Whatever it's called that is wrong with my brain is of little importance (especially since giving it a name has never seemed to help doctors effectively treat it). I have been diagnosed with some pretty serious mental disorders and if I thought telling you what names they have put in my patient files would help, I would mention it here. Because myo-inositol is not FDA approved to treat illnesses, vendors sell it as a supplement only and legally can't sell it for the treatment of anything, even though that's why people often buy it.
Even before my life-altering and traumatic event 10+ years ago, I had symptoms of mood instability, poor impulse control, anxiety- to name a few. These are the things that myo-inositol affected the most.
My mood was chaotic, fluctuating from depressed to the point of wanting to die to a megalomaniacal, euphoric state, and often those two would occur simultaneously. I'm sure those of you who know a thing or two about mental illness might think, "Oh, I know what that is!" Knowing what that is is pretty irrelevant when trying to treat it. I've tried close to 20 different mood stabilizers with varying degrees of success and in the end, even the most effective combination of the right ones left me with terrible side-effects and little relief.
My impulse control problems were not likely due to OCD, but more likely from another pathology. I would know about a particular boundary, possibly understand it, and might even really, really want to obey it, but, against my will at times, I would violate boundaries anyway and even when the consequences are well known to me. I couldn't reason it, will it, or medicate it away. I would have all the proof in the world not to do something, but still be driven to do it. It really got old years and years ago. My first memory of this happening, I was about 4 or 5 years old.
My anxiety was through the roof! This started at very young age with most of the other symptoms. I started drinking at a young age(8 or 9). Initially it wasn't to combat anxiety (I didn't even know the word or that what I was experiencing was anything other than how I was). I realized very quickly that alcohol was super effective in removing the anxiety and providing a superior comfort with interacting with others. If you're wondering how I managed to start at such a young age, you should spend some time with some Polish families... This approach was very effective and without consequence until high school. Up until that point, I generally drank very little (I had to- even at a young age I figured that I should keep it to a minimum so nobody noticed and I would, in turn, be able to keep it up). I never went to school intoxicated or even inebriated. But during the first part of high school, I started to experiment with getting drunk, which was how Pandora's Box was opened. Even though I kept it to the weekends and enjoyed how great it made me feel, as I increased the amount and frequency and would have black outs. By this point, I wasn't using it like medicine anymore. I will end my alcohol story there, because, as you can imagine, it only got worse. I had long periods where I didn't drink or do anything else. So for much of both middle and high school, I used exercise, vitamins, and nutrition to assist the problem... But it still prevented me from doing a lot. When I had just turned 17, right before I was supposed to become a senior, I looked right and not left (literally and metaphorically), and that truck changed my life (again, literally and metaphorically). I am not going to sit here and claim that I did nothing wrong and that I didn't deserve any of it, but this event took my awareness, my psyche, my soul to a place I wouldn't wish upon even my enemies. One incident, one moment can change a lifetime. Even to this day, I can't explain the full extent to what I experienced: not to my family, my friends, my therapists, not even my dog. From that point, it took everything in me to hang on, but everything just kept unraveling faster and harder. It wasn't until I grieved that I was able to start to get past it and I still have to fight back the tears. Perceptions were permanently hijacked, belief systems shattered, and my will to live seemed to be melting away like an ice-cube on a hot day. My anxiety was no longer a problem... It completely took over. I tried a variety of therapies, a variety of medications (many were addictive, which produced a new variety of problems), and when those failed, I sought help from drug dealers. Though smoking pot was very helpful, it wasn't practical to do long term. This cascade effect and dwindling desire to live, set me up to consider suicide as a potential solution. I had already had one close call with suicide in 8th grade, but had abandoned it until I thought my life, which was already unbearable, would continue to get worse- so yeah, the concept of ending my life seemed more logical than prolonging my agony. This continued until the end of last year. I had recently regained my faith, but still thought that dying was the only option left. I had plans of hanging myself, asphyxiation, or using a substance to either stop my body's ability to get oxygen or my heart's ability to contract. Ideally, I wanted it to not appear to be a suicide so my family would be spared from blaming themselves in any way. So, I prayed about it and every time I made a move to get ready to go through with killing myself, I received an answer of some kind. Not being convinced by these answers, I still had plans to end my life. Finally, out of the blue and without anything really provoking/preceding it, I had a vision that changed my life. What I saw was unimportant, but the message that came with it was "Not yet." Seeing as how I hadn't used a drug and that I have never had a hallucination of any kind like this, I was pretty stunned. So I vowed to not give up and to gaze upon my life in a different perspective. So I devoted my time and efforts to fixing myself which set the stage for the rest of my life.
Done with that lengthy explanation of how I got here. Now to explain what happened when I started supplementing with myo-inositol. I started with very low daily dosages and worked it up over time. I started with 1g/day for about a week. By the end of the week, I was noticing that the severity of my mood swings was decreasing. I increased it to 2g/day for a week. To my amazement, my mood swings were going away with great haste and the only side effect I noticed was loose stool. I kept it at 2g/day for a little longer (not certain if it was for an additional week or 2 weeks). I noticed that the longer I took it, the more I noticed my mood swings continued to improve. I then increased it to 3g/day. That seemed to be the tipping point for my mood swings, at this dosage they nearly vanished. What's more, by this point I noticed that I was able to control my impulses and no longer had a huge desire to use psychotropic drugs. Whether it has to do with my mood instability, impulse control improving, or some unrelated issue- I wasn't losing my temper like I was. In fact, it was as if I could be more reasonable and logical when interacting with other people, even people that drove me bonkers. A random and confusing thing changed as well: the hair on the back of my legs especially, but also elsewhere on my body had been gradually disappearing for 2-3 years before I started taking myo-inositol; after a month of taking it, nearly all of the missing hair came back... Right now it seems a little bizarre. As far as the anxiety is concerned- yes it helps, but CBD was more effective in that regard (and I might do a post just on anxiety relief options). And just to make sure I make this perfectly clear, the higher the dose means more of a problem with loose stool, BUT if you don't already have a problem with that sort of thing and are willing to wait it out, it does subside/even-out. I would suggest the possibility of increasing the daily dosage as gradually as possible to minimize that side effect (I was told that consuming a lot of sugar can do the same thing and is a practice used in children with constipation. Since myo-inositol's structure is very much like sugar, is nearly as sweet as sugar, it might be fair to consider the loose stool effect to be the body identifying it as a sugar).
All-in-all, I would never have guessed that myo-inositol would do so much. I still can't locate adequate information about how it effects the brain. It is naturally occurring in the body and can be found in various food (highest concentration in whole grains). It used to be called Vitamin B8 but is not considered an essential nutrient (ie. required in our diets). My thought is this, if we called it Vitamin B8 in the past, we must have thought that our bodies need it. Question came to be when I studied it and witnessed my reaction to taking it: can a person be deficient of myo-inositol? If so, what would cause a deficiency? Could people with certain conditions have a higher risk of deficiency compared to others? With fast paced lifestyle people are so used to, would a diet deprived of foods that contain myo-inositol have any impact on the brain and/or body? Though important questions to consider, answering them would likely produce more questions.
Something to leave you with (tried to html the images into the post but .jpg and .png images didn't appear correctly with my limited html skills):
Click on hyperlink text to view image
This enzyme...
Is our body's manufacturing site of the phosphate version of...
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