You’re doing brilliant work ozeph outlining your daily regime, don’t feel disheartened. I think once you crack it with the right selection of supplements/life style changes you’ll get many more responses. I’m doing similar stuff to you at the moment but am following TEI recommendations and it’s going okay.
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Wow. Thanks Chapman. That’s a really cool comment.
I’m certain there’s a way out. It’s a puzzle. it just needs to be solved.
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Seriously man, I read it every day. Really appreciate your updates.
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Keep up the good work. I know there’s a lot of people like me who just don’t have time or feel that they are going to add anything valuable at the moment, but a lot of us read things like this.
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Thanks for your support guys. I really appreciate.
Day 47: I had my good night of sleep. 8/10. This is what I did this time:
I went full on on my ketogenic / carnivore diet. No deviation (so no carbs). I took all my amino acids and supplements as per the protocol above (day 42). I took 2 rib eye steaks with plenty of fat and 2 protein shakes during the day. I had plenty of jiaogulan, which I neglected in the last few days. Stopped all food intake at 6pm.
In preparation for the night, I took 1/5 of an anti-histamine (2mg of htdroxyzine) at 8pm and my sleeping pills at 8:40 (clonazepam, 3.5mg).an hour later,(to give time for the pills to go down without food) i took two slices of cheese, 2 tbsp of coconut oil, 500mg of glycine and 5gr. of Glutamine. I turned off the light right after and didn’t play with my phone. The room is totally dark and I set the air con at 24 Celsius, which is on the cold side, but not too much compared to our regular setting.
The idea was to free the way for the pills by taking them 2 hours after eating, and 1 hour before adding food on top.
Then, the idea was to provide plenty of energy, in the form of protein, aminos and saturated fat, to prevent a cortisol spike during the night. Bear in mind I’m ketogenic. 2 tbsp of coconut oil give me almost 2.5 times the energy of the same amount of honey, but it last much longer. For carbs reliant people, I guess honey would work better.
Glycine is also said to support the Orexin complex which regulate wakefulness and sleep and Glutamine is used by many to help them sleep (it hasn’t done much for me in the past except for making me yawn one or two times)
So tonight, I will try the same without the anti-histamine, but I will increase Glycine to 1000mg and glutamine to 7.5gr. I also didn’t take DHEA 10mg and Pregnenolone 10mg during the day. Just to see what happens.
Update: Not taking Pregnenolone and DHEA was not a good idea. I felt irritable and discontent all day. I’ll revert to take it as usual.
This is the last of my symptom. My regimen has tamed and neutralized all the neurological, physical and sexual symptoms (including dry skin). If I beat insomnia, I’ll be as good as when I was 30 (I’m 50) except i’m in better shape, more muscular, and never felt better in the day time.
Insomnia is the last piece of the puzzle I’m solving.
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I think this is a good idea. I can imagine it is easy to feel better and never look back. (this was in reference to sending an email to all the users to have former users who had recoveries come back and write something in recoveries section)
Can I ask you a very stupid question? I have all these powders now, but mixing them in water almost makes me vomit each time. How do you take the powdered aminos?
I mix them with my 10am whey protein isolate shake, except the sour ones (like carnitine tartrate) which I take separately with water. It taste like lemon juice.
Pine Pollen tastes awful. Either you mix it to the shake and tough it out, or you mix it with DMSO and apply it on the skin (1 scoop pine pollen in 1 ounce of DMSO, apply 1 pea size drop to the forearms). Instead of 60 servings per bags, you end up with supply for years and it goes directly to your blood.
Glutamine dissolves well in water, so before sleep I take it separately, Glycine does not. So I just put the dose right in my mouth (it’s sweet), try not to breath to prevent having some going to my lungs and gulp it down with the glutamine / water mix.
I suggest the whey protein isolate shake as well. 0 carbs or 1 carbs. But don’t take more than the recommended dose (usually 32gr per serving) and no more than once or twice a day. It’s great for an overall protein boost and helps build up muscle. If it makes you less hungry, reduce to once a day. Food is more important than shakes.
Lol I know what you mean. I mix mine with my pre-workout.
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Day 48: Sleep 6/10. Not that bad, but not stable either.
So today, I skipped the second dose of 5-HTP 100mg, L-Tyrosine 500mg and L-Dopa 350mg I usually take around noon. I only took the morning one at 6:45am (all 3 aminos) I think I’ll keep it that way for now. those things are stimulants so maybe twice a day is just too much.
I had energy and felt positive all day. I can’t say I’m missing anything.
I did take Pregnenolone 10mg and DHEA 10mg in my 10am protein shake (with L-Valine 2000mg and DLPA 500mg). I felt irritable when I skipped the first two yesterday, ended up taking them late.
Tonight, I’ll take 2mg of anti-histamine hydroxyzine at 8pm, my sleeping pills (clonazepam 3.5mg ) at 8:30pm,
In order to avoid cortisol spike (or adrenaline spike in the absance of cortisol) I will take Glutamine 5gr, Glycine 500mg with a piece of cheese, 1 tbsp of coconut oil AND 1 tsp of honey at 9:30pm, right before turning off the lights. I won’t play with the phone when lights are out.
I’ll update tomorrow.
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Day49: Skipping the second dose of 5-HTP 100mg, L-Tyrosine 500mg and L-Dopa 350mg was a good idea. Also taking anti-histamine on top of my sleeping pill and taking Glutamine 5gr, B6 30mg. cheese, 1 tbsp of coconut oil AND 1 tsp of honey 45 minutes after taking the pills and right before turning off the light was good. I rate my sleep at 8/10. I woke up often, but went straight to sleep a moment later and had an overall good night of sleep that will get me well rested for the day.
7 months after crashing, Insomnia is my last symptom so this is a big step for me.
I didn’t take Glycine at all. It hasn’t proven to do anything and may be counterproductive. It’s good to heal guts which is very important, but I’ll take bone broth instead. It’s more natural and complete.
I’m now seriously looking at adrenal fatigue. I bough a book on the subject.
@John_Coleman in the recovery stories compilation (Success Stories Compilation) suggested this book and got better by following those guide lines.
I will also add water fasting, at least 24 hours, to the intermittent fasting I’m doing. I will consider doing 2 weeks of intermittent fasting 20 hours / 4 hours eating some time in March or April. It’s part of many success stories and for a good reason. It kills sick cells and replace them with healthy ones.
I updated my regimen written on Day 42 to include the recent changes and will continue to do so as I adjust things.
Update: It’s the end of the day. Having a single dose of 5-FTP, Tyrosine and L-Dopa in the morning wakes me up, makes me confident and in a good mood and clear away the grogginess from the sleeping pills. In the afternoon, I’m more normal and mellow, whereas with a second dose of all three aminos at noon, I was a bit hyper and maybe overconfident (with a smile and a sense of humor). Not bad except it’s not natural. I don’t intent to get high, I just want to recover. Plus I seem to sleep better with a single morning dose. Let’s see what happens tonight.
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Day 50: Sleep 9/10. I slept deep and comfy in my blankets. The night felt good (instead of nightmarish). I woke up rested and happy.
So here’s the recipe: I took anti-histamine (hydroxyzine 2.5mg) with my sleeping pill (clonazepam 3.5mg) at 8:45pm.
At 9:30, 45 minutes later, I took 30mg of B6 , 2mg of melatonin, 25mg of magnesium, 1 tbsp of coconut oil, a little bit of cheese, and in half cup of warm milk: 1 tsp of honey and 5gr of Glutamine. Then I shut down the lights and slept.
This indicates more adrenal fatigue than Orexin deficiency (narcolepsy). I will take steps to fix both, see which one it is and if I can get rid of all that stuff I need in order to sleep. Anyway, time is the greatest healer so if I can be symptom free until time heals me, I’ll be fine.
It’s all still very artificial, but nonetheless I’m symptom free !!! Ha ha !!! I’m not cured but I don’t feel pfs at all.
Update: Uh uh. Spoke too fast. I forgot to take my lunch pills, and it’s now 6pm and I’m exhausted and have a little bit of anxiety. Well I had worst. Much worst. At least I had a good night of sleep. I use to fear the nighttime, when I was setting myself up for 8 hours of hellish constant waking up and tossing around.
If I can have another good night tonight, It’ll be fine tomorrow.
New Update: I took the pills I didn’t take 2 hours ago and the anxiety and fatigue disappeared. They are pills I didn’t consider very important: Choline, inusitol, Glutathione, multivitamin and 11000 ui of vitamin D. Of them all, I see only vitamin D and Choline having neurological effects but I could be wrong. I feel like a puppet worrying one of its strings will get cut off and part of himself will stop working…
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Day 51: Not so great night of sleep. 7/10. Still good enough, just not as good.
Yesterday morning, I had a rush order to send and it was pretty big, plus I picked a fight with one of my supplier. It was a lot of stress and that may explain the fatigue / anxiety in the late afternoon. It points to adrenal fatigue.
Also, instead of having a second rib eye steak for dinner, I just had a bone broth vegetable soup so when I went to sleep, even though I did the same recipe as yesterday, my body had lower energy reserves than on the previous day. This means cortisol / adrenaline spikes during the night and also suggest adrenal fatigue.
I’ll take better care of my adrenal glands and check thyroid functions. PFS is a multi faceted disease. It brings its own symptoms but it also exacerbate the symptoms of all previous health conditions. In my opinion, this is one of the reasons why our symptom differs: our previous health conditions were not the same.
Here’s what a single rib eye steak contains. Taking two everyday dwarf all the amino acids I’m taking by a factor of 3 to 20, depending which amino. I’ll soon take digestive enzymes to make the most of my diet.
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If our issue is low cortisol and higher adrenaline, would being on a medication like Wellbutrin be a bad idea?
Hard to tell.
Wellbutrin is a norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitor. That mean it elevates both norepinephrine and dopamine. by preventing their elimination. The dopamine part makes you feel good, and the norepinephrine part makes you non-sleepy.
Norepinephrine has a similar effect to cortisol (and adrenaline) in the way that is releases glucose and causes alertness. By doing so, I would say it reduces the release of cortisol by the adrenal glands, without triggering an adrenaline response (norepinephrine is also called nor-adrenaline and epinephrine called adrenaline)
I would say it would make it more difficult to sleep at night (it would for me anyway). And also could be an obstacle in curing adrenal fatigue, although I can’t be sure. All three, cortisol, norepinephrine and epinephrine are stress hormones.
How’s your sleep ?
As far as I can tell, Our primary issue was with hyper active Androgen receptor causing an auto immune response to the AR which put the rest of the body out of balance. That causes some sexual symptoms.
That issue later caused new, separate issues:
Food allergies (which we all have to a certain degree) gets exasperated, the vagus nerve gets upset, the guts flora changes and that causes the neurological and some of the sexual symptoms. This is relatively simple to fix (but not easy) : go on a carnivore / ketogenic diet and it will fix your guts, guts flora, vagus nerve and eliminate most of the neurological symptoms.
We also lack the stress reducing neurosteroids called allopregnanolone and tetrahydrodeoxycorticosterone because of our lack of not only 5α-reductase but also 3α-HSD (which is also destroyed by 5ari, aka fin). That means our stress hormones are always on, and our anti-stress ones are off. That may cause adrenal fatigue (cortisol being always on and unregulated)
I checked my DHT levels and they are normal. It looks like my 5α-reductase is doing fine. That’s also easy to fix with resistance training, diet and some androgen boosting supplement (pine pollen, Vitamin A, D and K2 in small doses (K2 5-10mg), Carnitine Tartrate, as well as some estrogen methylation ones (choline and betaine)
What is harder to fix, is the production of 3α-HSD and the reboot of allopregnanolone and tetrahydrodeoxycorticosterone. I found some lead: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Activation-of-Human-Liver-3-a-Hydroxysteroid-by-1-Matsuura-Hara/e24d4bf86d9a6cc69b9f006be49b57b7f67f7c0d
and https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/86/3/1324/2847799
Meanwhile, I’m looking if I can do something about the orexin complex (which could have been affected by the auto immune response, it’s actually the only way it gets affected in humans) and adrenal fatigue because they don’t involve drugs and it can be done with natural products. But if I could find a natural way to boost 3α-HSD, that’s what I’d be doing.
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Sage soon hopefully !!
Sorry, I’m French and I don’t understand. I understand hope and I have hope for all of us. I don’t think this disease (or set of diseases as I understand it) can’t be cured.
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You mean you believe it will be cured ? And sorry sage is the allopreg increasing medication coming soon 
sage-217
Day 52: No changes. Sleep 6/10. It would have been 7/10, but I had to get up to pee and it took me a while to falls asleep again. But no problem. Thanks to the jacked up stress hormones, I’ll have a full productive day without fatigue.
I’m waiting for some new supplements from USA. Until I receive them, not much will happen.
I’ll keep you posted.