarily back to life, they do so very normally and healthily. In fact the experience is nice reminder of what it is like to be human! It's quite easy to forget what being human is all about once you have blunted or flat emotional responses.

Unfortunately I find these emotion-restoring supplements only give me a short window of around 4 hours of responsive emotions, before the effect disappears, and the emotions dry up again (and repeated use of the supplement does not work I discovered; I found these supplements only seem to work if I take them occasionally).

 

[sb4]

Do you know how much boron was in the borax you took? I'm wondering if boron might be more bioavailable in the form of borax.

I remember working it out to about 1-2mg elemental boron per pinch but this could be way off.

The magnesium angle makes sense as I do feel I have a magnesium deficiency and mg does help but I had strange reactions to nebulized Mg.

 

[Wayne]

Far and away, my favorite article on Boron (and Borax). Below the link is a snippet; the entire article in fairly long, but quite interesting and comprehensive.

The Borax Conspiracy -- How the Arthritis Cure has been stopped
Walter Last

​

The Arthritis Cure of Rex Newnham​

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In the 1960's Rex Newnham, Ph.D., D.O., N.D, developed arthritis. At that time he was a soil and plant scientist in Perth, Western Australia. Conventional drugs did not help, so he looked for the cause into the chemistry of plants. He realized that plants in that area were rather mineral deficient. Knowing that boron aids calcium metabolism in plants he decided to try it. He started taking 30 mg of borax a day, and in three weeks all pain, swelling and stiffness had disappeared.​

​

He told public health and medical school authorities about his discovery but they were not interested. However, some people with arthritis were delighted as they improved. Others were scared to take something with a poison label on the container and meant to kill cockroaches and ants. Eventually he had tablets made with a safe and effective quantity of borax.​

​

Within five years and only by word of mouth he sold 10,000 bottles a month. He could no longer cope and asked a drug company to market it. That was a major mistake. They indicated that this would replace more expensive drugs and reduce their profits. It so happened that they had representatives on government health committees and arranged that in 1981 Australia instituted a regulation that declared boron and its compounds to be poisons in any concentration. He was fined $1000 for selling a poison, and this successfully stopped his arthritis cure from spreading in Australia. (2)​

 

[pamojja]

He started taking 30 mg of borax a day, and in three weeks all pain, swelling and stiffness had disappeared.

That would only contain 3.3 mg boron per day. Never make the mistake and try to market a supplement as a drug in the west. In India it's different, Homeopathy and Ayurveda beside convention medicine are still appreciated. Saw for example a common cough syrup with Borax in it (Kasni, by Maharishi). 140 mg per 5ml dose (=15.4mg Boron).

 

[Mary]

Thanks for the article @Wayne! I'm going to forward it to my sister who has rheumatoid arthritis and a friend who has severe OA. (I already sent them the link contained in my initial post in this thread)

Never make the mistake and try to market a supplement as a drug in the west. In India it's different,

You're right @pamojja - the only things that western medicine recognize as efficacious are patented medicines, almost nothing as it exists in nature. So we are drowning in drugs here with all their effects. If a substance is to be recommended by doctors or covered by insurance, it generally has to be altered in some way from its natural state so a patent can be obtained, which of course is more expensive and again will have unwanted effects. I won't call them "side" effects because they are as much of an effect as the intended effect. The word "side" tends to minimize the negative effects drugs can have.

 

[Iritu1021]

They were quite horrible mental symptoms, and my main concern was that once triggered they might never go away. Thus as soon as I figure out that boron was the culprit, I stopped it.

There are other supplements and drugs that I have found which temporarily bring my emotions back online, and when they come back online there are never negative emotions.

Unfortunately I find these emotion-restoring supplements only give me a short window of around 4 hours of responsive emotions, before the effect disappears, and the emotions dry up again (and repeated use of the supplement does not work I discovered; I found these supplements only seem to work if I take them occasionally).

I remember that you posed a philosophical question about the paradox of supplements working only short term and the body being insistent on going back to where it was. At that time I didn't know the answer to that but I think I do now.

I've recently had a "tectonic shift" in the interpretation of my illness which allowed me to break through after years of those "glimpses into normality". I've realized that the reason why this was happening is because I was treating an adaptive/compensatory response rather than the real issue. Hypometabolism and the downregulation of neurotransmitters are not the real problem, they are the consequence of the real problem. When I got down to the real issue, it was a whole different story.

I highly recommend that you read a book by James Phelps MD titled "Why am I still depressed?" or just check out his website psycheducation.org. He explains that most treatment resistant depression is due to the failure by both patient and physician to recognize that what they are dealing with is a "mixed spectrum" illness which requires a unique approach.

As Phelps puts it: "If you start a patient on a drug and he calls you in two or three days and report that they are feeling great, your response should be "Stop the drug immediately".

Anything that makes you better right away is almost guaranteed to either stop working or only dig you further into the whole.

To be clear I'm not saying that boron is the answer. I'm talking more in general terms and reflecting on my experience that true recovery from depression always takes time, and the right drugs are often is associated with initial side effects that subside while immediate responses are most often due to either hypomanic switch or stimulant response.

 

[Hip]

I've realized that the reason why this was happening is because I was treating an adaptive/compensatory response rather than the real issue.

I think this is good possible explanation in circumstances where the benefits of a supplement or drug are only transient (for a few days, weeks or months). However, I've found treatments for various ME/CFS and associated symptoms which do seem to work permanently, and so not all ME/CFS treatments are the "fickle" type.

 

[Iritu1021]

I think this is good possible explanation in circumstances where the benefits of a supplement or drug are only transient (for a few days, weeks or months). However, I've found treatments for various ME/CFS and associated symptoms which do seem to work permanently, and so not all ME/CFS treatments are the "fickle" type.

I was not talking about CFS but about depression. Although I'm pretty sure that my CFS was caused by the wrong treatment for my depression.