Posted by sk85 on January 17, 2012, at 13:04:00
In reply to antioxidants, posted by Christ_empowered on January 16, 2012, at 15:48:47
> I'm stuck on 30mgs/day Abilify for "Bipolar I" (read: I'm in between bipolar I and some kind of off beat psychotic disorder). I take loads of antioxidants to prevent TD. I used to get mild tremor (not bad enough to require meds) and stiff gait from the Abilify; a brief dose reduction and lots of antioxidants corrected the problem. In an ideal world, I could switch to a neuroleptic that didn't do this, but Abilify is the only AAP that I've been able to tolerate.
>
> Now, for your situation, I'd say lots of natural form vitamin E (1600 IU, maybe), lots of vitamin C (think several grams--time-release=better absorption), lots of niacinamide (3+ grams daily, divided doses), manganese (I don't know the dosage for this one, sorry), b-100, possibly high dose b-6 (might hurt your stomach a bit, but several hundred mgs/day has helped with TD, akathisia, and other neuroleptic-induced problems...divide the doses).
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> Pretty much everything I've thrown out there I already take, except for the manganese and the extra B6 (I take 1 time-release b-100 daily). Taurine has been shown (in animals, mind you) to prevent TD and some other neuroleptic-induced problems when given with a neuroleptic. Its also kind of calming, although I don't notice a huge difference (I take 2 grams daily, all at once). I used to take 6 grams daily (2 doses of 3 grams). Doses of 4 grams have been used along with neuroleptics for mania and psychosis. If nothing else, its supposed to be good for your heart, and it seems to have made my hair thicken up. Plus, its cheap.
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> Good luck. This is a really bad situation you're in. I'm kind of surprised nobody mentioned antioxidants (at least high dose natural form E--that's pretty standard) for your movement disorder. Weird.Thanks for your input. I have tried numerous antioxidants (though not really the ones you listed) which have shown benefit in tardive dyskinesia, those particulars being alpha-lipoic acid, manganese, ginkgo biloba and NAC (all have some form of studies backing them up in TD). However none of these have made any difference whatsoever to help with dystonia. I think they would help if the issue is oxidative stress and e.g haloperidol has shown to do this and this is one aspect that probably contributes to the developement of TD by typical antipsychotics.
It also seems that tardive dyskinesia and dystonia are different enough that the same medications that help one, don't help the other (amantadine helps dyskinesia, but makes dystonia worse).
But mostly I think my dystonia is just a result of messed up brain chemistry and wiring that Prozac managed to do in my case. In fact it seems very similar to levodopa induced dyskinesia in Parkinson's where its developement requires first depletion of dopamine (that being caused by the loss dopaminergic neurons), then the brain rewires itself due to this lack of normal dopamine, and then finally when dopamine is restored by the form of levodopa it displays abnormal response to it, thus manifesting as dyskinesia.
So long story short it shows good analogy to SSRI induced movement disorders where SSRIs first reduce dopamine, and then the brain rewires (and this is not just the upregulation of dopamine receptors but myriad of other receptor changes) itself to become hypersensitive to dopamine and once normal dopaminergic flow starts coming back, the abnormal response to it results.
By the way if you're wondering where I'm taking these theories, then I have done some personal research in this, as I happen to be a biochemist (although not a neurobiologist), but even after years of reading, there isn't really a good explanation to all of these pathological events that happen in the case of movement disorders.
So I'm left with the good old trial and error process to find something (or anything) that would somehow just work. I will look into high-dose b-vitamins, although I'm bit sceptical it would make a change, lets hope for the best.
poster:sk85
thread:1007286
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120108/msgs/1007576.html