Veebonacci
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Can you explain how keto is very stressing? Like on the body? Or on your mental?
Should people not work out because exercise is stressful?
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Should people not work out because exercise is stressful?
First, remember that no one has any idea what they are talking about. We are all just speculating. We likely all have different fundamental neurobiological issues causing our problems, given that mdma damage would be somewhat randomly distributed across a variety of brain regions. Some / many people here may not even have physical "damage"; they could be suffering from purely psychological issues.
Having said that, exercise is almost certainly great for you no matter what subset of issues you have. There are so many studies that show its profound ability to do great things for our brains across the board.
I also don't think avoiding "stress" is particularly relevant here, though obviously could vary for specific sets of issues. I also don't think this is an issue with keto.
I'm pretty familiar with Palmer's work, and his thesis that most psychological disorders are fundamentally metabolic in nature seems pretty reasonable given all of the data. In that case, if our mitochondria are misbehaving, ketosis helps reset them and allows them to function better. This isn't "stressful" per se.
At the very least, trialing keto for a month or two makes sense.
We still don't really understand the nature of the potential damage from mdma. If the axonal loss theory is correct, and usage caused sertonergic cell axons to degrade, keto is pretty unlikely to help with this (and from my understanding, the other commonly suggested remedies also shouldn't really do much). However, if mdma usage caused receptor downregulation or some other type of dysregulation, that could certainly implicate mitochondrial function and keto (and exercise, supplements, etc) could help a lot.
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If I was devising a holistic treatment plan for "LTC", it would look something like this:
Supplements
NAC
Vitamin D3
Omega 3s (fairly balanced EPA / DHA)
Magnesium
Behaviors
Exercise (5 days / wk) - mix of cardio & weight training
Meditation
Social Activity
Mental Stimulation (reading, puzzles, games, etc)
8-9 hours of high quality sleep
Avoid
Drinking
Drugs
Acute Stress
Things to Check
Sleep Apnea
Thyroid function
Testosterone / Hormones
Vitamin Deficiencies
Other Treatment Options
Ketogenic Diet
HBOT
Acupuncture
TMS
Antidepressants
Microdosing Psilocybin
There are plenty of other supplements you could consider, but these 4 are all safe and essential for healthy neurological functioning.
Supplements
NAC
Vitamin D3
Omega 3s (fairly balanced EPA / DHA)
Magnesium
Behaviors
Exercise (5 days / wk) - mix of cardio & weight training
Meditation
Social Activity
Mental Stimulation (reading, puzzles, games, etc)
8-9 hours of high quality sleep
Avoid
Drinking
Drugs
Acute Stress
Things to Check
Sleep Apnea
Thyroid function
Testosterone / Hormones
Vitamin Deficiencies
Other Treatment Options
Ketogenic Diet
HBOT
Acupuncture
TMS
Antidepressants
Microdosing Psilocybin
There are plenty of other supplements you could consider, but these 4 are all safe and essential for healthy neurological functioning.
Veebonacci
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2022
- Messages
- 28
Can you elaborate how you felt chronically stressed while on keto? I’ve never heard this before.
Exercise is stressful so of course excessive exercise is excessively stressful. I don’t think anyone was recommending running the boston marathon. I’m just confused how the stress of running 26 miles is similar to the keto diet.
If the smallest stress can send people who experience LTC-hell into an acute suicidal spiral, what is your recommendation for someone going through LTC?
I will again reiterate - "LTC" isn't a single thing. It is an umbrella term used to describe people with wildly different symptoms. I think it is really important for anyone who is experiencing persistent issues after mdma usage to understand that. There isn't a silver bullet cure for LTC because there LTC isn't a single thing.
Everyone should do things that feel right for them, and if after trying one of the many, many possible therapies, it seems to make things worse, you should pause and ask yourself if it is doing more harm than good. This goes for supplements, medical interventions (i.e. antidepressants) and physical protocols (keto, exercise, etc.).
I think the big 4 of diet, meditation, sleep and exercise should be the first things anyone does. For exercise, start with what you can tolerate. For diet, eat as healthy as you can manage. It doesn't have to be keto, though I think the science behind keto is promising. If that is too extreme for you, just try to cut out processed carbs and excess sugar, and make sure you are eating lots of nutrient dense foods and plenty of healthy fats.
"the smallest stress can send ppl who experience ltc-hell into an acute suicidal spiral."
I certainly do not think this is the predominant case for people here, but it could apply to outliers. Everyone needs to modulate their own treatment plans based on how they react to things. If you have concerns in this regard, start small and work up.
There is a small subset of "LTC" people who report symptoms very akin to CFS - this is more in line with what you are describing here. One of the hallmarks of CFS is post-exercise malaise which can result in severe crashes from even light exercise. Certainly, if that is in line with symptoms you experience, you may need to radically adjust what I've advocated for here.
Everyone should do things that feel right for them, and if after trying one of the many, many possible therapies, it seems to make things worse, you should pause and ask yourself if it is doing more harm than good. This goes for supplements, medical interventions (i.e. antidepressants) and physical protocols (keto, exercise, etc.).
I think the big 4 of diet, meditation, sleep and exercise should be the first things anyone does. For exercise, start with what you can tolerate. For diet, eat as healthy as you can manage. It doesn't have to be keto, though I think the science behind keto is promising. If that is too extreme for you, just try to cut out processed carbs and excess sugar, and make sure you are eating lots of nutrient dense foods and plenty of healthy fats.
"the smallest stress can send ppl who experience ltc-hell into an acute suicidal spiral."
I certainly do not think this is the predominant case for people here, but it could apply to outliers. Everyone needs to modulate their own treatment plans based on how they react to things. If you have concerns in this regard, start small and work up.
There is a small subset of "LTC" people who report symptoms very akin to CFS - this is more in line with what you are describing here. One of the hallmarks of CFS is post-exercise malaise which can result in severe crashes from even light exercise. Certainly, if that is in line with symptoms you experience, you may need to radically adjust what I've advocated for here.
Veebonacci
Bluelighter
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- Nov 17, 2022
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I was asking @alienattack to elaborate on his own post to understand his point of view. Im not sure who you’re reiterating for or why you keep trying to answer questions directed at alien attack 
Veebonacci
Bluelighter
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- Nov 17, 2022
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There are a lot of interesting things with your last couple of posts. There are too many things to address so Imma double it and pass it to the next person
I will reiterate for what seems like the 100th time. There is someone on this forum (not me
) who seems to have solved this AND has a protocol that has helped people make a full recovery. On top of that, this person potentially narrowed it down to a “silver bullet” cure. Actually it’s more like a white bullet, magnesium (but you should really follow the whole protocol 
) It’s crazy to see how you guys just skip over it or refuse to even attempt it or come up with your own unproven protocol when this person has already done all the leg work 
I know I’m a dummy and the answer basically jumped out at me reading through the forums so wtf are y’all smoking 
I've taken Magnesium at varying doses and protocols for many years. I am sure it helps, and for some, it could be a complete cure depending on what issues they have. You cannot generalize what works for one person to something that will work for everyone, because we all have wildly different symptoms and therefore probably wildly different underlying issues.
I don't think anyone has said to not take magnesium. They are just telling you that your generalization of it to a complete cure is misguided.
I don't think anyone has said to not take magnesium. They are just telling you that your generalization of it to a complete cure is misguided.
Richi1
Bluelighter
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- Jan 6, 2022
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I was delaying this post because I wanted to wait a couple more months to be 100% sure, but no, it’s finally time to put this to bed.
**I recovered completely in the space of 4 weeks using paroxetine 10mg (USA brand name Paxil)**
Last year February if I recall correctly a user on here called @district9 advised me to try paxil. I kept putting it off and bad advice on this forum was partly to blame. “SSRIs are bad, nonono don’t use those, just exercise and take vitamins!”.
Nothing worked. To this day I have a cupboard full of vitamin pills, nootropics, magnesium in almost all forms, collected over 1.5 years and other silly shit that never worked.
The Process
Anyway, let me just give a quick log of what happened. I called my GP explaining my persisting symptoms over the course of the last 1.5 years, and he recommends therapy, CBT in particular. I tell him I’ve got that in the pipeline but I’d like to finally give psychotropic medication a try.
I ask specifically for Paroxetine. 2 reasons: District9’s recommendation & this one in particular is very effective for anxiety conditions. He gave me a prescription of 20 mg pills for a week and told me to report back to him for a longer prescription.
I broke the 20mg pills in half and took 10mg daily for 2 weeks.
By day 3 my anxiety had completely (& I mean completely) subsided. No this was not a placebo effect if any stupid fucker even tries to remotely suggest that.
By end of week 1 I was feeling more energetic, light on my feet, happy.
End of week 2 - catch up with doctor: I report the positive results and puts me on a 2 week prescription of 20mg. I once again break them in half to 10mg and carry on for another 4 weeks.
I tried 20mg but I preferred 10mg personally. I explain this and more at the bottom of the post.
It’s been over 6 weeks now and I’ve never felt better. The medication has truly given me my life back. I would express more emotion here if I could but I can only vaguely remember how bad I was suffering before.
Make your best judgement and at least give it a try. If it doesn’t work try a different SSRI. I think the right one could resolve this issue.
My humble opinion on what I think the LTC is
I say humble because I’m not here to push a viewpoint on something that I think works and completely disregard and insult the opinions of those that it hasn’t worked for, like some idiots on this forum do. Im just speculating, as we all are.
My best guess, based on the 20+ visits to a psych I’ve done and the countless research and symptom analysis over the course of 1.5 years, is that something about the serotonin transport system is malfunctioning. It is most certainly not a mere psychological problem in which eating your greens and thinking positively will solve.
I do not want to plaster this post with articles and reasoning that may induce anxiety in readers so I’ll keep it was short as that. The why isn’t important to us, only recovery is (because we are not medical professionals who can ascertain a solution by knowing precisely what’s wrong anyway).
I can make a separate post later if I even bother coming back here again.
Tips for using Paroxetine
Dosing: find the right dose for you. I’d say start on 10mg and titrate to higher doses if you and your doctor feel you need to.
Side effects: of all the SSRIs, this one is by far the most sedating. Take it at night, not in the morning. You don’t want to start dozing off at work.
Stopping the med: there’s a chance if you suddenly stop using it you’ll get some unpleasant symptoms, so taper it off slowly if you want to quit, don’t go cold turkey.
Final comments
Try it, don’t try it, tell me my advice is good, bad, I couldn’t give less of a shit. It’s worked for me and I’ve done my due diligence by making a post informing you all.
God speed.
**I recovered completely in the space of 4 weeks using paroxetine 10mg (USA brand name Paxil)**
Last year February if I recall correctly a user on here called @district9 advised me to try paxil. I kept putting it off and bad advice on this forum was partly to blame. “SSRIs are bad, nonono don’t use those, just exercise and take vitamins!”.
Nothing worked. To this day I have a cupboard full of vitamin pills, nootropics, magnesium in almost all forms, collected over 1.5 years and other silly shit that never worked.
The Process
Anyway, let me just give a quick log of what happened. I called my GP explaining my persisting symptoms over the course of the last 1.5 years, and he recommends therapy, CBT in particular. I tell him I’ve got that in the pipeline but I’d like to finally give psychotropic medication a try.
I ask specifically for Paroxetine. 2 reasons: District9’s recommendation & this one in particular is very effective for anxiety conditions. He gave me a prescription of 20 mg pills for a week and told me to report back to him for a longer prescription.
I broke the 20mg pills in half and took 10mg daily for 2 weeks.
By day 3 my anxiety had completely (& I mean completely) subsided. No this was not a placebo effect if any stupid fucker even tries to remotely suggest that.
By end of week 1 I was feeling more energetic, light on my feet, happy.
End of week 2 - catch up with doctor: I report the positive results and puts me on a 2 week prescription of 20mg. I once again break them in half to 10mg and carry on for another 4 weeks.
I tried 20mg but I preferred 10mg personally. I explain this and more at the bottom of the post.
It’s been over 6 weeks now and I’ve never felt better. The medication has truly given me my life back. I would express more emotion here if I could but I can only vaguely remember how bad I was suffering before.
Make your best judgement and at least give it a try. If it doesn’t work try a different SSRI. I think the right one could resolve this issue.
My humble opinion on what I think the LTC is
I say humble because I’m not here to push a viewpoint on something that I think works and completely disregard and insult the opinions of those that it hasn’t worked for, like some idiots on this forum do. Im just speculating, as we all are.
My best guess, based on the 20+ visits to a psych I’ve done and the countless research and symptom analysis over the course of 1.5 years, is that something about the serotonin transport system is malfunctioning. It is most certainly not a mere psychological problem in which eating your greens and thinking positively will solve.
I do not want to plaster this post with articles and reasoning that may induce anxiety in readers so I’ll keep it was short as that. The why isn’t important to us, only recovery is (because we are not medical professionals who can ascertain a solution by knowing precisely what’s wrong anyway).
I can make a separate post later if I even bother coming back here again.
Tips for using Paroxetine
Dosing: find the right dose for you. I’d say start on 10mg and titrate to higher doses if you and your doctor feel you need to.
Side effects: of all the SSRIs, this one is by far the most sedating. Take it at night, not in the morning. You don’t want to start dozing off at work.
Stopping the med: there’s a chance if you suddenly stop using it you’ll get some unpleasant symptoms, so taper it off slowly if you want to quit, don’t go cold turkey.
Final comments
Try it, don’t try it, tell me my advice is good, bad, I couldn’t give less of a shit. It’s worked for me and I’ve done my due diligence by making a post informing you all.
God speed.
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Richi1
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jan 6, 2022
- Messages
- 37
Fair point. I tried stopping cold turkey for 4 days. Sure I had pretty bad withdrawal symptoms (dizziness, restlessness) but it was nothing like an MDMA comedown/LTC. Not even close. That’s why I mentioned to taper it off slowly.
My advice is to let go of that fear and take the leap. That fear made me needlessly suffer for too long.
SSRIs do have their risks and I would never use them, except for this particular situation.
Norway
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2022
- Messages
- 39
I feel like they are hit or miss. Some people might respond well, others not. Did the SSRI clear other symptoms other than anxiety? They might be worth a shot considering its been a long time since the start of this.
Richi1
Bluelighter
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- Jan 6, 2022
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Yes, all accompanying symptoms were cleared - tinnitus, depression, insomnia, and so on.
Do what you feel is best for you though, if you don’t want to there’s no need to force yourself
Norway
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2022
- Messages
- 39
So I thought now is the time to share my insights and experiences with my fellow sufferers (and recovered ones) on here. I have suffered from this so called ''LTC'' for 14+ months by now, but I would call it adrenal fatigue, or a burnout complicated by anxiety. This is definitely a chemical imbalance in the brain, a hypersensitive nervous system, which is very complex. Don't even dare to deem it a normal anxiety disorder because of your pscyhosomatic disillusions. The symptoms are real.
Fortunately and unfortunately I have both good and bad things to share with you! Let me just make everything clear...
You will recover my dear friend. We only have one life. All you need to know is that you have to make it through, you are much stronger than you think.
After 5 months I noticed small and minor improvements in anxiety and cognitive function. Although small, they were noticeable and definitely had a positive effect. I noticed something was changing in my brain. My anxiety was also more stable for each day that passed. I actually worked in a relatively stressful job throughout my worst times, and it was hella tough and exchausting. I had to give up caffeine and alcohol since they were faaaar to stimulating. Keep in mind guys! Stay far away from any ''non-natural'' stimulants like alcohol etc. They will never do you any good.
Around the 10 month mark I noticed even more improvements. The anxiety stabilized a lot more, and my anhedonia was slowly improving too. I was starting to feel more pleasure in things, and social acitivities and other ''demanding'' tasks were not AS DEMANDING anymore... I think I was starting to feel 60 normal around this time and I could sometimes go days without really thinking about the LTC.
BUT... Never repeat my mistake. Don't drink alcohol...
Between month 11 and 12 I got drunk, and I relapsed heavily. I drank faaaar too early and should of continued to treat my nervous system with care. All the symptoms I had initially, resurfaced, and they were really baaad. It felt like a factory reset had happened. As the weeks went by I slowly started to recover a bit again, but I didn't reach the baseline I had at month 10-11. I did the mistake of drinking yet another time after this, and that was the final nail in the coffin. It's like the LTC has been restarted, but on another difficulty level. Every symptom this time, has not vanished or improved, and I've been stuck like this for many weeks.
But this time I know how to react and how to recover again! I don't care about your aggressive behaviour or whether I'm an idiot or not... all I know is that we all will recover, and we are in the same boat.
Stay strong, stay healthy and recovery will happen by itself. Don't feel the urge to push yourself too hard and you should be fine in the end. And if you don't feel okay in this moment, don't worry, because you have not reached the end yet!
I will continue living as I continue with the belief that I will one day be normal again. I have two options. Thinking my life is destroyed forever, or thinking I will get it all back one day. Which one would you choose?
My personal opinion tho is that many of us have had traumatic or stressful childhoods or teenage years, or did experience it right before the onset of their LTC - over a long period of time, which did trigger the initial stress/trauma response. Our bodies simply aren't built for it, but they know how to recover to exactly 100% again
Take care of your health, it's more important than money, relationships, status or anything you can think off. When your health is in order - everything else will come like a dream.
Fortunately and unfortunately I have both good and bad things to share with you! Let me just make everything clear...
You will recover my dear friend. We only have one life. All you need to know is that you have to make it through, you are much stronger than you think.
After 5 months I noticed small and minor improvements in anxiety and cognitive function. Although small, they were noticeable and definitely had a positive effect. I noticed something was changing in my brain. My anxiety was also more stable for each day that passed. I actually worked in a relatively stressful job throughout my worst times, and it was hella tough and exchausting. I had to give up caffeine and alcohol since they were faaaar to stimulating. Keep in mind guys! Stay far away from any ''non-natural'' stimulants like alcohol etc. They will never do you any good.
Around the 10 month mark I noticed even more improvements. The anxiety stabilized a lot more, and my anhedonia was slowly improving too. I was starting to feel more pleasure in things, and social acitivities and other ''demanding'' tasks were not AS DEMANDING anymore... I think I was starting to feel 60 normal around this time and I could sometimes go days without really thinking about the LTC.
BUT... Never repeat my mistake. Don't drink alcohol...
Between month 11 and 12 I got drunk, and I relapsed heavily. I drank faaaar too early and should of continued to treat my nervous system with care. All the symptoms I had initially, resurfaced, and they were really baaad. It felt like a factory reset had happened. As the weeks went by I slowly started to recover a bit again, but I didn't reach the baseline I had at month 10-11. I did the mistake of drinking yet another time after this, and that was the final nail in the coffin. It's like the LTC has been restarted, but on another difficulty level. Every symptom this time, has not vanished or improved, and I've been stuck like this for many weeks.
But this time I know how to react and how to recover again! I don't care about your aggressive behaviour or whether I'm an idiot or not... all I know is that we all will recover, and we are in the same boat.
Stay strong, stay healthy and recovery will happen by itself. Don't feel the urge to push yourself too hard and you should be fine in the end. And if you don't feel okay in this moment, don't worry, because you have not reached the end yet!
I will continue living as I continue with the belief that I will one day be normal again. I have two options. Thinking my life is destroyed forever, or thinking I will get it all back one day. Which one would you choose?
My personal opinion tho is that many of us have had traumatic or stressful childhoods or teenage years, or did experience it right before the onset of their LTC - over a long period of time, which did trigger the initial stress/trauma response. Our bodies simply aren't built for it, but they know how to recover to exactly 100% again
Take care of your health, it's more important than money, relationships, status or anything you can think off. When your health is in order - everything else will come like a dream.
The LTC may not even have to do as much with serotonin but rather gut-microbiome. Interesting recent study that just came out: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10219441/
Gut is the issue
Started to go to a more alternative doctor for my ltc and this is his hypothesis as well. Gonna start treatment soon
Deep_Fried
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2020
- Messages
- 34
After having a bad day today, I decided to make it worse by searching for newly released papers on MDMA damage and found one:
www.frontiersin.org
In general it tells the same story as the others: Yeah damage occurs, recovery is possible, but it takes a looooong time.
New info this time around: our brains might actually get bigger to compensate and recovery in the neocortex of primates is possible, which I had only seen in rats so far.
Happy recovery fellow sufferers
Frontiers | Preliminary Results on the Long-Term Effects of Dextromethorphan on MDMA-Mediated Serotonergic Deficiency and Volumetric Changes in Primates Based on 4-[18F]-ADAM PET/MRI
Alterations to the serotonergic system due to 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) (ecstasy) consumption have been extensively documented. However, knowl...
www.frontiersin.org
In general it tells the same story as the others: Yeah damage occurs, recovery is possible, but it takes a looooong time.
New info this time around: our brains might actually get bigger to compensate and recovery in the neocortex of primates is possible, which I had only seen in rats so far.
Happy recovery fellow sufferers