High-Dose Selenium Significantly Improves My Fatigue and Brain Fog

[jmd82]

I was in the moderate range. With the help of the nuvigil , adderall (which i wouldnt take often) and constant caffeine pills i was able to make it through my day but only barely. Days where i was home with nothing to do i would wake up around 6am take the nuvigl and have a coffee by 9am i was in bed taking a nap. i would then wake up and have more coffee to be ready for another nap by noon. Without the help of the meds i couldn't make it too long without feeling i was going to fall flat on my face. This is why i can not believe how this 1 supplement has changed all that after 20 years of dealing with this. As i stated i still have the tiredness feeling throughout the entire day but its more of an undertone now where as long as i keep my mind on something else i feel really good. I cant describe in words how appreciative iam towards you posting this and i really wish it would work for everyone with this issue. i literally would not wish this on my worst enemy. My biggest fear right now is it stops working once by body becomes accustomed to it, but hopefully not!

One more question is there any supplements i should be taking along with the selenium other than the vitamin c and vitamin e?

Again thank you, thank you thank you. I was so nervous with intaking all the stimulants on a daily basis so i hope this continues and i can give my body the rest it probably needs.

 

[hapl808]

I guess you could try other forms of selenium.

Have you also tried forms like brazil nuts? I was eating two per day for awhile, but not sure if it helped me. Theoretically, each nut should have up to 100mcg of selenium. I've recently stopped eating them as I'm focusing on more gut supplements lately, but just curious as I do like real foods if I can easily get a supplement there, although also open to lots of supplementation.

 

[Hip]

Have you also tried forms like brazil nuts? I was eating two per day for awhile, but not sure if it helped me. Theoretically, each nut should have up to 100mcg of selenium.

I like Brazil nuts, and they do contain a lot of selenium, but the content is variable, depending on what country they come from. So it's not really a reliable way to get a specific dose: you may be taking too little or too much selenium. In this selenium treatment for ME/CFS, 400 mcg is the target dose, and having less than that may make the treatment fail; whereas more than that tends to bring you over the safe daily dose.

 

[godlovesatrier]

Also if the nuts aren't organic they are meant to be full of pesticides. More than any other food because they are used so heavily.

The pesticide level is apparently really high and there are quite a few studies that prove this. So the supplement is likely a lot safer if you're taking it every day.

Similair issue with things like egcg and some herbal powders. They can be riddled with heavy metals. So if you take them every day you could just be poisoning yourself very slowly.

 

[Hip]

One more question is there any supplements i should be taking along with the selenium other than the vitamin c and vitamin e?

I am not aware of anything specific that should be taken with selenium.

 

[jmd82]

Hip, do you take any days off during the week from the selenium? It's still going pretty well so far. It seems that during the mid afternoon time is when i feel the worst out of the whole day but its no where near what it was. I use to feel like i haven't slept in weeks everyday. Now it feels like i didn't get the best night sleep the night before. No major need to take a nap and if i can make it past the afternoon i can pretty much go till 10pm with no problem. Just wondering if i should be giving my body some days off or if its fine to take daily.

 

[Hip]

Hip, do you take any days off during the week from the selenium?

I don't take any days off, because I find if I stop selenium, after just 5 days, I return to more severe ME/CFS.

And once I have returned to this more severe state of ME/CFS, even if I restart the selenium straight away, it takes 10 days for me to get back to improved health.

I have tested this many times: every time I have stopped selenium, I get worse; and when I restart selenium, it takes 10 days to get back to my state of better health.

 

[Nadirtopinnacle]

I found Brazil nuts work better for me, as a high selenium nut. What I have tentatively found though is that daily low dose doesn't work. I am also wary of any daily high dose of selenium, as it can be toxic in the long term. What I found, so far, that works best for me, is half a dozen or more Brazil nuts twice a week, eaten all at once. That spiked dose seems to do something.

Curiously I get a similar response pattern from resveratrol. A constant dose doesn't do much. Intermittent dosing twice a week gets the best response so far.

If anyone is only going to take one vitamin antioxidant, it would have to be vitamin E, as either gamma tocopherol or mixed tocopherols. It has been noted many times that we are consistently low in vitamin E, though I have yet to see a proper study showing this.

What other nootropics can help against cognitive dysfunction, anxiety and help improve focus and concentration. Im badly struggling with it and getting su!c!dal thoughts due to significant loss of productivity and inability to focus. Please help. @Hip @Pyrrhus @Mary. Requesting other senior members too to help me.

 

[Hip]

@Nadirtopinnacle you might like to start a thread asking your question. This thread is about selenium.

 

[Nadirtopinnacle]

@Nadirtopinnacle you might like to start a thread asking your question. This thread is about selenium.

Sure. Would do that. Thanks as always.

 

[jmd82]

Just wanted to give a quick update, i been taking the selenium every morning on an empty stomach. It seems as the days have been going by the stimulating effect i was getting is not nearly as strong. Overall i do feel better when comparing to how i was previously. I'm still getting the early morning to mid afternoon tiredness feeling however its not to the point where i'm falling asleep in my chair and forced to take naps. I'm a bit upset a majority of the positive effects i was receiving from it wore off however I'm still grateful for the little improvement it is providing. It also seems once the mid afternoon time passes my tiredness becomes less where i now feel decent until bedtime. I'm not sure why this happens.

 

[jmd82]

I forgot to add something and it doesn't seem like i cant edit my previous post. Going back to the mid morning afternoon tiredness topic. It seems as if the tired feeling is now happening in bursts where i have the tired feeling and then all of a sudden i feel fine which then turns back into the tired feeling. this has been happening everyday from around 11am to around maybe 1 or 2 pm. Usually after 2 pm the tired feeling fades to a point that is not an issue to me.

 

[jmd82]

wanted to check in, it seems the supplement's effects are pretty much 95% gone. This really makes me sad and it seems i'm just about back to where i started. I dont understand why it worked so well and then just stops. Was really hoping i had found the answer after all these years.

 

[Hip]

I dont understand why it worked so well and then just stops. Was really hoping i had found the answer after all these years.

Sadly that phenomenon of a supplement or drug working well for an ME/CFS patient and then mysteriously stopping is all too common in ME/CFS. Nobody really knows why that happens.

 

[jmd82]

Sadly that phenomenon of a supplement or drug working well for an ME/CFS patient and then mysteriously stopping is all too common in ME/CFS. Nobody really knows why that happens.

really horrible, the few doctors i spoke too, none of them seemed to understand why it was working nor did they seem to really care enough to come up with an answer most of them just said "thats great". I feel like the fact it was working has to be a clue to where i could proceed next. the only issue is trying to find a doctor who cares enough to help.

 

[Hip]

the few doctors i spoke too, none of them seemed to understand why it was working

You could ask the best medical researchers and professors of medicine on the planet why selenium helps some ME/CFS patients, and they would not know. It would probably take many millions of dollars of research funding to conduct studies to uncover the possible mechanism. So not surprising that the doctors you spoke to had no answer, because unfortunately the workings of the body are often a mystery.

If you find a functional medicine doctor, they might be more interested in speculating why selenium helps, but they probably will have no answers either. But you could show them the possible mechanisms I listed in the first post.

 

[JES]

wanted to check in, it seems the supplement's effects are pretty much 95% gone. This really makes me sad and it seems i'm just about back to where i started. I dont understand why it worked so well and then just stops. Was really hoping i had found the answer after all these years.

That's unfortunate. I got an initial very positive effect from selenium back in 2014. It basically cleared my brain fog for one week, but then that effect started to vanish.

However, after I stopped taking selenium on a couple of occasions, I noticed in general my fatigue and symptoms would get slightly worse over time. The same has happened with a few other supplements after I decided to go without them for a couple of days or longer.

So just my two cents: even though a supplement loses the initial major benefits, sometimes it can still provide a subtle benefit, which is hard to notice, but becomes more apparent once you stop taking it.

 

[SpiralOut]

It turns out I've already been taking 200mcg daily of... I'm not quite sure which form? As part of the Life Extension one per day multi. It's listed as:
Selenium [as selenium selenite, SelenoExcell high selenium yeast, Se-methyl L-selenocysteine]
If anything I've got somewhat worse during the several months I've been taking it.

Anyway, I'm going to try adding an additional 200mcg of Se-methyl L-selenocysteine and see how that goes.

 

[jmd82]

That's unfortunate. I got an initial very positive effect from selenium back in 2014. It basically cleared my brain fog for one week, but then that effect started to vanish.

However, after I stopped taking selenium on a couple of occasions, I noticed in general my fatigue and symptoms would get slightly worse over time. The same has happened with a few other supplements after I decided to go without them for a couple of days or longer.

So just my two cents: even though a supplement loses the initial major benefits, sometimes it can still provide a subtle benefit, which is hard to notice, but becomes more apparent once you stop taking it.

what other supplements do you find helps you? im so devastated im back where i started for the most part. It literally changed my life for the short few months.

 

[jmd82]

I did notice something with my last bottle of life extension se methyl seleno. It did not really smell bad at all. The first bottle i had when i first opened it, smelled terrible. Im wondering if maybe this could be partly the resason? maybe my second bottle is old/bad? i purchased 2 more bottles one from the company directly and one from amazon to see if those smell the same way the first one did.

The biggest thing now which i never really paid much attention too at the time was how i woke up. I would be up bright and early ready to go. Now no matter when the alarm goes off it is never enough.