I wanted to share something that is helping me sleep. For the last 2-3 years my sleep has been non-refreshing, fractured and generally not the pleasant experience I used to look forward to.

Over the years my experimentation with just about everything non Rx I have found a few things that have helped.

The latest thing is..... Selenium . But here's the catch, I have to take it [color:"red"] just before bed [/color] . I take about 70 mcg at bedtime and it has been helping wonderfully for over a week now. I've been adding other things that help and am ready to post.

[color:"red"]
70 mcg Selenium (the most important for me), 1.5 mg melatonin (helps sleep deeper, works much better with the selenium), 500 mg GABA (sometimes helps sometimes doesn't), 250-750mg L-Glutamate (this is a big one for me but too much reduces cortisol so if I thing my adrenals are tapped I leave it off), 100 mg Magnesium Glycinate (good for sleep and NMDA blocking). [/color]


Last night I added 100 mg of Acetyl-L-Carnitine in hopes of blocking NO and Lactic Acid production which I think it helped.

I did take 1 Jarrow Tox-Guard (Pectasol) in the morning and that has helped somewhat also.

My sleep last night was about as normal as I've had in a long time.

I did find another combination about a year ago that had me pretty excited.[color:"red"] It was about 500 mg Lysine, 1 regular aspirin, 1g Methyl-B12 and L-Glutamine. The B12 and Aspirin were to reduce NO and L-Glutamine to increase GAGA and the Lysine which is an inverse agonist at the NMDA receptor if the Glutamine increases Glutamate. This helped quite a bit but lowered cortisol quite a and I could only take for a few days in a row.[/color]

Other things: Flexeril helped a ton when taken every 4 days, more often I reached a tolerance. Klonopin helped also but wasn't worth the side effects. I would only recommend in times of severe stress.

I would be interested to hear what has helped mercury poisoned folks.

Sleep improvement since starting Molybdenum. Remembering dreams too.

Yes, molybdenum is good because it is important in acetaldehyde detox. It helped me too a lot.

That's great Sregan. You sound like you've done a bit of research here and it's paid off.

Well for me, selenium is something you can unfotunately take too much of and sometimes not enough of. I have found this for myself and know my limit. I try not to take anymore than 150 mcg in supplement form. I maybe getting a bit from foods, so I have to be careful. However, here in NZ our soils are depleted in selenium, so it's wise to supplement.

Taking anymore than 150 mcg starts to cause some weird symptoms. More anxiety, hyper, and more insomnia and a weird feeling of unreality/numbness and sometimes a funny taste in the mouth. So it definitely is about dosage.

I started sleeping better when completely removed sugar, yeast and wheat out of my diet and substituted for healthier lower carb meals. Lowering yeast must have improved a few functions.

I cannot say that any supplement made any great deal of difference. Though I think that too can be caused by candida. Unable to absorb nutrients properly. So often it was like tipping them down the toilet.

Anyway, you're regime is pretty extensive and it's good that all these things are working together to help you.

Some important things for helping sleep is getting enough sunlight and enough exercise. St. John's Wort taken at night has helped me become drowsy. I get very sleepy if I eat turkey.

the reason for me not sleeping at night is high cortisol, i have recently taken phosphatidyl serine and works very well. i have tried not to take it but i have to if i want a good 7 or 8 hrs sleep.

has anyone here ever tried calcium just before bed , in the past my wife had trouble staying asleep and would wake up half way through the night and not be able to go back to sleep , we looked up in the nutritional healing guide the a calcium deficiency can cause sleep related problems , so she tried calcium before bed and found that it worked wonders for her ,

Dawn,

In my experience there are a number of supplements that can lower cortisol. L-Glutamine will lower cortisol and can greatly inhance GABA and aid sleep. One of the things that lowered cortisol the most for me was Saw Palmetto. Wiped me out the next day. The beta-Sitosterols are supposed to be cortisol lowering.

Another good night, wow what a difference it makes during the day. I'll be sticking to this regime for a while.

I added a little ALA to the mix because I read in the "Guide"


It has helped my sleep even more and stopped me from having to get up during the night. Yesterday I got very lightheaded and flush (almost lost consciousness) and that scared me. I'm sure it was due to the ALA. I don't think I took more than 10 mg the previous day. I did better on 5mg.

I know Andy mentions 30mg+ for chelation. Is there a safe limit? Is there something I can take with ALA to keep it out of my brain?

IMHO Only way to take ALA is Cutler style, which is frequent dosing every 3 hours, 3 days on 4 days off. Anything else............anything else and you are on a chelation protocol that MANY people have been seriously screwed up with. Long term screwed up too. I believe its called an "inappropriate protocol" but the choice is yours if you wish to take the risk of hurting yourself.

It amazes me that people continue to take unnecessary risks when trying to get the mercury out. I have never inappropriately dosed chelating agents because :
I don’t want to risk hurting myself anymore that I already am,
Appropriate dosing every 3 hours is simple and easy, is tried and tested and has significantly less problems than random dosing(even at low dosages.)

I don’t need to read a report on pubmed or anywhere because I can read about real peoples successes and failures everyday on Yahoo Frequent dose chelation.

ALA is specifically used because it crosses the blood brain barrier.
If you don’t wish to get at the mercury in yr brain, then dmsa or dmps will do the trick. Again frequent dosing seems to be the method with least problems.

The reason you are getting nasty symptoms is because ALA only has a half life of 3 hours in the blood. So after 3 hours the ALA is used up and guess what……yup you have the mobilised mercury bouncing around inside you with nothing to escort it out. The symptoms you are having is the mercury redistributing somewhere inside you.
Doesn’t matter you are only taking what you consider small doses of ALA, it still only has a half life of 3 hours and you will still get redistribution when the ALA runs out after 3 hours.

Take care

I'm not taking the ALA for chelation but for other reasons. Our bodies need ALA much like Selenium for chemical processes. Like Selenium, and even more so ALA, bonds with Mercury making it unavailable for it's indended purpose. And Like Selenium those with Mercury toxicity end up deficient in ALA also and certain reactions are hindered or stopped.

So SOME ALA is needed. I was hoping to find a safe minimal dose that wouldn't chelate but still give me the lipoic acid by body wants and needs.

I hope this might be of some help:

Alpha-lipoic acid dosage, intake, recommended daily allowance (RDA)

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Currently there are no established recommended doses for supplementation. For use as a general antioxidant, a lower dosage of 20 to 50 mg daily is commonly recommended. Recommendations for the use of racemic alpha-lipoic acid as an antioxidant range from 50 mg/day to 400 mg/day. The typical dosage of oral lipoic acid for treating complications of diabetes is 300 to 600 mg daily. Alpha-lipoic acid can be purchased in dosages ranging 30 mg to 100 mg tablets.

Sources of alpha-lipoic acid

Alpha-lipoic acid is mainly derived from dietary sources. Most alpha-lipoic acid in food is derived from lipoamide-containing enzymes and is bound to the amino acid, lysine (lipoyllysine). Good food sources of alpha-lipoic acid include spinach, broccoli, beef, yeast (particularly Brewer's yeast), and certain organ meats (such as the kidney and heart). Animal tissues that are rich in lipoyllysine include kidney, heart, and liver, while plant sources that are rich in lipoyllysine include spinach, broccoli, and tomatoes, potatoes, yams, carrots, beets. Supplemental doses of alpha-lipoic acid are hundreds of times higher than the amounts that can be obtained from food, and should be considered pharmacologic rather than physiologic doses.

I can understand you wishing to include this as a general antioxidant, but not enough to where you will cause problems with the mercury. I know a few antioxidant supplements that typical have about 10 mg - 25 mg. You may have to try a small amount and test your own responses before increasing.

Thanks Bex, I read that Brocolli, carrots and potatoes were high in ALA. I have been avoiding Brocolli lately. I used to really like it. Maybe it's my wife's cooking <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Dawn,

I also have high cortisol at night and read that it is because of lack of response to the negative feedback. My morning levels are very low.

The confusing thing to me is if my adrenals are fatigued so that they can't make enough cortisol, why do they suddenly make too much at night? I realize that "too much at night" is still not near enough for the morning, but why do they suddenly kick in? Is it because they have been trying all day and only just get going by bedtime <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

I have been a bit afraid to take ps because of my confusion of the whole thing. I have found for me magnesium and probioitc before bed usually helps me sleep. Oh, and earplugs!

lol!! When I eat broccoli, I usually have it steamed or I stir fry it with other vegetables and chicken. It is REALLY REALLY nice that way. In a stir fry, I'll have carrots, tomatoes, onions, broccoili, celery, cucumber. All sliced up properly and fried up with chicken.

That is one way you can get all these vegetables in there at onetime.

You could just tell your wife that you feel she's let herself go a bit in the cooking department and you feel she needs a tune up.... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/gunshot.gif" alt="" />

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> You could wind up wearing the meal instead of eating it, but hey what's a marriage without honesty?

broccoli contains alot of sulfur maybe even more than eggs

Earplugs also, keeps me from waking up for every little noise. The Glutamine was good for me but I could tell be the end of the next day that I had run out of cortisol. Just plain out of steam after taking the Glutamine a few nights in a row. Maybe once every 3-4 days might be alright.

Add 3mg of Melatonin to the mix and I'm sleeping very well. Almost pre-cfs. It's been great, all my symptoms are much less in severity and I feel like it's healing me. I'm able to sleep in on the weekends!

I've Added Alpha-Ketoglutarate and Butyrate to my presleep regimen. I believe I'm Ammonia or Lactic acid abundant.

The complete formula is now:

80 mcg Selenium
100-200 mg L-Glutamine (Up to 500g if it isn't upping your glutamate, should up GABA)
100-150 mg A-L-Carnitine
500 mg GABA
100 mg Magnesium Glycinate
3 mg Melatonon
2 g of Alpha-Ketoglutaratem
200 mg butyrate
5 mg Alpha Lipoic Acid

The most important being Selenium, Melatonin and perhals Glutamine.

Well I've tried L-glutamine (500 mg) for a few days and have to say I'm impressed, makes me more active and more sharp in head. I've heard it has induced mania in some susceptible people in large doses, so perhaps still be a bit careful. But it really has too many benefits to be avoided.