I think I may have discovered something very critical in terms of timing when taking RS.
When first starting RS I was taking 2 tbsp twice a day. One around noon, and another dose right before bed. As I stated before, on the whole my Chronic fatigue symptoms got worse in terms of overall energy, despite having better temperature and blood glucose regulation & digestion.
I switched to one large bolus dose of 4tbsp right before bed after @
Ripley had the idea that taking more at once may be better in terms of having it make it to the colon. The fatigue symptoms got worse, and I had a brutal time pulling myself out of bed in the morning and was exhausted all day long. Again despite improvements in virtually every other metric that RS is known to improve.
This was extremely frustrating, taking something that made me feel simultaneously better and worse at the same time but in different ways. The thing I desired most.... being energy, was worse. The other metric such as improved digestion and regulation were nice but not what I was after.
One night I woke up after 3-4 hours, still a bit tired but strangely energized. Not the brutal exhaustion I experienced before. It made me think maybe I should sleep less, perhaps I was oversleeping by sleeping 7-8 hrs and something whack was happening with my hormones like melatonin.
RS appears to be a prime food for bifido bacteria such as B.Infantis which has a critical role in producing serotonin. Serotonin is the precursor to Melatonin and I thought maybe I was producing WAY too much leading to me feeling drugged an exhausted right when I should be waking up.
Also I know personally my gut motility is hugely impaired while lying down. When sitting or standing upright gravity seems to help a lot in terms of moving things along my GI tract, so perhaps the RS was getting fully fermented before even reaching the colon when taking it right before bedtime.
But then I also thought about transit times:
The time taken for food or other ingested objects to transit through the gastrointestinal tract varies depending on many factors, but roughly, it takes less than an hour after a meal for 50% of stomach contents to empty into the intestines and total emptying of the stomach takes around 2 hours. Subsequently, 50% emptying of the small intestine takes 1 to 2 hours. Finally, transit through the colon takes 12 to 50 hours with wide variation between individuals. ~
Wikipedia
With a transit time from mouth to colon being about 3-5 hours I decided to take 3-4tbsp of RS 5 hours before bedtime instead of right before bed. This made a HUGE difference in terms of my energy and well-being the following day. We are talking about going from a 3-4 on the energy scale and then subsequently after making the change in timing, going all the way to a 8-9.
I am at the point now where I feel
nearly cured of CFS! I am now getting all the benefits touted from RS, and wow what an improvement!
I think there is a powerful neurotransmitter/hormonal connection here with RS and the bacteria which has a much bigger impact than I even thought was possible. Prior to the timing change I think RS may have been producing abundant Seratonin and subsequently melatonin right at the time I should be waking up thus making me feel exhausted. Now however I am getting the beneficial effects at the time when they benefit me the most, leading to restful rejuvenating sleep. In fact I need less sleep now than before, AND I have twice as much energy during the day.
It's also possible there are some critical detox mechanisms going to work right at sleep time and perhaps having abundant SCFA's at those times may be very important. I'd be curious for other people to experiment with timing to see if they get a similar result.
