Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitors? Safer Than SSRIs?

[Astolfo]

I bought a box of donepezil, and currently planning to take 1.25 mg per day. My all cognitive problems (pssd) made my life unbearable and they are still progressively worsening as well day by day. I just wanted to get a temporary relief, and a temporary cognitive boost for my exams which will be this month. I read that Peat is against to cholinergic meds but I don't know if they have such dangerous effects as similar as to SSRIs.

Is there anything I should do before or while using them?

Also, one more question, Can I take the aricept pills as dust?? The minimum dosage is 5 mg, so I have to take the exact 1/4, and there is no way I can correctly split the pills to the 4. This med isn't enteric coated, so my guess is I can crush the pills and drink the 1/4 with some water.

 

[ecstatichamster]

There are plenty of supplements that do this. Uridine Monophosphate, Galantamine, and Huperizine are in this family and they make fantastic nootropics. Probably good for depression as well.

I would imagine these supplements may be better than the drug. Galantamine is a rare bird that the FDA didn’t ban as a supplement, even though it is marketed as a high priced Alzheimer’s drug.

I take all three often and find them wonderful.

 

[Astolfo]

There are plenty of supplements that do this. Uridine Monophosphate, Galantamine, and Huperizine are in this family and they make fantastic nootropics. Probably good for depression as well.

I would imagine these supplements may be better than the drug. Galantamine is a rare bird that the FDA didn’t ban as a supplement, even though it is marketed as a high priced Alzheimer’s drug.

I take all three often and find them wonderful.

Finding supplements are pain in the **** for me here, but wow, thank you for mentioning the galantamine.
Oddly, galantamine is very cheap here. 4 mg 14 tablet, 11 TL. Do you think it's safer than donepezil? How many mg should I take? 1 mg?

 

[ecstatichamster]

4mg minimum. 16 is okay. It has a very very long history of safe use.

 

[ilikecats]

@Astolfo inhibiting actetylcholinesterase (aka cholinesterase) is not something you want to do, you want to increase it...

"A series of experiments that started at the University of California in 1960 found that rats that lived in larger spaces with various things to explore were better at learning and solving problems than rats that were raised in the standard little laboratory cages (Krech, et al., 1960). Studying their brains, they found that the enzyme cholinesterase, which destroys the neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, was increased. They later found that the offspring of these rats were better learners than their parents, and their brains contained more cholinesterase. Their brains were also larger, with a considerable thickening of the cortex, which is considered to be the part mainly responsible for complex behavior, learning and intelligence."

"The increase of cholinesterase, the enzyme that destroys acetylcholine, during enrichment, serves to inactivate cholinergic processes. If deprivation does its harm by increasing the activity of the cholinergic system, we should expect that a cholinergic drug might substitute for inescapable stress, as a cause of learned helplessness, and that an anticholinergic drug could cure learned helplessness. Those tests have been done: "Treatment with the anticholinesterase, physostigmine, successfully mimicked the effects of inescapable shock." "The centrally acting anticholinergic scopolamine hydrobromide antagonized the effects of physostigmine, and when administered prior to escape testing antagonized the disruptive effects of previously administered inescapable shock." (Anisman, et al., 1981.)"

"Estrogen, with similar generality, decreases the activity of cholinesterase. DHEA, like progesterone, increases the activity of cholinesterase, and is brain protective (Aly, et al., 2011).

Brain trauma consistently leads to decreased activity of this enzyme (Östberg, et al., 2011; Donat, et al., 2007), causing the acetylcholine produced in the brain to accumulate, with many interesting consequences. In 1997, a group (Pike, et al.) created brain injuries in rats to test the idea that a cholinesterase inhibitor would improve their recovery and ability to move through a maze. They found instead that it reduced the cognitive ability of both the injured and normal rats. An anticholinergic drug, selegeline (deprenyl) that is used to treat Parkinson's disease and, informally, as a mood altering antiaging drug, was found by a different group (Zhu, et al., 2000) to improve cognitive recovery from brain injuries."

Cholinergic activity plays an important role in the development of learned helplessness so I don't know why you want to inhibit acetylcholinesterase... There are probably over 100 different safe methods for addressing learned helplessness. One being T3:
"During the development of learned helplessness, the T3 level in the blood decreases (Helmreich, et al., 2006), and removal of the thyroid gland creates the "escape deficit," while supplementing with thyroid hormone before exposing the animal to inescapable shock prevents its development (Levine, et al., 1990). After learned helplessness has been created in rats, supplementing with T3 reverses it (Massol, et al., 1987, 1988)."

another being bright light (ideally from a light source that contains a lot of red light and not a lot of blue light such as sun light (red:blue ratio depends on time a day but anytime of day is still good) or high wattage incandescents:

"Bright light can reverse the cholinergic effects of inescapable stress (Flemmer, et al., 1990)."

All quotes by ray peat.

edit: for some reason I thought you were asking about depression/learned helplessness as well but in your post you only mention cognitive dysfunction but as you can see with my first quote cholinesterase inhibitors won't help you in that department either. And clearly you've dealt with depression since you were on SSRIs. But the methods for PROPERLY and COMPLETELY resolving cognitive dysfunction, sexual dysfunction, and depression all work in the same direction. And the inverse is true as well. Cholinesterase inhibitors/cholinergic substances work in the same direction as SSRIs inhibiting oxidative metabolism and increasing damaging inflammatory and excitatory factors. Depending on your physiology you might get a temporary minor SEEMINGLY positive feeling adaptive/stress response (or just placebo effect).