namenda,cfids, alzheimers

[Guest guest]

A Dr suggested that I try Namenda. I have cfids and toxic brain diagnosis, and

he said my SPECT scan looked similar to alzheimers.(although not actually

alzheimers)

Namenda protects braincell from glutamate. Is this useful for us with cfids?

another drug aricpet used for alzheimers increases amount of neurotransmitters

acetylcholine in brain.

Does namenda or aricept go through p-450/liver

Has anyone tried these meds?

here is an interesting slideshow about the brain in general and

alzheimers/memory things and the brain

http://www.alz.org/alzheimers_disease_4719.asp

and other info here

Amy

[Guest guest]

>

> Namenda protects braincell from glutamate. Is this useful for us

> with cfids?

Unlike other NMDA antagonists, Namenda increased my mold/dust -> TRPA1

stimulation -> muscle tension. It also wiped out the effects of the

anti-muscarinic drug trihexyphenidyl. This paper found that Namenda is a

muscarinic stimulant.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18198419

Besides the brain boost (which I didn't get, probably because I have no

cognitive problems), muscarinic stimulation could also prevent beta-amyloid

plaque accumulation, since it appears to be required for alpha-secretase

activity. Alpha-secretase (good) and beta-secretase (bad) compete with each

other to cleave the amyloid precursor protein.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16423497

Muscarinic stimulation also prevents hyper-phosphorylation of tau proteins

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16900665

" Little metabolism with 57% to 82% excreted unchanged in the urine and remainder

eliminated as 3 polar metabolites that possess minimal activity. "

http://www.drugs.com/ppa/memantine-hydrochloride.html

Note the huge 60-80 hour half-life. It took 3-4 days for it to stop messing with

me, depending on how long I had been taking it.

Namenda inhibits CYP2B6.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15378224

[Guest guest]

> Namenda protects braincell from glutamate. Is this useful for us

> with cfids?

>

> another drug aricpet used for alzheimers increases amount of

> neurotransmitters acetylcholine in brain.

Here's a sobering paper about combining those two drugs entitled " Donepezil

markedly potentiates memantine neurotoxicity in the adult rat brain " .

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2246087/?tool=pubmed

In other Olney group papers, they show that at neuroprotective levels, NMDA

antagonists have the side effect of increasing stimulation of sigma, M3

(cholinergic), and kainate (glutamatergic) receptors. That increased activity

causes brain damage. The NMDA antagonists can be " safened " by stacking them with

alpha-2 agonists (like clonidine) which reduce acetylcholine secretion. That

seems to be their preferred method (in part because clonidine has also been

shown to augment the effects of NMDA antagonists in the treatment of neuropathic

pain), but they also got good results with anti-muscarinics, GABA-A agonists,

kainate antagonists, and 5-HT2A agonists. This paragraph is much easier to

understand if you look at the figures on pages 2 and 3 of this patent.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=uBcBAAAAEBAJ & printsec=drawing & zoom=4#v=onepage & \

q= & f=false

In the donepezil/memantine paper, they argue that memantine hasn't been

neurotoxic in humans because the 20 mg/day dose is too low to reach the

neuroprotective/neurotoxic level. But with escalating memantine doses combined

with donepezil, all bets are off.

Memantine may not reach neuroprotective levels, but it still seems to do some

meaningful NMDA antagonism, since so many people report that it eliminates

amphetamine and opioid tolerance.

Olney mentions that CFS could be treated by ketamine + clonidine in this patent.

The only examples, however, are for complex regional pain syndrome and herpetic

shingles. The patients get hammered continuously for 2 to 5 days with enough IV

ketamine to slur their speech but not enough to knock them out.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=t5OWAAAAEBAJ & printsec=abstract & zoom=4 & source=gb\

s_overview_r & cad=0#v=onepage & q= & f=false

More detailed results are in this paper.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15367304