Aerowallah
Senior Member
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If anyone has similar experiences / suggestions I'd love to hear.
After a bad flu and CFS onset 5 years ago, a doc put me on precursors and Kavinace (phenibut + 200 mg taurine) for anxiety. After 3 months of great sleep / vivid dreams, insomnia turned on like a light switch with 72 hours awake, followed by loose pattern of several weeks waking at 3 or 4 am, increasing to 1 or two all-nighters, finally breaking with a night of 8 or 9 hours sleep--then repeating.
Neuro retest showed elevated glutamate and GABA, with Taurine OFF the charts, and depressed histamines (cortisol low normal). Stopped Kavinace due to possible glutamergic reaction to taurine buildup. Unfortunately glutamate goes up quicker than it comes down. For 18 months I fiddled with food groups and then started coffee enemas to help liver clearance and symptoms from detox. All-nighters ended immediately, and I slept an hour later, now waking at 4am/5am. Still wired & tired, except after 8-hour sleeps when brain felt peaceful but I felt weaker, like a CFS state of hibernation / low energy production reasserting itself.
After some bad starts a methylation program of B12s + folate + cofactors added another hour to my sleep--but only after I worked out an optimal dose, erring on side of low & slow. (Electrolytes, magnesium glycinate and diatomaceous earth also had good effects. Otherwise my approach is to avoid targeting synthetic isolates.)
After 2 years of slow rebalancing, insomnia had almost disappeared, then 4am wakings ramped up again a few months ago, concurrent with skin breakouts on back, brain fog, tinnitus, and some flu-like aches and pains mostly in hands, which I put down to increased detox (and cytokine activity from inflammatory response), possibly resulting from increased methylation. (This follows logic that CFS onset causes metabolic triage and reduction in detox function, with more sequestration to storage sites until energy improves. Then release of toxins causes symptoms that seem like setback after a period of improvement.)
Someone else here described what I feel now--after 5 hours of sleep I feel like hell, after 7 hours I feel almost healed. Also, with an increase of detox symptoms I feel many nights a rapid onset of histamine itching, like summer lightning flitting over face, scalp and body, esp. after big green salads. Have had periods of this before---it presents, I'm guessing, when histamine levels are already elevated by inflammation due to detox. I never took Benadryl for the itching because it never stopped me falling asleep. After CEs and methylation I fall asleep in miuntes now, faster than I did as a kid. But when I woke at 4am and tried Benadryl it did NOT get me back to sleep, neither did Melatonin. Sometimes I could get another hour after 7 or 8am for some reason.
Then the breakthrough--few weeks ago I tried 2 Benadryl before going to sleep instead of at 4am--itchy or not. Result was EVERY single night since I sleep 7 to 9 hours. After 14 days of this rest it feels almost like a 100% cure, except I am slowly tapering up activity, walks and light exercise. This is the best I've felt since onset, and no doubt hangs on the slow healing and rebalancing I've done since then.
I've read about the linkages of anticholinergics like Benadryl to dementia, though causality is not established, and that 1st-gen antihistamines like Benadryl have low receptor site specificity, so block all sorts of things in the brain, causing drowsiness in many.
I know many already take Benadryl to sleep, but is it because of the side effect of drowsiness or because it blocks histmaine and adrenaline release? I read that if you have high histamines (which have the function of increasing cellular permeability for immune factors), the body eventually releases adrenaline to end their function, and that is one cause of sleep maintenance insomnia. (BTW I can still bring back sleep onset insomnia for a day or two by jamming a lot of high free-glutamate foods for dinner.) Is Benadryl at bedtime blocking histamine receptor sites and keeping me from waking when adrenaline release coincides, hours later, with my light sleep cycle?
I suppose I have a choice...
1. Trial with a more specific anti-histamine like Loratidine and if the issue is adrenaline release I should continue to sleep 8 hours.
2. Trial more vitamin C or other natural anti-histamines for the same reason.
However I am nervous of C's effects on zinc. As for more potent anti-histamines my hay fever disappeared with the onset of CFS, which I think indicates overall lower histamine levels, though they appear to spike again during periods of elevated detox. Also. newer anti-histamine drugs give me side effects, which Benadryl NEVER does.
3. Don't worry about developing dementia over the next few months, and continue improved sleep, energy, and healing momentums. Discontinue Benadryl later. I hate to mess with my sleep just now by trialling new things.
4. Go back to fiddling with food groups, especially reducing high-histamine foods like the probiotic live-culture kefir I eat for elevated lead and methylmercury levels.
Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks!
After a bad flu and CFS onset 5 years ago, a doc put me on precursors and Kavinace (phenibut + 200 mg taurine) for anxiety. After 3 months of great sleep / vivid dreams, insomnia turned on like a light switch with 72 hours awake, followed by loose pattern of several weeks waking at 3 or 4 am, increasing to 1 or two all-nighters, finally breaking with a night of 8 or 9 hours sleep--then repeating.
Neuro retest showed elevated glutamate and GABA, with Taurine OFF the charts, and depressed histamines (cortisol low normal). Stopped Kavinace due to possible glutamergic reaction to taurine buildup. Unfortunately glutamate goes up quicker than it comes down. For 18 months I fiddled with food groups and then started coffee enemas to help liver clearance and symptoms from detox. All-nighters ended immediately, and I slept an hour later, now waking at 4am/5am. Still wired & tired, except after 8-hour sleeps when brain felt peaceful but I felt weaker, like a CFS state of hibernation / low energy production reasserting itself.
After some bad starts a methylation program of B12s + folate + cofactors added another hour to my sleep--but only after I worked out an optimal dose, erring on side of low & slow. (Electrolytes, magnesium glycinate and diatomaceous earth also had good effects. Otherwise my approach is to avoid targeting synthetic isolates.)
After 2 years of slow rebalancing, insomnia had almost disappeared, then 4am wakings ramped up again a few months ago, concurrent with skin breakouts on back, brain fog, tinnitus, and some flu-like aches and pains mostly in hands, which I put down to increased detox (and cytokine activity from inflammatory response), possibly resulting from increased methylation. (This follows logic that CFS onset causes metabolic triage and reduction in detox function, with more sequestration to storage sites until energy improves. Then release of toxins causes symptoms that seem like setback after a period of improvement.)
Someone else here described what I feel now--after 5 hours of sleep I feel like hell, after 7 hours I feel almost healed. Also, with an increase of detox symptoms I feel many nights a rapid onset of histamine itching, like summer lightning flitting over face, scalp and body, esp. after big green salads. Have had periods of this before---it presents, I'm guessing, when histamine levels are already elevated by inflammation due to detox. I never took Benadryl for the itching because it never stopped me falling asleep. After CEs and methylation I fall asleep in miuntes now, faster than I did as a kid. But when I woke at 4am and tried Benadryl it did NOT get me back to sleep, neither did Melatonin. Sometimes I could get another hour after 7 or 8am for some reason.
Then the breakthrough--few weeks ago I tried 2 Benadryl before going to sleep instead of at 4am--itchy or not. Result was EVERY single night since I sleep 7 to 9 hours. After 14 days of this rest it feels almost like a 100% cure, except I am slowly tapering up activity, walks and light exercise. This is the best I've felt since onset, and no doubt hangs on the slow healing and rebalancing I've done since then.
I've read about the linkages of anticholinergics like Benadryl to dementia, though causality is not established, and that 1st-gen antihistamines like Benadryl have low receptor site specificity, so block all sorts of things in the brain, causing drowsiness in many.
I know many already take Benadryl to sleep, but is it because of the side effect of drowsiness or because it blocks histmaine and adrenaline release? I read that if you have high histamines (which have the function of increasing cellular permeability for immune factors), the body eventually releases adrenaline to end their function, and that is one cause of sleep maintenance insomnia. (BTW I can still bring back sleep onset insomnia for a day or two by jamming a lot of high free-glutamate foods for dinner.) Is Benadryl at bedtime blocking histamine receptor sites and keeping me from waking when adrenaline release coincides, hours later, with my light sleep cycle?
I suppose I have a choice...
1. Trial with a more specific anti-histamine like Loratidine and if the issue is adrenaline release I should continue to sleep 8 hours.
2. Trial more vitamin C or other natural anti-histamines for the same reason.
However I am nervous of C's effects on zinc. As for more potent anti-histamines my hay fever disappeared with the onset of CFS, which I think indicates overall lower histamine levels, though they appear to spike again during periods of elevated detox. Also. newer anti-histamine drugs give me side effects, which Benadryl NEVER does.
3. Don't worry about developing dementia over the next few months, and continue improved sleep, energy, and healing momentums. Discontinue Benadryl later. I hate to mess with my sleep just now by trialling new things.
4. Go back to fiddling with food groups, especially reducing high-histamine foods like the probiotic live-culture kefir I eat for elevated lead and methylmercury levels.
Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks!
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