Hey all,
Just made an account here on LongeCity trying to learn more about my side effects. I have been to doctors, including a derm, plastic/cosmetic surgeon and a vascular specialist and they have not known what is going on/ have doubted my story. Also posted on reddit to see if anyone had these issues but nobody has been able to help so far. Sorry for the long post in advance but this has been about a 4 month issue so far for something I never thought would cause problems!
My background: M, 5'10, 22, 160 lbs, ~12% BF, fairly good health (I ran a 7:30 minute mile yesterday for reference). I got big ugly puffy bags under my eyes which I am 90% sure are due to taking several vasodilator supplements together daily for about 3 months, (stupidly) trying to maximize my lifting. I figured there was nothing bad about maximizing blood flow, and worst case I will have better sexual health. However, it is definitely possible to have too much and I will be way more careful now. Each day, I took a combination of L-Citrulline, Ginger Root Extract, Ginseng, and Ginkgo. I would roughly take 2-3 g of citrulline, which is a normal daily dose, but then over the course of the day I would take the daily dose of each of those other vasodilators as well. So in retrospect this was likely too much since it is more like 4x the daily dose, not to mention any potential synergistic effects. Overall, daily I would take 2-3g of L-Citrulline, 1000mg of Ginger root extract, ~400mg of Ginseng, and 240 mg of Ginkgo Biloba extract consistently daily. These are all roughly the dosages the typical supplier from Amazon says to take per day or a bit more.
My allergies, sleep, and diet all did not change significantly in that time. In fact, I was in university previously, and had worse sleep and diet regularly, without ever having eye bags close to this. I know this since I wore contacts for all of University, and my eye bags when I got them were bad enough for people to comment that I look awful, so if I had them during Uni I would have definitely noticed. I didn't notice the eye bags as they crept up over the 3 months since I was wearing glasses for that time period. For reference, this was June, July and August of this year (I noticed them around august) and ever since then through now (December) I have had these big puffy eye bags making me look like I haven't slept in days. As soon as I wore contacts for the first time in a while though, I didn't want to go out in public because while my dark glasses make them hard to notice, they are obvious in contacts. I can't link images since this is my first post.
I believe my symptoms are due to these vasodilators. I believe taking these relatively high doses of L Citrulline upregulated the levels of Nitric Oxide Synthase (NOS) in my body, which will hopefully fall back down eventually. This is because while L Citrulline is a product of NOS, it can also be recycled into L-Arginine, so I may have produced continuously high arginine levels in my blood over 3 months, allowing NOS (probably inducible NOS aka iNOS aka NOS-2) to be upregulated significantly.
It has been roughly 3 months since I have touched the L Citrulline or any vasodilator since I realized it may have been contributing to my eye bags and they are slightly better, but it seems to be taking a while. As of right now it has been about 4 months that I have looked like a 30 year old drug addict without my glasses, while previously, before I took the Citrulline I had a baby face. If you google a bit you will see that there are a few potential causes:
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Nitric Oxide (NO), a byproduct of citrulline, causes lymphatic flow to be slowed in experiments, so I believe my lymphatic system has been slowed down significantly over the past months but I am hoping it will get back up to speed as my levels of NOS fall back to normal, although it may take several more months.
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NO causes vasodilation, allowing more lymph to exit blood vessels into the interstitial space, which shows up as edema/puffiness/swelling
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I am not sure how the Ginkgo, Ginseng and ginger are involved, but they may have caused general vasodilatory effects which are taking a long time to reverse.
Anyone who has taken citrulline have similar stories? Or anyone think my logic is right? As I said above, doctors have so far not known what to do. *I have been taking L-Lysine, roughly 2-3g a day for 2 weeks in an attempt to reduce my iNOS levels since lysine competes with arginine, but I haven't noticed much change so far.*
I can't link studies since this is my first post but here is a name of a study; "Genetic removal of basal nitric oxide enhances contractile activity in isolated murine collecting lymphatic vessels"
The above basically says that " higher agonist-evoked concentrations of NO exert purely inhibitory effects on contractile function." and also that removal of NO increases lymphatic speed, which follows from the previous statement. The bags I have are definite due to combined slow lymph flow and increased edema since they are worst in morning and reduce over the day as they drain better.
TL;DR: Took a lot of citrulline and vasodilators over about 3 months. Months after stopping, still have bad eye bags which I never had before and my allergies, sleep, salt intake, exercise, etc haven't changed. Why? Anyone experienced similar? Would lysine or any other supps help?
Thanks so much to everyone!