@Hip
I soaked in heavily dosed Esom Salt baths daily, didn't notice much effect but I was so bad then that it's hard to recall ....
I was able to return to some semblance of normality.
I know how good that must have felt ..... and I can't tell you how good it makes me feel to see "normality" as opposed to the grotesque remnant from Pres Harding, I think, "normalcy" ......
Do you find exogenous glutamate worsens your anxiety?
Absolutely ..... and I found that cutting it out entirely really helped start the lengthy, still on-going, healing process .... it was entirely intuitive, and started with having to stop the lecithin gels ..... then the Vit D, I think, then the E ... then I was afraid to take
anything, and converted to veg-capsuled supplements only. I also had to stop all herbs and things like turmeric for a while, tho I'm edging back into them slowly.
The only things I never stopped taking were ginger and cinnamon. Much later, I found a research study from India, if I'm remembering right (and I think you can guess the odds of
that) that spent 2 whole paragraphs on cinnamon and it's ability to cut glutamate / excitotoxicity reactions. Not sure by how much, but I still take it every morning (Ceylon cinnamon only, all the others have a shite-load of coumarin, especially Vietnamese, so not good for steady dosing) with potassium and ginger in hot--ish water .... it's a not unpleasant way to limp into the day with the feeling that your giving yourself every edge and corner you can.
Glutamate in the blood does not cross the blood-brain barrier, so dietary glutamate should not be able to affect the brain
Granted. But it does something sneaky with the citric acid cycle, which converts it into something that
can cross the BBB, where it slides in and starts hammering on the NMDA system, and there you go. This is a layman's grossly simplistic translation of intensely unreadable studies, diagrams, and charts. But fro personal experience, I can attest to it's deadly effect.
you can check for BBB leakiness by the
GABA challenge test).
Will do that over the weekend, assuming I can get some sleep and regenerate more than 3 brain cells and the usual empty clanking, whirry, sounds.
They were borne out of pure desperation, and the hellish suffering that only those with severe GAD know about!
It's a
terrific piece of work, Hip, and greatly appreciated. And I know that driven feeling. LIke you, I've lived in it for years, falling deeper into desperation and despair, then rebounding as something unexpectedly seemed to work, then suddenly stopped, then falling again. It's a very particular, precise little slice of hell. You have my deep respect. You not only got thru it, you produced some
extremely worthwhile investigative treatment protocols that you generously chared with all of us here, and that will help a lot of others for a very long time.
It usually observed that those with severe GAD spend the entire day trying to find (usually unsuccessfully) solutions for their horrendous anxiety, and that's what I did every day, for around 7 years.
I've only been at it for the last 3 or so .... I spent of lot time not knowing what was happening to me .... the fatigue, the bone deep weariness, the sleep that, when I could get it, neither refreshed nor restored, the spastic muscles, the massive anxiety/panic (I use this form to express it because I really don't know which it is, and I'm sure as shite not going to another doctor to find out), the sudden onset agoraphobia, I could go on and on, but you're already familiar with all this.
Though when you say "anxiety attacks", does that mean you have panic disorder (PD) rather than generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)?
Not a clue.
PD involves "panic attacks" which come out of the blue
Whereas GAD involves more-or-less constant anxiety, which is present all day, every day (although its severity can vary from day to day).
The best I can offer by way of explanation is a thumbnail of what it was like ..... the onset was fairly sudden, starting without warning, them ramping up from unpleasant to un-effing-endurable, all day, every day. The worst one lasted for a solid 22 hrs, nonstop, and it was a chest-ripping, heart pounding, tremoring, head exploding, screaming, sweating horror.
That's the one that sent me to the emergency room after the first 10 hours because I couldn't believe this wasn't going to kill me. After the inept nurse ripped apart the last good vein in my body (a year of chemo, 3 years of follow up, uncounted blood draws, infusions, experimental drug infusions, neupogen, epogen, and a month in the hospital with a patient controlled pain meds IV had pretty much ruined all the veins I had except for this one) causing an impressive geyser of almost vertically ascending blood while she slid quietly out of the room, not to be seen again, and the attnding physician wrote me off as a drug seeker and scribbled a script for Ativan, I walked out, or rather leaned on my husband out, before he'd finished signing it.
This started about a year of intense repeat performances, all lasting all day, tho many with little intermissions during their course. Sleep was a distant memory, brain function was shot, but I somehow managed to plow through those impenetrable research papers that you probably read thru like Sunday comics, you lucky duck, and endless medical articles, slowly putting together my treatment plan, such as it was.
But little by little, experiment after experiment, I gradually found things that worked, at least for the panic or whatever we want to call it. The fatigue, the PEMS, the POTS, and all their nasty little friends still come a-callin'. but they not as bad as they were, and I'll keep on punchin' until I find a way to defeat them, as well.
I will have to try magnesium glycinate.
The secret for that is constant semi-micro-dosing, 50 mgs every hour or less if you're having a bad attack, all day til bedtime. I also found that .25 mgs of melatonin helped, sometimes quite a lot, sometimes just a little, but if I woke up in a bad attack, I'd immediately hit .25 mgs of melatonin, then 50 mgs of mag gly as often as needed, but no less than 1x hour.
I hope it works for you as well as it's working for me, or at least gives you another path to try. It's always good to have another arrow in your quiver.
Though I read just now that magnesium glycinate increases serotonin, so maybe that's how it leads to anti-anxiety benefits (serotonin has anti-anxiety effects).
I wish I knew. I believe melatonin might, as well. Not sure. Too tired to check back thru notes and the several thousand files I have on everything I tried at one time or another.
If increasing serotonin works for you, you might also consider high-dose inositol
Actually, Inositol was one of the early rejects. I'd been taking a very small dose (500 mgs or less) to help with sleep, and it started to turn on me as well, so after years of using it with no issues, out it went.
Good God, this has turned into a fairly boring
War & Peace .... apologies, and thanks for hanging in this far.
And thank you again, Hip, for all your input and generous sharing.
And apologies for all the inevitable typos, too beat to fix.
Talk later ...... onward and upward, eh?
