Afternoon Exhaustion

[haidut]

One possible reason is that allithiamine is fat soluble and crosses the blood brain barrier much more easily AND also accumulates in tissues including the brain. I am not sure to what degree regular thiamine Hcl accumulates in tissues. So, in theory even if you stop taking it you should be able to function normally for longer until the stores get depleted down to the level that gives you deficiency symptoms.

Thanks, Haidut.

Yes, it does build up. I know because in the beginning I needed two 50mg capsules of allithiamine several times a day to control my symptoms (about 300-600mg daily). After a month or two, I tapered off so that I was only taking it on about half of the mornings, and also before exercise, and if my fatigue appeared. I cut back because a blood test showed very high thiamine levels, and Ii became concerned that a buildup might affect my other Bs (don't biotin and thiamine share a transporter?) and create a new problem that I couldn't easily fix. Over the past week, I've had to start taking allithiamine at high doses again since my fatigue came back.

I would like to know if my symptoms are due to thiamine deficiency or something else. A thiamine deficiency doesn't really make sense to me. I eat well, I don't drink at all, I have taken a B-complex for decades. Before I tried allithiamine, I had a Spectracell test that showed good WBC levels of thiamine, so that would indicate I don't have a transporter problem. I just don't see how I could be low in thiamine!

And yet the allithiamine works.

Yesterday on the forums here I read about thiamine neutralizing ammonia (viewtopic.php?t=5749) .

Could I have an ammonia problem rather than a thiamine problem? What would that look like?

Ammonia symptoms are very much like low thiamine - fatigue, inability to sleep well or concentrate on tasks for too long, trouble with short-term memory, etc. Based on the studies I have seen pretty much anybody over the age of 30 has some ammonia problems due to sluggish liver and/or kidneys. You can check by taking some ceylon cinnamon (1g-2g) before going to bed. If you state improves then it's likely ammonia and not low thiamine that is the problem.

 

[calliandra]

I will see if I can find Ceylon cinnamon at the store, and try a teaspoon in applesauce. The cinnamon in my spice drawer doesn't list its type.

I've been reading more this afternoon, and arginine or ornithine might work to reduce ammonia, too. My blood amino acid panel says my arginine is at the lower end of the normal range, so I'll try taking a capsule and see if I notice anything.

Thanks for the help! I appreciate it.

 

[haidut]

I will see if I can find Ceylon cinnamon at the store, and try a teaspoon in applesauce. The cinnamon in my spice drawer doesn't list its type.

I've been reading more this afternoon, and arginine or ornithine might work to reduce ammonia, too. My blood amino acid panel says my arginine is at the lower end of the normal range, so I'll try taking a capsule and see if I notice anything.

Thanks for the help! I appreciate it.

I strongly advise against arginine or citirullne - they are both precursors to NO. Peat has talked about the dangers of arginine repeatedly in interviews. Ornithine is a bit safer but ceylon cinnamon is much better and the best things for reducing ammonia are lithium, sodium, butyrate and magnesium.

 

[calliandra]

Okay, no arginine. My citrulline (and ornithine) levels are midrange; only my arginine is low, so I thought supplementing might solve that problem as well as my fatigue.

I will try the other options instead.

Thanks for the warning!

 

[narouz]

Would "Ray Peat Potato Juice Soup" be a way to reduce ammonia?
The keto acids....

 

[north]

Would "Ray Peat Potato Juice Soup" be a way to reduce ammonia?
The keto acids....

According to Peat there are carbon structures similar to amino acids in potato but they are lacking a part (don't remember which part/molecule). The ammonia binds to this, and a complete amino acid is created, so it "reuses" the ammonia to create complete amino acids, hence it might aid in lowering ammonia.

 

[calliandra]

Okay, I'm shocked. It worked.

I woke up with brain fog and major tingling in my legs, feet, and fingers from a dark chocolate bar last night (chocolate always gives me lots of tingles the next day). I took one teaspoon of Ceylon Cinnamon in applesauce about 20 minutes ago, and now my brain fog is gone, energy has returned, and my tingles all but disappeared (just a teeny bit left in my left foot).

The cinnamon worked even better than the allithiamine; allithiamine always removes my brain fog and energy, but only makes my tingles recede, but not disappear. Both worked startlingly and improbably quickly, within 15 minutes.

Only side effect is that I'm *freezing*, as I am having chills on my skin. I hope that goes away soon.

So-- I'd like to keep working the ammonia angle.

Q. What else removes ammonia? What else can I try?

Q. When I googled hyperammonemia, I only matched about half of the symptoms (fatigue and brain fog, not headaches and disorientation and weight loss and vomiting), and I have other ones that aren't shown (paresthesia and poor wound healing). Looks like hyperammonemia is a serious problem for people with liver failure... presumably not the problem I have. So is a chronic low-level ammonia problem called something else?

Q. Testing... anyone here have their ammonia tested? I can imagine that my doctor will be dubious about ordering a blood test.

 

[calliandra]

So I tried another teaspoon of cinnamon this afternoon when my late-afternoon crash hit, but this time it didn't help at all. And I think I had too much cinnamon overall because I felt weird. So... I don't know. I guess I'll just keep experimenting and reading. Definitely won't take 2 teaspoons of cinnamon in one day again, though, and would not advise anyone else to take that much.

 

[gretchen]

I've been exhausted for years and have declared most of the last few years to be "partial sick days". What has actually made the biggest difference (besides restricting PUFA)is fixing my circadian rhythms. I turn the light down on my phone before sundown and try to get to sleep before 9. In the morning when I get up, I open the blinds immediately. For at least 10 minutes before noon I try to get full spectrum light by opening a window or going outside. When I first started doing this (I avoided light for about 10 years, from late 20s to early 40s), I would feel dizzy like my blood sugar was going to crash. I had no energy and could barely get out of bed in the morning. Now I'm up at dawn and have good energy all day.

Aspirin, B vitamins, and salt are also staples.

 

[gretchen]

^^ the light/PUFA connection actually has to do with something called cytochrome oxidase. Suppressing it interferes with respiration and is a cause of fatigue. This article explains:
http://eastwesthealing.com/fatigue-exha ... -weakness/

“Mitochondrial animals which are fed a diet lacking the “essential” unsaturated fatty acids are more resistant to oxidation than the mitochondria from animals fed a standard diet containing unsaturated oils, but they also have very different in vitro swelling behavior. ” Ray Peat PhD.

Thus we can conclude a diet lacking these “essential fatty acids (EFA)” are facilitative to oxidative metabolism. EFA’s inhibit the cytochrome oxidase enzyme.

“Kunkel and Williams found that the very high respiratory rate of animals fed a diet lacking polyunsaturated fats was caused primarily by a great increase in the activity of cytochrome oxidase, and that adding an “essential fatty acid” strongly inhibited this enzymes activity” Ray Peat PhD.

Cardiolipin, a phospholipid found in the mitochondria, is another important co-factor associated with the function and availability of cytochrome oxidase. According to Ray Peat PhD, “cytochrome oxidase is often damaged by stress and blue light, and activated or restored by red light, thyroid and progesterone.”

 

[haidut]

So I tried another teaspoon of cinnamon this afternoon when my late-afternoon crash hit, but this time it didn't help at all. And I think I had too much cinnamon overall because I felt weird. So... I don't know. I guess I'll just keep experimenting and reading. Definitely won't take 2 teaspoons of cinnamon in one day again, though, and would not advise anyone else to take that much.

First, taking a teaspoon of cinnamon is way too much. That's like 5g-6g and you only need 1g-2g for maximum effect. So much cinnamon will sharply lower your blood sugar and all kinds of symptoms will pop up.
Second, you won't get benefit if you take every day. Once removed, ammonia takes several days (weeks maybe) to build back up, so you should be taking cinnamon probably once a week. The only people with daily ammonia issues are the ones having liver / kidney disease, severe hypothyroidism, exercising too much or eating 400g+ of protein daily. Hopefully, you are not one of those.

 

[calliandra]

Thanks, Haidut.

I had read that some Parkinson's patients were taking a little over a teaspoon a day ( http://forum.parkinson.org/index.php?/t ... ion-of-pd/ ). I may have overshot a little! Fortunately, no harm done. And now I have something that works against my paresthesia (tingling).

Unfortunately, cinnamon didn't work for my fatigue, so I am left with the original mystery of why allithiamine reverses my fatigue so effectively when I appear to have adequate (now very high) blood levels of thiamine. I had hoped that ammonia was the culprit, so I could stop taking so much allithiamine.

Thanks for your expertise and help.

 

[haidut]

Thanks, Haidut.

I had read that some Parkinson's patients were taking a little over a teaspoon a day ( http://forum.parkinson.org/index.php?/t ... ion-of-pd/ ). I may have overshot a little! Fortunately, no harm done. And now I have something that works against my paresthesia (tingling).

Unfortunately, cinnamon didn't work for my fatigue, so I am left with the original mystery of why allithiamine reverses my fatigue so effectively when I appear to have adequate (now very high) blood levels of thiamine. I had hoped that ammonia was the culprit, so I could stop taking so much allithiamine.

Thanks for your expertise and help.

I posted a study on IBS / Chron's disease and thiamine for fatigue. The study was in humans and they ALL had normal thiamine blood levels. The study said that in conditions of fatigue normal levels of thiamine are not enough to force it inside the cell and taking a high dose (600mg per day) raised blood levels of thiamine to the point if it starting to passively diffuse into the cell and not relying on the faulty active transport. So, your normal levels of thiamine unfortunately do not tell you what is your tissue thiamine levels, especially in the brain. If taking thiamine helps then your tissue thiamine is likely low.

 

[calliandra]

I agree, it seems that I need to stay on high thiamine indefinitely. It works!

I had wanted to reduce it so as not to induce other deficiencies in Bs (biotin especially), but oh well. Maybe someday I'll identify the bad transporter and be able to fine-tune things... in the meantime, I'll just try to cover all the bs with high doses to compensate for the high thiamine. Just take a bunch and hope enough of each gets absorbed.

Really, I'm so grateful to have found allithiamine. Just how essential it is to me became apparent last month, when I read it was discontinued on iHerb. I felt a truly visceral sense of panic for a moment. Fortunately it appears that only iHerb has dropped it, and it's still available elsewhere.

Thank you again for you help. I will look up the study you mentioned.

 

[aquaman]

Ammonia symptoms are very much like low thiamine - fatigue, inability to sleep well or concentrate on tasks for too long, trouble with short-term memory, etc. Based on the studies I have seen pretty much anybody over the age of 30 has some ammonia problems due to sluggish liver and/or kidneys. You can check by taking some ceylon cinnamon (1g-2g) before going to bed. If you state improves then it's likely ammonia and not low thiamine that is the problem.

This is interesting - in one of the Radio interviews, Peat mentions the amino acids in cooked potato juice interacting with ammonia in the body and reducing it. He talked about someone who always burped ammonia post-meals, but with potato juice this stopped.

 

[calliandra]

Is cooked potato juice similar to the potato-based "resistant starch" I keep reading about? Instead of cooking potatoes, could we just use Bob's Red Mill Unmodified Potato Starch for a similar effect?

**edit** Just looked around in the forums here, and I'd guess the answer is "no".

 

[narouz]

Yeah, calliandra.
What you're talking about is
what is strained out of Peat's Potato Juice Soup.

 

[tara]

Ammonia symptoms are very much like low thiamine - fatigue, inability to sleep well or concentrate on tasks for too long, trouble with short-term memory, etc. Based on the studies I have seen pretty much anybody over the age of 30 has some ammonia problems due to sluggish liver and/or kidneys. You can check by taking some ceylon cinnamon (1g-2g) before going to bed. If you state improves then it's likely ammonia and not low thiamine that is the problem.

This is interesting - in one of the Radio interviews, Peat mentions the amino acids in cooked potato juice interacting with ammonia in the body and reducing it. He talked about someone who always burped ammonia post-meals, but with potato juice this stopped.

My memory was of Peat talking about keto-acids in potatoes joining with nitrogen - I guess from ammonia? - to form complete amino acids.

 

[aquaman]

Is cooked potato juice similar to the potato-based "resistant starch" I keep reading about? Instead of cooking potatoes, could we just use Bob's Red Mill Unmodified Potato Starch for a similar effect?

**edit** Just looked around in the forums here, and I'd guess the answer is "no".

Yes, it/s the exact opposite - you remove the juice from the starch and you dispose of the starch :)

 

[calliandra]

Okay, I'm shocked. It worked....one teaspoon of Ceylon Cinnamon in applesauce about 20 minutes ago, and now my brain fog is gone, energy has returned, and my tingles all but disappeared (just a teeny bit left in my left foot).... The cinnamon worked even better than the allithiamine; allithiamine always removes my brain fog and energy, but only makes my tingles recede, but not disappear. Both worked startlingly and improbably quickly, within 15 minutes... So-- I'd like to keep working the ammonia angle.

So, a new theory. Ceylon Cinnamon generates sodium benzoate, yes? And sodium benzoate combines with glycine to create hippuric acid, thereby consuming ammonia in the process, yes?

Here's the new theory: I felt better not because ammonia was removed, but because glycine was.

My plasma glycine levels are normally high, over the top end of the range. My latest amino acid panel showed glycine = 423, with range 122-322.

Anyone know if high plasma glycine can cause neurological problems or fatigue?

**edit** Also wondering if allithiamine could reduce glycine, because it worked too.