Amino Acid For neurological symptoms

[Shellnyce]

Greek… thats great news about your baseline. I have my ups and downs mentally. Vacation is a big help. I suspect that if I could take a year off and just relax and enjoy things at a slow pace, I would see recovery faster. Unfortunately I work in NYC, live a stressful life, 2 kids, wife, mortgage, soccer coaching, etc… I agree with doing almost nothing for PFS. I take Vit D, fish oil and a probiotic, meditate, eat a balanced diet and try to excercise. I think brain health is key. So many of us want to take a pill and see our baseline improve. I think our brain chemistry can be altered in a much better way by meditation, doing things that we enjoy, relaxing, putting ourselves in uncomfortable situations (not all the time), push our limits a little bit. It seems that so many of us are taking so many isolated B vitamins, etc… that there would be no way to tell what works or doesnt.

Adrenal fatigue is a tricky one. Its not really something the medical community is able to diagnose (usually). I suspect that there are some very fine nuances in testing the adrenals which might suggest adrenal fatigue but you need an Endo who believes its actually a thing. I suspect low DHT is the culprit for vision and sleep issues.

[Ozeph]

That’s the main trick for people with adrenal fatigue: reduce stress, let the adrenal gland rest (the one producing stress hormone) so that they have some juice into them when needed.

[Ozeph]

Day 152 I came back from my trip to Georgia yesterday. beautiful country, good food, I would have liked to spend more time.
The airplane trip to there was hard. It took 19 hours, they served mostly carbs in the meals, and I had a bad headache from suddenly eating all those carbs. Of course, I couldn’t sleep on the plane (that’s normal for me. Even before fin, I wouldn’t sleep on airplanes.)

While over there, I manage to limit carbs and eat lots of meat, eggs and cheese. Still, sleep was affected. I spent 3 nights and they ranged from 4 to 6 / 10. That’s actually not too bad. It didn’t affect my days and the only supplements I took was my morning wake up pills, my nighttime sleeping pills and some vitamins during the day. This time, I did not increase the sleeping pills. That’s a 40% drop in the supplements I’m taking and I had no pfs symptoms except from bad sleep. Daytime, I was calm, confident, motivated, happy and full of energy. No neurological symptoms, no sexual symptoms.

I did lots of walking. On Wednesday, I must have walked 8-10 hours, going up and down hills. Georgia is so nice… Energy was not a problem but spending more energy and eating less had me lose some weight. Muscle and fat alike.

Last night, after 36 hours of not sleeping, I had a 10/10 night. That’s falling asleep immediately, not waking up at all for 9 hours and oversleeping another 4. That’s a 10 only because of the 9 hours straight. Oversleeping messed it up a bit, but after a sleepless night, 3 nights of bad sleep and 36 hour without sleep, that’s to be expected.

Anyway. Overall, I count this as a success. I can now travel and sleep at night, something I couldn’t do 4 months ago. I’m a bit more flexible on the diet in that I can eat SOME carbs if it’s not too much and even if sleep is not as good, I’m still able to have normal days. All of that with less supplements.

The few residual symptoms that remains of pfs are the ones I had before crashing, Those that increasingly manifested themselves in the last 5 years of taking fin. Now they’re not as strong as they were back to before the crash. Those pre-crash symptoms are insomnia, burning dry lips all day and night, and burning eyelids especially on a hot sweaty day (I’m in Thailand). The burning eyelids were so bad I couldn’t ride my bike, had to stop at a gas station, wash my eyes with water and although that would help a bit it would just be enough to get home. A shower would help and bring it to bearable levels.
I still have those 3 symptoms, but much less than pre-crash levels, it’s bearable and slowly improving.

I will continue with less supplements and see if I can decrease more. The trick is to change my mental state so that I get less stress. For example: I lost a contract that accounted for 25% of my factory output. At first, it created stress as I freaked out about it. So I changed and tries to see the good in it: less responsibility, less to shoulder, more free time, plus of all the production contracts I have this one didn’t pay as good as the others. Truth is I had too much on my plate and what was taken out was what I would have chosen to take out myself.
That’s what I do with everything in my life. I’m trying to be as fast as possible to adapt to the new changes by seeing all the good it brings and not thinking twice about the negatives. This way, I embrace the change instead of rejecting it. I’m not perfect at it, but that’s the attitude I try to cultivate: Adapt, see the positive, go with the flow and be quick about it. I remind myself that sometimes, sacrifices needs to be made to make room for something else, something better if I have a good attitude throughout the change. I remind myself none of those things happening are life threatening, but just life itself, with all the turns and changes it takes.

This attitude has proven to me to eliminate anxiety, depression and decrease stress. It’s not in a pill, it’s in the head and it works.

[Ozeph]

Check out this great video. It’s what I’m talking about when I say attitude changes things for real and when I say we are not individuals but communities of… cells.

Here’s a way to recovery.

- YouTube

[Dubya_B]

This is utter nonsense.

If the theories promoted in the video had any merit, I would be recovered by the grace of believing I would get better over time during the first decade. I looked up Dr. Bruce Lipton and found that he is viewed with disrespect by the scientific community, basically for feeding people a long line of diarrhea to sell books.

Go post this garbage somewhere else. Promoting magical thinking as a means to recovery isn’t welcome here.

[Ozeph]

I find your choice of word offensive. Surely there’s a more graceful way to convey the same meaning.
But feel free to remove the video, you’re a moderator after all.

To me it makes no doubt thoughts have an effect on the world. I studied statistics in college, did some tests with a group of students and having beliefs showed evidence of a divergence in the statistical results of throwing dice for example (around 0.25 standard deviation. It’s not that much, but it is significant and cannot be dismissed by the classic 5% threshold used in science) I’ve been using this technique since I was 16 and there’s a protocol to have it work:

1- Shape you thoughts as to get as much details on the results: what you would see, hear, feel, how people would feel around you etc…
2-Believe without doubts it will happen. That’s the faith part.

It seems #1 is the mold and #2 is what will fill the mold to generate the results. I’ve extensively experimented with this over the last 35 years and I get results 1 out of 3 or out of 4 attempts. Some results are astounding, but not so many people would be interested into hearing them. I found disbelief to be an obstacle rather dangerous to try to surpass, as disbelief is a belief of itself. People of all faith have strong emotional response when their faith is questioned. I prefer to discuss those ideas with open minded people just to keep it smooth and pleasant.

Some claims in this video are exaggerated. 1.7 volts in a cell is a wrong figure. It’s 0.07 volts for a neurons and 0.02 volts for an ordinary cell. It says nothing about amperage but surely it’s very low resulting in a very low watt output per cell. That sure would be enough to generate a weak magnetic field (and brain “reading” devices are currently being developed using that principle) but faith doesn’t move mountains. Sorry. It takes 2 watts to raise 1 kg from the floor to a 1 meter high bookshelf in 5 second so imagine how many watts it takes to move a mountain.

But it’s no secrets in hospitals that attitude and the belief the patient can heal actually improve chances of healing.

I found this video after writing my previous posts, not before. It didn’t influence any of my previous posts except the current one. I thought the video would give a good illustration of what I’m talking about. (I’ve been saying for years that we are not individuals, but communities of cells. It’s important in understanding the sources of conflicts in our minds)

It’s true the man in the video is using standard sales techniques in his presentation and after seeing a second video of him I was starting to believe he was selling stuff. You just confirmed that. Personally, I don’t care he sells stuff. I’m not buying. But there’s a distinction to be made between the message and the messenger. The most evil convict can still say something wise or true even when he can only be judged negatively.

Anyway. In the compilation of success stories I made, positive attitude and faith in recover is also a common element. Some people even avoid going onto this forum to avoid the negative posts that would weaken their belief recovery is achievable. The tricky part is it works both ways. the belief we will fail increases chances of failure. So understandably, the mind being an un-unanimous community of neurons, people want to protect themselves from strong disbelievers that could tilt the balance on the negative side.

I’m currently working on identifying the set of conflicting thoughts that brought me here at the first place. I’ve identified the source, now I’m untying the knots. I’ve been resentful for years for being attracted to women as I find relationship to be challenging while I would rather concentrate on researches in different domain. I was resentful at my own sex drive and I ended up losing all of it. Yes, that could be a coincidence.
As I’m untying the knots, I’m getting better. It could be a coincidence as well and I don’t care. The conflicting thoughts were bringing me psychological discomfort so getting better psychologically on top of physically is a bonus, the two being related or not.

I would suggest you delete the video if you see fit to do it. I believe there’s some truth into it (but not all of it) and if there is, truth cannot simply be deleted. It always emerges again elsewhere. But for the sake of diversity of opinions and for the benefits of having more positive attitudes, I suggest you don’t delete the current post. People are not stupid. They can judge by themselves the parts they want to integrate and the ones they want to reject.

I wish you the best and I apologize if posting the video resulted in a strong emotional response on your part. I didn’t mean to do that.

Ozeph.

[Ozeph]

Day 154 Sleep is getting back to normal, around 8/10, and I still don’t have much symptoms.
I can’t eat more than around 30 gr of carbs or I get headache and sleeps starts to deteriorate. I’ve removed 1/3 of the supplements I was taking and don’t see any difference. I’m still good. I’m now waiting for children to start school (they’re on holiday in Thailand) and I will start reducing the sleeping pills, see what happens.

[ncsugrad]

Gah. I think I’m going to start on low carb tomorrow. I need to just do it I guess. I’ve never gotten past the initial few days of feeling crappy so it’s hard to commit to, but it’s just too common in recovery stories for me to not do it anymore

[Ozeph]

The first day is easy, second day is the worst. That when your carbs reserves are depleted. To push through it, I was drinking a glass half milk, half water for a total of 6 gr of carbs. Just to get me through the next hour or so. You have to plan for it. You may feel weak, tired and have to sleep in the afternoon. You may get diarrhea or constipation. But for the most part, you’ll crave carbs: bread, banana, orange juice, spaghetti.
It take a week to start getting comfortable and a month to be fully adapted.

I found it easier to eat lots of protein at first than to go straight on eating fat (meat, rib eye steaks with all the fat). When the body is not used to it, it’s hard to eat a quarter cup of butter. (Lol. and when you’re used to it, it’s easy and delicious). On the airplane back from Europe, I asked the stewardess to bring me as much butter and salad as she could. I had 3 salads that had cheese and meat in it and 8 plastic cups of butter. It kept me going for 12 hours.

80% of my neurological symptoms were gone by the 3rd day. Best thing I’ve done to fight this pfs shit.

It feels so good that even after I’m recovered, I’m going to keep the keto diet. I have the same body as when I was 28, my face look 35-38 and I’m 51. It’s like a second life.
It’s the best thing this disease brought me.

[ncsugrad]

The results you’ve had are awesome to hear about. I just have the sensitivity issues that you’ve probably heard me complain about for months (along with longer refractory period), though I’m hoping for some surprise cognitive improvements as well. That would be nice.

My cravings are going to be for Reece’s and peanut butter I imagine. I eat quite a bit of both unfortunately (which I need to cut back on regardless, though I don’t seem to gain any weight from it?). The hard part for me is going to be keeping my meals planned well enough so that I have something to eat every day… It’s pretty tough to find anything low carb in a restaurant in the area I live. I guess once there’s a route it isn’t so bad making a day or three worth of steak at once and being covered for a few days.

CDNuts recommended I try the whole juice feasting thing first then go to a keto or paleo diet after that. I haven’t honestly decided whether I’m going to do that or go straight for keto/paleo or what yet. I have to do something though.

[Ozeph]

I’ve had that sensitivity and longer refraction problem. It went away. Now I’m 11 months after crashing, 8 and half months in the diet. My tested refraction period is no longer than 3 hours but could be less, I just haven’t tested it. Sensitivity seems normal.

What I do to make the diet practical, I buy 3 rib eye steaks at a time, along with enough spinach to get around 5 ounces (150 gr) a meal. I put a quarter inch of water in a pot, put the spinach in, put a cover on top and turn on the heat.
Then I put 3 tbsp of ghee (clarified butter, found in Indian groceries) in a pan, turn on the heat and when it’s melted put the steak in with salt on top. By the time I’m done doing this, the spinach are already boiling and are soft. I drain the water out, put some salt and lemon juice on top, stir and put that on a plate.
When the steak start having blood coming out of the uncooked side, I flip it using plastic kitchen tweezers add some salt and just make sure all the surface touches the melted, grizzling butter. Out of the pan, into the plate. Then I put the left over liquid from the spinach pot (lemon juice, salt and water) into the melted ghee and stir with a silicone spatula to deglaze the pan (remove the steak juices) and I pour the hot butter on the spinach, scraping the pan with the spatula. I don’t even wash the spatula, tweezers and pan, I just rinse them with water to remove the excess.

Total time, 10 minutes. Faster than going to the restaurant.

Evening I prepare a cabbage roll stew made of 2 kilos of meat (half pork half beef, fat cuts), 400 gr of tallow (beef fat) 2 onions, 2 cans of crushed tomatoes and 2 kilos of cabbage. Takes a while to prepare, but I freeze in individual portions and I have enough for 10 days. So I just pop one frozen container in the microwave at medium for 23 minutes and then I have dinner. Total time: 3 minutes for me. (google cabbage roll soup for the recipe, replace rice with tallow)

I also prepare fat bombs for desserts and between meals. They’re 300 gr of extra virgin coconut oil, 150 gr of almond powder, 50 gr of cream cheese, 100 gr of berry juice and some artificial sweetener or stevia to make it sweet. I put in silicone muffin molds, put in the fridge and get 6 hockey puck sized containing over 350 calories each, mostly from fat. Google fat bombs. One or two a day make sure you get 2200 calories.

I snack on almonds, macadamias, Brazil nuts etc…

Altogether all this is faster, cheaper than going to restaurants.

Of course, you’ll make your own plan, this is just my regular thing.

Cheers !

[ncsugrad]

3 hours? Geez. I’d be happy with 12 hours at this point, haha. I can SOMETIMES manage daily for two days in a row, but usually I need to skip a day lately.

Even waiting 3-4 days I don’t get the intensity I used to. Usually at that point I’m struggling to last long at all… which is something in hindsight I miss. Now it’s like I’m always concentrating to try to make it possible for me to finish instead of just being able to enjoy it. Anyways, probably too much information but what’s new, haha.

I guess I’m going to go buy some chicken, ribeyes and spinach tonight and try to get on it. My significant other is out of town for a week or two so that will make it a little easier to eat a lot of meat to see how I do (she eats a lot of carbs, not nearly as much protein as me even now)

One thing that I’ve been trying to figure out is why I always seem to be OK on Friday’s. For whatever reason, Friday afternoons/evening I’m almost always able to have a pretty normal time sexually. The only thing I’ve been able to come up with is I usually want to leave work early on Friday’s so I skip lunch a lot of days (and I don’t normally eat breakfast anyways) so by the time I’m “going for it” I’ve been a good 20+ hours without eating. I wonder if fasting for 20 hours is having a similar effect.

I guess it’s time for me to find out. I’m going to have to throw away the peanut butter and Reece’s to have a chance at getting through the first few days

[Ozeph]

Maybe you’re more relaxed on Friday, with the week of work behind you.

Once you’re keto, it’s a piece of cake to fast. You don’t have cravings or drops of energy, but you do lose muscle and fat. I don’t fast for long. 24 hours max.

[Ozeph]

Day 158 Sleep remains good around 8 - 9/10. I’m not taking afternoon aminos, I skipped half of the morning ones and half of the vitamins and I saw no difference. I’m still normal in the day time and sleep good at night.

I’m still taking Betaine / Choline / Carnitine at lunch time, and Magnesium and potassium chloride at dinner time. I take my evening pills all the time, and I’m quite strict on the very low carbs diet, except for a slice of birthday cakes once in a while (which has no effect).

Yesterday, after a motorcycle ride, My ears were ringing as if on a feedback loop when you put the microphone next to the speaker. I could hear my voice very loud in my head. It lasted 5-10 minutes then went back to normal. It happens occasionally.

I’m still planning to lower gradually the sleeping drugs, but I’m waiting for my kids to be back to school and for my schedule to go back to normal.

I would consider myself cured if I didn’t have to take sleeping drugs, didn’t have any occasional pfs symptoms and eating carbs would only give me headache and stomach ache but no anxiety. So I’m not cured but I can’t complain. I consider myself very lucky and I’m grateful it went that way.

I’ll post again if something comes up.

[Burito101]

Much appreciated for posting. Would it be at all possible for you to list out each symptom you believe improved? Specifically sexual symptoms?

[Ozeph]

I’ve been asked the same question yesterday. Here was my answer:

In the month an a half after I crashed but before I went on a very low carbs diet, I had a period of no morning erection, difficult and incomplete erections with stimulation, desensitization so that many time I masturbated or had sex with my wife and just gave up after a while because I couldn’t finish. It’s sad my wife had to experience that. Desensitization was the longest to get rid of.

I had a week with absolute zero sex drive, when a pretty girl, a tree or a car were just as unappealing. This really played with my innermost motivations in life. I’ve always been driven to do business and get rich with an afterthought I would get plenty of pretty girls to have sex with. Sex drive gone, my desire to make money vanished and I started thinking why not just live a minimalist life and work as little as possible.

Also my balls must have hurt for 8 months. I had almost forgotten about that. Now I don’t feel a think and it was constant at the time. I also had a weird thing: when I did come close to orgasm, I felt like a needle prick, always at the same spot, on my ball sack and it would throw me off. At first it would always happen but now It’s become infrequent and not as intense.

I must have had watery semen for years while taking fin, 4 or 5 months into the diet, when it became thick again, I had forgotten it was ever thick before. (I took fin 20 years)

During the first months of the diet, sex drive went up and down and was hard to stabilize. Desensitization was an issue until I tried 3 specific supplements, which I keep taking and now I can feel normally. Sex drive is still lower than usual, with need for sex 2-3 times a week (as compared to basically all the time, before fin. Lol), refraction time is lower than 3 hours compared to days when it was at it’s worst.

Altogether, I didn’t have the worst sexual symptoms. I didn’t have physical transformation or alteration of my genitals. Neurological symptoms were debilitating. I couldn’t work, drive or even stay with my family. I had de-motivation, insomnia, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, anhedonia (lack of emotions). I couldn’t stand up or climb stairs at times. I had head splitting headache, stomach ache, gastric reflux (If I layed down, I would choke on my stomach fluids. I had to put some pillows and sleep at an angle). Gee those are bad memories now that I recall them.

Anyway. Most of the neurological symptoms took 3 days to disappear once I completely stopped eating carbs, and so did the headache and stomach problems. All sexual symptom got better but took months to improve and did so very slowly.

I stopped fin 1 year and 2 weeks ago, crashed a month later, suffered most of all I described above for a month and a half and finally got a break with the diet, which I’ve been doing 9 and a half months. Of course I had more symptoms at the beginning of the diet and it went decreasing from then on. Many people know I’ve been taking dozens of natural supplements during the diet. I’m not talking about them here, because except for diet and exercise, it’s a bad idea to go and take supplements in the first 3-4 months, until the body stabilizes.

But the good news is, a year latter, I’m basically symptom free, I forget to take the supplements half the time and nothing happens, but I’m still taking sleeping drugs. I’m not cured, I’m just having a normal life. Insomnia slowly appeared 4 years ago while on fin, was at it’s worst after the crash and is finally decreasing slowly. Oh so very slowly…

So there’s a way. If I had just found out I may have pfs and was having neurological symptoms, I would stop carbs as soon and as much as possible. It’s possible to eliminate them completely. Google carnivore or ketogenic diet.

I don’t know if this would work here, I’m just sharing my experience.

I wish you all the best and this is why I posted all I’ve done, in the hope it could help others.

Ozeph.

[Ozeph]

I’m grateful I’m don’t aprehend going to sleep at night.

I used to be kinda scared of the hardship i was going through during the night. I’m glad I can now sleep, even though I wake up frequently. I go back to sleep each time.

It a blessing to rediscover the normal things I took for granted. I now appreaciate them and see them for their true value.

[hopeless94]

There is a theory that the ketogenic diet is somewhat inducing neurogenesis. So your brain may be able to repair during the months you were on that diet.

[Ozeph]

Day 164 Sleep has decreased to 6 or 7/10. I had a motorcycle crash and I have road rashes. The pain wakes me up during the night. Not heavy pain but it doesn’t take much to wake me up.

I also had some depression and anxiety but there’s major drama going on at my factory. For a while I thought I would lose it all so I’ll dismiss the anxiety as a pfs symptom.

Bottom line I’m getting better and that the best I can wish for.

Time is a great healer.

[Ozeph]

At last, an answer as to why ketogenic diet solves the neurological symptoms:

https://www.jacobsladdercenter.com/doc/research/other/How-to-Increase-GABA-and-Balance-Glutamate.pdf