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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
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Posted by bleauberry on January 15, 2014, at 8:14:34
This stuff has good potential to improve mood problems of all kinds. However, none of them are psychoactive. They do not directly influence mood in any way. Instead what they do is target, in blind shotgun fashion, many common causes of psychiatric symptoms in one punch. When the cause of symptoms is reduced or eliminated, psychiatric symptoms automatically and almost magically begin to fade away. But, with testing either non-existent or unreliable or confusing results, we are not likely to nail down exactly what our problem is. Thus the shotgun approach. The culprit will reveal itself in the process.
Paradise Herbs Resveratrol made from Polygonum Cupsidatum (Japanese Knotweed). Could write an entire book on this one. Anti-inflammation from various angles, as effective or more effective than inflammation prescription meds. Immune modulation....calm it down where it is too hot, spice it up where it is too cold....immune support....important because in my experience the immune system and the mood center are directly linked. This herb also suppresses a wide variety of bacteria and yeast, with special focus on the pathogens of lyme disease.
Cat's Claw, better is the version called Samento. Similar in outcomes as the above herb, except from different angles and different mechanisms, and it is stronger as an antibiotic. This one is very common and usually tolerated well. For some reason, it gives me a real hard time....which means it is hitting a bullseye. It is thus highly appropriate for me, but I have to approach it with tiny doses, and/or pulsed doses rather than daily doses.
Rhodiola Rosea. Entire books have been written on this one. Pro-immune, pro-energy, pro-endurance, antidepressant, antianxiety, hormone support and balance, and more. Tricky to dose though. Dose sizes change the effect. Over stimulation is a common start up side effect. It melts away into peace and calm in a few days or weeks. But because of the trickiness involved in exploring for the right dose for you, many people never get to give it a good trial. Too bad. This herb can do magic.
Thorne Research or Jarrow Formulas Rhodiola Rosea. My best dose is 100mg, and Thorne is the only one with that size available. All other brands are in the 400mg range. Jarrow happens to be the only one I've seen where the color of the powder is actually a rusty rose red....the true color of rhodiola. All the other brands are a grey-ish version of rust color.
Source Naturals Mushrrom Immune Defense. This has all the most researched healing mushrooms in it. The list of their humanly benefits is long. Most of them play into the mood stuff in one way or another, indirectly through the side door....inflammation, toxin, infection reduction.
Cholestyramine. The is basically a natural treatment but requires a prescription to get it. This anti-cholesterol powder serves the purpose of absorbing everything fat soluble in the gut....which includes all the unknown toxins likely contributing to our symptoms...preventing their reabsorption...and over time lowering the load. If 50 systems in the body are screwed up, this substance has the potential to get all of them back to normal.....simply by removing the neurotoxins that are causing them all to be screwed up. The number 50 is pulled out of pure air just for the sake of discussion. Could be any number.
Vit C minimum 250mg at each meal, increase to bowel tolerance. Loose stools will signal the dose is too high. Crucial not for commonly assumed anti-oxidant stuff, but because it is a major building block to making new collagen and new nerve connections, which are both probably under severe assault in our conditions.
Vit D 5000IU per day. Without even testing your Vitamin D levels, if you have been under the weather for quite some time, I would bet money it is very low. Bugs such as in lyme disease chew that stuff up like candy, so extra supplementation to make sure you get some is important.
Multivitamin/Mineral, but not the ones bought at the drug store or supermarket. I favor Pioneer 1+, because of all the fantastic cofactors in it that carry the nutrients, and because of the superior forms of B6, B12, and folate....they are in the already metabolized readily absorbed form, so if there is a malfunction in your body where you cannot metabolize the Bs properly....common in chronic illness, sometimes the actual cause....these vitamins bypass the roadblocks. Another good one is Thorne Research Extra Nutrients, which could be added to any vitamin you want, even cheap ones.
Fish oil. Start with high EPA. More expensive, but seems more effective for our type of population. Try regular fish oil too. Maybe do both. I do. For the longest time I could not take fish oil....bad reactions psychiatrically. If that happens with you....you have problems with fish oil....that all by itself is a pretty strong diagnostic clue that you got some infection or toxic stuff going on. Those types of situations will cause fish oil to be metabolized wrong, where the outcome is that one of its common neutral metobolites instead becomes a somewhat slightly toxic metabolite. That doesn't feel good. If that happens, you will likely have to do some anti-bacterial stuff and anti-toxin stuff before you can handle fish oil without problems.
Gosh, I could keep going and going. So many good plants and herbs.
The ones above work as a team. They are grouped together as they are because it creates a cohesive goal-oriented strategy that covers as many bases as possible with the least cost possible and the least side effects possible. The goal is not to improve mood. The goal is to remove the offenders and enemies of a good mood, the bad guys, so that mood can automatically on its own improve. The ultimate goal is to either live a happier life with a lowered dosage of meds or no meds at all. The above supps pave a fairly wide path to help make that happen.
Posted by bleauberry on January 15, 2014, at 9:01:38
In reply to Psychiatric Cocktail, posted by bleauberry on January 15, 2014, at 8:14:34
I want to add a few comments as follow up.
Do you know what a Herxheimer reaction is? If no, please google it and become familiar with it. There is a decent chance you may experience this. You need to be able to discern that is what is happening, and to back off on the doses or even take a couple days off if that happens. Basically, it is just too much toxic crap being stirred up from bacterial death and other stuff, the immune system becomes overwhelmed, plumbing slows down, and it just feels bad. It is basically a "cytokine storm". Though it feels bad, it also is good in the sense that it confirms in a very loud manner that you are on the right track.
What might one feel the first few days? Is there any sort of diagnostic pattern to look for?
Predicting how you might feel in the first few days is impossible. We have no idea what is wrong inside your body and we will probably never know. Validation we did the right thing or not comes after treatment. There is little risk, practically zero toxicity, so we have nothing to lose, only gain.
Here is a diagnostic pattern that plays out with both pharmaceutical antibiotics as well as herbs. The very first day, or maybe the 2nd day, maybe the 3rd day....early in treatment...your experience might be "feel better than in a long time, almost like a miracle". Enjoy it but don't throw a party....this effect is short lived. Call it the honeymoon. Back to the old symptoms again real soon, and maybe worse than before. All good.
So what's going on there? Early in treatment, any offending pathogenic microbials will sort of be stunned, paralyzed, stopped, slowed down....but not killed, not dead. In this stunned state, their toxins stop. And you feel a lot better. Or maybe if there are no pathogenic issues, the herbs reduced inflammation, but now that other stuff is working better without that inflammation, the immune system is automatically naturally beefed up and bad stuff is going to get killed no matter what, even without direct antibacterial efforts. The herbs are going to change stuff, and a "healing crisis" could happen. Now, the honeymoon comes to an abrupt end when the bugs whatever they are start to die, about 3 or 4 days later. That's when the first Herx might well show up.
Feel better real fast....short honeymoon...followed by sort of a crash....highly diagnostic. When an MD suspects an infection such as lyme, but they want just one more piece of the puzzle to further cement their suspicions, the above pattern does that. This is very important because we do not have reliable accurate tests. So what we see happen clinically is more important than any lab test.
The supps I mentioned can be viewed as a base. Lots of stuff can be added to it. For example maybe if one of your major issues is anxiety, lemon balm can help while waiting on the rhodiola to smooth out and do its thing. If candida, yeast, or fungi is suspected rather than bacteria, the herbs will work on those too, but you could add other herbs very specific to those, such as grapefruit seed extract, oil of oregano, garlic (raw not cooked not processed), pau d'arco, and more. If more support in the pain/inflammation department is needed, then there are things like curcumin, which some docs consider mandatory, or boswellia, and a number of others. Willow is what aspirin is derived from, and the raw plant itself is a good herb for pain/inflammation. On and on. Add on what you think you might need. Experiment. Don't give up. The rest of your life and all of your well being, will be determined by how much faith and persistence you put into it.
A half hearted effort will probably predict a worthless outcome. So if you are feeling sort of on the fence, half hearted, not sure, that is fine, go forward with it anyway, but take it in small steps and mark on your calendar several months to dabble with the stuff. Be faithful to it. Do your work. Do your experiments. By the end of it all, you probably won't be half hearted about it any more. You will have experienced stuff, seen stuff, learned stuff, that puts you in a better position going forward to win the war.
All of this, all of it, assumes that your psychiatric symptoms have at their root cause one or all of these:
Unknown unsuspected chronic low level infection spewing neurotoxins into the bloodstream. lyme is most common, but there are at least a dozen others. Testing is not reliable. Since estimates are that only 1 out of 10 lyme cases is accurately diagnosed, that means a whole lot of people at pbabble have some strong potential issues there. What is maybe the most common symptom? Depression, with an without anxiety. Most patients complain of pains, but sometimes it is just depression.
Unknown unsuspected inflammation. Brain inflammation, nerve endings inflammation...obvious to see how that might mess up someone's mood center really badly. No accurate testing.
Unknown unsuspected neurotoxic accumulation. About 20% of the population has a faulty gene, resulting in poor ability to excrete normal toxins in our food, water, and air. Trace amounts build up over time and accumulate, to the point of overload and sickness. Add to that the mountains of toxins from a confused immune system attacking your own flesh, or the toxins of normal daily bacterial lives, you are going to be feeling like crap especially in psychiatric ways. If there is a serious issue in this department, even exercise might make you feel like crap. How often have we seen someone here complain that exercise made their depression worse? A lot. It happens. That's why. Toxic build up, too much. Exercise releases a lot of toxins.
The whole thing assumes the above are true. I believe they are true. Based on my own journeys, there is nothing I could do to disprove them. I've tried. I am naturally very suspicious and distrusting of anything new or anything without solid backing. If you don't know the stuff I have written, then to you it is new. Since I am just a stranger on the internet to you, then there should be suspicion. All good. Normal. Healthy. The greatest thing we can do, according to the Bible, other than love Jesus, is gather wisdom.
My suspicions and doubts had to be confronted head on. There is no way to know what might have happened, unless one actually does it. Those are some really good herbs, and I see a very strong application for them in the world of psychiatric treatment. While they can help directly with symptoms, as meds do, they go further than that by actually suppressing or eliminating the cause of the symptoms in the first place.
If during the process it was determined that a hidden lyme infection was uncovered, then at some point pharmaceutical antibiotics will likely be required to finish the job. The herbs have the advantages of:
-hitting a wide range of depression causes all at the same time
-uncovering new clues previously hidden
-pave the path for true healing, not just symptom controlThrough it all, do what you and your doc decide in terms of meds. He will not likely know much about plant medicine, especially the ones I mentioned, so don't even go there. They are all safe with meds and non toxic with very low risk of anything. He can manage the meds side of the equation, you manage the plants and supps. If he says no to supps and no to herbs, run out of there and start looking for a new doctor. My opinion, not suggestion.
Posted by herpills on January 15, 2014, at 21:20:02
In reply to Re: Psychiatric Cocktail, posted by bleauberry on January 15, 2014, at 9:01:38
This is the end of the thread.
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