As those who follow this blog know, I have found a combination of solutions that has kept the music out of my head for most of the past 2+ years now.
But I didn’t really know which parts were necessary, so I tried taking one part out: the phosphatidyl serine (PS). I didn’t stop it completely, but reduced my daily dose from 300 mg to 150 mg. It seemed to be fine, as I’d been on this reduced dose for about a month and had had no problems.
However, I was only cautiously optimistic because PS takes a long time to build up in your brain, and presumably would take an equally long time to deplete.
In the meantime, I took on a rather manic project to produce a video in just a few days to support a proposal for one of my clients. A few days stretched into a week when they got an extension and asked us to add a couple of animations to the video. And with the video goes music, three short pieces. And so for a week of sometimes 12+ hour days, I sat with my video editor making cut after cut, tweak after tweak…all with the music bits playing along with the images onscreen, sometimes even editing the music to make it fit the visuals.
So not only was I pumping out tons of cortisol to stay on my toes and try to figure out what key concepts from two 100-page proposals needed to be conveyed in this brief 6 minute piece, but I was drumming the same 6 minutes of music into my head over and over in that high cortisol state.
Granted, that alone should have earned me this current soundtrack. But I fear that cutting back the PS may have been really bad timing. We finished the video last Friday, but the music didn’t stick right away. It has been slowly creeping in a little more each day, mostly in the morning then fading out… until today, when it has really become bothersome, intruding into my thoughts. It is now 3:00 in the afternoon and the music is finally calming down now. Then again, I took 200 mg of PS at 10 am. I don’t think the PS can possibly work that fast, but it may be a factor, for what it’s worth.
So just in case cutting back on the PS has played any part in this recent recurrence of the AMLs, I’ve decided to go back to 300 mg of PS daily until I am far enough away from a music-loop-inducing situation that I can try weaning off the PS again and see what happens.
I’ll keep you posted on this ongoing science experiment in my brain.
Wishing you peace and quiet,
Pat
Hey I’m relatively new to this blog, but man it feels so good knowing people are out there like myself. I was wondering how the PS works for you as I have really not tried any natural supplements, only failed experiences with SSRIs and other psychiatric drugs.
Honestly Matt, I’m not sure. I know that the AMLs started creeping back in over the past month, but I don’t know which of three possible factors might have caused it. (1) I had cut back from 300 mg of PS a day to 200 mg/day, (2) I also had low estrogen symptoms and suspect I’d gotten a bad box of hormone patches. And (3) I’d taken xanax (just a teeny amount) every night for nearly a month to suppress the vertigo episode before I finally got rid of the vertigo and stopped the xanax.
I’ve since gone back up to 300 mg of the PS and the AMLs are much quieter. But I’m also supplementing my estrogen with a bioidentical (natural to humans) estrogen cream…which quieted the music to almost nothing.
I’d say for me the PS helps, just as the the Relora did. But the PS is longer acting. It builds up in your brain over time. The Relora helps quickly (within about 30 min for me) and wears off quickly.
If you want to experiment with cortisol reducing supplements, I’d start with the Relora. If you see any dimming of the music at all with a single dose, then maybe cortisol is part of your trigger and a higher dose of Relora (plus PS for the longer term) may help. Sadly, the PS is expensive ($50 a bottle some places), which is partly why I decided to see if I could cut back.
Keep in mind that these supplements only take the edge off the AMLs for me. It was the hormones (in the right amounts and timings) that completely got rid of my AMLs. BTW, the Relora may make you sleepy so take it at bedtime.
Good luck and keep us posted.