I'll be honest, and say I don't think it had anything at all to do with M4OHN. You were hardly taking enough to do anything at all, let alone induce Parkinsons.
Just because you haven't seen one, you may not believe in giraffes, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
Doctor, why don't you wait a while and reserve judgment to see if there aren't others out there? I don't make any claim except that it happened to me and I believe the M4OHN I used was involved. Some drug reactions are one in a million (did I mention neuroleptic malignant syndrome?), some aren't. I read on one of these boards in the last couple of days that someone was in the ICU from what sounded like rhabdomyolysis due to their muscle building activities. Although no specific drug was mentioned, dopamine blockers can do that (rarely).(...By the way, why is everyone calling M4OHN and methyl Di pro-hormones when they patently are not?)
You said you take a whole host of nootropics, among other things. Why don't you let us in on what all you take, what kind of training and diet you have, etc.
I'm certainly not ruling out nootropics as one factor, but I been on a stable regimen for over a year with no trouble at all, and I'm still on it with no trouble now that I'm off the M4OHN.
At 43 I have gotten out of shape. Looking to lean down mostly with a small amount of bulking. Have been on medically supervised Adkins diet, less than 50 Carbs daily. (however, the M4OHN was my idea- I did a similar thing in the military in the 80's, back before they banned deca and started looking for it in the tests.)
My nutritional status is fine (B vitamin levels, etc), heart fine. Kidneys fine. No torsion (or any other) trauma to the head.
Workouts mostly daily aerobic exercise on lifecycle and other machines of that kind. Only light resistance training.
Lost 25 Lbs (over 2 months of dieting), and that does not take into account what must have been 20 Lbs of added muscle mass- my legs have become tree-trunks. Adkins alone can add some muscle it seems like, but the effects of the M4OHN (started a month after the diet began) were dynamite at first!
And why would you be taking nootropics in the first place? Weren't they invented for people with conditions like Parkinsons?
Hey, some folks want to pump up their bodies, some want to pump up their brain. As for me, my brain is my second favorite organ, so I want to treat it right.
The thing is, a lot of compounds with nootropic action are totally familiar to bodybuilders. It seems that both muscle and brain are high energy organs- so things that help create or utilize energy are seen in both hobbies. Many or most nootropics are antioxidant and can also protect neurons from injury from high calcium levels, hypoxia and over-excitation.
My nootropic stack?
creatine- only about 1-2 gram a day, but it synergises with the piracetam (about 2 grams a day). Try it sometimes- fantastic combo. I first reported on that one in rec.drugs.smart a while back. No idea why it synergises, but it sure does.
I may also take a gram of aniracetam, which is lipid-soluble, and lasts longer than piracetam . These -acetams have been used all over the world for decades (US excluded until recently they came out as supplements), and are remarkably non-toxic in real life. They are also
commonly stacked. Just TRY finding a case of a serious adverse reaction in the literature.
Add to that about 100mg (low-dose) Alpha GPC for added acetyl choline.
Then a tad (perhaps 60mg) idebenone, a co-Q10 analogue that increases the efficiency of the electron transport chain- which is what you need if you want to have no problem phosporylating that creatine floating around in your system.
Then, letsee, I keep my liver and mitochondria anti-oxidized with vitamin E and Alpha lipoic acid.
Then there's a gram of TMG (along with B-50 on many days to keep the reactions moving in the right direction).
Dr. Brodus, given your general skeptical tone, I can well guess what sweeping generalization you might give. What I challenge you to do is to give a cogent specific argument, based on more knowledge than you have shown about MDMA (which I will get to).
Now, how many of those nootropics can you spot that can influence the dopaminergic system? Since you probably wouldn't know, I will fill you in:
1) Piracetam and aniracetam tend to increase DA release (but not by direct action on the receptor), at least in rats.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=8974570
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=8061686
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=3035858
2) Alpha GPC increases acetyl choline, and would be expected to have a mild inhibitory effect on dopamine in the substantia nigra.
3) ALA increases dopaminergic transmission, especially in old rats like me.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12559418
4) Creatine and idebenone act in every cell in your body. There is mixed evidence regarding whether idebenone can increase free radicals (probably in proportion to the degree it increases ATP production). The in-vivo evidence looks like it actually acts as an anti-oxidant, much like Co-Q10.
5) TMG converts to SAM-e, which is necessary for both the production and breakdown of DA. It also becomes glutathione, which is a critically important antioxidant int he brain and liver.
If, for the sake of argument, excess free radicals from idebenone led to a toxic effect, I would not be getting better, so we can rule that one out.
You are 43--do you have a latent condition, perhaps?
I am NOT a homosexual!
;-)
But seriously, even if I had something ready to blow-up on me:
-My life of loose cars and fast women catching up
-My nootropic cocktail of death
-Impending idiopathic parkinsons disease that has not previously declared itself
The facts remain this: Those have all remained the same throughout this odyssey. I start the M4OHN and a few weeks later I get cogwheeling. I quit the M4OHN and the cogwheeling resolves over about a week.
The M4OHN is doing something to my dopamine receptors.
And BTW, you're incorrect about the link between MDMA and Parkinson's-like symptoms. I have read three studies that show there is a definite link, particularly in chronic users. One study may have been debunked, but it's pretty common knowledge now that Ecstasy fucks you up good. But you don't need a study to tell you that--I can point to ten or fifteen people I know that changed irreparably for the worst after a lot of MDMA binging...you wouldn't happen to be a regular MDMA user, would you?
Why no, but I have been taking antipsychotics for the last 20 years.
Jeeez. I'd think you were trying to besmirch my good reputation if it weren't for the fact that I have no reputation at all around here.
I have met Alexander Shulgin though. His brain works just fine.
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/shulgin/
By the way- the damage caused by MDMA is to the serotonin system, not dopamine system. There were a few papers after Ricuarte's screw-up that took it as a matter of
fact, but it just ain't so with the dopamine. What ravers get off the street is typically NOT MDMA, and can be anything from Meth (a dopamine toxin, frequently seen to cause psychosis) to PMA (a truly nasty drug that has led to hyperthermic deaths).
In the end, I'm not here to prove anything, but I had this happen to me, that it is, in my estimation directly (if not wholly) related to M4OHN, and that I had better share my experience as the ethical thing to do.
Read the posts as they come in. If no one else had shuffling gait or cogwheeling, that says something, don't it? If a few people had those problems, that says something else. If a lot of people remark that they didn't know what it was, but that they did get those symptoms, it means yet something else.
Quit making rash judgments, Dr Brodus and read the posts.
Oh yeah; the thing about me taking antipsychotics? Just checking to see if you were paying attention.
INFOHAZARD
Come and visit at rec.drugs.smart- The water's fine