Pregabalin

DaveFoster

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The winter's bringing a whole host of problems, including increased depression and anxiety, low tolerance for stress, and anti-social behaviors.

I'm still adjusting the thyroid dose, and my psychiatrist offered gabapentin (Neurontin) or pregabalin (Lyrica) as a treatment option for anxiety during the winter. Dr. Peat has spoken favorably about GABA and its positive hormonal effects.

Has anyone had any experiences with pregabalin? It's fairly well-tolerated and doesn't increase serotonin like gabapentin (Neurontin). I'm wary to increase Progest-E to 400-800 mg of vitamin E for a few months.

Gabapentin augments whole blood serotonin in healthy young men. - PubMed - NCBI

"It has been previously demonstrated that gabapentin, a gamma-amino butyric acid analogue, inhibits monoaminergic neurotransmitter release from rabbit caudate nucleus slices and from rat cortex. In humans this drug has been shown to have anti-epileptogenic activity. Serotonin may act as an inhibitory neurotransmitter and its interaction with blood platelets is thought to reflect its central actions. We investigated sleep stages, whole blood serotonin levels, and serum melatonin in healthy men after the administration of gabapentin. With increasing serum gabapentin levels six healthy subjects showed an increase in sleep stages 3 and 4 and in whole blood serotonin (P less than 0.05) Serum melatonin levels were not influenced. On account of these results we speculate that gabapentin modulates the release of serotonin from blood platelets. The increase in peripheral serotonin points paradigmatically to an increase in the bioavailability of serotonin which may account for the increase in sleep stages 3 and 4."
 

michael94

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It would be worth looking into what Lyrica experiences fibromyalgia patients have ( I was doing that a bit myself just a week or two ago). Fibro is kind of a collection of symptoms that eventually was coined as a disease, mostly because of the muscle/joint pain... but anyway. Lyrica is the only official treatment so there is a lot to read through.
 

ilikecats

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No bueno. I was on it for like a year and I started getting a lot of muscle pain and weakness. A common side effect is water retention too. It certainly gave me me a lot of water retention but I had zero interest in health at the time so I wasn't super observant. I don't know the mechanism of action with regards to the water retention but a side effect like that would tell me that it's pushing things in the wrong direction. It was hard to taper off too
 

ilikecats

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What's your light set up like? "Exposure to the direct light of ten 150 Watt incandescent
bulbs, for just a few minutes every two or three hours, might
provide more effective protection than continuous exposure to a
single 100 Watt light."- Ray Peat
 
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ilikecats

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"If artificial light is bright enough, it is as effective as
sunlight at stopping the stress reaction, but people seldom use
lights that are bright enough."- Ray Peat
 

ilikecats

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My biggest break through within regards to anxiety and stress tolerance is realizing (and excepting lol) that I need an insane amount of salt. Some times up to 4 tablespoons no less then 2 tablespoons a day. And this is with good thyroid function (If we're talking about temp and pulse... my temp fluctuates between 99.3-99.8 during the day and my pulse is usually 100 bpm of higher). I consume a lot of fluids though (up to 2 gallons from milk and oj and coke) so take that into account. I've managed to get my temps up to 100.2 degrees Fahrenheit recently without any anxiety
 
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You seem to probably be one of those people who feels better from higher GABAergic tone. May I ask, do NMDA antagonists do anything for you in the way that GABAergics do? Is it just the lessening of excitation, or is it purely GABA that you like?

I would personally try a combination of small doses of many different GABAergics and possibly NMDA antagonists.

So like, 250mg phenibut, 1/4 of whatever dose of pregablin that your doctor gives you, and like 1/2mg etizolam or some benzo, and a decent dose of picamilon. I have zero fear of benzos at such low doses btw, benzos are horrendous at high doses though.

So basically you take like 1/4 the doss you would be using for each of these, and they'd all add up somewhat as a full dose.

Or maybe you could do 1/5 doses of each combined, except each day you choose a different one of them and take it as 2/5 the dose, and cycle this 2/5 dose. Does that make sense? You basically take each med at 1/5 the normal dose, except for one which you use at 2/5 and which you change daily.

Or, you could simply take a different one each day.

Not really exactly on topic, but I think taking the same med daily like that has the possibility of leading to bad effects
 
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DaveFoster

DaveFoster

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My biggest break through within regards to anxiety and stress tolerance is realizing (and excepting lol) that I need an insane amount of salt. Some times up to 4 tablespoons no less then 2 tablespoons a day. And this is with good thyroid function (If we're talking about temp and pulse... my temp fluctuates between 99.3-99.8 during the day and my pulse is usually 100 bpm of higher). I consume a lot of fluids though (up to 2 gallons from milk and oj and coke) so take that into account. I've managed to get my temps up to 100.2 degrees Fahrenheit recently without any anxiety
Salt seems great, I agree.

You seem to probably be one of those people who feels better from higher GABAergic tone. May I ask, do NMDA antagonists do anything for you in the way that GABAergics do? Is it just the lessening of excitation, or is it purely GABA that you like?

I would personally try a combination of small doses of many different GABAergics and possibly NMDA antagonists.

So like, 250mg phenibut, 1/4 of whatever dose of pregablin that your doctor gives you, and like 1/2mg etizolam or some benzo, and a decent dose of picamilon. I have zero fear of benzos at such low doses btw, benzos are horrendous at high doses though.

So basically you take like 1/4 the doss you would be using for each of these, and they'd all add up somewhat as a full dose.

Or maybe you could do 1/5 doses of each combined, except each day you choose a different one of them and take it as 2/5 the dose, and cycle this 2/5 dose. Does that make sense? You basically take each med at 1/5 the normal dose, except for one which you use at 2/5 and which you change daily.

Or, you could simply take a different one each day.

Not really exactly on topic, but I think taking the same med daily like that has the possibility of leading to bad effects
Clonazepam (Klonopin) takes away all my problems, but I never use it. I'm not sure about combining different meds, but I agree that all those together would be undesirable.

Large amounts of pregnenolone, progesterone, and mirtazapine and cyproheptadine seem to bring everything into focus, but the dosages worry me sometimes, particularly the cypro (30 mg daily or so).

Phenibut's great, but the withdrawals make it a non-option.

@ilikecats
I have 4-5 250 watt incandescent bulbs shining on me for the entirety of the day.
 
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Salt seems great, I agree.

Clonazepam (Klonopin) takes away all my problems, but I never use it. I'm not sure about combining different meds, but I agree that all those together would be undesirable.

Large amounts of pregnenolone, progesterone, and mirtazapine and cyproheptadine seem to bring everything into focus, but the dosages worry me sometimes, particularly the cypro (30 mg daily or so).

Phenibut's great, but the withdrawals make it a non-option.

@ilikecats
I have 4-5 250 watt incandescent bulbs shining on me for the entirety of the day.

I have personally known quite a few HARDCORE benzo addicts, it can be horrible.

But even with the personal/anecdotal knowledge I have on benzo addiction, I still think benzos have huge therapeutic potential.

The key is to NEVER escalate dose, and to keep doses low.

You might want to consider the pros and cons, and decide whether a daily low dose is worth it for you. It's not always all bad. .25mg or less a day is likely to lead to mild withdrawals. The real problems start when people take multiple mgs a day or more, and/or mix it with alcohol daily (which I've personally seen... a friend who used 6mg a day of super potent RC benzos + copious amounts of alcohol).

If it fixes everything as you say, it might be worth it to go low. Or to cycle it with other drugs.

Also, you may not want to hear this, but the ketogenic diet works, simple as that. If you notice, the vast majority of people on this forum who had problems with it were going zero carb, ate tons of PUFA instead of butter, they did it wrong.

60g carbs a day, with the majority of fat coming from butter, can be a great and healthy diet.

The Ketogenic Diet in a Pill: Is this Possible?

60g of glucose a day is a sufficient amount for needs other than fueling the body. And for that, I mean 60g is enough for 1) fueling the brain 2) fueling the pentose phosphate pathway 3) other misc glucose requiring functions.

You should also be made aware that a glucose based metabolism requires that the cells using that glucose be exposed to the effects of insulin, and insulin seems to have excitatory effects on cells, namely driving calcium into cells.
 

tomisonbottom

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Apr 17, 2013
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My biggest break through within regards to anxiety and stress tolerance is realizing (and excepting lol) that I need an insane amount of salt. Some times up to 4 tablespoons no less then 2 tablespoons a day. And this is with good thyroid function (If we're talking about temp and pulse... my temp fluctuates between 99.3-99.8 during the day and my pulse is usually 100 bpm of higher). I consume a lot of fluids though (up to 2 gallons from milk and oj and coke) so take that into account. I've managed to get my temps up to 100.2 degrees Fahrenheit recently without any anxiety

Wow that's a ton of salt. I've managed to work my way up to a tablespoon but even that can be hard to manage. How do you take that much? Is everything you eat just really salty, or do you take it as a supplement?
 

bionicheart

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Mar 15, 2017
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Wow that's a ton of salt. I've managed to work my way up to a tablespoon but even that can be hard to manage. How do you take that much? Is everything you eat just really salty, or do you take it as a supplement?
I also would like to know as I struggle with getting enough salt... @ilikecats
 

ilikecats

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@bionicheart @tomisonbottom I think salt really has to be spread out throughout the day because too much at one time can irritate the stomach. Also i find there is less of a risk of irritation if its completely dissolved in something.
I find it tastes all right t if I dissolve it in milk and sugar. Salt in oj is disgusting. I'll use half a teaspoon of salt per 8 ounces of milk. Sometimes I might use 1 teaspoon of salt instead of the half teaspoon. 3 teaspoons = 1 tablespoon
 

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