Posted by Tomatheus on August 27, 2013, at 13:45:31
In reply to Re: Emsam Fail » Tomatheus, posted by damnthislife on August 27, 2013, at 12:37:01
Hi Damnthislife,
Thank you for your post and for asking about my hypersomnia and chronic fatigue. Yes, I did take Nardil several years back with good results, at least for as long as they lasted (a few months altogether). Ultimately, though, it wasn't hypertension that cut my Nardil trial short, but a sudden loss of effectiveness along with extreme agitation that made continuing with the medication unbearable. I've suspected that I might have received a bad batch of Nardil from my pharmacy and that that's why the way I responded to the medication suddenly shifted course, but it's always hard to know if a bad batch was to blame or if it was something else.
Anyway, I'm taking vitamin D again now. I was found to have an insufficient level of the vitamin through a blood test that I had several months ago, and this is the second time I've tried supplementing with vitamin D since then. The first time, if I recall correctly, I had a decent response that involved improvement in my energy and concentration and a reduction in my hypersomnia, but my response seemed to die out after about two weeks. I ended up stopping my trial with vitamin D at that point, even though I was only taking 400 IU for most of my trial, which I also didn't allow to last for nearly as long as I should have.
So, now I'm taking vitamin D again, and this time I plan on getting my dose up to 4,000-5,000 IU and continuing to supplement with the vitamin for at least six to nine months. A study that I came across (Vieth et al., 2004) found that the "greatest biochemical responses" to vitamin D supplementation didn't occur in individuals taking the vitamin until they had supplemented with it for more than six months, and the study also mentioned that previous studies had found that vitamin D levels tend to plateau some five months after starting supplementation. Consistent with this, the results of studies of vitamin D supplementation for clinical depression have been mixed, with the one study that found supplementation to be beneficial (Jorde et al., 2008) lasting for a year. So, it seems that if I'm going to respond to vitamin D, I'm probably going to need to take it for at least several months before I start to see the long-term benefits. I'm in the process of slowly increasing my dose of vitamin D (I'm at 1,200 IU now), and I'm increasing the dose slowly because the vitamin seemed to increase the severity of my psychotic symptoms when I tried it before I was on Abilify, and I don't want to overwhelm my system with something that could possibly make my psychosis worse. At present, I seem to be noticing a little something from the vitamin D that I'm taking, but somehow I don't think that the response that I'm noticing now is necessarily characteristic of how I'm going to respond to the vitamin in the long run. I think I've just got to be patient and see what my response is going to look like several months down the line.
As an aside, I think you pointed out in a response to one of my posts that one thing that stuck out about what I had written was that my vitamin D level was low, and I said that I would think about giving the vitamin another try. I'd like to thank you for writing what you did, because if you didn't, I very well might not have decided to start this current vitamin D trial. I'm not sure how beneficial supplementing with vitamin D is going to be in the long run for me, but I'm rather optimistic about it, given the fact that my vitamin D level is low and that there does seem to be some evidence that low vitamin D levels may at least be related to clinical depression and schizophrenia.
I know that you just wrote that you've had a lot of tests done, but since I just wrote what I did about vitamin D, I figure that I should just check to make sure that you've had your vitamin D level checked. Have you?
Take care,
T.==
REFERENCES
Jorde, R., Sneve, M., Figenschau, Y., Svartberg, J., & Waterloo, K. (2008). Effects of vitamin D supplementation on symptoms of depression in overweight and obese subjects: randomized double blind trial. Journal of Internal Medicine, 264, 599-609. Article: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2796.2008.02008.x/full
Vieth, R., Kimball, S., Hu, A., & Walfish, P.G. (2004). Randomized comparison of the effects of the vitamin D3 adequate intake versus 100 mcg (4000 IU) per day on biochemical responses and the wellbeing of patients. Nutrition Journal, 3, 8. Article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC506781/
Conditions:
* chronic fatigue, hypersomnia, and related symptoms
* schizoaffective disorderTaking Abilify, niacin, vit D
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