ADHD, Severe fatigue, digestion problems etc..
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@questforhealth I would suggest that thiamine making you anxious was probably due to excipients in the brand than the actual molecule itself. Ray recommended physiological doses in the range of 5-10 milligrams. Personally, I've taken up to 100mg and felt great. I know of people who dose it in the grams, as well. Thiamine HCL and Allithiamine are the two best I think - Georgi posted something about how Benfotiamine was not actually "fat soluble" and was excreted by the liver as a toxin.
B6 also has a lot of promise in treating ADHD, but I'm not too versed in what that looks like, so I'll just leave it as a little comment for you to explore.
I wish you well!
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@questforhealth said in ADHD, Severe fatigue, digestion problems etc..:
It wouldn’t surprise me but I’ve tried thiamine and it made me very anxious.
Which one? How much? Did you also take magnesium?
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Thiamine hcl about 100mg and yes I did take magnesium with it.
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@questforhealth said in ADHD, Severe fatigue, digestion problems etc..:
Thiamine hcl about 100mg and yes I did take magnesium with it.
100mg of thiamine hcl is a very tiny tiny dose because oral thiamine hcl has a very poor absorption rate through the intestinal wall.
That said, if you are deficient in thiamine and you take some thiamine hcl (hopefully with water only and at least 30 minutes away from food), you could experience a flicker of activity in your metabolic system that you are not used to. Thiamine will lower blood sugar so it is not a good idea to take it on an empty stomach first thing in the morning. A sudden drop in blood sugar could be interpreted as anxiety.
Thiamine deficiency is a serious condition. It can cause Wernicke's Encephalopathy. I went through that in 2020. Your symptoms of severe fatigue, digestion problems, and brain fog match the symptoms that I had. If this condition is not addressed quickly, permanent damage to the brain can result, which is known as Korsakoff syndrome..
"Korsakoff’s syndrome (KS) is a residual syndrome in patients who suffered from a Wernicke encephalopathy (WE), but did not receive immediate and adequate treatment with thiamine replacement therapy. The most conspicuous symptom of KS is global amnesia, which can be very profound. In combination with other cognitive and behavioral deficits, usually present in more severe forms of KS, this may have far-reaching effects on daily life.1–3 Studies that have examined the extent, pattern, and nature of the anterograde episodic memory deficits in KS have contributed greatly to the delineation of concepts regarding human memory formation and to the realization that memory is not a unitary function. Moreover, the study of KS has brought to the fore that diencephalic structures play a critical role in memory function, thus stimulating the search for separate and distinctive brain structures and neural circuits underlying the component mnemonic processes.4,5"
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I have had big improvements from large doses in the past actually. Although it didn’t help everything.
I’m not sure if this is maybe some trauma causing energy flow to be stuck in my body man. I really don’t know. I’ve tried all this sort of stuff and it works for a short while then goes bad again.
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All this makes me think
What if I’m dealing with some deep rooted spiritual disease?
How would I begin to even address a thing like this?
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@questforhealth
Supposedly EFT or TRE is good at releasing trauma.
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I’ve tried these things before but it’s not really worked. I might try it again and take it more seriously this time.
I really don’t know what’s up with me sometimes.
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@questforhealth I find that releasing trauma can only be productive in a particular state of mind and health. If you're too unhealthy, it seems that suppressing it is better, at least in my experience. You need to be healthy enough to handle the negativity.
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I keep trying everything and can’t get any healthier. It’s exhausting. I don’t know if it’s just meant to take time or what...
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@questforhealth
Have you ever had stool or urine tests?
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I would but I don’t have the energy to go to the doctors anymore.
Also they just say it’s anxiety or something. But I will have to try.
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@questforhealth
Going to doctors for such tests is useless, since there is a good chance that they are using outdated testing.
I'd get a stool and urine (and mycotoxin) test from Mosaic diagnostics. It's pricey, but you can take it at home.
Practitioners who've been using them have started noticing various things like clostridia metabolites inhibiting dopamine conversion to norepinephrine, leading to things like ADHD. They also keep changing and expanding their tests, so they are very much at the frontier of human testing, versus the typical tests you might get.
I think there's a few other stool tests from other companies, but overall I think the urine one might be a bit more informative? Although it wouldn't point out things like parasites.
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@questforhealth said in ADHD, Severe fatigue, digestion problems etc..:
I have had big improvements from large doses in the past actually. Although it didn’t help everything.
I’m not sure if this is maybe some trauma causing energy flow to be stuck in my body man. I really don’t know. I’ve tried all this sort of stuff and it works for a short while then goes bad again.
I remember when I was going through being so sick with thiamine deficiency/functional blockage and I was just starting to take higher doses of thiamine hcl. I started with around 300-350mg, 2Xday, with water, never juice. The dose would work for a week maybe 10 days and then it sort of stopped working. Each time that happened, I increased the dose.
My gut was a real mess and Ray Peat had advised me to take thiamine hcl + magnesium (I use magnesium glycinate). He had said not to take more than 1500mg of thiamine hcl/day. But he also told me that if I had heavy metal poisoning (which I did) that all bets were off. Four months later, I had worked my way up to taking 750mgs, 2Xday and I felt that I needed to increase my dose yet again because the effect was wearing off again.
I searched on line for more information and I found Dr. Costantini's website. His Therapy page includes conversion information for how much oral thiamine hcl you need to take daily for 7 days to equal a single 100mg injection of thiamine hcl taken each week. It's a LOT. According to that info, based on my weight, my optimum dose would be 2 grams/day, divided into two doses.
So I increased my dose to that recommendation. Within two days my digestive tract normalized for the first time in decades. Suddenly I could swallow food and my stomach could make stomach acid so I could digest the food, and my intestine was working and I could poop like a normal person. I was really hungry for a steak; so I ate one (actually three over three days).
My health continued to improve over the next 6 months. Then the improvements tapered off but didn't go away. It's been 3 years, I'm still taking 1gram of thiamine hcl, 2Xday and I'm still doing very well. I also take magnesium glycinate (3100mg, divided into 2 doses daily), riboflavin (100mg, 4 X day), niacinamide (100mg, 4Xday), selenium (200mcg/day), zinc (15mg/day) and I also drink orange juice for the potassium. I take a few other things, but these are the ones that people like Elliot Overton advises to take so you don't get into trouble high dosing thiamine.
If you have had improvements from taking large doses of thiamine in the past, I think your body has given you clues to what it needs in order for you to get well.
I found watching Dr. Costantini's patients' before and after videos enormously helpful. I'd like to encourage you to take the time to watch them. Each is very short and they're all in Italian (but some interviews have subtitles).
Dr. Costantini's FAQs are full of hands on wisdom regarding how to get better on his protocol. His research papers are hiding under Blog Posts.
Yes, I think you are exactly right; your body's energy flow is blocked; I think it's because of your thiamine deficiency.
I did try to take 2.5 grams of thiamine hcl one day in early 2021. That night, when I went to bed, I got shooting electrical zapping pains in my thighs. I interpreted that to mean that I had overdone the thiamine dose so I went back to taking the 2 grams/day and have never had another problem. My chiropractor told me that taking the thiamine was "messing with my body's electrical system". I believe he was right about that.
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@questforhealth I second @mostlylurking's advice.
B1 is your first easy step towards improved gut and brain function. It's silly not to use it, IMO.
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I just took some down the hatch. Lost my scoop so I just put some on the top of a teaspoon.
I HEAVILY suspect heavy metal problems. So probably should be doing thiamine.
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@questforhealth said in ADHD, Severe fatigue, digestion problems etc..:
I just took some down the hatch. Lost my scoop so I just put some on the top of a teaspoon.
I HEAVILY suspect heavy metal problems. So probably should be doing thiamine.
Did you know that thiamine hcl is given to animals to save them from lead poisoning? It's in the Merk manual for veterinary medicine.
It's important to accurately weigh out your dose to make sure you are taking the correct amount and to be consistent about taking it so your body learns it can rely on it.
Here's a video and also an article for you:
Mega-Dose Thiamine: Benefits Beyond Addressing Deficiency (video)Thiamine Saves (article)
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Will a drug scale work? It’s pretty accurate. Crappy amazon micro scale thing
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@questforhealth said in ADHD, Severe fatigue, digestion problems etc..:
Will a drug scale work? It’s pretty accurate. Crappy amazon micro scale thing
Yes. I weighed out my 1 gram dose with a little digital scale like that and then I found a little spoon that would hold that amount. I tested it out a few times so I knew the little spoon holds exactly the right amount (it holds 500mg, I use two of them); so now I just use the little spoon, not the scale.
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That makes sense. Last time I felt good I had been taking 1 gram doses of thiamine every once in a while with b3 and methylene blue.
Might be worth trying that again along with magnesium. I may well need it until I chelate my heavy metals.
