Guest guest Posted December 31, 2009 Report Share Posted December 31, 2009 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted January 1, 2010 Report Share Posted January 1, 2010 > > 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted January 8, 2010 Report Share Posted January 8, 2010 > 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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