Re: Anxiety, depression, and more. I feel terrible.

I agree also that we crave what we tend to nutritionally need also! It's hard to distinguish cravings. These days i keep an open mind about why i'm craving something.
Funnily enough the foods i most crave are avocados, eggs and mushrooms! I feel terrible without eggs in my diet. Garlic i added to everything i made...i love the stuff...but i've found less digestive troubles by completely eliminating it from my diet.

I rejected meat as a child...i would feed it to the dogs under the table at meal times. When i was 16 and moved out of home i naturally became vegetarian. It was not an ethical choice for me but one of taste preferability coupled with much better digestive health. As a child i was severely constipated which came to an end when i stopped consuming flesh.
It's not a diet i recommend for everyone...and certainly am not a pusher of a meat-free way of life.
It would be much much muuuuch easier for me calorifically and nutritionally if i could eat meat...but i'd rather have bowel movements and better bowel health!
The last piece of flesh i consumed was salmon caught fresh by my father from the sparkling clearest waters of Scotland - and i had the worst bowel issues i ever had in my life and literally no bowel movement for 10 days afterwards. I was so ill.
Genetically my reaction to meat can be explained due to it being a high ammonia producing food, as well as high histamine (fish especially) and those genes are severely mutated leading to already high ammonia and histamine in my system. Meat pushes me over the limit with these chemicals and causes severe symptoms.
Go with what your body can handle...
There are many many protein options for non-meat eaters. I really recommend quinoa as it contains the 9 essential amino acids. Braggs liquid amino's contains a huge amount of amino acids. There are amino acids in many foods. Eggs are a great source of protein and choline...and Ray Peat says that potatoes are an excellent source of protein.

Living in Ireland i know potatoes were the staple of the diet for many generations and only due to the blight affecting potato crops did hundreds of thousands die. Meat was too expensive and so potatoes were relied upon. So my opinion of the potato has switched to it being an excellent staple.
It has also been a staple of the Aztec's who still to this day grow various varieties and rely on it.

GABA in my opinion is a safe supplement. Obviously with any supplement it is best to have a low dose and gauge how you feel.
It's not like taking tryptophan or L-dopa which, if you already have high levels, taking more will cause worse symptoms of serotonin syndrome...high dopamine.

I tried SAMe as it's good for liver health and relieves depression. Everyone says it's fabulous. I tried one pill and became extremely agitated, anxious, depressed, suicidal...it was awful. I locked myself in a room for 2 days knowing it was the SAMe and would end. I didn't know it then but SAMe is a huge methyl donor - i took 450mg....being MTHFR it basically caused a huge detox to occur. Everything swirling around my system not being expelled. When you consider that taking just 1MG of methylfolate causes a severe herx reaction for a MTHFR person, taking 450 times that amount is lethal.
I didn't know i was MTHFR at the time.

The dosage of GABA is recommended at 2 x 500mg a day. I take phenibut which is an altered form of GABA to pass by the blood brain barrier, giving an effect within 1 hour of taking it... all i take is 250mg per day. 500mg all at once makes me sleepy.

Caution of Phenibut - party-clubbers abuse phenibut to give them a confidence boost and to make them ultra-sociable when clubbing. They take in the region of 1g-3g at a time. That's a huge dose. It works great for many and they become addicted. But the downside is that when they stop it they have worse jitters and anxiety than they ever experienced, because they're suddenly depriving themselves of a major 'calming' chemical.
The web is loaded with info of people taking it in this fashion and warning others not to take it.

I take it therapeutically, and am sensitive to chemicals, and would never take over 250mg at a time, despite being an 'addictive' type of person. I have never had a problem using it wisely, i generally take it for 3 days...stop for 3 days, take some more.

With GABA - it takes a while to build up in the system, a couple of weeks, as it doesn't readily cross the BBB so easily as phenibut, so i would start with 250mg, see how you feel, if no adverse reactions...try 500mg a day...see how you feel...and continue like that. It depends if you're naturally sensitive to supplements and drugs. I am. So i always react.
Like with any neurotransmitter enhancing supplement - if you want to stop it it is best to wean off slowly. Otherwise you'll crash the other side if you stop suddenly.

I've never experienced this as i take low dosages.

Generally GABA is cheaper than phenibut. Like i said before i'm going to switch to GABA when i finish this phenibut as it works well for calming me and i'd prefer to have a supply of it feeding slowly through my BBB than dosing 'as and when' with phenibut.

Folic acid fortification is normally labelled. You'll have to check. I don't buy from supermarkets so i'm not sure on general labelling of goods these days but i'm sure it's law that it has to be labelled.

Don't try to do everything at once with diet and supps - that itself can create more anxiety! Start with diet elimination. If anxiety is a huge problem right now making it impossible to function, consider GABA too.



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