9 replies to this topic

[vtrader]

When I used to take the mentioned supps a year ago, they use to give me a good clean energy and focus.
But now I get an energy boost for a few hours, followed by very bad anxiety levels, brain fog and insomnia. This is all at the standard dosage of less.
The only reason I can think of the effect is that about two months ago I started getting anxiety attacks(I've not used those supps for several months).

Why am I getting such bad effects now?
How can I get back the good effects like I did before?

[niner]

Are you saying that the supps worked well a year ago, but you stopped taking them, then later the anxiety started when you weren't taking them? If that's the case, then the supps are probably just aggravating your present anxiety state. So the real question (if I understand you correctly) would be why are you anxious and how can you fix that? You could try cutting the dose down, or maybe taking them after a meal.

[xsiv1]

There are any number of reasons as to why you've developed anxiety and I'd agree with niner that when you take these supplements again at this stage in life, for whatever reason, they're aggravating any existing anxiety you have or are prone too. Changes in life, stress, physiology, nutritional habits, environmental variants and a dozen more may put you in a state such as this. Address the root cause and avoid taking these supplements for a bit until you figure it out. I'd try ALCAR alone or the L-Tyrosine alone and see how it effects you. Ensure you get some Vitamin B and C with your tyrosine but the addition of EGCG may raise dopamine levels to a point that's uncomfortable. Also, the insomnia is really often a symptom of depression or an anxiety disorder. It's not unheard of to develop either or both at varying stages in life. Try something else if you need to be alert and focused.

[Luminosity]

Yeah, I wouldn't take these supplements now if they are disagreeing with you. Your supplement tolerances can change. Probably it's like Niner said.

Edited by Luminosity, 21 March 2013 - 04:36 AM.

[vtrader]

thanks, I don't combine those supps, I take on or the other. For me at the moment any energy boost from anything will always end with high levels of anxiety later on.

[jadamgo]

The exact same thing happened to me whenever I developed generalized anxiety disorder. Anything energizing -- caffeine, tyrosine, bright light therapy, socializing, even exercise would make my anxiety worse. You have to fix the cause of the anxiety, and then you'll be able to use tyrosine and ALCAR again like normal.

[xsiv1]

The exact same thing happened to me whenever I developed generalized anxiety disorder. Anything energizing -- caffeine, tyrosine, bright light therapy, socializing, even exercise would make my anxiety worse. You have to fix the cause of the anxiety, and then you'll be able to use tyrosine and ALCAR again like normal.

It astounds me that exercise would worsen your anxiety symptoms. It's almost universally recommended that a vigourous exercise regimen should be undertaken if medically advised (everything physically is ok). How hard were you exercising? If you did any aerobic activity, were you training hard enough where it would be difficult to talk to someone over the phone? Just curious since I don't see many people complaining that exercise had made their anxiety worsen. Strange creature GAD can be.

[jadamgo]

I was exercising pretty hard. What would happen is that I would have pretty strong social anxiety when going to the gym, worrying that people would think I was too skinny to work out or that I would look stupid using a machine wrong, and so that was pretty clearly not due to the physical act of exercising itself.

Once I got into the flow of the workout, I would feel fine, and then I would push myself to near-total exhaustion. At that point, I would be pretty dissociated, and also totally incapable of concentrating or thinking clearly for about a half hour. After the exhaustion wore off, I would feel increased anxiety for the next few hours, but I would usually be back to baseline anxiety by the next morning.

It was definitely strange. Before developing the anxiety and after recovering from it, exercise was always a good stress-reliever.

[guitarparty]

When I used to take the mentioned supps a year ago, they use to give me a good clean energy and focus.
But now I get an energy boost for a few hours, followed by very bad anxiety levels, brain fog and insomnia. This is all at the standard dosage of less.
The only reason I can think of the effect is that about two months ago I started getting anxiety attacks(I've not used those supps for several months).

Why am I getting such bad effects now?
How can I get back the good effects like I did before?

I don't really know, but I can guess a bit?

The first guess might be that the two events--taking supplements and having anxiety attacks--might not be related at all, since (I think I understand from your writing at the end, "I've not used those supps for several months") the two were separated in time. Or if I'm misreading that, and should be paying more attention to the word "now" earlier, here are some more guesses:

TEA (and most likely the tea supplement too)...

Tea promotes the pancreas to release insulin, more insulin than it otherwise would release in a healthy body--having nothing to do with real bodily need. (This is not a guess.)

Whether this is might be pertinent to you is related to your idea of what constitutes an anxiety attack--or at least yours.

As a diabetic who has suffered numerous low blood sugar problems, including a few that were probably approaching life-threatening, I've had a *lot* of experience with all degrees of low blood sugars (as measured with a blood sugar meter), including some mildly low blood sugars and with drinking tea; I grew up on iced tea, and graduated to hot tea that I have at times consumed tea daily and in pot-sized quantities.

I never noticed the effect of iced tea as a child because I always put a ton of sugar and lemon into it--which, while not particularly healthy, would have probably taken care of any immediate lower blood sugar effects. And the same when I first started on hot black tea; I added milk and sugar to it. Eventually I decided that it would be healthier to take my tea straight, and I started adding or substituting green tea for black sometimes. Somewhere in there is when I started noticing the effects, noticed them in a big way. Tea made me hungry not long after finishing up a pot. I got those effects with both black and green tea.

Eventually I decided that if I wanted tea, I'd better plan to eat something either with it or soon afterwards, because it made me hungry and jumpy-feeling. And I've started only drinking tea that's diluted by other infusions (like rooibos) and lots of water. It's not an effect of caffeine that I know of--just tea. I drink caffeinated coffee and never ever had a similar problem from it.

By the time I ever read in a book that drinking tea stimulated the release of insulin, I'd already figured that out, at least for my own body... which was once prediabetic and then later diabetic. I suppose that at the earliest of prediabetic times, my blood sugar might have been elevated just a wee bit to start with, and tea would have brought the blood sugars down to a better level-->producing more energy and good feelings (because that always happens to me when blood sugars are optimized).

Have you ever been really, really hungry? I don't suppose you took your blood sugar at that point, but once the blood sugar even drops a tiny bit--to say, 65--I can sharply notice a difference. I start to feel jumpy, and can't really concentrate at all any longer. Let it drop just a bit more, and I really get to feeling frantic.

If the tea you're drinking causes your blood sugar to drop even just a wee bit below 70, then you'd be better off taking your tea/tea supplements only with meals, and limit the amounts even there.

I don't really think it's such a good idea to go with tea very often, given its effects on insulin production. As Dr. Robert Lustig, an endocrinologist at San Fransisco State Medical School mentions here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

all you need to do to make a person into a diabetic is to keep shooting them up with insulin every day. It destabilizes the natural ability of the body to do its own insulin controls. A little won't kill you, but considering the insulin-promoting effects, a heavy practice of tea use can make worse anyone's genetic tendencies toward diabetes.

If you're curious about this possibility for yourself, you could drink several cups of tea and also take a tea supplement. Then an hour later show up at the pharmacy and have them take your blood sugar. But you won't know what your blood sugar was before starting the experiment. A better route might be to buy a blood sugar meter. With a rebate, you can get one for free and it will come with several free test strips; that's cheaper than paying the pharmacy to test you. (And it's EASY to test yourself.) Take a reading both before and after taking your tea, but wait a bit to give the tea time to start prodding the pancreas before taking the reading afterwards (wait an hour or so unless you're so starved that you must eat sooner than that).

L-CARNITINE (ALCAR)... One of my supplements books mentions that this one is good for Type II diabetics. It doesn't specify what it does in this regard, but it's not inconceivable that it helps to lower a (presumably) often higher blood sugar. It also mentions that it's best taken with meals to avoid a digestive upset.

I take this in the combination of Arginine & Citrulline 500/250 because in another part of the book it says: "Diabetes, however, makes it hard for blood vessels to relax. The disease essentially creates competition for L-arginine. It works like this: When your body breaks down L-arginine to make urea, it uses an enzyme called arginase to do so. Diabetics have higher arginase activity that nondiabetics, which means it leaves too little L-arginine behind to formulate nitric oxide. Scientists think this problem can be resolved in diabetics with another amino acid, L-citrulline, and with a type of cholesterol medication. Study is needed to confirm this, however." (I do take some supplements that are supposed to benefit cholesterol too, though I don't know whether they fulfill the theorized need.)

L-TYROSINE... Another of my supplements books mentions that this one "lends itself to the production of more thyroid hormone..." If you start out at the high end of normal in your thyroid production, then more might well make you feel too jumpy. It also mentions that higher doses might increase blood pressure, rapid pulse, and there are caveats about MAO inhibitor drugs.

If you are depressed, then my book recommends instead taking the ALT form of it (Acetyl-L-Tyrosine). But if agitated-depressed, then different amino acids altogether--tryptophan and 5-Hydroxy-tryptophan--work better.

If you're not depressed, maybe just skip this one nowadays?

Best wishes, Mary

[guitarparty]

Have you ever been really, really hungry? I don't suppose you took your blood sugar at that point, but once the blood sugar even drops a tiny bit--to say, 65--I can sharply notice a difference. I start to feel jumpy, and can't really concentrate at all any longer. Let it drop just a bit more, and I really get to feeling frantic.

Hello again. I got to thinking about how you might interpret this comment and thought I ought to add a little more. The hunger question had to do with getting you to think about your reaction to extreme hunger--how "anxious" you feel under those circumstances. I didn't mean to imply that a low blood sugar always can be indicated by hunger. If it could, then fewer diabetics would ever go into a very low blood sugar panic while awake. Sometimes the only indication I have that I'm in need of immediate glucose is that after feeling fine I'm suddenly so tired and sleepy I can scarcely stay awake. Anyway, the topic of that paragraph is how you feel when anxious, not hunger. If you happen to recall your anxious feelings when intensely hungry, that's the sort of anxiety I'm talking about in the earliest stages of a low blood sugar experience. It has nothing to do with anything like hunger pangs. (I don't tend to get hunger pangs when going into a low blood sugar condition, though sometimes I can tell I'm more hungry than usual.)

L-TYROSINE... [...] It also mentions that higher doses might increase blood pressure, rapid pulse, and there are caveats about MAO inhibitor drugs.

"Higher doses" to me means that I might well get those effects at minimum doses. Some people are much, much more sensitive than others. I'm one of the sensitive ones. I don't say it's particularly likely that you are too, but you might be, or might be just especially to this particular supplement.

ONE MORE GUESS: As a reactive sort of person, something I once never reacted to will often behave later in a totally different, much more negative way, especially when it's something that I've put into my mouth on a daily basis for an extended period of time. It's not impossible that that might happen to you sometimes too.

ANXIETY: whatever the causes for your anxiety whenever it does occur, it might help some to take a passion flower supplement. It definitely helps and appears to be very safe. One of my supplement books describes the research done on this one to earn its approval from the German supplement authorities. It also mentions the possibilities of using a combination of valerian with lemon balm, but don't go with high doses, because then it can make matters worse.

Mary