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Cordyceps - broad spectrum eliminated my joint and body pain

raghav

Senior Member
Messages
809
Location
India
Hi,
I have been using Cordyceps ( Full Spectrum ) from Planetary Herbals - 2 tablets a day for the past 3 years. Before using it whenever I ate gassy foods or foods high in protein like chickpea I used to get severe joints pain and overall diffuse body pain throughout that particular night when I took that type of food. If I ate peanuts (My favourite side dish) I used to get a parkinsonism like continuous jerking movement of my head. There will be a tightening sensation at the back of my neck. My finger joints used to get locked in spasm. But after continuously taking Cordyceps Sinesis this has almost vanished. Anybody else had this effect ? I also want to try Cordyceps Militaris and see if it gives more energy than the sinensis variety. Cordyceps is suppposed to increase ATP. Mods, if mentioning brand names is not allowed please remove the brand name from my post. Thanks.
 

Paralee

Senior Member
Messages
571
Location
USA
@raghav, is there a down side to Cordyceps?

Wait, is there a name for your condition? Something to do with favish beans, I think the name is Favish ....something?

Just looked it up, it's Favism, from the G6PD gene. Just a thought.....
 

raghav

Senior Member
Messages
809
Location
India
@Paralee as far as I know there is no negatives in using cordyceps sinensis. It has not only helped with eliminating my food triggered joint pain and diffuse body pain while sleeping it has given me more energy while I am awake. I take 2 tablets immediately after breakfast and thats it . The manufacturer says you can take 2 tablets 2 to 4 times a day. That is too costly for me ! I looked up favism. I dont know. My symptoms of chronic fatigue started after I took cisapride for a prolonged period of time. I initially got a lot of gas, bloating, cramping and frequent BM after prolonged usage of cisapride. But cisapride helped with my symptoms at that time (1999 - 2001). The gastro failed to diagnose my hippocampal sclerosis (left brain) caused abdomen epilepsy. I see from allopathy medical literature that abdomen epilepsy is a rare disorder. But ayurveda says it is much common. In fact it was an ayurvedic practitioner who diagnosed my problem was to do with my intestine. Before that I was treated by Cardiologist for a jumpy mitral valve with prolapse. MVP. They put me on Propranolol 90 mg a day totally. They just had no clue that my intestine was rising. It is called epigastric rising. All my symptoms were connected to my intestine. Anyway hope cordyceps helps you.
 

Paralee

Senior Member
Messages
571
Location
USA
Thanks, @raghav , I'll definitely look into this. Sounds like it could cover general symptoms as well.

The only reason I latched onto Favism was you were naming beans that I thought might be connected to Favism.
 

Peyt

Senior Member
Messages
678
Location
Southern California
Hi,
I have been using Cordyceps ( Full Spectrum ) from Planetary Herbals - 2 tablets a day for the past 3 years. Before using it whenever I ate gassy foods or foods high in protein like chickpea I used to get severe joints pain and overall diffuse body pain throughout that particular night when I took that type of food. If I ate peanuts (My favourite side dish) I used to get a parkinsonism like continuous jerking movement of my head. There will be a tightening sensation at the back of my neck. My finger joints used to get locked in spasm. But after continuously taking Cordyceps Sinesis this has almost vanished. Anybody else had this effect ? I also want to try Cordyceps Militaris and see if it gives more energy than the sinensis variety. Cordyceps is suppposed to increase ATP. Mods, if mentioning brand names is not allowed please remove the brand name from my post. Thanks.

According to my Chinese Medicine Doctor, Cordyceps should not be taken for long periods of time without a break. The reason is that supplement is considered Yang and one may originally have a Yang deficiency which it will correct but it will build up in the system so then the person can become too Yang... So it's best to take a few days of break once in a while and then re-strat.... As far as the brand that you mentioned, I looked up the ingredients and it's too bad it has calcium in it and I do poorly with Calcium as a filler In any supplement, so I would have to pass , but I am glad its working for you.
 

raghav

Senior Member
Messages
809
Location
India
thx @Peyt So how do I correct this excess yang. Any herbal supplement for this ?. Cordyceps is helping in keeping my blood sugar just at borderline. As I said no joint pain for the past 3 years. So can you suggest something which will balance out the cordyceps ? thx BTW why dont you try some other brand of cordyceps which does not contain calcium ?
 
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Peyt

Senior Member
Messages
678
Location
Southern California
thx @Peyt So how do I correct this excess yang. Any herbal supplement for this ?. Cordyceps is helping in keeping my blood sugar just at borderline. As I said no joint pain for the past 3 years. So can you suggest something which will balance out the cordyceps ? thx BTW why dont you try some other brand of cordyceps which does not contain calcium ?
It's not that simple,
Everyone is different. Chinese medicine looks at 5 main body parts as the main ones which are : Lung, Liver, Kidney, Spleen, and Heart... and then there is 5 hollow organs that each go together with the 5 organs. For example Large intestine goes with Lung, Small intestine goes with Heart, and so on....
A good Chinese medicine doctor should be able to tell if there is excess yang based on their clinical diagnosis... One person may get too much yang in the heart (which would have its own symptoms) vs. another who might get excess yang in the liver and so on..... But if you absolutely have no side effects after continually taking Cordyceps for 3 years then I guess I wouldn't worry about it.
 

Carl

Senior Member
Messages
362
Location
United Kingdom
Buying cordyceps tablets is the expensive way of doing it IMO. It is a fairly expensive "herb", a fungi but buying it in it's raw form would be the cheapest method.

However I am not a fan of moulds and fungi and I dislike mushrooms.

CFS is a condition of yin excess, increasing yang tends to counteract that. TriMethylGlycine is yang too which is why it can be of benefit. Fruits and above ground veg are yin in nature, below ground veg are more yang and salt is yang. Animal meats tend to be yang.

Yin excess shows in the tongue as a thick white coating, redness is more yang. When my tongue has less coating, I feel much better with an improvement in mood. There was a time when I was taking Herbalife herbal aloe back in about 1997 when my tongue became quite red with very little coating. My mood was great, my skin was great rather than being dry, energy was excellent, I felt fantastic. Unfortunately they changed the formula and the newer formulations do not work well and do not have the same effect. I think some people overdid it with the herbal aloe which damaged their kidney energy. I knew a woman who I used to get herbalife products from and she overdid it taking very large amounts of the stuff and could not stand still. Constantly moving around rather than standing stationary.

I doubt some tiny tablets would provide any great effect, certainly not too much anyway.

BTW I am a peanut lover just like you. I was eating large amounts of peanuts, 1Kg bags at a time, buying 6 to 10Kg at a time. However I am now staying away from them because they make me put on weight. My weight is slowly reducing since I stopped them. The fats in peanuts are not beneficial, there is very high amounts of omega 6 fats which are very inflammation promoting.

With regard to Yang, it depends upon which parts of the body the fungi works on ie which meridians. Just checked and it looks like it works on the lung and kidney meridians. Warming the kidney to a degree can be helpful but the lung is not so useful. Taking kidney yin herbs might be helpful. Gou Qi Zi (wolfberry/goji berry) is a kidney yin herb. I use that along with another herb called Tu Si Zi (dodder seed).

I did read that Gou Qi Zi does have some properties which might not be so helpful. I love those berries but there was something, which I cannot remember, which did not sound helpful.
 

raghav

Senior Member
Messages
809
Location
India
@Paralee I had an MRI cum MR spectroscopy which detected my left hippocampal sclerosis in 2011. I started taking cordyceps in 2014 august. I don't know whether my mitochondria had got damaged and to what intensity and at which places in my left hippocampus. But the neuro (A reputed professor in India) was absolutely sure mitochondrial damage was the cause of the hippocampal sclerosis.

My left hippocampus had shrunk by 20 % approx compared to my right. The left hippocampus is necessary for recollection, language and many more critical functions which modern medicine is yet exploring. That is why this part of the lobe is informally called the psychomotor lobe. All your psyche emerges from this part. Coming to your question of whether it will repair damaged mitochondria , I will say give it a try. I saw improvements from the first dose itself. Initially when I opened the first bottle I was very scared. I popped in one pill with water and waited for one hour. No response. Then I took the second pill after one hour and within a few minutes my energy levels increased quite remarkably.

I take only 2 tablets everyday after breakfast. Been doing so for the past nearly 3 years. The label on the bottle says take 2 pills 2 to 4 times daily. That would be too costly for me in India. So I am sticking with 2 tablets at one go once a day. No more joint pains while sleeping. No stiffening of finger joints. The kind you will see in a corpse undergoing rigor mortis. Sorry for such vivid description. I am able to eat peanuts now.

I am going to try the Vielight Neuro Alpha next week. It is supposed to activated mitochondria in dead cells also by activating cytochrome c Oxidase. I dont know what that means. I am weak in chemistry. he he he . But i will post on that in the Vielight thread. Sorry for the long winded post. Try it. I hope in the process of trying to clarify I have not confused you.
 

raghav

Senior Member
Messages
809
Location
India
@Carl I am taking Ashwagandha, Brahmi (Bacopa Monnieri), Rhodiola along with cordyceps. Maybe this is balancing the yin and the yang. I dont know. I have seen on many forums that these are the only four herbal supplements which are of most use to cfs sufferers and all four are working for me. Forgot to add shilajit.
 
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Paralee

Senior Member
Messages
571
Location
USA
Thanks @raghav . I'll make a sticky note (my memory cells) and research it some more. my mitochondria is so messed up from the !Cipro that I keep going down. It's getting to the point I'll try anything!:(
 

PatJ

Forum Support Assistant
Messages
5,288
Location
Canada
Is Lithium orotate safe for long term use

As far as I know the best effects are from long term use at low doses (ie. 5mg/day) but I haven't extensively researched it. Lithium is sometimes considered dangerous because of the negative effects that many people have experienced from the very high doses given by many doctors. See the lithium doctor article for more info.

The main drawbacks are that it can influence the thyroid, inhibit magnesium and iodine (so I assume they should be taken a few hours apart), may not be good for crohn's patients, and shouldn't be taken by anyone with kidney disease (see the selfhacked article.)

More info on lithium orotate:
The lithium doctor - FAQs
Selfhacked - benefits of lithium

Comments related to your condition, from the selfhacked article:
"Chronic lithium treatment was found to robustly reduce glutamate-induced excitotoxicity mediated by N-methyl-D-asparatate (NMDA) receptors. This effect was at least partly due to lithium’s ability to inhibit the influx of calcium, which mediates NMDA receptor activity. (R)

Therefore, lithium can help mood disorders, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, cancer, and inflammatory and autoimmune diseases"

"Chronic lithium treatment also has been found to induce the production of Bcl-2, a protein in the frontal cortex that protects cells from apoptosis"

"Lithium also increases Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) and Glial-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (GDNF) in the hippocampus, frontal cortex, occipital cortex and striatum (R). NGF and GDNF help increase neuronal survival and plasticity (the ability to regenerate and form new connections) of dopaminergic, cholinergic, and serotonergic neurons in the central nervous system."

"Because lithium induces autophagy, it may be particularly helpful for neurodegenerative disorders – Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS and Huntington’s because these disorders are, in part, characterized by the accumulation of misfolded disease-causing proteins"

"It also increases neurogenesis in the subventricular zone, the only other place except for the hippocampus (memory center) that it’s been found to occur, causing a sustained increase in gray matter volume in patients"
 

raghav

Senior Member
Messages
809
Location
India
@PatJ thx I looked up the products in ebay. It has typical 5 mg tablets. But there is one by Dr. Hans Neiper (Advanced Research ) which says 120 mg Lithium Orotate equivalent to 4.8 mg lithium. Anybody here using it or other forms of lithium ? Will give it a try. But the side effects list is scary. One of them is enlarged thyroid.
 

raghav

Senior Member
Messages
809
Location
India
I am actually waiting for the launch of Fycompa in India. It is going to be launched August-september. It specifically targets the hippocampus. I hope i get better control of my abdominal symptoms with it. Anybody here on Fycompa ? It was launched in US in 2014. But the dropout rate is supposed to be high.
 
Messages
5
Hi,
I have been using Cordyceps ( Full Spectrum ) from Planetary Herbals - 2 tablets a day for the past 3 years. Before using it whenever I ate gassy foods or foods high in protein like chickpea I used to get severe joints pain and overall diffuse body pain throughout that particular night when I took that type of food. If I ate peanuts (My favourite side dish) I used to get a parkinsonism like continuous jerking movement of my head. There will be a tightening sensation at the back of my neck. My finger joints used to get locked in spasm. But after continuously taking Cordyceps Sinesis this has almost vanished. Anybody else had this effect ? I also want to try Cordyceps Militaris and see if it gives more energy than the sinensis variety. Cordyceps is suppposed to increase ATP. Mods, if mentioning brand names is not allowed please remove the brand name from my post. Thanks.

I realize this is a rather old post but I have been taking Cordyceps per coaching protocols from a Dr. Lam coach since early April. Only every other day though. It has changed my fatigue experiences quite notably so I’ve been taking notes cautiously observing changes and waiting. At one point it increased some mild internal cold episodes but I took a break, and reintro’d lower dose and am pleased so far.

Low circulation and bradycardia are two things I deal with. It’s been complicated further by a loss of tolerance to thyroid meds over last 5 years or so. But working off them brought a variety of pros (mostly brain related). Cons have not evolved to be what I imagined it should’ve been, but still observing patterns & watching everything.

I’d love to hear more on anyone’s Cordycep experiences over the long run, esp since I’m only a few months in.

Meanwhile I thought this might be interesting on what they are studying around Cordyceps on endurance athletes and implication on influencing oxygen.

https://firstendurance.com/cordyceps-endurance-performance/
 

Paralee

Senior Member
Messages
571
Location
USA
@klynn , it seems like when I find something to help, it is a supplement that brings down cortisol and I can't afford to go lower, I'm in the 4's first thing in the morning. Do you know what the side effects are?