Completely eliminated my severe anxiety symptoms with three supplements!

[soulfeast]

For me personally, NAG, flaxseed oil, turmeric, and also the excellent drug amisulpride 12.5 to 25 mg daily (which you can buy in India here), were the best anti-anxiety treatments.

But I also found these supplements good for anxiety: taurine 2 grams twice daily, vitamin A 25,000 IU daily, choline bitartrate 1000 mg daily.

If you can find some arginine powder, then I discovered that snorting (nasal insufflation) a very small amount of arginine powder (100 mg) into your nose has a very powerful and rapid anti-anxiety effect. You can snort arginine powder using a short length of drinking straw.

Hip curious your thoughts on taurine dumping seen on UAA which Yasko associates with CBS upregulation in methyaltion. She translates the dumping as excess taurine created by methionine synthase cycle. I am having brain inflammation as I type so more difficult to explain... CBS gene snps control the trap door at bottom of cycle and when metabolites move too quickly, taurine can be formed instead of glutathione. My last UAA showed excess taurine excretion and all other AAs were low. So seemed to support Yasko's theory. Wondering if you have thoughts on that since you are recommending taurine.

Also curious what arginine does.. wouldn't it feed a virus? Vit A as in beta carotene or from fish oil? Thanks!

 

[soulfeast]

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.

Brain's blood supply. Sphenoid sinus is shown in violet color
View attachment 4488

could infection also go this route into amygdala? my sinuses were completely obstructed and full of fungal balls. my sinus inflammation does not make my nose stuffy.. different.. it's an inflammed feeling that feels like it goes straight into my brain. I can feel burning, pulsing.. but no stuffy can't breath sensation.

 

[dannybex]

Thanks for the link, Dannybex. I did at one point consider at quinolinic acid from neuroinflammation as a possible source of anxiety, via its ability to activate the NMDA receptors. However, this study found that in neuroinflammation, quinolinic acid build up is in fact too small to cause any significant NMDA receptor activation. So that would seem to rule quinolinic acid out as a cause of anxiety.

Thanks Hip. What about the gut-brain connection, i.e., if there are 'elevated' quinolinic levels in the gut, might this not affect the brain?

 

[Hip]

@soulfeast
If you need to reduce dietary sulfur due to CBS mutations, taurine is probably best avoided. But there are many other anti-anxiety supplements on my list, many of which I found much better than taurine.

N-acetyl-glucosamine (NAG) is by far the best anti-inflammatory / anti-anxiety supplement on my list, and certainly I would recommend every ME/CFS patient try NAG, especially if they have significant anxiety symptoms or the "wired" feeling in the brain.

N-acetyl-glucosamine most likely works for anxiety and the "wired" feeling because NAG reduces the production of Th17 cells, and these cells release IL-17 which is linked to anxiety.

 

[Hip]

Could infection also go this route into amygdala? My sinuses were completely obstructed and full of fungal balls. My sinus inflammation does not make my nose stuffy.. Different.. It's an inflammed feeling that feels like it goes straight into my brain. I can feel burning, pulsing.. But no stuffy can't breath sensation.

You have autonomic nerves which run from the sinus and nasal cavities to the brain; this nerve can sense inflammation in these cavities, and transmit this information to the brain, which can then cause inflammation to arise in the brain.

In general, any inflammatory state in the body may precipitate inflammation in the brain. Autonomic nerves sense inflammation in various locations throughout the body, and these nerves will signal this inflammatory state of affairs to the brain. The brain will then respond to this information by instigating inflammation within the brain. It is not entirely clear why the brain should switch on its own local neuroinflammatory response when there is inflammation elsewhere in the body, but this certainly does occur (ref: here).

So you would certainly want to address any infection you have in the nose/sinuses, as this could be making your ME/CFS or anxiety symptoms worse, by ramping up brain inflammation.

 

[Hip]

Thanks Hip. What about the gut-brain connection, i.e., if there are 'elevated' quinolinic levels in the gut, might this not affect the brain?

As far as I am aware, quinolinic acid is only an issue in the central nervous system. It arises through the actions of the enzyme indoleamine-2-3-dioxygenase (IDO) in the brain. IDO breaks down tryptophan into quinolinic acid and other metabolites.

By contrast, I believe excess extracellular glutamate in the brain may be the driving cause of anxiety and the "wired" feeling, as glutamate will overstimulate NMDA receptors, thus making neurons become too sensitive.

 

[Hip]

Also curious what arginine does.. wouldn't it feed a virus?

Arginine is antiviral for coxsackievirus B3, and also, arginine inhibits Epstein-Barr virus reactivation.

Arginine can sometimes cause herpes simplex virus reactivation (causing cold sores). I have found myself that high doses of arginine (10 grams or more) can sometimes cause a cold sore outbreak, but I find this is no big deal anyway.



However, you don't have to take such high doses of arginine: I discovered that by taking arginine intranasally, by snorting around 100 mg of arginine powder into my nose, this actually gives a better anti-anxiety effect than 10 grams of oral arginine!

Not only that, but I found snorting 100 mg of arginine power works fast — the anti-anxiety effects of intranasal arginine kick in within just 20 minutes! I guess by snorting, the arginine gets into the brain more quickly than by the oral route.

So snorting arginine powder is very useful in emergencies, when you are suddenly hit by high levels of anxiety, or have a high degree of the "wired" feeling in you brain, since the potent calming effects of intranasal arginine appear so quickly, within 20 minutes.

I found that arginine pyroglutamate powder works best (both orally and intranasally), as this form of arginine crosses the blood-brain barrier better.

You can buy arginine pyroglutamate bulk powder quite cheaply at purebulk.com.

Vit A as in beta carotene or from fish oil? Thanks!

Vitamin A is not the same as beta carotene, which is a precursor to vitamin A. There is not enough vitamin A in fish oil for our purposes here. To have an anti-inflammatory effect that ameliorates anxiety and the "wired" feeling of ME/CFS, you need to take a high dose of vitamin A, around 25,000 IU. Though useful, I found vitamin A is nowhere near as potent as oral N-acetyl-glucosamine or intranasal arginine pyroglutamate, in terms of anti-anxiety effects.

 

[MeSci]

I found that arginine pyroglutamate powder works best (both orally and intranasally), as this form of arginine crosses the blood-brain barrier better.

You can buy arginine pyroglutamate bulk powder quite cheaply at purebulk.com.

I am wondering, as I expect some other people are, whether arginine pyroglutamate could increase glutamate levels?

 

[Hip]

I am wondering, as I expect some other people are, whether arginine pyroglutamate could increase glutamate levels?

I never considered this, but it says in this book that pyroglutamate stimulates the activity of EAAT, which speeds the removal of glutamate in the extracellular spaces of the brain. (EAAT is one of the glutamate transporters, responsible for clearing up glutamate). So it would seem that arginine pyroglutamate will actually decrease glutamate levels.

Though I think it is the arginine part of this molecule that has the anti-anxiety effects, as I found pure pyroglutamate did not have any anti-anxiety benefits.

 

[soulfeast]

@soulfeast
If you need to reduce dietary sulfur due to CBS mutations, taurine is probably best avoided. But there are many other anti-anxiety supplements on my list, many of which I found much better than taurine.

N-acetyl-glucosamine (NAG) is by far the best anti-inflammatory / anti-anxiety supplement on my list, and certainly I would recommend every ME/CFS patient try NAG, especially if they have significant anxiety symptoms or the "wired" feeling in the brain.

N-acetyl-glucosamine most likely works for anxiety and the "wired" feeling because NAG reduces the production of Th17 cells, and these cells release IL-17 which is linked to anxiety.

Thank you, Hip,

I don't have sulfur issues. After a series of tests, I actually tend to run lowish for sulfur. But, I do have high levels of taurine excreting on UAA while all other AAs are low range. Yasko would say this highly suggests that the "CBS trap door" is open too wide allowing metabolites of methylation to drain too fast leading to formation of taurine (thus excess excretion) rather than glutathione. I'm not sure she is 100% correct about that and there is not another reason for the excretion that might be related to depletion rather than excess. This may not be something you have much experience with, not expecting you to solve this puzzle! Just putting it out there.. wondering if I actually have a taurine depletion issue.

Thank you for addressing my questions and for these threads. I am purchasing NAG and organic tumeric. Have flax oil. Will give this a try!

 

[soulfeast]

Arginine is antiviral for coxsackievirus B3, and also, arginine inhibits Epstein-Barr virus reactivation.

Arginine can sometimes cause herpes simplex virus reactivation (causing cold sores). I have found myself that high doses of arginine (10 grams or more) can sometimes cause a cold sore outbreak, but I find this is no big deal anyway.

However, you don't have to take such high doses of arginine: I discovered that by taking arginine intranasally, by snorting around 100 mg of arginine powder into my nose, this actually gives a better anti-anxiety effect than 10 grams of oral arginine!

Not only that, but I found snorting 100 mg of arginine power works fast — the anti-anxiety effects of intranasal arginine kick in within just 20 minutes! I guess by snorting, the arginine gets into the brain more quickly than by the oral route.

So snorting arginine powder is very useful in emergencies, when you are suddenly hit by high levels of anxiety, or have a high degree of the "wired" feeling in you brain, since the potent calming effects of intranasal arginine appear so quickly, within 20 minutes.

I found that arginine pyroglutamate powder works best (both orally and intranasally), as this form of arginine crosses the blood-brain barrier better.

You can buy arginine pyroglutamate bulk powder quite cheaply at purebulk.com.

I had no clue. Would a lysine and arginine pyroglutamate blend be a good idea?

http://www.iherb.com/Source-Natural...S&w=arginine pyroglutamate&rc=25&sr=null&ic=3

Thank you..

 

[Hip]

Would a lysine and arginine pyroglutamate blend be a good idea?

You need to take around 5 grams of arginine pyroglutamate orally to have effect, so by having lysine in the same supplement, that would give you a similarly high dose of lysine. Are you sure you want to take 5 grams of lysine a day?

 

[soulfeast]

You need to take around 5 grams of arginine pyroglutamate orally to have effect, so by having lysine in the same supplement, that would give you a similarly high dose of lysine. Are you sure you want to take 5 grams of lysine a day?

good point.. I'll start with the three: NAG, tumeric and flax oil. This is over my head. I'd have to read up on arginine and lysine. Is it just me or do other folks get the message that arginine (esp without balancing with lysine) is a viral provoker?

 

[L'engle]

I got raw turmeric root today. It only cost 25 cents to try a few sticks. Certainly a low risk trial. About how many much per day in terms of the roots would a dose be.

 

[est_sunshine]

Hey Hip, my NAG just arrived will try it on the weekend, will have to slowly increase it though so will let u know how it goes in a while. I've read it can bind to Lectin which is the nasty stuff in grains that can cause leaky gut. My anxiety is amplified when I have bad gut problems, I have Pots so have higher than normal adrenaline but I know when I have gas in my gut I am even more hyper. I really hope this helps

 

[JES]

I have posted here a couple of times last year, but I thought to update my latest findings as this is one of the most informative threads on this forum.

I have basically a mild form of CFS (if such a thing exists), which causes mainly a combination of neurologic issues: neuropathy, pain, major anxiety and fatigue. As Hip as speculated, the anxiety and related symptoms seems to be a result of overactive microglia and thus a pro-inflammatory chronic immune response. I cannot basically tolerate anything immune stimulating (even probiotics), as they will intensify my anxiety massively within a week or two of use.

After now trying all of the recommended anti-anxiety supplements, I can report somewhat curious findings:

- NAG: within a day or two big relief in anxiety. 2 or 3 more days and big decrease of neuropathy symptoms. But: after a week or two of use, I start feeling sicker. My CFS does not cause me flu-like symptoms, only neuro symptoms and general fatigue. But after two weeks of using NAG my fatigue worsens and I feel literally cold. This feeling does not go away before I stop NAG. I do have much reduced neurological symptoms while staying on NAG.
- Flaxseed oil: very similar response as to NAG. First big relief of anxiety, then after a few weeks feeling more sick. Just a bit less than with NAG.
-Turmeric: mild improvement in neurological symptoms. But after few days of use, increased anxiety and OCD symptoms. I don't get a flu-like response to Turmeric, but I cannot tolerate the brain chemistry effects of it.

After wondering long about this reaction, I think what is happening is that both NAG and Flaxseed oil dampens my immune response too much. This would cause improvement in the neuro issues as my body would stop attacking itself. But instead the virus/pathogen would be suppressed less. This is just a theory, but I can consistently repeat the results. I don't get this effect with ordinary Fish oil, but neither does my anxiety improve much on it.

Lastly, I started taking selenium a bit over a week ago after I saw Hip's new thread about it. Within three days, my anxiety starts to improve. What is very interesting with selenium is that it does not seem to stimulate my immune system in a bad way, as does some 80% of the supplements I tried. It does not have the effect of NAG or Flaxseed oil to suppress my immunity either. This seems like an ideal supplement for me and I will probably continue to take this indefinitely. Hopefully this experience could help in finding other supplements that act in same way.

 

[Hip]

@JES
That is an interesting effect that you experienced from using N-acetyl-glucosamine (NAG) and the other anti-inflammatory supplements.

Your theory sounds like a good one: ie, that these anti-inflammatories are unfortunately weakening some aspect of your immune response a little, such that one or more microbial infections that are part of the root cause of your anxiety symptoms grow larger, so that although these anti-inflammatories help in the short term, in the long term (after a few weeks), as the infection grows, your symptoms actually worsen.

So far, this is first time I have heard of this particular response to NAG, flaxseed oil, etc. The reports I get back from people trying these supplements are usually either that (a) these supplements work very well for their anxiety and "wired" symptoms, or (b) they do not work at all. But this is the first time I have seen these supplements cause these negative and positive effects together.

Though I did consider the possibility that these anti-inflammatories could weaken some aspect of the immune response and thus promote an underlying infection, so I am not entirely surprised to hear your experiences.

The interesting thing about NAG is that this supplement reduces the Th17 (and the Th1) immune response 1 (or at least it does so in the context of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis). Now reducing Th17 is actually a good thing in the case of viruses, especially coxsackievirus B, as the Th17 immune response appears to increase coxsackievirus B replication, 1 and the Th17 immune response increases viral persistence. 1

However, the Th17 immune mode is important in fighting against certain microbes, particularly Candida albicans and Staphylococcus aureus. 1 So conceivably, although NAG may be reducing your viral load, it might just be increasing levels of Candida albicans and Staphylococcus aureus in your gut (though not everybody has the latter in their gut), thereby increasing inflammation. It might be idea to try NAG again, but in combination with some anti-Candida medications, to try to prevent any increase in Candida levels. But this idea is very speculative.

Also, theoretically, NAG may feed Borrelia bacteria (as discussed earlier in this thread), so if you in fact had Lyme disease rather than ME/CFS, theoretically NAG might make your condition worse.



The other anti-anxiety approach I would recommend, instead of (or in addition to) the NAG and the anti-inflammatory approach, is taking NMDA receptor antagonist supplements.

Blocking the NMDA receptors on neurons was in fact my first successful approach to treating my anxiety symptoms.

You can find details of the theory and practice of using NMDA receptor blocker supplements in my thread here (see the section entitled "GABA and NMDA" in the very first post of the thread):

Non-Standard Anti-Anxiety Treatment

See also this post in the above thread.

And you can what Dr Cheney says about the GABA and NMDA balance here.

The basic idea is that overactivation of the NMDA receptor by glutamate (a neurotransmitter released during brain inflammation) is what over-sensitizes neurons, leading to anxiety and/or the "wired" state of ME/CFS.

So by taking supplements that block this NMDA receptor activation, you effectively reduce anxiety and "wired" symptoms.

I would suggest trying two or three NMDA receptor blockers in combination, particularly these:

Transdermal magnesium (as magnesium chloride or magnesium sulfate) applied to the skin all over your body. Magnesium is a potent NMDA receptor antagonist, but you need to take it transdermally, as orally you cannot absorb sufficient quantities. Transdermal magnesium is generally a good treatment for ME/CFS in general, and many ME/CFS patients use it. The method I use to apply transdermal magnesium is given here.

Taurine powder 3 or 4 grams orally. You can buy bulk taurine powder very cheaply from bulk supplement powder suppliers such as: purebulk.com, www.nutraplanet.com, www.myprotein.com, www.bulkpowders.co.uk, www.bulkpowders.com.au.

Progesterone cream (which is always applied transdermally), at a daily dose of around 10 to 15 mg of progesterone. This is another effective NMDA blocker, though progesterone does unfortunately also promote the Th1 response.

I have found that this NMDA receptor blocker approach to treating anxiety disorder is not quite a powerful as the anti-inflammatory approach, but NMDA blocking certainly does have a good anti-anxiety effect, and I often take NMDA blockers in combination with my anti-inflammatories, for an even better anti-anxiety action.



A third approach you might want to try is the intranasal arginine method detailed here. I found that snorting just 50 mg of arginine powder had a surprisingly good anti-anxiety effect. The intranasal route is a fast way to get a medication into the brain.

 

[est_sunshine]

I think selenium works for me, Ive only used it for a day but so far so good. Anyone had any side effects? I can't see any in the literature unless you exceed the 150mcg per day.

 

[nomad]

Hip,

Thanks for suggesting NAG and flax oil on my previous thread. The insane anxiety I was suffering from has been cut by at least 60%, and I suspect that over time, taking the anti-inflammatory this will go down further.

I'm very impressed how quickly NAG worked, it even lessened the facial cramps/tension. A very potent supplement.

I've been taking only 3 tablets a day of Jarrows NAG (750mg), mainly because iherb are out of stock. I intend to increase dosage to six tablets taken over the course of the day.

I've just started the methylation protocol, and this has further dented anxiety levels, and resulted in a major improvement in cognition; particularly clarity..

Thanks !

 

[Hip]

@nomad
Let us know how it goes with the high dose NAG.

I found that the best anti-anxiety strategy is to take half a dozen or so of the anti-anxiety supplements in my list. My anxiety is very well controlled these days, and my current daily anti-anxiety supplements regimen, which I find keeps anxiety completely at bay, is the following:

My Current Daily Anti-Anxiety Protocol:
N-acetyl-glucosamine 750 mg (taken on an empty stomach)
Flaxseed oil 15 ml
Turmeric 1000 mg
Vinpocetine 10 mg (best taken with food, for maximum absorption)
Vitamin A 25,000 IU
Amisulpride 12.5 mg

All the above are taken once daily.

Should I get a bad day, where I notice my anxiety symptoms start to return transiently, even when taking the above supplements, then I just add some further anti-anxiety supplements, typically the following:

Additional Anti-Anxiety Supplements:
Arginine pyroglutamate powder 5 grams
Taurine powder 3 grams
Transdermal magnesium on skin
Saccharomyces boulardii 3 capsules

This additional set of supplements then usually wipes out the transient anxiety symptoms with 2 or 3 hours.


When I first started trying to treat my anxiety symptoms, a few years ago now, I would often take all of the above supplements every day. But after a year or so on these supplements, you may find that your anxiety is under better control, and you can then reduce your supplement intake.