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MDMA Recovery (Stories & Support - 4)

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Hormones I think are deeply affected. My beard is totally different than it was. My sex drive is crazy high which is sort of tortuous. My skin is also very shallow and sensitive.
 
Adubbs, I also got a cold and it makes things worse. Anyone had luck with medication while being sick?
 
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fnono33 said:
Hormones I think are deeply affected. My beard is totally different than it was. My sex drive is crazy high which is sort of tortuous. My skin is also very shallow and sensitive.
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The second point could be caused by too high Dopamine levels because of low serotonin levels. Mine normalized after the SSRI treatment.
 
Too high sex drive from LTC? Wow lol

It seemed like it was the opposite for a lot of people including me.
 
Something really weird happened to me when I got a cold 5 months ago or so. I was deep into my LTC and got a really bad fever. Went to the hospital for it. Got a bunch of antibiotics for a week or two. Then when the cold went away my LTC symptoms were gone as well for a few days. I was back to normal! But then after a few stressful days it came back slowly. Maybe one of the antibiotics helped ? Or I forgot about my symptoms while i was going through the fever and my brain forgot about it ? I should have kept a diary or something of what meds i took... I can probably find the list given by my doctor somewhere.
 
Scratcher said:
Something really weird happened to me when I got a cold 5 months ago or so. I was deep into my LTC and got a really bad fever. Went to the hospital for it. Got a bunch of antibiotics for a week or two. Then when the cold went away my LTC symptoms were gone as well for a few days. I was back to normal! But then after a few stressful days it came back slowly. Maybe one of the antibiotics helped ? Or I forgot about my symptoms while i was going through the fever and my brain forgot about it ? I should have kept a diary or something of what meds i took... I can probably find the list given by my doctor somewhere.
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Orrr:

It could be that you were not focussed on magnifying and finding every tiny little bit of something that could possibly be attributed to LTC -- because of the fever/cold

Then you remembered how fucked up you were, how stressed out -- and all the symptoms came back

or -- you can't handle stress -- at all



I was dizzy for about 15 minutes at work today -- OMFG LTC !!!!

Nope -- low blood sugar from no breakfast
 
There is also a lot of cross-talk between the brain and immune system. For example, people sleeping much longer when they are sick is probably mediated by COX2 -> prostaglandins -> effects on the pre-optic area of the hypothalamus, which regulates sleep and I might also add houses oxytocinergic cells. As an aside, you may be interested in this ascorbic acid/pre-optic area study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24064109

Anyways,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3748818/
"There are two forms of COX: COX1 is constitutively active in many tissues, and COX2 is mainly induced during inflammatory responses8. Although COX2 is expressed constitutively by some neurons in the brain, systemic LPS (*an inflammatory molecule) induces COX2 in the brain only in perivascular and endothelial cells along small venules, and IL-1β primarily activates COX2 in perivascular cells9–11. These venules are found throughout the brain, but are densest in the preoptic area"

The issues seen with some GABA interneurons in the hippocampus of animals given MDMA have been found to be mediated by COX-2/prostaglandins. Unfortunately they only studied the hippocampus.

At any rate, there is surely a neurological explanation as to why sickness -> anti-inflammatory medications -> resolution of sickness could have had an effect on Scratcher's symptoms. The cells that are acting via 5-HT2 receptor mediated induction of COX-2 and hence prostaglandin synthesis -> glutamate release to affect GABA interneurons in the hippocampus are astrocytes, which are no longer thought to be solely part of the "housekeeping/immune system" portion of the CNS - they are thought to play an integral role to the function of the brain.
 
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I'm sick as a dog and really could use NyQuil, I've slept 0 tonight....How dangerous is it to take a normal dose???
 
socrilus said:
Oh lol I didn't realize you were doing that. Was it high before that or do you think it helped?
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Libido has been all over the map since this started. So it can go back to low levels at any time. Right now, it's very high and with no fap it makes it double.
 
Cotcha Yankinov said:
There is also a lot of cross-talk between the brain and immune system. For example, people sleeping much longer when they are sick is probably mediated by COX2 -> prostaglandins -> effects on the pre-optic area of the hypothalamus, which regulates sleep and I might also add houses oxytocinergic cells. As an aside, you may be interested in this ascorbic acid/pre-optic area study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24064109

Anyways,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3748818/
"There are two forms of COX: COX1 is constitutively active in many tissues, and COX2 is mainly induced during inflammatory responses8. Although COX2 is expressed constitutively by some neurons in the brain, systemic LPS (*an inflammatory molecule) induces COX2 in the brain only in perivascular and endothelial cells along small venules, and IL-1β primarily activates COX2 in perivascular cells9–11. These venules are found throughout the brain, but are densest in the preoptic area"

The issues seen with some GABA interneurons in the hippocampus of animals given MDMA have been found to be mediated by COX-2/prostaglandins. Unfortunately they only studied the hippocampus.

At any rate, there is surely a neurological explanation as to why sickness -> anti-inflammatory medications -> resolution of sickness could have had an effect on Scratcher's symptoms. The cells that are acting via 5-HT2 receptor mediated induction of COX-2 and hence prostaglandin synthesis -> glutamate release to affect GABA interneurons in the hippocampus are astrocytes, which are no longer thought to be solely part of the "housekeeping/immune system" portion of the CNS - they are thought to play an integral role to the function of the brain.
Click to expand...

Does that mean a COX-2 inhibitor can show positive effects in LTC? Like, bringing it up again, curcumin?
Beside some substances that generally reduce inflammation which nearly always have a positive effect on the brain.
 
Amml said:
Does that mean a COX-2 inhibitor can show positive effects in LTC? Like, bringing it up again, curcumin?
Beside some substances that generally reduce inflammation which nearly always have a positive effect on the brain.
Click to expand...

COX-2 inhibitors certainly have benefits in particular states like amyloid-beta induced memory issues in Alzheimer's and THC induced acute memory issues but I don't know if COX-2 inhibitors have a whole lot to offer if it COX-2 isn't being induced much and the constitutive activity is low. There is certainly not much harm (aside from GI tract issues) in trying some ibuprofen/naproxen sodium but I wouldn't expect miracles.

The specific scenario of COX-2 playing a role in altering cells in animals given MDMA is 5-HT2 receptor activation -> induction of COX-2 -> prostaglandin synthesis -> prostaglandins have an effect on glutamate release from astrocytes in the hippocampus, and then the genetic changes (reduction of parvalbumin expression) are downstream of that. So if constitutive COX-2 is playing a very small role in glutamate release of astrocytes or if LTC sufferers aren't having persistent issues with induced COX-2 then I wouldn't expect this pathway to be bi-directional (I hope that makes sense). But I'm not too sure on the matter of inducible and constitutive COX-2 in the various regions.

Its possible that Scratcher had some COX-2 induction during their sickness and this may have acted as a bit of a reset switch. The CNS effects of sickness are thought to occur via prostaglandins because cytokines are pretty bulky (although they can leak into the brain to some degree via the regions that aren't protected by the BBB very well) but the activation of different pathways/neuronal activity induced by the natural cytokine -> prostaglandin/prostanoid synthesis scenario vs. 5-HT2 receptor mediated COX-2 induction could be nuanced.

I suppose natural cytokine mediated COX-2 induction could be activating some pathways that oppose the acute changes mediated by cytokines/prostaglandins to allow for resolution of the sickness syndrome - you may not necessarily see activation of these theoretical oppositional pathways with COX-2 induction via 5-HT2 activation, and I wouldn't expect COX-2 inhibitors to lead to activation of these oppositional pathways.

One scenario is that during sickness there is a particular distribution of the induction of COX-2 in the brain, while the distribution of the induction of COX-2 by 5-HT2 agonists is going to be spatially dependent on variable expression of the 5-HT2 receptors and variation from cell to cell in terms of COX-2 induction response to that 5-HT2 activation. Induction of COX-2 via natural sickness could be somewhat more "balanced" for this reason as opposed to the network being thrown off balance with just 5-HT2 mediated COX-2 induction. When scratcher was sick, he could have seen some benefit from this "balanced" version of COX-2 signaling that helped mitigate the unbalanced induction of COX-2 seen with whatever substance they took. Hope this makes some sense.
 
Yes makes sense to me, I also noticed before the LTC that serotogenic substances like Tramadol made me feel much "dirtier" when I was sick, which confirms your theory for me.

Just saying that Paracetamol and I also believe Ibuprofen work in the endocannabinoid system too. Some positive effects may also result from that.
 
DXM. I'm looking more for something to relieve the cold symptoms, but also sleep would be nice.
 
N-Acetylcysteine is helpful when you have problems with tough mucus and helps regenerating Glutathione.
 
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