20 replies to this topic

[orangish]

The supplement route that I have been trying to take to help clear things up hasn't helped much.

At this point I am on several steady supplements, I am on:
500 mg Ashwaghanda (which in no way tires me out)
500 mg 5-htp
300 mg theanine
500 mg dlpa
300 Bacopa
1200 EPA fish oil

The effects seem quite unnoticeable. I still cannot focus--I remain quite vague and flitty in my thoughts.

Moreover, I am quite depressed either because I can't focus or vice versa but the process is quite ingrained and recycling...
At this point I count the number of hours from the afternoon until the evening when there isn't a depressing hour to go to sleep.

I have quite unpatternable sleeping patterns--but pretty consistenly can't really sleep, or if i do get to sleep wake up in the middle of the night.

Any ideas why I am such a void, why I cannot connect/focus on ANYTHING? (even on this post, I'm sure if I could focus I either wouldn't have posted or would have asked much more specific questions)

[scud]

Orangish- What is your diet composed of. I would write down everything you eat or drink in a day. Then look for possible causes for your depression/lack of focus. Could be hypoglycemia or even a food allergy. A proper diet is probably going to do more for you than a bunch of supplements. Supps are great, but you need a good base of good diet and some exercise.

[orangish]

diet is composed of a range of organic foods minus the meat. I have no idea how to begin handling isolating for allergies--try off and on to exclude milk and yeast to no avail.

what would be the best way to detect hypoglycemia/allergens?

[scud]

I know some common allergens include wheat, soy, peanuts, corn(aflatoxin),dairy and fermented products like beer and wine can cause bad reactions in some. What do you for protein intake? Do you eat a low fat diet?

[scud]

Just wondering, how long have you been avoiding meat? Do you eat eggs?

[drmz]

 
At this point I count the number of hours from the afternoon until the evening when there isn't a depressing hour to go to sleep

What are you doing or are supposed to do during the day ? Do you sport ? Enough distractions beside work/study ?

[orangish]

I study for school mostly during the day, used to be more active but gradually as this increasing awareness sunk in of my unchanging focus problem, unfortunately sunk into this depressive rut.

i do try my best to work out at least 30 min every day ...though overcoming the inertia is quite difficult.

for protein i eat eggs and soy, and sometimes fish (mercury free). although i have to say, my protein options are often quite limited to soy (cheaper/more convenient).

[orangish]

And this is the multi I am currently taking:

http://www.iherb.com/alivepowder.html

Is the magnesium too low? or anything else out of whack?

Asides from tackling the diet, and .

I've seen numerous specialists throughout the years who have labelled off my diagnose as stress--now considering I have been stressed but the pattern of my physical symptoms has been quite different, i don't quite take this diagnosis as an explanation for things--especially since i do relatively little during my days, and if stress is an explanation for why my days have always been so empty, then its just indicative of some physiological and irreparable flaw in me.

[scud]

Orangish- Do not allow yourself to get into that negative thinking! You do not have some irrepairable flaw! First... I had much the same symptoms a little over a year ago. I feel great now with lots of energy and great concentration. If you can find a copy of it, read Neanderthin by Ray Audette. I know it goes against the grain(pun intended) of all the tofu eaters on this board, but stop eating soy! Get proper amounts of animal protien and fat in your diet. Yes eat more saturated fat. Your brain cannot utilize Essential Fatty Acids ie. omega 3s without sufficient saturated fats. Get outside and get some sunshine. Go to www.westonaprice.org and see if you agree with their philosophy of proper nutrition. Don't get bummed out, you can fix this!

[kenj]

At this point I am on several steady supplements, I am on:

500 mg 5-htp

This is WAY too much, also what is the reasoning for choosing the mentioned compounds?

[orangish]

Actuallly the supplements I'm taking are proprietary blends.

theanine/5-htp/glycine/taurine 1200 mg together--don't know the individual amounts

and

dlpa/l-taurine/l-theanine blend of about 400 mg

the 5-htp blend is for the inexplicable pits of anxiety, that i used to feel but no longer exist...and to help me sleep, i take it at night to ease down

the dlpa blend I take in the morning to help with terrible spacy, foggy sluggish indescribaly unfocused mind. perhaps a proper analogy to my focus problems is the what happens to language with a lack of consonants. i forget who, but i heard said on a film about ape language, that consonants function to separate and distinguish words from each other, and without them sounds/words are pretty unintelligible, like my thoughts. for example, i once had to take photos for photography class back in high school and spent an entire day wandering around my state without a pre-formed idea of what to look for. by the time the day finished i had two rolls taken of the same poses of the same flock of geese. the obsession was in no way positive, or explainable as some artistic strategy. it was hardly artistic. what was once perhaps able to be used as satire of self, is really quite miserable.

I don't know if the effect of the supplements is indeed erased by my diet. I do eat ample amounts of soy, since being a vegetarian it is the most feasible protein source. but haven't per se correlated my symptoms to soy-ingestion, except i do have estrogen dominance.

Scud:
what did you do to rid yourself of your symptoms? eliminate protein? other diet clean-ups? what do you feel caused your symptoms in the first place?

i'm planning more diet revisions and am wondering which is more important to eliminate--soy or dairy/wheat?

[Shepard]

I'm not a fan of soy, and personally, I would try to cut down on it. I'm not that big on dairy or wheat, either. Hemp, egg white, and even brazil nut protein are decent. What exactly is your diet?

Anything other than the psychological issues that hint to some hormonal issue?

Also, those supplements would not be my first choices for focus. How does caffeine treat you?

[xanadu]

Have you tried st john's wort? That helps with mood issues. Sam-e is also good and salvia divinorum if used carefully is very good. Do some reading.

[orangish]

I tried St. John's wort, it helped with the depression but not the attention/focus. Could I take St. John's wort Sam-e with DLPA? I do try and do reading but its so tedious in this state--which is what makes being depressed and unfocused even tougher.

Caffeine helps only somewhat, my mind still wanders. Plus I'm still hesitant with caffeine, I tried guarana. But I read studies citing the adverse effects of caffeine and impeding brain bloodflow--it was awhile ago, and i'm terrible at this kind of thing, so possibly i'm remembering right. I don't really know what my ailment is--i.e. the biochemical imbalance source of my focus problem.

got tests done which say i have low dopamine and high cortisol at night (the high cortisol correlates with my mid-night waking)
i also have low progesterone during the latter half of my cycle...if anyone knows anything about untangling hormones out there. don't really know what kind of validity/implications can be transferred from the data, and how to put it together into a sort of understanding. tsh is also possibly low, depending on who does the interpretation, level's at 4, or 4.8. of course although i do have spouts of fatigue, its difficult to say, especially with the dlpa, which if it doesn't help the focus, keeps me somewhat alert, alert enough not to sleep.

so here i am. quite sunken, depressed. pushing myself to drink gallons of water and go running every day with hopes that i can overcome what i haven't been able to overcome for so many years--focus problems and ensuing depression--but now i have the intensifying awareness.

any suggestions for how to understand and then address these symptoms? i think i've been fine with targeting isolated symptoms and finding supplements in their own element, but as a whole, its quite difficult for me to put together into combo's. i'm not against keeping what i'm on, but would like to maybe tweak add additions that could address other parts of the focus problem. unfortunately, i wish i could break the problem into smaller parts--i.e. be able to attribute the many and various biochemical factors, mechanisms contributing to focus problems. i'm not sure if its all capable of being addressed with amino acids? what other sorts of biochemical processes might not be working as efficiently and thus be aiding to this misery? i assume if i were to take SAM-e it would only help me if i had a methylation problem. are there other options, or have i exhausted the most obvious and promising possibilties?

[orangish]

and in terms of diet, Shepard I have a question for you:
How do you manage to eat? What do you eat? Asides from those scant options you've laid out. I've tried a wheat/dairy elimination diet and went turkey, because it got quite difficult and expensive, especially with my student lifestyle of fiscal conservation and intellectualizing time binges.

I can think of other nuts and meat and fish and beans as other possible protein sources...but what else?

[Shepard]

I still manage to eat somehow. I'll be the first to reject any notion of completely cutting certain foods out of your diet. I eat everything, just moderate myself (may be more intense than the normal definition). I eat rather well, but I'm not vegetarian/vegan. My daily protein intake typically comes from eggs, hemp/egg powder, nuts, and usually a piece of meat or some type of bean. However, I think diet is sort of individual, so you have to find what works for you.

[guyledouche]

I agree with Kenj. Your 5-htp dosage is way too large. perhaps you meant 50mg, not 500mg. 100mg of that stuff makes me feel like Ive been given a freakin morphine shot......super tired and groggy. Maybe you have lost your lust for life because your seratonin and or dopamine levels are low.

Wheat and complex carbs make up most of my diet. Is that a bad thing? I get great energy boosts from complex carbs.

[orangish]

You know thats quite odd. Because the 5-htp really doesn't make me tired...
Any explanations?

[scud]

orangish- my condensed story of depression starts with divorce, temporary job layoff, lots of junk food, coffee in the AM whiskey in the PM, all taking place in AK in the wintertime(not enough sunshine) and lack of exercise. I'm guessing none of my story applies to you. I really do think that your symptoms sound like vegetarian "failure to thrive." I read Neanderthin and went on a diet of mostly meat,salmon and halibut. I avoided almost all carbohydrates for almost a month and my energy and concentration improved dramatically. You cannot do that kind of diet low fat. You need to eat sufficient fat. The minimum carbohydrate required to sustain life is exactly zero. But without enough protein and fat you will surely wither and die. I suppose this is all wasted typing if you are committed to a vegetarian diet. If not, I will make this challenge to you. If you will read "Neanderthin" and follow it exactly for one month...With NO cheating...I will bet 100to your 1 dollar that you will see a marked improvement.

[orangish]

Thanks Scud for sharing your experience--although I don't share many of the same difficult life circumstances, I can definitely understand and sympathize with your past difficulties, especially in light of my mental state and other murky circumstances. I'm so glad that you've made it through those tough times, and though I certainly don't want to render your experience hope-inspiring, and negate its personal meaning, certainly am instilled with faith that getting through this bad moment is possible, and that it is quite possibly not all situationally induced. Also, thank you for your advice. Although, I don't necessarily agree with all the points of Neanderthin, and since I can't read through the whole bit, have difficulty assessing where I stand on the points they bring up, think that their information is interesting, and certainly worth a try. I'm going to see what happens if I give up soy, and may possibly add meat back in (which is now complicated with the potential avian flu). Thus far I have been soy-free for an entire day...and do feel clearer, though still depressed, the clarity negates the hopeless throes of the darkest/deepest depression.

So asides from diet, I guess I'm still resolved to try other options and keep exploring this cryptic focus problem which for some reason is recurrent and resistant to alterations in diet or supplements.


Problem is the sifting the research to get to the most effective options. I become quite taken by all the supplements out there, because I can't make the distinctions between their usages and effects, and they all seem to have a possibly curing cognitive effect. Anyhow, I've narrowed it down to considering for further research:

idebenone--as a more potent antioxidant than COQ10--possibly has restorative effects in addition to protective effects
r-ala--potent antioxdiant
nadh--cofactor in production of catecholomines? enhances production of serotonin/dopamine/noradrenaline, could have positive effect on focus
piracetam--?? can find the external effects, but can't find anything on its biochemical function...
vinpocetine--as a vasolidator could improve poor, constricted blood flow to brain and thus enhance aerobic metabolism

Regarding these supplements, I specifically have some questions regarding their interactions with low dopamine. Part of my focus problem is due to low levels of dopamine. So thus I'm keeping with the blend of DLPA etc. But, what else could be contributing (in attempts to modify my previous vague/broad question)? How do/would they indirectly/directly interact with/complement dopamine enhancers?

I drank caffeine for many years and was under extensive stress and perhaps had some depressive traits. I'm wondering if this could have created blood flow problems which would remedy fixing in order to reach better focus? I am keeping with 5-htp, and the dlpa, may adjust doses, but am wondering how to complement and enhance effects. I guess to re-sum up, I'm interested in optimization, restoring and protecting my cognitive capacities--specifically related to focus difficulty (which entails lack of clarity, poor decision making ability, and a general, undesired driftiness)...wish I could make finer distinctions...but alas, this inability is my reason for research in the first place.

[scud]

orangish- I'm sure those supps can help. It seems that many here have had good results with some of them. I was going to add that maybe whey protein would be a good alternative to soy if you are reluctant about meat. I may be alone in my praise for saturated fats, but my body thrives on them. One more thing to consider is thyroid function. medium chain saturated fatty acids found in virgin coconut oil and butter give me a lot of sustained energy and a sense of well being. I believe that you should think about everything you eat as a drug( ie how is this going to make me feel)