GABA has changed my life :)

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Pramod Dash from the University of Houston wrote this in an article on the bbb too - it was very surprising to me to learn that only some of the brain has the barrier... and perhaps would surprise not only most people but most doctors..(?)


Quote from Dash:
All areas of the brain do not have a blood-brain barrier. The structures located at strategic positions in the midline of the ventricular system and lack the BBB are collectively referred to as circumventricular organs (CVOs). In these non-barrier regions, the tight junctions between endothelial cells are discontinuous thus allowing entry of molecules. Many of these areas participate in hormonal control.

Areas of brain without a blood-brain barrier:

?Pituitary gland
?Median eminence
?Area postrema
?Preoptic recess
?Paraphysis
?Pineal gland
?Endothelium of choroid plexus
End of quote.

The plot just thickens and thickens....!

I began taking GABA even before I suspected I might have high functioning autism. My wife used GABA to get off from her addiction to anti depressants. I was having a hard time at work when my job began to get complicated. I was not handling things well at all...almost a walking nervous breakdown waiting to happen. I told my wife I might need anti depressants to cope. She put me onto GABA, telling me to stick one under my tongue when I felt the stress levels begin to rise. I was taking them nearly 3 times per day to get through it.

For me, it seemed to take about 20 min to begin to calm me down.....It just seems to settle my mind. My aspergers gets my mind rolling out of control and when it does, I have a heck of a time doing any task. What it did is allow me to focus better on the task I was doing. Before I would be doing tasks without thinking about them....my mind buzzing off in other directions.

Now I don't need as much but I take about one per day just before I know I might be in a stressful situation or task at work or in a private setting. I also take one before I go to bed on work nights. And even though I have been married to my wonderful wife for 22 years, now and then, I take one before intimacy. Now and then I have a hard time getting focused before sex....I think it helps blood flow...maybe....but that might be TMI. Sorry.

That's very interesting. I have also had the same experience of being able to focus on tasks in a more specialised way - the change was just as you describe. It also seems to have sharpened my memory.

So glad your wife directed you away from the prescription drug route to GABA - you must have married a wise woman!

I'm reading and learning all the time. Probably won't stop until I know everything there is to know

One new thing I read last night:
Not to take GABA with hot drinks - because heat disables it.

I actually have taken it with hot drinks, and seemed to work, though perhaps it will work even better now..

As for your TMI, once this thread is read by the males on WP, the stores will possibly have a rush on GABA lol!! !

I think it is important to mention, for anyone reading this thread, that I don't drink alcohol. From my reading of the website that is mentioned in the OP, it seems that if you took GABA, and drank alcohol, this could be problematic as you might get an overdose effect.

May I ask how you're doing now, B19? I was searching this site for GABA and found your testimonial very encouraging. I'm trying to help my 10-year-old son with his anxiety and irritable mood. Are you still feeling more calm? Have you developed any unpleasant side effects? Did you develop a tolerance?

I certainly hope you're doing very well. Thank you for sharing this post.

^^^hiya Hbomb11 welcome to the club

Welcome to WP Hbomb11. The answers to your questions:The form of GABA I find the most helpful is to take low dose clonazepam 2 -3 times a week. The dosage is either .25mg or .5mg (the latter if there are particularly challenging circumstances or demands on a particular day. It is as effective now as when I began a couple of years ago. I have not developed a tolerance. It seems to be important, when you are taking anything that increases of decreases the brain's availability of any transmitter (GABA is increased in this case) not to take it every day, not only because of the dependency risk (we want to solve problems, not add to them) but for the also-very-important reason that with daily use, the therapeutic effect is likely to be lost over time. This is because the brain will "down regulate" its own natural production with daily use - ie the brain learns that it doesn't need to make its own GABA anymore, because of the input it has learned to receive instead; so daily use for a long time can be very counter-productive, (dependency plus no effect). Happily I have avoided these negative outcomes and for a couple of years I researched the research extensively to find other ways of supplementing GABA.

The powder form of GABA which you can buy over the counter in the USA is illegal in New Zealand (which is ridiculous given the other things you can buy here) and that's why I take the clonazepam instead. I would prefer the natural form if I could access it. You may like to google "GABA agonists" to find a list of foods, herbs etc that also raise GABA levels.

Although GABA is treated by the authorities as "a drug" (at least in NZ) it is a substance naturally occuring in the brain, and without it we humans would all be wired all the time, jumping out of our skins. For some reason not yet understood, many people on the spectrum appear to have an innate deficiency. This isn't a 'cause' of ASD, though; it's one of the many manifestations, so GABA is not a "cure" for ASD per se (I still stim, I am still noise hypersensitive etc) though it does zap the anxiety and reset executive function to maximal effect. It also helps very substantially with social anxiety. For me it is an enabler of smoother function without anxiety riding on my shoulders.

The thing that I still find remarkable is how fast-working the doses are (within half an hour) - so if say I have a stressful appointment, I can time the dose perfectly.

Having said that, there are people on the spectrum who don't have the deficiency in GABA, so the effect on them would maybe be only to slow down the speed of brain function. However I think you could establish within a very short time whether it is helping or not, and a few doses on a trial basis are unlikely to cause any harm. For myself, I would say that anxiety has been such a major issue at times that GABA was like a magic wand for me, it was a revelation to discover what life could be like when the obstacle cause of anxiety wasn't a daily feature anymore. I hope you find a similar effect for your son. Best wishes.

I wonder if the New Zealand summer has anything to do with your recovery!

Seriously.....Your testimonial, and others, might lead to a groundswell of people seeking to take GABA. It would be nice if very few side-effects are observed, and that at least 3/4's of the people taking derive quite noticeable benefit from it.

Thank you! It's taking me a minute to get used to this site. It's not as easy as Facebook LOL! I just changed my settings so I'll know when someone's responded.

prego I belong to a WP offshoot there also I am "ivan washinton" there [with a Bullwinkle and lion avatar]. if you wish, I will try to invite you to "the cough wagon" which is the group that moog [ex-WPer] formed on FB.

Wow. I have so much to learn. But this makes good sense to me. I'm kind of winging it here. When my son was seven, we tried several different medications to help him at school. He had a VERY strong reaction to stimulant medication. I can't even remember which ones we tried now; I'd have to dig up my notebook. I believe Concerta might have been the first one we tried. It was amazing ... for the first, oh, 8 hours he was on it. I just popped the pill in his mouth, he went off to school, and I picked him up with a stellar report from his aide and teacher. I mean, we were hugging one another and bawling happy tears that day.

But, I noticed he also had a facial tic and a tic where he kept flexing his fingers. He was hyper-verbal. He didn't sleep for 36 hours even with medicine to help him sleep. He did okay-ish for the next few days, but he quickly turned into an angry, angry little boy. It was awful. He was beyond irritable. He was also extremely jealous. (He's always struggled with jealousy, but this was significantly more pronounced.) Even if a child in his class sneezed and someone said, "God bless you." My son would become irate and shout, "WHAT ABOUT ME? GOD BLESS ME!! !" It's funny now, but then it was agony.

We tried other stimulants, and we had the same reactions. We tried another med that was often used as a blood pressure medication, but had horrible results with it too.

It seemed everything we tried pushed him toward a hypomanic (possibly full-blown mania a couple of times) state. It was absolutely torture. And I just complied with the nice Dr. all the way. Sometimes I hate myself for what I put him through that year.

We ended up on Zoloft. It was magical for a very short time, too. It ended up making him angry too. The weaning process for that was torture. Every time I would drop the dose we had rage fits for a couple of days.

We did absolutely nothing for three years. We've just tried to do as much calming, therapeutic fish oils, high quality vitamins, and calming strategies at school that we could.

He's ten now, and honestly, it's becoming another difficult year. He's angry often and is just set off by the tiniest (to me) things. It's hard to walk around on egg shells around him, you know? And he has a little sister who loves him SO much, but she is becoming tired of his anger too.

I did some research, and decided to give him a Lithium Orotate supplement. We started about two weeks before Christmas, and actually, we've seem some incredible improvements since we started that. I give him 30mg in the AM and 10mg before bed.

I actually bought a supplement that has some L-theanine, Inositol, and GABA in it. I give it to him in the morning. I just bought a GABA/Nicainamide/Inositol supplement from Kirkman that I gave him last night and tonight.

I wonder if I should try giving it to him every couple of days. Do you think that's a better idea? What about the Lithium Orotate? Do you think that's the kind of thing we might have more sustained benefits from if we don't give it every day?

I'm starting to feel like a mad scientist, and I don't like it.

Um, that would be GREAT!

I've been sorting through old files tonight and came across this study where they compared brain imaging of ASD children with controls and identified GABA level differences which I am posting for parents interested in this aspect:

https://spectrumnews.org/news/imaging-s ... in-autism/

This is a fascinating account, B19.

Can you say anything more about the reported differences in effect on males and females?

I am really tempted to try this based on your reports. I would really love to deal with some of those areas as stress has been enormous in my life recently and my ability to communicate has been degraded and many executive functioning issues have gotten worse just when I really need them to be better.

Can you recommend a place to start for anyone who is interested in following in your footsteps in experimenting with this treatment?

I'd suggest an initial trial of this:

buy some GABA (from a good health store) and take

750mg not combined with food 3 times daily and maybe combine the first dose with magnesium, B6 and Taurine (an amino acid, you can get all these at a health products store). Go easy on the coffee, as caffeine is a GABA antagonist, and alcohol (if you drink) as it is an agonist. If this has no effect, then consider trialling clonazepam. If you get no effect at all with the clonazepam then I would say it is pretty likely you don't have a deficiency. How well the powder works may to an extent depend on how healthy the lining of your small intestine in, as that is the main pathway to the brain that taking the GABA supplement depends on - if it is well absorbed through the small intestinal wall it travels via the ventral neural pathway from there up into the brain.

Incidentally I have a theory - totally unproven - that many alcoholics are GABA deficient and use it unknowingly as a GABA agonist (booster). This would possibly explain at least partly why some people develop an alcohol addiction, while others can take or leave the stuff. I think the combination of GABA and alcohol is best avoided, though the only likely effect is that you might feel much more drunk on say one or two drinks.. bear this in mind if you have to drive anywgere after the combination intake, if it happens.

It is curious to me that the popular press and the general public have a good knowledge of two of the brains four major neurotransmitters - dopamine and serotonin - and yet is so generally unaware of the other two majors - acetycholine and GABA. That is the quartet and they are all equally important; the balance between regulates (or disrupts) function in major ways. I think the reason for that ignorance is a that Big Pharma does major education on the media and public and doctors which is biased in a way to suit and promote its own products - unproven though many of them are (especially the antidepressants). I meet very few people who even know what GABA is and does, or realise that it is just as important as serotonin for well-being (perhaps more so for us).

I hope this is helpful and will be interested to hear what your experience is; everyone is unique and no-one can ever accurately predict how any individual will respond to anything taken into the body though I know of no adverse effects other than possibly sleepiness which might occur. I don't get the sleepiness though some people may do..

Sorting through more of my old files today, I retrieved this set of four studies:

Autism and raised levels of copper in plasma vs controls
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3738468/

High Copper levels as GABA antagonists
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3235993/

Addressing high copper levels:
http://nutritionalbalancing.org/center/ ... xicity.php

High copper foods:
http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-000 ... 000-3.html?

If you read them, it will be obvious (I think) why I stored them as a group, and their relationship to the topic of this thread. Quite a few people over the past years on WP have expressed interest in trialling GABA, though for some it may not be as simple as taking supplemental GABA, if your blood and plasma have high levels of antagonists like copper; you would need to address that also to obtain the supplemental GABA benefits.

If my memory serves me correctly (I often wonder, at my age!) copper and zinc have an inverse relationship in the body: as one goes higher the other lowers. This raises another intriguing possibility to me: the immune problems which a proportion of the spectrum have may be partly related to a high copper/low zinc ratio. Zinc, as most people probably know, is an important mineral for immune function, and there are some other studies which I can recall reading though didn't file for future reference identifying low zinc levels in ASD sample populations.

Given the complexity of GABA agonists and antagonists I realise that probably only a handful of members are interested, though it is that handful who may have other interesting studies, knowledge and/or experiences to share on this topic.