The use of Collagen

[Ozeph]

@Ozeph

That reminds me when I was drinking alcohol. I would get to a point where I was euphoric and was having fun, so then I would drink more, thinking what I was doing was making me feel better until it didn’t anymore and I would end up sick.

What if the mistake is to go on talking a supplement past the point where it have been beneficial ?

If I felt good today, maybe it means I should now stop so that I don’t overreach it and get off the other side.

As I posted above, maybe when we reach a state where we feel good we should either stop or reduce the dosage.

Thanks to the diet and the protein shake Im taking, Im almost symptom free and has been for months. At one point, I decided to increase the protein shake and felt like shit. So I decreased it to the level before and felt better.

Now Im taking gelatin and I decreased the protein shake by 30% to account for the extra protein in the gelatin. So far, Im feeling better. I have a better sense humor, Im more calm and I sleep better. I feel more happy. (thats a nice one after feeling nothing for months !)

So I don`t know the answer to your question. My best opinion would be to reduce by 1/3 instead of getting off and see how you feel. If you feel worst, go back to the same levels. If you feel the same or better, keep taking the lower level for a while and after a couple of weeks, see how you fell by reducing some more and adjust accordingly.

Considering were so sensitive, I think its better to introduce something new slowly, and reduce it slowly if we think we have to. I would also say if we take something and we feel good, then suddenly it seems it`s not working anymore and we feel worst, we should at least reduce by half or 2/3. Some would say maybe we should stop completely and maybe that would be the right action, but than why would taking it have made us feel better to begin with ? Those are just ideas…

Too much can be as bad or worst as too little. So caution is advised. Drastic changes too fast can also be detrimental in my opinion.

[Mcbbould]

After all this, I think I’m going to take a cleanse from all supplements. I got WAY too carried away. My apartment has become a GNC and I think I’ve single handedly made up for Amazon’s poor earnings report

[Ozeph]

@Mcbbould

I think I’m going to take a cleanse from all supplements

Please keep us informed about how you feel after stopping all supplements.

Are you better or worst ?

[Pete1989]

Yeah I’ll try that, however my hair just started falling out this week, just over 3 months after my stop date. My erections are finally At a point I am comfortable with. But now Im back to balding again. At this point I could care less about that, just want to make sure my plumbing works and that I don’t get the dreaded testicle pain again. I fear discontinuing the AA regimen will be counter productive

[Mcbbould]

To be completely honest with you I can never tell if I’m “better” or “worse” my main symptoms of vision issues/derealization/weird feelings in my head never go away. It’s impossible to truly gauge the severity.

[Ozeph]

Congratulation on the hair loss and the better sexual functions. Looks like you`re getting closer to where you were before the nightmare started !

[Ozeph]

@Mcbbould

my main symptoms of vision issues/derealization/weird feelings

Mcbbould, I feel I can`t give any advise. I almost provoked a possible catastrophe for some by suggesting the use of something as ordinary as gelatin.

I would say instead of stopping everything cold turkey, you should gradually decrease. But what do I know ?

[Pete1989]

Thanks @Ozeph I actually do feel partly in debt to your advice regarding AA’s and this forum. It has helped a lot, not saying it will help everyone else. I took the bits and pieces I needed and applied it to my own regimen and I feel like Im on a good track. You know we’re a challenged group of individuals when we congratulate each other on experiencing hair loss, lol.

[Mcbbould]

Yeah good call I will most definitely taper. I’ve been taking Vit c Alcar and NAC since I crashed, so for me, I know those don’t make it any worse

[Ozeph]

@Pete1989

You know we’re a challenged group of individuals when we congratulate each other on experiencing hair loss, lol.

Ha ha. Yes ! I can`t wait for mine to start falling again !

[Ozeph]

@Pete1989

I actually do feel partly in debt to your advice regarding AA’s

You can Thank alteredlife. He`s the one that put me on to this.

[Ozeph]

I do believe AA can be helpful for some of us. But as Greek puts it`s difficult to know where the lines are.

(Thats why Im going with a simple barometer: do I feel better or not, and how so. I`m also being careful not to overreached the target and fall on the other side)

[Ozeph]

Day five: I crossed the line ! I overreached and felt on the other side.

Pretty much all day yesterday I felt calm and happy (joie de vivre ! in French). I went to the bank and waited patiently for my turn while smiling at the other customers. I was not irritable and was rather agreeable.

The day went well until dinner, when I had the idea of eating chicken liver with bacon and raw cabbage (it is as disgusting as it sounds). After that meal, I didn’t feel good. Maybe it’s the chemicals in the bacon that got me (I eat almost no processed meat. All I eat has only one ingredient) or maybe it was the extra aminos and vitamins in the liver which, among others, is particular rich in cystine. There’s also a lot of cystine in whey protein (the protein shake I take) and it’s particularly bad to take too much cystine on a low carb diet like I’m doing. Glycine also has something to do with carbohydrates and is 30% of the aminos contained in gelatin. It also depletes Methionine which is abundant in meat (muscle).

Anyway. 2 hours later, I took 10 gr of gelatin and my usual protein shake and 30 minutes later i really felt weird.
I had problem keeping my balance, brain fog, a little speech slur, some cognitive problems and irritability. I was looking at some stuff on my computer and couldn’t get a grasp of it, it felt too complicated (It wasn’t. It’s stuff I usually do).

I also had insomnia all night. I kept waking up from the beginning of the night till the end and didn’t get any deep sleep. It wasn’t the stressed kinda of insomnia but nonetheless it wasn’t great. Today I have some brain fog and fatigue but the rest seems fine.

Looks like low serotonin which can happen when there are too little carbs in the body (perhaps as a result of my low carb diet, the extra intake of cystine and glycine).

But enough with the scientific gibberish. Problem: I didn’t and still don’t feel good. Solution: cut the gelatin to zero, reduce the shake for a couple of days, eat 400 gr of red meat today to counteract the extra Glycine with extra Methionine , and I’m going to have a small quantity of carbs right away (eat 50 gr. of oat) and see what happens. This will also enables me to test if collagen did or did not reduce my food allergy problems. If I get anxiety in an hour, it didn’t. Ha ! the joys of being a guinea pig !

Collagen did improve my mood by making me calm and feeling happy. So I will reintroduce it again in a few days, at 2.5 gr a day instead of 10-15 gr a day. Again, let’s see what happens.

I’ll keep posting my results.

[Ozeph]

Update:

I didn’t take a whey protein shake this morning in case I was reacting to too much Cystine, as whey protein contains a lot of Cystine.

And in case it was too much glycine that affected my carb level and ability to produce serotonine (which is what I think happened), I took 50gr of oat, cooked it into oatmeal and had that for breakfast (35gr carbs). I also took 500mg of Tyrosine to create Epinephrine and Nor-epinephrine out of those carbs so that more Serotonine could be created and I did some cardio and weight lifting to burn the extra carbs.

I also ate a rib-eye steak for lunch and will eat another one for dinner, to replenish my Methionine levels, again in case it’s the Glycine that fucked me up.

At the moment I have no more brain fog or irritability, I’m at the same time calm, motivated and excited. The “joie de vivre” came back and as an extra bonus, I don’t feel like procrastinating which I did in the prior days.

My observation from the gelatin experiment: Too much may be bad (unless it was the combination of chicken liver/whey protein resulting in too much Cystine).

However, after taking gelatin I did feel some calm and happiness, and I didn’t have any food allergies to the oatmeal, which was actually the objective of the experiment: To test if anxiety from carbs was the result of food allergies.

It is still too soon to come to that conclusion, and because of the chicken liver/whey protein variable, it’s difficult to isolate the results of gelatin.

I will resume taking gelatin tomorrow or in 2 days, but will drop the dose from 10-15gr to 2.5 gr a day.
I will also refrain from eating anything unusual for as long as I’m doing this test. My objective is still the same: to have a pizza and get away with it ! (Mooooooouuuhahahahahahahaha !)

I hope to sleep good tonight.

I’ll keep you posted.

[Pete1989]

Thanks for the update. Whats the difference between collogen peptides and the gelatin you’re taking? I personally don’t have plans to introduce either one into my stack because I feel my regimen is dialed in right now, but I’m curious because I’ve heard good things about the hydrolyzed peptides - but not from ex-fin users, just some gym buddies.

[Ozeph]

Gelatin is partly hydrolyzed collagen, whereas hydrolyzed peptides are 100% hydrolyzed collagen.
(they take gelatin, mix it with an enzyme that hydrolyze the gelatin to 100%, than i guess they wash out the enzyme. End result: 100% hydrolyzed collagen, also called hydrolyzed peptides)

[Ozeph]

…The more hydrolyzed, the easier to digest.

[Ozeph]

6 Days into the experiment:

I’m still on the experiment but at the moment I’m not taking any gelatin (collagen) nor did I yesterday.

Taking L-Tyrosine 500mg and exercising yesterday was a good thing. The brain fog went away.
Yesterday I slept better than the night before although not as good as I did on the night between day 3 and day 4 of this experiment. (I stated at the time it was my best night since a long time)

However, today I felt good all day. Calm, at peace, with a sense a humor. I had sex too, and it was together better and not as good as before I crashed. Not as good because my genitals are less sensitive and I kinda have to concentrate to stay connected to what’s going on down there, and better because with all the protein, exercise and the low carbs diet, I’m quite in shape and have lots of endurance (couple that with lower sensitivity and my wife was in for quite a ride.) Anyway, it was nice.

By the way, yesterday I had a small bag of the finest 7-11 corn delicacy: nacho cheese Doritos !
I didn’t get anxiety at all as I use too, and on that same day I had oatmeal at breakfast. Two servings of carbs, no anxiety.

I did start to have stomach burn in the evening. Collagen may (or may not) have fixed my leaky guts, but it did nothing to the stomach ache I used to have in the past 5 years, and which stopped with the ketogenic/carnivore diet (less than 10gr of carbs a day)

So it looks like I’m going to have to keep doing the diet for the sake of my stomach.

I ate 2 rib eye steaks today. I’m loading up on L-Methionine to counter balance a potential surplus of L-Glycine.

I will resume taking 2.5 gr of gelatin a day, but I will take it with a little carbs to make sure the extra glycine does not affect my Epinephrine, Nor-epinephrine / Serotonin levels.

I want to get it over with this experiment, find a suitable low level of gelatin that I can take every day, like 1 to 2.5 gr and see if it lower my food allergies. Then I want to start working on the sexual side effect and the insomnia.

[Ozeph]

Day 7

I had an excellent night of sleep. Whatever it was that crashed me 2 days ago it seems I re-balanced it.

I took a whey protein shake this morning and felt nauseous again. I think it’s the cysteine in it. Too much of it. I just bought vegan protein, waiting for it to be delivered.

If it’s the Glycine in the gelatin that fucked me up, than I had plenty of Methione rich rib eye steak to balance that.

Either way, tonight I’ll reduce the shake and take some gelatin (2.5gr) in a soup with some carbs and some cheese.

Today I feel good. Tomorrow, I’ll skip the shake, have 5 gr of gelatin in the morning and head straight to Dominos with my kids for a large pizza and we’ll see if gelatin helps with food allergies, in my case anyway.

I’m bored of eating beef and greens everyday.

I’ll keep you posted.

[Ozeph]

Day 7, update:

It’s 4pm and I’m feeling tired. I had that before but in the last months it was gone. Yesterday was the same.

Maybe I haven’t recovered from my mini crash 2 days ago. Let’s see what happens next… ( it’s like reading a novel, it keeps me on my toes…)

I took L-Tyrosine 500mg and feel more awake.

Update: I had 2.5gr gelatin in a vegetable soup, some cheese and 9 sticks of breaded fish made of 25% breadcrumbs ! That’s quite a bit of carbs for a carbs allergic guy like me ! It was delicious. Morale is good.

After I was very motivated and I finished all my work and did some accounting I procrastinated instead of doing for months.

I’ll go to bed tired, satisfied, but i won’t speculate whether or not I’ll sleep good.

Next update tomorrow.