brendan

nac pills are usually 600mg, but can be as low as 200mg. I buy powder from http://www.bulkpowders.co.uk/ and take a scoop a day (about 700mg) plus an occassional big dose of 3g or so, especially if i am drinking. If you are new to nac i recommend taking 600mg at first to see if you get a detox reaction - if you do then reduce, then rebuild, your dose according to comfort up to 3g then reduce to a maintenance of 600mg or abouts plus the odd 3g top-up. I have also heard that you should take 1 to 4 times as much vit c as nac tho only as an internet factoid - i've never seen a study suggesting this. I do take vit c with it tho in case. I used to have anxiety that felt like vertigo from height, but without being high up. Sort of felt like i needed to grab something to feel secure in my body. Open spaces - even driving on a motorway - would make it worse, as would hangovers. I have never experienced this since the day i took a big dose of nac to test it as a hangover preventative (maybe 8 pills or so over the night). Also lost a lot of brain fog and got more energy. Also i forgot how good a 5000iu dose of vitamin d is. Really perks me up when i have unjustifyable sleepiness, or carb torpor.

doc appointment friday. Minded to try naltrexone first.

yes, i know what you mean about spongy and wet. try not adding water. Also, when i make it i make double of that recipe, and reduce by an egg (ie 9 instead of 10). I use 3 cups of flax to 1 cup of sesame which tastes better i reckon. Instead of baking powder i mix my own from 1.25 teaspoons baking soda and 2 tablespoons ascorbic acid, and reduce the salt (1.5 tspn instead of 2). Plus a teaspoon or two of pepper powder and a couple of teaspoons of cinnamon (barely noticeable, just a background note). I sweeten with xylitol. I bought some cheap stevia off ebay but it had a very strong bitterness to it. Maybe i'll try a more expensive brand. I like the idea of your bars - got a link to a good recipe? Try adding dessicated or creamed coconut and sweetener to high fat greek yoghurt - very tasty. I feel bad about eating meat and dairy. Animals arent machines but i fear we treat them like they are (like we treat ourselves i spose). Slaughterhouses are big places with a high throughput and i doubt the welfare procedures are effective, especially as they are manned by miserable minimum wage labour with minimal training. I dont think people who care about animal welfare go into these jobs so i expect they are pretty brutal places. So even if your free-range animal had a reasonable life i suspect the chances of it having a grim death are pretty high. Electric stunning seems to be ineffective at removing conciousness, especially if applied kack-handedly. Got any low carb, high fat vegan recipes?

affects nmda receptors. However, given that the anti-anxiety effect is longer lasting than the presence in blood of nac, perhaps it is the glutathione top-up working its magic. Nac is used experimntally for cfs, ocd, schizophrenia, bipolar, and other neurotic conditions (like hair pulling).

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Seems from what i gather from forum that keppra is best for visual emphasis hppd, and naltrexone for dpdr emphasis hppd, and clonazepam for anxiety emphasis hppd. My hppd is more about head tightness from information overload. I want to try naltrexone or keppra as i dont need benzos, but wonder if either of these has improved head tightness in anyone?

<span class="Apple-style-span">i find chaparral is another good herbal detoxer. And limonene. If you're in uk, www.</span>homeopath.it is<span class="Apple-style-span"> the only place that i found selling chaparral. I tried the vinegar in ear thing and it had no effect on me. Perhaps one of the reason nac works is due to clearing mucous (it is mucolytic). I find it slightly strange that something external can have an affect on visuals that are presumably internally generated. Maybe it puts pressure on your eyes so it is like putting your fingers in your eyes and getting shapes.</span>

For a quick meal i knock up some greek yoghurt and/or marscapone and/or creme fraich with berries, sprinkled with cinnamon and walnuts. Make a big pot of something to keep in the fridge - boil up your old chicken bones with an onion, carrot and celery for 2-3 hours to make a stock, then add veg, chopped tomatos etc to make a chicken soup or stew or curry. Also make some flax bread: http://video.about.com/lowcarbdiets/Focaccia-Style-Flax-Bread.htm My food bills are fairly low - i've got a local Sainsbury's which do organic mince meat for £4/kilo and 2packs of really nice outdoor reared 'taste the difference' branded sausages for £4. I've got a good local fishmonger too. Cheap fish are under-rated (jackfish is especially tasty but cheap). I get most of my veg from the market (whitechapel, east london) which is ludicrously cheap mostly. I make up a nut mix (mainly almonds with brazil, hazel, and walnuts), a pot of which (maybe 100-150g?) does for lunch. Lots of eggs (£1 per 6 free range at local health shop). Berries are expensive tho - dont know why you cant usualy get them frozen.

i would think you will be ok from a fat point of view, tho eat loads of fibrous (not starchy) veg, and nuts. If youre eating a lot of protein and too little veg then you'll have a high acid and purine load so making you more susceptible to kidney stones, gout, osteoporosis etc. Also I'm pretty dubious about the ethics of industrial meat production, so i always get outdoor reared or organic meat, free-range eggs etc. I dont think i spend more money on food cos i eat less - no sugar swings means less hunger. I'm surprised you gained weight tho - maybe you just were'nt getting enough calories before.

Plenty of info on net - top result from googling 'triglyceride hdl ratio' http://www.yourmedicaldetective.com/public/523.cfm Doctors dont generally have the time to get to the bottom of patient's problems for thorough healing so do a quick fix with a drug to suppress symptoms, and often simply by refering to a text book rather than consulting some god-like vat of knowledge in their head. You can do that yourself, and probably would do a better job cos tho you dont have the background medical knowledge you do have the motivation and perhaps time to dig around, and you know yourself better than a doc does. I'm not saying docs are rubbish, just know they have limitations, and take their prescriptions with a pinch of salt.

Everyone is on a diet! Even if it is pies and mash. You are on a diet that is basically low GI, but cos you dont read the books and count the numbers you dont consider yourself to be 'on a diet'. I dont count carbs, i just dont eat them most of the time. Your diet is such standard issue establishment advice that it is often called a balanced diet, as tho anything else is unbalanced so inherently a bit dodgy. But carbohydrate is completely irrelevant to providing a balance of the things you actually need, and has long term degrading effects on your body. You can have a balanced ketogenic diet, and live longer for it. The guff about mimicing starvation is also propaganda. Your body burns carb before fat, so when you run out of carb, such as when starving, you burn fat stores. But you arent starving cos you are eating fat! Also, because you burn carb first doesnt mean it is inherently better. You burn alcohol preferentially to carbs, but no-one says carb burning mimics alcohol starvation! You say there is little scientific evidence for low carb diets - this is simply not true. In fact, one of the remarkable things is that the weight of scientific published evidence strongly favours a low carb over a low fat diet for general health, but this evidence is subverted once it turns into a political health message. There is also good scientific evidence for using keto diets for treating epilepsy, some for treating schizophrenia, and some for treating diabetes. I should also point out that the scientific evidence for eating according to blood type is very weak, which doesnt necessarily mean it is not true tho.

i tried piracetam. Nothing too noticeable - maybe i would perform better on function tests but nothing subjectively noticeable in short term use. I used modafanil to get me through my masters, but not great as anti hppd.

maybe nac improves memory too! Nice guitar btw. Piper - i use a 2ml scoop that you get from the sports powder places. This is about 700mg. Most pills are 600mg. So a maintenance dose of a scoop a day, plus If i am boozing i up it to 3 or 4 scoops x once or twice a night. Internet hearsay suggests using 1-4 times as much vitamin c with nac to keep glutathione in deoxidised form. Most ala pills are 200mg, but again i just use a scoop whenever i feel the nac isnt working its magic. Ala doesnt dissolve but i put it in water as a suspension and knock it back with a load of water, cos it feels quite peppery. Or put it in food. Also use chaparral tincture (from homeopath.it if youre in uk) - just a pipette full whenever i feel like it.

I learnt about the ketogenic diet from hppdonliners of the old forum. It seems to have an effect of regulating brain activity and hence of some clinical use in epilepsy and schizophrenia and thus theoretically hppd. It sounded instinctively a bad idea and very unhealthy due to large amount of fat. My instinct, however, was informed by what i now recognise as propaganda. Most value-added food products are carb based and hence there is a very strong food lobby that wants to make carbohydrate more acceptable to health. But it is inherently unhealthy, whereas fat is only unhealthy in the presence of carbohydrate. If you assume a carb-based diet, then yes you should reduce sat fat and eat wholegrains etc. But this assumption should be challenged and move to a fat based diet. I eat unlimited non-starchy veg and nuts, not much fruit (maybe an apple and some berries per day) loads of eggs, a reasonable amount of dairy, meat and fish, and a bit too much alcohol. I feel i have a bit more edge with the diet, tho my hppd is otherwise unafffected. If ever i have a starchy meal i dose up with 5000iu of vitamin d which cuts out the carb torpor. After 6 months or so on a keto diet i took a cholesterol test (sadly no test before for comparison). Dont have the numbers to hand but basically LDL (Bad) was high, HDL (good) was high, and triglycerides (bad) were low. So the nurse told me i need to get my LDL down, so to take aerobic exercise (fair enough) and cut down on sat fat and alcohol . What she didnt tell me: LDL is itself subdivided into bad and benign. Not all LDL is bad. It is very hard to measure directly how much benign and bad cholesterol you have, but a good proxy is your ratio of HDL to triglycerides. As i have high HDL and low triglycerides, the LDL will be largely of the benign sort. In fact it is pretty well shown that this ratio is a much better predictor of heart disease than LDL. But LDL sells statins and is easier to prescribe than a low carb diet so the cholesterol myth persists. Triglycerides are elevated by starch, HDL is raised by omega 3. Alcohol does not actually affect cholesterol but too much raises triglycerides, but as my TGs are low, the advice to reduce alcohol was nugatory. Also, carbs cause glycation (sugars attaching themselves to protien) which causes aging (age is another better predictor of heart disease than cholesterol) including hardening of arteries. Fat does not cause glycation. I have started running tho, which is of great benefit to me mentally - i always thought that cos i do a lot of walking this was enough, but no. I also ate a lot of brazil nuts but they are so rich in selenium that only a few a day can cause excessive levels that can cause raised cholesterol. So i cut down on them. But my fat level is still up and will see what my LDL looks like in a few months time. Not too bothered tho, as long as my hdl:tg ratio stays good.

before i took mushrooms and got hppd i had really bad brain fog - a dense heavy sensation in the front of my head with permanent tiredness. Maybe this was from cannabis, i cant remember which came first. Maybe it was candida? I have a friend who self-diagnosed with candida and did a 5 day water fast which caused loads of die-off symptoms. She has done hallucinogens but not got hppd. I also did a 5 day water fast which made me clearer but no major changes or die off symptoms. I got a bit of herxheimer (some spots on feet and belly) from taking a teaspoon of limonene but not any change in hppd, and the same but milder more recently from pau d arco as mentioned above. So maybe had some mild candida or other old lingering infections? Pau makes a nice brew as well. I dont get any herxheimer from acetyl cysteine but does massively improve my clarity and anxiety. I recommend if you are doing all this detox stuff to also supp with acetyl cysteine as it makes toxins more water soluble and less toxic, and replenish your glutathione levels which will be depleted by all that crap swilling around your system. Acetaldehyde is one of the candida toxins neutralised by AC. On the other hand, making the toxins more water soluble and hence mobile may exaccerbate the herxheimer.

ovation22?

Users of the old forum may remember me recommending this stuff. It has two effects that seem to be relevant. Firstly it modulates nmda glutamate receptors (whatever the funk that means), secondly it increases levels of glutathione, which is often depleted in mental illnesses. Glutathione is the body's main indigenous antioxidant and detoxificant, removing various pollutants such as heavy metals, various organic chemicals (including acetaldehyde from alcohol metabolism, chlamydia) etc. Whatever the action, the result is pretty spectacular. No more anxiety or feeling i'm going to fall out of my body. Cleared up brain fog and feel physically stronger. Worked quickly. Did not affect visuals or tightness around head. Acetyl cysteine has been used experimentally to treat schizophrenia, OCD, chronic fatigue, manic depression and other mental/neurotic conditions, as well as a load of other stuff. It is a cheap supplement available from body building stores like Bulk Powders and MyProtein in the uk, or in more expensive pill form from health food shops like holland and barret. People with excessively compromised detox systems may suffer a herxheimer reaction, so just reduce dose if this happens. Effect is enhanced with alpha lipoic acid. High dose vitamin d is good, tho less necessary with a low carb diet, which i also recommend, with lots of fibrous veg. The effect of aerobic exercise is also remarkable in improving the quality of life. hope this helps someone.

ive not been here for a while. Partly ive not had much new to add (basic advice from me: take acetyl cysteine and alpha lipoic acid, take regular aerobic exercise, stop eating carbohydrate or if you do take high doses of vitamin d). Partly i lost the habit of going on the forum when it was down. Partly i've been sulking - I felt the old board was a cumulative process of knowledge building so to have all that collaborative work deleted without warning or any effort to retain the knowledge therein, or even just giving us the opportunity to copy and paste some bits, felt like an insult. I spent a fair bit of thought, time and effort on some posts in the belief that it was adding to a permanent information base, which i obviously wasnt.

it is gutting to have lost all that time and effort that went into creating such a great collaborative information project - some really good stuff on there. Hope it aint gone forever. We could even have just taken screenshots and put them up on flicker or something like that.