Ray On Anxiety / Neurosteroids

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I recently asked Ray about non-psychiatric treatments for anxiety, and his answer was helpful, but not surprising: "I’ve seen increased sugar, and/or calcium, and/or magnesium, and/or vitamin D, and/or vitamin B6, and/or other B vitamins, and/or pregnenolone, thyroid, progesterone, testosterone, relieve it. Sometimes a beta-blocker like propranolol gives immediate relief."

Has anyone ever used pregnenolone and/or progesterone in a direct attempt to combat severe anxiety?

Some have suggested that SSRIs work* by temporarily redressing neurosteroid deficiencies (please forgive me if this makes no technical sense). Would a supplement of pregenolone or progestorone achieve the same end?

*to the extent that they can be considered to work at all.
 

LUH 3417

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I recently asked Ray about non-psychiatric treatments for anxiety, and his answer was helpful, but not surprising: "I’ve seen increased sugar, and/or calcium, and/or magnesium, and/or vitamin D, and/or vitamin B6, and/or other B vitamins, and/or pregnenolone, thyroid, progesterone, testosterone, relieve it. Sometimes a beta-blocker like propranolol gives immediate relief."

Has anyone ever used pregnenolone and/or progesterone in a direct attempt to combat severe anxiety?

Some have suggested that SSRIs work* by temporarily redressing neurosteroid deficiencies (please forgive me if this makes no technical sense). Would a supplement of pregenolone or progestorone achieve the same end?

*to the extent that they can be considered to work at all.
I use progesterone and cyproheptadine for social anxiety and it’s pretty effective at inducing blissful I don’t give a duck ness
 

InChristAlone

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Need to be careful with pregnenolone, it has a U shaped curve. Meaning a small dose might be less effective than a larger one, and a large one can cause the very thing you want to treat. Progesterone can help with anxiety, but it depends on where the anxiety is coming from, if it's just imbalanced blood sugar rollercoaster then progesterone might not do anything for that and you need to start eating better meals. If it's stress and fear causing it, then any supplement might be just be a bandaid until you deal with the stress.
 

Makrosky

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OF COURSE pregnenolone works. In my personal experience, the more, the better. No U shaped issues when dosed topically. Problem is too much pregnenolone affects androgenicity bigtime for some males.

Progesterone should work even better although I've never tried. But its got the feminizing efect also.

SSRIs work indeed. And work quite well. Problem is long term use and quiting them. Stay away from them. It's a russian roulette.
 

Makrosky

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Btw minocycline works for anxiety too. Skullcap (scutellaria laterliflora) works too. L theanine. Lithium orotate. Vitamin K2.

Sodium acetate works too.
 

InChristAlone

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I say U shaped because as someone who went through panic disorder I did a load of research on remedies. I came across a few people who said they developed panic disorder from higher dosages.
 

lampofred

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OF COURSE pregnenolone works. In my personal experience, the more, the better. No U shaped issues when dosed topically. Problem is too much pregnenolone affects androgenicity bigtime for some males.

Progesterone should work even better although I've never tried. But its got the feminizing efect also.

SSRIs work indeed. And work quite well. Problem is long term use and quiting them. Stay away from them. It's a russian roulette.

How can you tell the difference between serotonin induced calmness and GABA induced calmness?
 

bromuda

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I think the reason SSRI:s work is because of its allopregnanolone-raising effects. Progesterone should do the same thing but I haven't tried it personally. I fight a similar issue myself but haven't found a long term solution.

I think anxiety is interesting because you see "unhealthy" people (not trying to be judgemental) with basically zero anxiety. So it might be something more chronic not related to diet/supplements but I hope I'm wrong.

Times of low anxiety for myself was actually when I was the least metabolically healthy i.e drinking, fasting and consuming fast food.
 

Nokoni

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I think the reason SSRI:s work is because of its allopregnanolone-raising effects. Progesterone should do the same thing but I haven't tried it personally. I fight a similar issue myself but haven't found a long term solution.

I think anxiety is interesting because you see "unhealthy" people (not trying to be judgemental) with basically zero anxiety. So it might be something more chronic not related to diet/supplements but I hope I'm wrong.

Times of low anxiety for myself was actually when I was the least metabolically healthy i.e drinking, fasting and consuming fast food.
If you want to raise allo, 5α-DHP does so very effectively.
The majority of 5a-DHP quickly metabolizes into allopregnanolone. It has nowhere to go but to metabolize into allopregnanolone.
 

shine

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I recently asked Ray about non-psychiatric treatments for anxiety, and his answer was helpful, but not surprising: "I’ve seen increased sugar, and/or calcium, and/or magnesium, and/or vitamin D, and/or vitamin B6, and/or other B vitamins, and/or pregnenolone, thyroid, progesterone, testosterone, relieve it. Sometimes a beta-blocker like propranolol gives immediate relief."

Has anyone ever used pregnenolone and/or progesterone in a direct attempt to combat severe anxiety?

Some have suggested that SSRIs work* by temporarily redressing neurosteroid deficiencies (please forgive me if this makes no technical sense). Would a supplement of pregenolone or progestorone achieve the same end?

*to the extent that they can be considered to work at all.

I did not realize how anxious I was until I took 50mg pregnenolone.
I haven't been anxious since then.
I am still taking 50mg daily.

I also really like to eat sorghum (I make my own sorghum bread) shortly after it. It contains 5alpha-reductase and I can actually feel the enhanced conversion to allopregnanolone, or a more pronounced anti-anxiety/anti-depressive effect.

What also works really well is StressNon topically, 2 drops is enough to relieve any anxiety.
 

CLASH

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@waldenpond
I had pretty severe hyperhidrosis, especially in social situations. My mind would function fine but my body would tense up ridiculously and I would sweat profusely. It was as if my body was directing all its energy substrate to my brain as opposed to my body.

Orange juice and a low fat diet made these symptoms multiple times worse.

Getting my fat up to around 40-50% of my calories almost completely eliminated these symptoms. Eating adequate fiber from specific fruits and veg pretty much eliminated the rest.

The main situation that triggers sweating and tension now is if I havent eaten in around 5 hours and I was under significant stress (I work as a nurse so this situation happens in the hospital). The sweating occurs for around 20 minutes or so as my body switches over into the adaptive hormones and then once the adaptive hormones fully switch over I stabilize. Once stabilizing I can last for around another 12 hours or so and then I start to get cold hands and feet and become a bit irritable.

I think with low fat, your body utilizes adrenaline to pull fat from body stores because fat isnt being ingested. As cortisol liberates sugars for its general adaptive function I think adrenaline liberates fats. I also think for many people the process of converting ingested sugar to fat and then liberating that fat from stores is a bit inefficient for the body and stressful as it upregulates the adrenergic system to liberate said fats. I think that perhaps the northern “species” of human require more fats based on thier ancestral environments than the equatorial species.
 

A.R

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I did not realize how anxious I was until I took 50mg pregnenolone.
I haven't been anxious since then.
I am still taking 50mg daily.

I also really like to eat sorghum (I make my own sorghum bread) shortly after it. It contains 5alpha-reductase and I can actually feel the enhanced conversion to allopregnanolone, or a more pronounced anti-anxiety/anti-depressive effect.

What also works really well is StressNon topically, 2 drops is enough to relieve any anxiety.
Could you share your recipe for the sorghum bread please
 

brix

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@waldenpond
I had pretty severe hyperhidrosis, especially in social situations. My mind would function fine but my body would tense up ridiculously and I would sweat profusely. It was as if my body was directing all its energy substrate to my brain as opposed to my body.

Orange juice and a low fat diet made these symptoms multiple times worse.

Getting my fat up to around 40-50% of my calories almost completely eliminated these symptoms. Eating adequate fiber from specific fruits and veg pretty much eliminated the rest.

The main situation that triggers sweating and tension now is if I havent eaten in around 5 hours and I was under significant stress (I work as a nurse so this situation happens in the hospital). The sweating occurs for around 20 minutes or so as my body switches over into the adaptive hormones and then once the adaptive hormones fully switch over I stabilize. Once stabilizing I can last for around another 12 hours or so and then I start to get cold hands and feet and become a bit irritable.

I think with low fat, your body utilizes adrenaline to pull fat from body stores because fat isnt being ingested. As cortisol liberates sugars for its general adaptive function I think adrenaline liberates fats. I also think for many people the process of converting ingested sugar to fat and then liberating that fat from stores is a bit inefficient for the body and stressful as it upregulates the adrenergic system to liberate said fats. I think that perhaps the northern “species” of human require more fats based on thier ancestral environments than the equatorial species.

Interesting. I have bouts of hyperhydrosis but can’t figure out what causes it. Very sensitive to heat but not sure. I heard salt helps a lot.

I’ve been contemplating on going low fat to shed some body fat but don’t want to make the sweating worse in the coming summer months. Did eating high fat cause you to gain more body fat vs lower fat?
 

inthedark

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I've found Metergoline to be very helpful for anxiety. It took me quite a bit of experimenting to find a good dose but lately 1 drop a day of the Idealabs product has been doing the job.
 

CLASH

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@brix
Increasing my fat made me lose weight, specifically around the abdomen. It also made my muscles harder and my sex drive much stronger. I think it increased my androgens.

Salt didnt really help me. I only salt to taste.

My sweating is always accompanied by flashes of heat throughout my body, which I have always thought was adrenaline.

For context:
I curently eat around 160-200g of fat a day from beef tallow mostly and coconut oil (40g). For anyone worried about issues with saturated fat causing supposed bacterial translocation and endotoxemia, as a case study n=1, I eat around 100g of saturated fat a day according to cronometer and have done so for about a year, every single day. My PUFA averages around 8-9g per day. I still eat between 300-400g of carbs as well, all from fruit sugars and honey so its not low carb (i drink 1/2 gallon of juice, eat a couple tablespoons of honey and cook between 2-4 ripe bananas to eat everyday). My protein is 120-150g (i dont do any dairy tho). I’m 6’2” 190lbs about 10% body fat. I work out around 3x per week although sometimes only twice. I dont do any cardio besides sex. I work and live on a night shift schedule 24/7 for 12 months straight now without ever switching back to days. I havent spent more than 10 minutes in the sun in over a year. I average probably 5-6 hours of sleep a day (i sleep in the day), some days I cant sleep so I’ll sleep for maybe 1-2 hours. These days are often the days before work. So i wind up sleeping 2 hours and then working a 13-14 hour shift in a hospital. I say all this because in the past this lifestyle would have utterly crushed me. Yesterday I watched a person pretty much get to the verge of death in my hands while we tried to resucitate them, after having worked 14 hours (happened at shift change), i went home ate and slept fine for around 7 hours, my waking temp was 97.4, my temp. after eating was 98.8. The foundational thing that allowed me to function through this year was increasing my fat based on how I felt. Once I did that all the other things I implemented starting working better (I do supplement quite a few things to be fair). Also to be fair, for a full context, i do have some lingering health issues, the only two are thinning hair and thinning eyebrows (not just the outer third but the diffusely across the eyebrow).
 

brix

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Dang @CLASH we are very similar. Same height/weight, work nights, thinning hair...

I have been eating higher fats, PUFA under 10g, high sat fat, but can’t seem to shake the extra fat. Also still sweat a lot with minimal physical exertion. Hmm.
 

Constatine

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@brix
Increasing my fat made me lose weight, specifically around the abdomen. It also made my muscles harder and my sex drive much stronger. I think it increased my androgens.

Salt didnt really help me. I only salt to taste.

My sweating is always accompanied by flashes of heat throughout my body, which I have always thought was adrenaline.

For context:
I curently eat around 160-200g of fat a day from beef tallow mostly and coconut oil (40g). For anyone worried about issues with saturated fat causing supposed bacterial translocation and endotoxemia, as a case study n=1, I eat around 100g of saturated fat a day according to cronometer and have done so for about a year, every single day. My PUFA averages around 8-9g per day. I still eat between 300-400g of carbs as well, all from fruit sugars and honey so its not low carb (i drink 1/2 gallon of juice, eat a couple tablespoons of honey and cook between 2-4 ripe bananas to eat everyday). My protein is 120-150g (i dont do any dairy tho). I’m 6’2” 190lbs about 10% body fat. I work out around 3x per week although sometimes only twice. I dont do any cardio besides sex. I work and live on a night shift schedule 24/7 for 12 months straight now without ever switching back to days. I havent spent more than 10 minutes in the sun in over a year. I average probably 5-6 hours of sleep a day (i sleep in the day), some days I cant sleep so I’ll sleep for maybe 1-2 hours. These days are often the days before work. So i wind up sleeping 2 hours and then working a 13-14 hour shift in a hospital. I say all this because in the past this lifestyle would have utterly crushed me. Yesterday I watched a person pretty much get to the verge of death in my hands while we tried to resucitate them, after having worked 14 hours (happened at shift change), i went home ate and slept fine for around 7 hours, my waking temp was 97.4, my temp. after eating was 98.8. The foundational thing that allowed me to function through this year was increasing my fat based on how I felt. Once I did that all the other things I implemented starting working better (I do supplement quite a few things to be fair). Also to be fair, for a full context, i do have some lingering health issues, the only two are thinning hair and thinning eyebrows (not just the outer third but the diffusely across the eyebrow).
The bacteria translocation thing has been overblown a bit. High protein increases bacteria translocation, exercise increases bacteria translocation, etc, its generally not a good thing but its not a big deal under most contexts. It mostly concerns those with damaged and thus more permeable intestines or those with SIBO or what colitis or what not. Bacteria translocation happens in everybody and while high bacteria translocation is certainly bad it is not as simple as that.
 

Wilfrid

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Have you ever tried True Calm from Now brand? The whole ingredients as well as their dosage are pretty safe.
Maybe combining the product with a little D and a little pregnenolone could help for a certain period of time, while trying to figure out a more profound solution through your diet like @CLASH suggests.
 

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