Magnesium - A Very Powerful Anxiety Cure

[Hip]

I understand that generalized anxiety is one of the most debilitating symptoms for many Morgellon's sufferers.

A powerful method to tackle anxiety is via high dose magnesium. This is a safe and natural approach, but is highly effective.

You should take oral magnesium supplements (preferably with balanced calcium) to around 500 mg to 1000 mg daily, but unfortunately you cannot take much more than that orally otherwise it causes diarrhea.

So after taking as much magnesium orally (say 500 mg daily) as your bowel can comfortably handle, you then take some additional magnesium, but this time transdermally - that is, via your skin.

You can buy transdermal magnesium creams, but it is much cheaper and easier to make your own. This is achieved by buying some Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate) from the pharmacy, which costs very little (perhaps $2), make up a VERY strong solution (dissolve in as much as you can) of these salts in tap water (or distilled water is even better), and rub just a tablespoon or three of this water on you skin every day, all over your body, and let it dry. If this stings on the skin, then just dilute your solution a bit with fresh water until it does not sting. You can perform this skin application even twice a day if necessary.

Apply this Epsom salts solution to as much skin area as you can, to get the maximum absorption.

This transdermal magnesium sulfate remedy is given frequently to autistic children, who seem to benefit highly from it. It also often used in chronic fatigue syndrome.

High dose magnesium is one of the most powerful natural anti-anxiety supplements you can get. It is not addictive, and there are no real side effects.

With a few hours of performing this transdermal magnesium protocol, you should feel a wave of calmness and a new sense of tranquillity come over your mind.

It works because magnesium prevents the NMDA receptors in the brain (which mediate anxiety) for getting overstimulated, thereby calming you down.

Highly recommended.

I hope this helps.

It does wonders for my own anxiety problems. (I have GAD - generalized anxiety disorder - as part of the symptoms of my chronic fatigue syndrome).

[Katinka]

Hello Hip and welcome to the forum! What a great first post!... It hit the nail on the head!

YES! Magnesium is a essential supplement for Morgies. It has many, many benefits, not only against anxiety but also plays a main role in metabolism and cell function. It's also a great mineral to detox.

I believe, that magnesium deficiency is part of our disease. Also low potassium levels. This leads to a disturbed calcium absorption which in the other hand interferes with lysosome enzymes we need to break down heavy metals, bacteria, viruses and other pathogens.

IMO we all have a dysfunctional metabolism and extra doses of Magnesium, like you said, are very helpful.

Thank you..your input is very much appreciated!

Kat

[Hip]

Thanks very much Kat.

I don't have Morgellon's, but instead I am reasonably sure that I have CFS/ME (chronic fatigue syndrome), which appeared after catching a respiratory virus.

I experienced constant extreme anxiety levels as a result. Anyone that has had this experience of extreme anxiety knows that sometimes you often cannot even think, watch TV, or follow a normal conversation when you have it, and it really impacts on your overall state in your mind.

It has taken me several years of trial and error to come up with an anti-anxiety regimen that keeps my anxiety more or less under control, and I am very grateful to have found supplements that can do this. The SSRI drugs I tried did not really help, so I had to develop an anti-anxiety regimen for myself.

I am posting up this effective anti-anxiety regimen, in case it helps anyone else in the same dire situation. I have a lot of empathy for anyone with extreme anxiety.

Some of the supplement ideas are ones that you are probably familiar with, such as the Salt & C protocol. Others may be new.

This anxiety is biochemically-caused: it comes from biochemical processes in the body created by the infection, so it is best treated by supplements. Very often, anxiety is caused by one or more chemical substances in the brain activating the NMDA switches on brain cells that turn on anxiety.

Things like relaxation techniques, meditation, yoga, etc, I found are generally just not strong enough to combat these extreme biochemically-caused anxiety levels.


THE ANTI-ANXIETY REGIMEN:

The 6 main daily anti-anxiety supplements I found that work very well are:

(1) Drinking 5 grams of vitamin C powder mixed in a large glass of water (say 300 ml), 3 times a day (5 grams is approximately a lightly heaped teaspoon). It is best not to take more than 5 grams at one time, as higher doses of vitamin C can cause diarrhea. You can put in half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda into this drink (which you can easily get at your supermarket or grocery store) to neutralize the acidity of vitamin C. This bicarbonate of soda does not reduce the power of the vitamin C.

Not many people know that vitamin C has been shown to have efficacy similar to the tranquilizer Haloperidol.

Tip: If you mix in a teaspoon of sea salt to this vitamin C drink as well, you will also be doing the "Salt and Vitamin C" protocol that I understand has proved very helpful for Morgellon's (and in my case, the additional salt seems to further decrease anxiety levels).

Tip: search for "ascorbic acid powder" online (and eBay), and you will find bulk vitamin C powder at very good prices.

(2) Take Soya lecithin, a 1200 mg capsule, twice a day. This is a great calming and anti-depressive supplement.

(3) Milk Thistle: at the same time as taking the Soya lecithin, take around 1000 mg of milk thistle herb (as lecithin greatly improves the absorption and bioavailability of milk thistle). Milk thistle is an excellent liver booster, but I also found it has a powerful calming effect.

(4) Inositol, 4 to 10 grams once a day. Inositol is a B-vitamin. Inositol helps the liver, but more importantly, inositol is a natural serotonin booster, as good as SSRI drugs, but with no bad side effects, just benefits. So this makes inositol a very powerful anti-anxiety and anti-depression supplement.

Tip: search for "inositol powder" online (much cheaper than buying inositol tablets). It tastes nice too.

(5) High dose transdermal magnesium supplementation (as described in my previous post). This is an important cornerstone of the anti-anxiety regimen. You have to take magnesium transdermally (that is, absorbed through your skin), because oral magnesium supplementation alone cannot deliver enough into the body.

Tip: Anxiety found in autism is often treated with transdermal magnesium, plus the addition of 100 mg vitamin B6 tablets. So it is worth taking some vitamin B6 as well as the magnesium.

(6) High dose Evening Primrose Oil, 2000 mg capsules, 3 times a day. This one worked very well for lowering my anxiety. I am not sure if it will work in Morgellon's, but it is certainly worth trying.



The above 6 are the most powerful anti-anxiety supplements I have found. I take most of them every day, and feel much better as a result.

In case you need extra anxiety-proofing (on those really bad days), these additional supplements are also effective in eliminating anxiety:

Vitamin B1 100 mg 2 times each day
Vitamin B6 100 mg 2 times each day
Zinc 25 mg 2 times a day

L-Tyrosine 500 mg 3 times each day
L-Taurine 2000 mg 3 times a day
Picamilon (a drug) 50 mg 3 times each day
Acetyl-L-Carnitine 500 mg 3 times a day

Cetirizine or
Loratadine (anti-histamines) 10 mg once a day. These have a noticeable calming effect.

Take as and when needed, or add a few of them to your daily anti-anxiety regimen.

Some anti-anxiety herbs:

Cat's claw
Rhodiola rosea
Ashwagandha
Bacopa monniera
Chamomile
Lavender
Terminalia Chebula

I found that once you get your anxiety levels down, you start doing things better, and can think more clearly. You can talk to your doctors more calmly, and set about find treatments for your condition with more clarity. Your perspective on things also slowly gets better.

So I realized it is crucial to treat the anxiety before treating any of the other symptoms of my CFS/ME, and I think the same may apply to Morgellons-disease, Lyme disease, and any other conditions in which anxiety plays a prominent role, including GAD (generalized anxiety disorder) itself.


EXTREME ANXIETY, TOUCHING PSYCHOSIS

It is well-known that in anxiety disorders, on days when your anxiety levels get extremely high, your mental state can almost border on psychosis, meaning that you can start to become disorganized in your thinking, and you loose judgement and discernment, and become less able to comprehend or deal with reality, and social situations. This is the extreme end of anxiety disorder. Perhaps many people here, myself included, have been in his state at one point or other. When you are in state of mind, you often realise yourself that your are there, and it is not pleasant (to say the very least!). Fortunately, I found there are two effective vitamin supplements that can rapidly tackle this mini-psychosis state:

The first is the one already described above: drinking 5 grams of vitamin C mixed in a large glass of water, 3 times a day. As mentioned, high dose vitamin C has efficacy similar to Haloperidol, which is a powerful anti-psychotic drug, used to treat schizophrenia. Simple vitamin C can be as powerful as the drug Haloperidol, and with none of its side effects.

In addition, Vitamin B3 (200 mg 2 to 3 times each day) has powerful anti-psychotic action. You can take either the niacin form of vitamin B3, which will flush blood to your skin (which is actually very good for your skin, and your cardiovascular system); or you can take the niacinamide form of vitamin B3 (which does not casue this flush).

So next time you begin to feel really on edge with your anxiety, just take 5 gram of vitamin C powder, and 200 mg of vitamin B3, three times a day, and you will find these two may well bring your mental state back to normal within a few hours or so.

You can take this high dose vitamin B3 plus vitamin C as part of your daily regimen, which should keep these extreme anxiety states from appearing. Both are very safe.

[lamb]

Terrific post. Gotta add a few extras to my regime, but you are on the right track. I started taking 80% of your suggestions per TCM's posts about 2 months ago and my blood pressure and brain fog have vastly improved. I still have full blown m but I am dealing with it in a healthier way and as a parent,
that is huge!
Life is still minute to minute, but it sure helps. God Bless us all.

[Kritters]

Hello Hip and a major welcome to this forum. And you are definitely 'hip' ;-)

As Kat said, great first (and hopefully not last) post.

I didn't realize that epsom salts is basically magnesium. No wonder it works so well for so many things.

What do you think of bathing in a cup of it in water as an alternative? It's worked wonders for me with clearing up lesions and soothing aching muscles.

Kritters

[Hip]

Hi Kritters

Bathing in Espom Salts will work, and is done this way by many people, but if you are going to do this every day (and you need to do it daily to keep anxiety away), then you'll start to get through a lot of Espom Salts. People who take Espom Salts baths to calm the mind say you really need two coffee mugs full of Espom Salts in a bath, in order to to get a good dose through your skin. This is quite a lot of Espom Salts.

So it is much more economical to apply Epsom Salts just after your bath (and after a quick towel dry), when you skin is still damp. You only need to use say two tablespoons of Espom Salts this way, dissolved in a very small amount of water (1/8 cup of water). Splash this on, and it will dry with a minute or so, and the Epsom Salts will slowly be absorbed by your skin.

In other words, if you apply just two tablespoons of concentrated Epson Salts & water directly to your skin, you will actually be getting a higher concentration of Epsom Salts on your skin, than you would with several mug fulls of Epson Salts diluted in the bathwater.

A more convenient (and equally economical) way to apply Espom Salts is to make up a few pints of Epsom Salts solution in water, and store this in a large spray bottle (like the household cleaning spray bottles that you get these days), and spray yourself from head to toe after your bath or shower. This takes just a few seconds, and is very convenient. If possible keep the spray bottle in a warm place, so that when you use it, it does not feel too cold on your skin.

Also, this spray bottle is very handy in an "anxiety emergency": you can just go to the bathroom and quickly spray yourself all over, and within an hour so so you will start to become calmer, as the soothing magnesium works its way into your nervous system.

Myself, as soon as I feel any anxiety even beginning to build up, I use this spray, and this remedies the situation, so that the anxiety never fully manifests.

ONE OTHER THING: Apart from the anti-anxiety capabilities of magnesium salts, magnesium salts are often very good for the skin itself, especially for treating skin complaints like psoriasis or eczema. So there is a double benefit with Epsom Salts: it treats anxiety AND cures skin complaints.

You can also use other magnesium salts on your skin, such as: magnesium chloride, magnesium hydroxide, or magnesium oxide as an alternative, and these will work more or less equally well. However, Epsom Salts (= magnesium sulfate) is usually the easiest to find, and cheapest.

Note that you should also take magnesium with calcium tablets orally: the best dose is a tablet with up to 500 mg of magnesium plus 1000 mg calcium. The body needs a balance between magnesium and calcium, so this is why you should include calcium in your oral tablet. Many magnesium tablets you can buy do contain calcium in a balanced amount.