Freedom from diet-related plagues
of the 21st century
Reports From The Front: Nutritional First Aid In Action at The Virtual Clinic
This second edition poses an important question that is seldom asked:
“How long should we stay on what doses of nutrient supplements?”
This question blazed out at us in response to someone who came to us for help last month:He was a 26-year-old man who had been taking 200 milligrams of 5 HTP at bedtime for two years.
It had immediately helped him get to and stay asleep and he was still sleeping well. But otherwise, starting two months prior to his call to us, he had been experiencing 13 symptoms of brand-new discomfort! He had a supportive female MD who told him “Well, it can’t be the 5 HTP that’s causing it because it’s natural. It can’t be serotonin syndrome.” (Even though all 13 symptoms were specifically characteristic of serotonin syndrome.) Fortunately, he had a friend who had greatly benefited from reading TheMood Cure. She told him to call our virtual clinic immediately and she got the book out and read him the symptoms of serotonin syndrome from the chapter Alternatives to Antidepressants.
He called and we set up an appointment for two days later, after we received his email with the four forms that we always ask potential clients to fill out. We also sent our own Serotonin Syndrome checkoff list for him to fill out. When we heard that his temperature was 101°, not 106°,and that he was continuing to function at work, we did not send him to the emergency room. (There he would probably have had a knowledgeable work-up and possibly been prescribed two medications that have been found helpful in more extreme SS cases.) Four days later, on a simple protocol of GABA, for agitation at night, and vitamin C, three times a day, he had continued to sleep well, without the 5HTP, but woke up feeling rested and considerably more energetic, almost immediately. He sent in a daily journal, and we met with him again on the phone four days later, after he had filled out The Serotonin Syndrome symptom list again. He had almost no symptoms left, and those that he had were extremely mild. He was not yet playing rugby almost daily again, but he had actually played one game!
Learning points: The person that had recommended 5 HTP to him had neglected to tell him that 5 HTP, like tryptophan, could reinstate a normal conversion to melatonin immediately and that that conversion could become a permanent pattern that no longer required 5 HTP to sustain. How would he have decided when he no longer needed the
5 HTP? He would have stopped taking it on his own a month or so after it had cured his insomnia. If his insomnia had resumed, he would have taken the 5 HTP for another month and stopped again until he found that he no longer needed it at all. This is what we recommend to all our clients. One of the miracles of amino acid therapy is that these potent nutrient concentrates actually permanently correct neurotransmitter deficits. So they are not needed long term, and if they are taken long term, they can cause health problems. (This is something that the nutrient supplement industry may not be keen on making widely known!)
The case of an 84-year-old nutrition researcher looks at the same problem from a slightly different vantage point.
She came to us after having a TIA while walking with friends on a level trail, which she had been doing for several years, twice a week. She had immediately gone to the ER and had been worked- up. She had no further incidents, but she began to have fairly frequent daily experiences of what she called “irregular heartbeats. ”She agreed to do an elimination and challenge of each of the many supplements that she had been taking long term. We also recommended that she stop drinking decaffeinated green tea, which she was drinking on her holistic doctor’s recommendation, even though she had a history of violent reactions to fully caffeinated coffee and tea. She had a habit of experimenting with supplements for specific purposes quite successfully, but she was currently taking two supplements for the same problem. The problem had improved, but she didn’t know which supplement was providing the help, so she’d just stayed on both for over a year. When she eliminated the first one, there was no change. When she eliminated the second, which was NAD, most of her frightening heartbeat irregularities stopped. When she eliminated the green tea, the incidences became even fewer. Then we suggested, and she began to take, a form of taurine, which, like all supplements that support GABA function, neutralizes adrenalin. This calmed her entire system nicely, and made her realize that her system, generally, tended to be over- stimulated and that there were supplements she could take, short term, to counterbalance this tendency. She promised to stop these new supplements, one at a time, on a monthly basis to see which ones she still needed, if any!
And finally, since she continued to have some, though much less, chest heaviness and irregular heart beat, I asked her to consider reinstating animal protein, which she had eliminated 18months earlier, after a lifetime of frequent animal product consumption.
