For me personally, it's not a chilling effects. Its a tired like I just want to be asleep feeling.
Cordyceps seem to be hit or miss for alot of people. Have certainly heard alot of people who love it for endurance!
But google cordyceps, fatigue, adenosine and theres alot of people where it makes them tired.
For anyone reading, I asked him if it was okay that I mentioned him having a hypersensitivity to anything that affects acetylcholine levels before posting this just to make sure he was okay with it. He's talked about it openly before, but I always like to be respectful and make sure.
In his case, he's probably the most hyper sensitive person to anything that effects Acetylcholine that I've ever known of - and I think the response to Cordyceps may be related to that.
Here is something that I expect may be very relevant to this particular situation that may not have realized, and it may be relevant to anyone else with extreme acetylcholine hypersensitivity, and also explain it for people that don't so they don't have to worry about it themselves.
- A major factor in improving cardiovascular endurance is lowering the heart rate.
- A lower resting heart rate makes the heart more efficient, allowing it to pump a larger volume of blood with each beat, which then reduces the need to beat as often because it requires fewer beats to meet the body’s oxygen needs (increased efficiency of oxygen delivery).
^^^ This is generally a wonderful thing and goal of most endurance athletes.
Cordyceps is great for cardiovascular endurance because it can help/support:
- Increased oxygen utilization and efficiency
- Enhanced ATP production
- Lactate threshold improvement
- Reduced fatigue by improving mitochondrial function
- Improved blood flow and delivering more oxygen to working muscles
- Adaptogenic Properties: Cordyceps has strong adaptogenic properties, meaning that it helps the body better handle both physical and mental stress. This is especially important for athletes who train hard and need to recover efficiently between workouts or events.
- Studies have shown that Cordyceps may lower heart rate though mechanisms such as improved blood flow and improved cardiovascular efficiency.
^^^ this is great for most people, especially endurance athletes and people who want to increase their cardiovascular endurance.
The problem in your case, and the case of others that have hypersensitivities to acetylcholine levels, is that lowering the heart rate is directly linked to increased acetylcholine levels.
Here’s how this works:
- As shown above, lowering heart rate is good for endurance athletes because it increases oxygen efficiency and delivery.
- As shown above, Cordyceps has been shown to support oxygen efficiency and delivery and has been shown in some studies to lower heart rate and improve cardiovascular efficiency.
- Parasympathetic activity: The actions or function of the parasympathetic nervous system, a brand of the autonomic nervous system that is involved in calming the body, slowing heart rate, and breathing.
- Lowering heart rate, particularly through parasympathetic activity, is directly linked to increased acetylcholine levels. The parasympathetic nervous system, which releases acetylcholine, plays a key role in slowing down the heart rate, and this mechanism involves acetylcholine binding to M2 receptors in heart cells.
- While increasing acetylcholine is involved in alertness and increased levels can sometimes cause excitability, increased levels can cause tiredness in certain contexts – such as when the heart rate is low, an increase in acetylcholine can contribute to tiredness.
So basically, even though Cordyceps doesn't directly effect acetylcholine levels, the method of action through which it works, and especially for specialized extracts how well they work - its the way that it works that may be influencing your acetylcholine levels and it explains the tiredness aspect of it.
This wouldn't apply to the average person, or 99% of people, but hopefully it may help you in the future too when you think about methods of action with other things that may improve heart rate and oxygen utilization.