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insomnia glutamate histamines Benadryl

Aerowallah

Senior Member
Messages
131
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!
 
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Sundancer

Senior Member
Messages
569
Location
Holland
hm...much of this is like me.

My reumatic like hands started when I started with B12, itching too.

some weeks ago I stopped taking folate as even though B1 and B6 had normalized since I was taking B12, folate was as high as ever. 10 days later the bad hands began to become better and now about a month later I'm sure there is big improvement in that department

Then I ramped up B12, changing to hydroxy instead of combination of methyl and adenosyl. Sleep became much better, itching became so bad that I asked doctor for Histamine depressor , so something like benzadryl,

reading this

"I feel many nights a rapid onset of histamine itching, like summer lightning flitting over face, scalp and body, esp. after big green salads."

I think you may look into folate and see whether taking down dose ( or stopping , or testing bloodlevels and then deciding) will help you.

Of course this is is just my personal experience, not advice, were all different

I still wake up in the late night/early morn though. But it is not as bad as it has been for years. Just being awake for an hour, then dozing of. instead of feeeling real ill.
 

Aerowallah

Senior Member
Messages
131
My flu achy hands began with CFS onset--my immune continued to believe it was under attack by a virus. They finally began improving with methylation but it is very dose dependent. It is my contention that a lot of my symptoms are due to rate of detox, which can further aggravate an immune system in "cellular defense" mode. I have chosen not to go the route of chemical chelation.
 

vision blue

Senior Member
Messages
1,877
I recently started taurine and found your thread by searching for "taurine". So far I like it so interested in your adverse reaction that occured later.

One thing to note is the way in which you retested and said your levels were "off the charts". Was that thru urine or blood? If urine, then that does not mean anything- alot of taurine will be dumped overboard when youre taking supplements, so of course it would be very high. You need blood levels to see what the real levels of taurine are. That's how I found my taurrine deficieny by the way- my urine levels were HIGH, which i knew meant either i had too much taurine or too little taurine- in the latter case being "wasted" at they say thru the urine. Only way to know was to test my blood (amino acids serum) and when i did it was low (even officially low, not just relatively low, i'm rarely offically out of range on such tests. Made sense since my beta alanine in urine was also very high and those two compete at receptors. I can say more if anyone interested.

I"m no familar with the other thing you were taking with taurine. Does that factor in at all?

also intersting that it raised your glutimate. I had read that taurine may help one better handle gluimate contaiing foods and since i'm sensitive to these and can't have, i thought it would be a bonus.

maybe i should start a fresh thread on taurine and compare notes with others who have tried.
 

Aerowallah

Senior Member
Messages
131
All good observations. Right out of the gate Taurine gave me diuresis, excess stomach acid, and then, I believe, contributed to insomnia--elevating an inhibitory neuro can cause the brain to elevate an excitatory one to balance, like dopamine an glutmate. Phenibut probably played a role, but not much literature on that. When I first posted about taurine's possible glutamergic reaction others posted wondering if that's what happened to them--you might search that. Many on this forum are searching for that synthetic isolate that will make them feel better, and like many I have a shoebox full of bottles I tried that imbalanced me further. I focus now on liver clearance, and methylation to help the body repair / rebalance itself. Taurine sure as hell didn't help me handle high glutamate foods--glutamate insomnia was the worst and feels different than high histamine insomnia. But I am probably wired differently. A couple years later I can get away with all high glutamate foods--in moderation.
 
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vision blue

Senior Member
Messages
1,877
Thanks for the elaboration. I guess we're all so differnt -one persons poison is another's miriacle cure. In general, I agree with you and very well put "synthetic isolates" are typically miserable - e.g. just consider multivitamins. I have a proven taruine deficiency and tried everything i could possibly think of to fix this w/o resorting to actually taking taurine. (longish story but the cause is high beta alanine which as you may know competes with taurine at receptor sites. I also have high anserine which goes along with high beta alanine.howerver, i do not have a candida infection nor any other yeast infection. The cause of my high beta alanine is unknown. I tried searchig for a way to fix this, but coming up empty had to resort to trying to outcompete beta alinine at the receptor. btw, the taurine deficiency also gives me a potassium and magnesium deficiency, but just adding those did not work for one reason or another (gut could not tolerate for one thing).

I think i will start a fresh thread and see if others want to chime in with experiences.

i 'm glad you stated explcitly that histamine insomnia different than glutimate insomnia. I am sensitive to all of them i.e. glutimate, tyramine, and histamine- but each produces a different effect that I can distinguish.

so far, my initial reaction to taurine has been different than yours. Noticed a little diurisis, but with very high bp, that has been helpful. I usually have GERD and so far my gut is much improved.

but i'm really concerned i'm overdosing because I am taking powder meant for ingestion and using it sublingually by keeping it on my mucous membranes for 60 seconds. it absorbs very well. but the dose of a sublingual product, including taurine, should only be 1/10th the oral dose, and i checked formulations intended as sublingual and indeed they are 1/0th. So i've been using 675 mg sublingually which is equv of 6 grams which may well be toxic. but am baffled becasue instead of being sick a dog, it has been helping a variety of things. Perhaps its like cortisone- when that first came out, people felt great and everyone though it was a miracle drug but then the catch phrase was "cortisone lets you walk to your own funeral". so maybe that's the march i'm on now.

glad the liver detox and methylation approach working. I'm already an overmethylator tho like the idea of liver detox. used to take milk thistle, but think my senstiivty to aged foods was even starting to apply to my milk thistle tea and had to give it up.
 

vision blue

Senior Member
Messages
1,877
hi. Man have I ever had genetic testing. I started in 2002, which was well before the fad - paid a fortune for only I'd say 2 dozen positions. Then moved on to 500,000 positions when that became affordable, followed by nearly 1 million positions along the genome tested, and then finally just about 2 years ago took another plunge and gut full exome sequenced which is about 30 million positions tested...I thus far have no interest in testing whole genome since even the exome is so much data its hard to use clinically.

hope your not using Yasko since her logic is incorrect.

but better than genetic testing is how the genes are expressed- RNA testing- but thus far it hasn't caught on so direct to consumer nearly impossible. taht's where all the action is because so many things change how genes are expressed.
 

Aerowallah

Senior Member
Messages
131
Yes! Less is more. A few SNPs stick out and we know the symptoms of defective MTHFR expressing and so I treat that and several others. I can't get in the weeds. I don't think we know enough. 99% of my focus is improving the background of health and letting the body rebalance / repair itself. My mainstays are CEs + diatomaceous earth + fermented foods + methylation. Have you tested for elevated glutamate? The observation that, everything else remaining the same, CEs eliminated glutamate insomnia in several weeks suggested to me that some of my elevation was part of the cocktail of stress response to metals / toxins coming out of storage sites...
 

vision blue

Senior Member
Messages
1,877
Methylation gets too much attention though. so odd everyone focusses on that when its one of a million things going on.
i can't eat fermented foods- tyramines near kill me
what kind of elevated glutimate test? in serum, my glutamic acid is in the normal range and i think i was surprised that it was the oxidized form that was higher and glutimate lower than i was expecting- can't remember. If you mean urine, its very tricky to tellin urine because of what happens after urine hits the air etc. But in urine it is clear something funky going on there, but very hard to know what. if you know for sure glutimate elvated like in brain, there's some stuff you can take that draws it out of the blood, and theres a good theory that this acts like a sink and pulls it ouf of the brain as well. I haven't tried it, though ahve a bottle of it somewhere.
toxic dental chems for me.
 

Aerowallah

Senior Member
Messages
131
Neurotransmitter saliva test. When you've been up for 72 hours and you're contemplating suicide since you don't trust hospital interventions you are loathe to trial anything. Methylation affects a million things and I've been deficient in B12 my whole life. Make me wonder that the hibernating state of CFS is easier to slip into when you're an unsdermethylator. And to my great surprise methylation improved my sleep.
 

vision blue

Senior Member
Messages
1,877
I hope you didn't use Labrix or Neuro something or other company. Most reputable one I know of is the Doctors Data biogenic amines comprehensive https://www.doctorsdata.com/neuro-biogenic-amines-comprehensive-urine/
I had done a few including thru mainstram MDs and Labrix data was really fake; doctors data and mainstream one agreed. Never done saliva though, only urine (i'm aware of the criticims for others reading this post. but there's also known legit accepted uses - like detecting pheochromocytoma and some very good arguments that if you have a metabolic issue with processing say dopamine produced by the kidney, then veyr likely the same matabolic issue will be there when processing dopamine produced in brain).

I think at our stage, its more like medical "right to die", not suicide.

I do not trust ERs or hosptials either for me, because mainstream med gets me even sicker.

I'm an overmethylator.

anyway, obviously that's great if adding methyl donors or whatever helped you. wish my solutions were that mainstream.
 

Aerowallah

Senior Member
Messages
131
Pharmasan labs.

When I heard about the woman who took her mother with cancer to Gerson Clinic in Mexico, and the daughter stayed for moral support and drank all the juices they give the patients, and then HER hair started to fall out, I realized we are all underestimating the stresses of detox. The daughter had had chemotherapy some 17 years earlier, and the cleansing juice brought chemo out of storage sites she'd been carrying around for that long--on top of everything else. And here in the US we live in a FILTHY toxic country...
 
Messages
4
Yes! Less is more. A few SNPs stick out and we know the symptoms of defective MTHFR expressing and so I treat that and several others. I can't get in the weeds. I don't think we know enough. 99% of my focus is improving the background of health and letting the body rebalance / repair itself. My mainstays are CEs + diatomaceous earth + fermented foods + methylation. Have you tested for elevated glutamate? The observation that, everything else remaining the same, CEs eliminated glutamate insomnia in several weeks suggested to me that some of my elevation was part of the cocktail of stress response to metals / toxins coming out of storage sites...
What are CEs?