Supplements and activity designed to improve circulation - an experiment.

Symptoms aside it seems I may still have some form of OI issue, despite my heart rate being drastically reduced after resting sufficiently.

I'm still seeing a rise of around 30 bpm upon standing, it's just it's now initially only climbing to the high 90s (this morning), it then, just to be funny, rises to the high 100s (109) for a few minutes after I sit down.

So something's going on, despite having mainly dropped my HR down into normal range, when rested, after at least a days hard resting.

I actually feel okay this morning, not pwoME okay, but okay.

Which is a surprise given my 'diet' yesterday (ice cream, crisps, and a large sandwich mainly)

I might actually attempt the phone call to scottish power to get my warm home discount code.

Not holding out much hope for that as despite them saying the reason for having to wait 2 weeks before I could call for a code was so they could first credit my account with it I've checked my account, and it's not showing, not just as an entry but it's also not reflected in the balance.

So, I'm not optimistic.

7 days power left without topping it up so if I can't get the code I'm going to have to spend money I shouldn't have to, and haven't really budgeted for.

 

This project has not been abandoned, yet, but it's not going anywhere fast.

It seems I no longer have the capacity for any significant unnecessary activity.

When I try I crash.

After a while this gets 'discouraging'.

I am getting odd little bits done tho, just not really in line with the aims of this project.

On Monday I had a bath and cooked roast pork, this has been most of my meals until last night, when I finished it.

On Tuesday I went shopping, by bus, 850 steps involved in the trip out. A small shop - milk and fruit.

On Wednesday I hoovered and moved a notice board (which involved finding drill (to use as a screwdriver, the holes were already there), spirit level, screws, screw covers -that sort of thing, finding all the necessary bits took 3 times as long as putting up the notice board). I also cleaned the kitchen windows, a job I have been unable to manage in 16 years. I'm not claiming they are clean, it's just they are no longer filthy.

Today I've had a bath and hung a picture on an existing screw, only taken since January to get round to it. I've also managed 5 deadlifts.

I am continuing with supplements aimed at increasing circulation and boosting glutathione production, although these are mostly supposed to be twice daily I am generally only managing once a day.

I still haven't found a solution to this problem.

Most other supplements have been dropped although I am maintaining vit d3 and it's associated stuff (k2, mg, zinc)

I've run out of b complex so I will be experimenting with 'nutritional yeast' to provide b vits.

Tomorrow was supposed to be a walking day, as I again need fresh veg, fruit and milk could do with topping up. My aim is to do 2 days a week that involve some walking, a total of about 4 miles, but can't see that happening. It's taking too long to get started in the day and I'm not sleeping enough. In the last two weeks, on the rare occasions I have been out, I've been using the bus. Total walking distance in the last 2 weeks, every single step while awake, is just under 3 miles.

My average daily steps is just under 1200, with days where it's only 700.

...and this is when I am consciously trying to do more.

 

Do you know which of your supplements has had this effect?

 

I assume it was the Maca root, as that's part of it's advertising spiel.

But the whole thing at the time was designed as a distraction, to give me time to get how I was feeling under some form of control, so it could have been other things I was doing, or a mixture.

Even arginine could possibly alter mood as it seems quite good (N=1) at lowering blood pressure.

 

I have added;

Gingko (120mg a day, marked up as 6000mg plant equivalent) - circulation,
Pine bark (200mg a day for the first month, dropping to 100mg a day after that) - anti inflammatory, supposed to help circulation when combined with arginine.

The citrulline/arginine debate still rages on, which is best, for my purposes, along with which form, pure or combined with some things else e.g is citrulline malate better or worse than citrulline.

I currently have 2-3 months worth of whey/arginine etc. So that's how long this project has to run unless I see more positive results. I have some positive results, lowered blood pressure, lower resting heart rate etc, all good things, but pointless metrics if they don't positively impact my capabilities. And I'm not sure how much they are, possibly that's a reflection of the fact that I was uncharacteristically 'capable' when I started this, possibly all these complicated and expensive things are doing squat.

I need a few thousand of aged me clones to do this properly, and apparently for reasons of ethicality, technological limitation, and causality, that aint going to happen. So it's this way and see what, if anything, happens.

Last week, up until friday afternoon, I managed to keep the intensity minutes down to 28, from midnight on Sunday to about 5pm on Friday. Then I was ill, I suspect it may have been an intolerance to nutritional yeast.

By Sunday midnight I had acquired another 650 IMs when I'd done nothing, simply as a marker of how my body was struggling. Small bananas compared with a few weeks previous, yeast made me ill, being ill caused a 'crash', IMs go up for no obvious cause.

Still not 'recovered', although despite only getting a couple of hours sleep last night, and only 3-4 the night before (starting at around 7am), so far I feel okay today, and my IMs are so far at 103 for the week so far. Which is high for the amount I've done, but not absurdly high given I'm still not 'recovered' from last weeks 'crash'.

It is however not yet 8am, so things may change

 

I went out yesterday, I walked up to my local sainsbury's, shortest route possible, about a mile. Just to see if I could do it and the impact it would have, both whilst doing it and 'later'.

It was okay, still got problems with my achilles tendons, no idea how I'm going to resolve that.

But it didn't go well enough so I felt like walking back, so I caught a bus.

One of the 2 new supplements, either ginkgo or pine bark, seems to do something useful.

Apart from the pain, which is normal, I feel okay, not no ME okay, or even over christmas okay, but a lot better than the last few weeks.

I've had odd instances of doing things this evening, such as a couple of doors have been cleaned and polished, hooverings been done, some paperworks been sorted, a couple of kitchen bits/cupboards have been re-organised for current needs etc. Not usual behaviour.

My thinking seems clearer.

Side effects seem to be slightly numb feet, oddly with minor itching, numb and itching at the same time is an unusual experience, although I seem to remember I've had it before.

I'm planning on doing a little more random stuff today, inside, nothing big, just stuff, and on Wednesday maybe consider another walk of about the same distance, walk out, catch bus back.

I am considering re-introducing inulin (prebiotic fiber), an additive I discontinued a few years back as it didn't seem to do much, but with my increasing my liquid food intake (protein shake with added bits) recently, which doesn't contain a whole lot of fibre, I'm looking for a convenient way of adding it back, and inulin seems to be under half the price it used to be. Price was one of the reasons I chose to drop it, it cost a lot, and didn't seem to do much, so it was out.

I'm also considering introducing C8 Mct Oil, a 'ketone booster', allegedly useful for increasing cognitive function and for weight loss, although the claimed stunning rates of weight loss seem rather pathetic to me, given what my body does when it's in the mood to drop weight. Given that one of the ways it is supposed to help weight loss is that it's quite filling, and allegedly blocks ones of the hunger hormones, it may help with making the shakes more filling, or at least last longer.

So, even though it seems horrendously expensive (£20 for about 2 weeks worth), I'm going to give it a try, I think.

If anyone has any experience with C8 Mct Oil then please pipe up.

ETA - after reading a couple of papers, and a combined summary of papers, on the oil, it looks like the effects are marginal at best, not really out of the range of placebo. It may have an effect if you're doing everything else right and have stalled, or have cognitive issues due to dieting, but for me, the effects would probably not be noticeable. Dropped to the back burner.

Today is not going well. I only got about 3 hours sleep and fully intended to go straight back to bed but that didn't happen. I could have got something done earlier but now I'm feeling the lack of sleep over the last week or so. My numbers which earlier said I was okay to do stuff now suggest I am not, so I'm either going to go back to bed for an hour or 3 or lie here dozing on the sofa, until my amazon delivery after 6pm, or until I have to start cooking as today is/was supposed to be a food prep day, so I have nothing out of the freezer that can just be microwaved, and 3 lots of stuff that was pulled out of the freezer to cook today, and consequently need cooking.

Cooking is probably all I can manage today (bolognese and maybe something simple with some fish, both of which I can more or less do in my sleep provided I can start moving to do them).

Hopefully I can manage that, and bump today to tomorrow, and tomorrow to Thursday lol

 

Slight diversion, I think I am going to give a high protein keto diet, with 1-2 refeeding days a week, a go for a couple of weeks and see how I get on.

I was slightly surprised just how much sugar is in skimmed milk, 10g in 200ml, even though I was aware that over half the calories in it came from sugars I'd never made the connection. I'm drinking about 500ml a day do that's 30g in sugars just from milk - which is a bit high given I am diabetic.

Given I've also drastically increased my fruit intake to 3-5 pieces a day this adds up, and it may not be surprising I can't control my appetite.

Of course eating less than 25g of carbs a day may be a problem, it's something I haven't done for a very long time, I was always more comfortable at 50-100g of carbs a day, but I'll see how it goes.

So my protein shakes will either have to be made with water of something like unsweetened almond milk, for a while, until I see how palpable that is, and if it's worth it.

I can't sleep much anyway so as that was one of the main side effects of low carb that stopped me doing it, nothing to lose.

Of course this presents the problem that my fridge is just too small for this type of diet without twice weekly shopping trips but I'll just have to see how I get on.

 

I'm making attempts to eat low carb, high fat at the moment. I've found my sleep has improved, but pain has generally worsened.

 

I 'may' remember that as a side effect of low carb, but that was a long time ago and things were pretty weird back then, pain was only one of the physical sensations I remember. Subsequent attempts over the years have mainly been stopped due to insomnia and my getting stupid, my brain doesn't work well without carbs.

I doubt it could get much stupider ATM, and I'm only averaging about 3 hours sleep a day.

Maybe it will help, maybe it will make it worse, but I'm fed up with my appetite being out of control and gaining weight so worth a short trial.

THe alpha lipoic acid may be helping with neuropathic pain, I've been able to stop taking gabapentin most nights, in fact I tend to only take it it for its mild help when I feel I must get sleep, and I have much better general painkillers than I used to have.

I hope you get your pain levels back under control.

 

I have this problem as well. I have wondered if my body and brain would eventually adapt, with sufficient time, to using fat/ketones for fuel or whether my need for carbs is built in with the foundations (so to speak) and can't be overcome. I have wondered if there is a way of finding out, but I don't know how to even begin investigating. Going down to 20 or 25 grams per day, or even less, makes me so stupid and so very, very weak, that I can't keep the experiments going for very long before I eat some carbs just to give me some energy and get my brain working again.

 

That's what the higher carb refeeding days are for, that and the fact I have rice, pasta, porridge, shepherd's pies, chips, etc. to use up.

I am anticipating that it will initially be drop carbs down to under 100g for a few days, then drop it fully for a few more days, then a higher carbs day, then drop down to 20-30g a day for a few days.

Yes I know this will keep knocking me out of ketosis, but the aim is more along the lines of a 2:5 Intermittent fasting diet, only switching to full on keto if it looks like it's worth it, and if I can handle it.

I am also aware this may make the adaptation period never ending, just going to try it and see. I know that the idea of deliberately mixing keto with calorie restriction is 'odd'.

I am not recommending it, having no experience with it, but being stupid and weak if carbs are too low is one of the things the MCT oil is supposed to help with. I have purchased a small amount (500ml) of the C8 variant, allegedly the most effective, definitely the most expensive, to see if it helps at all. I have found out that despite the advertised claims it does not work properly with coffee, it settles out to a thin layer on the surface meaning you don't ingest it, it just covers my lips lol. Seems to work better in a shake.

 

I've been trying to get into a keto diet for the last 18 months. I would give myself 3 out of 10 for effort. I keep plugging away, but it really is 10 steps forward, 9 steps back.

Due to MCT being so very expensive I've been using coconut oil which is often mentioned as a not-very-good substitute. I haven't really noticed much improvement.

I have the same effect with coconut oil. The way to get round it is to put the hot coffee and fats (and cream if you use it) into a big jug then use a stick blender (and hang on to the jug very tightly before turning on the blender if you don't want the jug skidding across the kitchen), or put the ingredients into a jug blender and use that. No oily lips then. Stick blenders are cheaper than jug blenders. I bought mine for a fiver from Morrisons many years ago. If you go to the Argos website they have some for £9.99, but I have no idea if they are any good.

 

I appear to have hit a problem with almond milk.

It appears the various powders I am adding to the whey shake are curdling it.

I initially blamed a new brand of l-arginine for the taste and the lumps, as that is lumpy even after attacking it with a mortar/pestle, and it's apparently quite common for people to complain l-arginine is acidic when changing brand.

But I just tasted one of the white lumps, it's not chemically, it's more like nut pulp, so it's possible it is nut pulp, which along with the taste of the shake would strongly suggest the almond milk has curdled.

On the plus side not having to buy it will save a small fortune, probably around a tenner a week, on the negative I'm not a fan of the taste of the shakes made with water, but then again it tastes better than it does made with almond milk.

Why not use a non dairy milk that doesn't curdle? Almond milk was the only one I could find without significant carbs/sugar. Even f it was about 4 times the price of diary milk.

I estimate my carbs intake was around 300g yesterday, 100g of pasta and a 2 handfuls of chips, not a very good start to keto lol

Today will be better but given tea is either pasta again or shepherd's pie it's probably going to be in the 150-200g range.

I'm eating the food I have rather than binning it, it's perfectly good food, in some cases lol, but once it runs out it will be replaced with more keto friendly stuff. I worked out a shopping list to go keto only for a week or 2 and it was expensive, mainly coz I don't have any of the keto staples, almost everything I have in the cupboard/freezer has at least some sugar/carbs in.

ETA - I wonder if it's the l-citrulline, as that tastes similar to grapefruit squash on it's own, and google suggests almond milk doesn't like acidity. I'll give it one more try but leave that out, that's perfectly acceptable to drink on it's own.

If it doesn't work it's going down the sink, and remade with water, sod the expense lol

It is pretty vile

 

Sorry I’m new to the thread @Wonko

In the not too distant past I did a massive piece of work on so called “superfoods” as part of research for a new range of products. One of the ingredients proposed was Maca powder. I worked with the biggest importer of this stuff into the UK who supplies pretty much every retail product.

After looking at the in depth nutrition and potential health claims, the only one that was valid was “source of vitamin C”. There was nothing else to be said about it. It was too expensive in the end to include because there were other things that were a lot cheaper that could give you the vitamin c and other claims.

The most worrying thing though was that when I asked the supplier for some evidence of conformity (specification, vitamin testing regime etc etc), they advised that they didn’t test the product !

So they sell a dubious powder that could be adulterated at source, they don’t measure any crop variation either ?

This is the supplier that supplies over 90% of all maca powder used in the UK (as well as most of the other dubious superfoods (greens powder, spirulina etc). We parted ways with this supplier (which we marked as red in our due diligence checks). I would strongly recommend avoiding anything made with maca powder that is made in the UK ...you may get more than you bargained for.

After that experience I decided to get my vitamin C from a third of a fresh red pepper a day. Much cheaper ..and you get more micronutrients and fibre.

Just thought I would share ..albeit probably too late.

 

This is unsweetened, it is less sweet than skimmed milk, which isn't surprising given the amount of sugar it doesn't have in it (0.0% vs 5.4%)

It makes a reasonable lukewarm coffee, apparently adding it to freshly made coffee will cause it to curdle. The main problem I have with it in coffee is that so much is needed to lighten the coffee (I'd estimate about a third of a mug, around 100ml or so, which is 3 times the amount of skimmed milk I would use, which is itself double the amount of semi-skimmed).

If I can get around this little curdling problem then I'm planning on trying unroasted unsweetened almond milk next.

If I can't then I'm not sure I can find a use for it, and 'milk' will probably have to go for a while, which is 'unfortunate' as I'm not that fond of green or fruit teas.

 

It's fine with whey, l-arginine and inulin.

Tomorrow i try the other 2 components, citrulline malate and Acetyl L Carnitine, to see which one is the problem, both taste pretty acidic.

Hopefully it's the citrulline malate as that's actually nice in a squash so no problem to regig.

Hopefully it's not both as Acetyl L Carnitine tastes vile in squash.

 

Hi @Wonko

It’s possible that it’s the whey that is precipitating. How easily this falls out will depend upon the quality of the whey powder. Some are more denatured via the spray drying than others. You should be ok with a good quality whey protein isolate as long as you avoid pH of 4.5.

I think inulin interacts with whey as well so this may also be a factor, so you may have to play around with mixing them separately or play around with the levels.

We call inulin, fart powder at work because it takes a good few weeks of eating it for the flatulence to subside. Are you using it for fibre or sweetness?

 

I have mixed it with whey (undenatured), inulin and l-arginine and it's fine, therefore it would seem to follow it is likely one of the other 2 components which is causing the almond milk to curdle.

I am using inulin for fibre.

The mixture is around 250ml milk, 30g whey, 6g l-arginine, 5g inulin, 1g citrulline malate, and around 1-2g of acetyl l carnitine, taken twice a day, if that's any help

It all works fine with skimmed milk, or water, it's only a problem with almond milk, and the lumps do taste like chewed nut.

If I could find a decent b complex powder, and a decent vitamin powder to add to it it would be an acceptable meal replacement, sort of like slim fast but with decent quality protein and a lot less sugar.

But I am unable to, so it's still pills and capsules for some things.

ETA - In the morning I am also adding about a tsp of C8 MCT oil, though only since yesterday - forgot about that so need to check if that's causing the curdling, although I consider that's unlikely.