Methylene Blue

[messtafarian]

Wow! You're *glowing!

I was thinking about starting at 5ml. It's a low dose but it would probably be enough to see if I felt better in some way but also probably low enough not to set off reactivity.

Very interested. Please post your findings. I've got one day left of levaquin and then I'm going to dilute my fish drugs and start :)

 

[charlie]

Ray Peat writes about methylene blue in this months newsletter.

 

[messtafarian]

:). Yes, Charlie, he sent it to me:

Receptors, fields, and therapies

The understanding of vitamin C as an antioxidant, and the protective role of antioxidants in general, has been powerfully influenced by the fact that ascorbic acid is a strong reductant. This has contributed to a popular belief that a "reduced state," rather than an "oxidized state," of the cell is better.

When Szent-Gyorgyi discovered ascorbic acid, he was interested in catalysts of oxidative respiration, and his view of life was focused on the importance of maintaining a slightly oxidized, "semiconductive" state in cellular proteins. He repeatedly demonstrated that it was often a molecule's electron affinity or redox potential, rather than its shape, that governed its biological activity.

Dehydroascorbate, the oxidized form of vitamin C, is the main form of the molecule in the healthy cell. Szent-Gyorgyi believed that it, and other oxidative molecules, possibly including substances related to methylglyoxal, served to maintain cellular respiration, and to prevent cancer. Szent-Gyorgyi's views, like those of W.F. Koch and Otto Warburg, failed to resonate with the culture of science--but I think that much of that culture is a house of cards, that is collapsing, slowly.

W.F. Koch was the pioneer of the idea that an oxidative catalyst could restore cellular respiration, and restore health in cases of chronic infection, allergies, and cancer. Like Szent-Gyorgyi and Warburg, Koch's attention was on restoring the organism's resistance to disease, not on killing "the pathogen." When his reagent was used to cure mastitis in dairy cows, it was found that there were more bacteria in the udders of the healthy cows than had been present during the "infection." His reagent seems to have made the bacteria non-pathogenic, by improving the resistance of the host.

Practically all contemporary medical treatments are guided by a paradigm of mechanical lock-and-key (shape-based) receptor interactions which has been unable to solve the most important health problems. Therapies based on a new paradigm are now becoming available. Familiar substances, seen in a new perspective, are already producing surprisingly good effects in some "incurable" diseases.

Paul Ehrlich was the person most responsible for creating the "receptor" idea in biology, starting with a theory about chemotherapy, and then developing it into a theory of how organisms become immune to disease. He is often described as the discoverer of humoral (antibody) immunity, and his idea of a "magic bullet" inspired a century of chemotherapeutics, hoping to find a nontoxic chemical that would kill pathogenic organisms and cancer cells. The accidental discovery of antibiotics seemed to confirm that Ehrlich had been on the right track.

Ehrlich shared the 1908 Nobel Prize with Elie Metchnikoff (Ilya Mechnikov), an embryologist who discovered phagocytosis, or "cellular immunity," and who viewed immunity as a part of developmental biology, in which life is seen as a process of creating and maintaining organization.

Ehrlich campaigned against Mechnikov's approach which ascribed intentionality or purposeful behavior to an individual cell, which could identify and destroy harmful material or organisms. He described it as "mysticism, the Russian fog," as opposed to real science, in which substances interacted according to physical, essentially mechanical, principles. Mechnikov's approach didn't obviously lead to medical products, and Ehrlich had worked closely with the chemical dye industry, so Ehrlich's orientation had great cultural and financial support, and phagocytosis research was subordinated.

The physics of the 19th century had no principles to explain physical and chemical interactions other than by mechanical and local electrical or chemical forces, so explanations of biological processes naturally elaborated hypothetical local interactions. Ehrlich developed a variety of new tissue staining methods, using dyes that were being manufactured in Germany from coal, and theorized that the dyes' apparent selectivity for certain cells' chemical properties could be used to deliver toxins such as arsenic to pathogenic cells that cause diseases such as sleeping sickness, tuberculosis, malaria, or syphilis, or to cancer cells.

I think his most useful work might have been with the dye methylene blue, which he discovered stains the nervous system. In 1891 (P Guttmann and P Ehrlich, Collected Papers) he used methylene blue, by itself, to treat two cases of malaria that appeared (mysteriously) in Berlin. In both cases, the symptoms disappeared and the parasites disappeared from the blood cells after a few days. It confirmed his belief that substances could be found that were toxic to pathogens and practically non-toxic to the patients. One of his beliefs, based on his use of dyes to selectively stain certain cellular structures, was that toxic substances could be delivered selectively to pathogens because of a selective affinity for their unique receptors or "side chains." Because he had previously found that the dye accumulated in the living nervous system, he was aware that it wasn't seriously toxic to mammals and people, but he believed it just happened to be toxic to the parasite.

In the last century, new information about the effects of methylene blue has accumulated, making it possible to reinterpret Ehrlich's work, and the research directly guided by his ideas, including the discovery of the sulfa drugs, anti-inflammatory and antipsychotic drugs. Ideas of cellular coherence, polarizability of molecules and cells, liquid crystalline phase changes, and other non-local properties of molecular systems have established a basis for a complete revision of the "cell model" that dominated the 20th century.

The lock-and-key idea, as applied to "receptors," enzymes, and antibodies, implies that a closely complementary spatial arrangement of specific atoms determines the biological effect. Several types of evidence show that there is more to cellular activation than a good spatial and chemical fit between effector and receptor. For example, Luca Turin (e.g., Franco, et al., 2011) has shown (in people and animals) that the way molecules vibrate governs the way they smell. Molecules with different shapes, but similar vibrations, smell the same, molecules with similar shapes, but different vibrations, don't smell the same. When deuterium (hydrogen that contains a neutron as well as a proton in its nucleus) is substituted in a molecule for hydrogen, the molecule has the same shape, but vibrates differently, and fruit flies can tell the difference by smell. They will reject a favored food when its molecules contain the heavy form of hydrogen. In Turin's view, such effects are transmitteed through proteins by alterations in the state of their electrons.

Multilayer adsorption is now understood to be produced by resonance, slight fluctuating shifts of electronic charge, between molecules. On a much larger scale, whole cells can be polarized, causing them to move in an oscillating electric field. In the 1920s and '30s people had found that small biological particles such as red blood cells would form chains under the influence of a high frequency electrical field, and later investigators found that dead cells could be separated from living cells in a non-uniform field. Living cells were, under those conditions, electrically polarizable, and dead cells weren't. Everything with a charge will move in an electric field, and that has been used to measure the fixed charges on cells, by cell electrophoresis. Differences in the dielectric properties of cells which might have the same fixed charges make it possible for them to be separated, in a process called dielectrophoresis, using an oscillating field.

Cell electrophoresis is usually thought to depend exclusively on the negative electrical charge of acidic sugar groups on the surface of cells, because using enzymes to remove those sugars reduces the speed of their movement. However, when dividing and non-dividing cells are examined, the rapidly dividing cells still move faster than the non-dividing cells after the enzyme treatment (Mayhew, 1966). Other studies have found that the surface charge of dead bacteria is more negative than that of live bacteria (Lee, et al., 2011). However, living cells are more polarizable than dead cells, and so can be separated by dielectrophoresis from dead cells, even when their surface charges are the same (Lapisco-Encinas, et al., 2004).

The idea of the cell membrane as a barrier separating the cell osmotically, electrically, and chemically from its environment was necessary when the cell interior was seen as a collection of molecules dissolved in water, governed by random diffusion. For the barrier to be crossed by signals and nutrients required specific receptors, pores, and pumps for each relevant substance. But now the redox state of the cell, and especially the sulfhydryl groups of the cell substance and surface, are being seen to function as a unit, with surface sulfhydryls sensing the environment, and responding to changes in metabolism and internal cell structural changes, influencing the way the cell interacts with its surroundings.

The architecture and consistency of a cell, regulated by the various filaments of the cytoskeleton, have an integrative, communicative function. The oxidation state of the sulfur groups in proteins governs the form of the cytoskeleton, interacting with ATP, magnesium, and calcium. These changes in the structure of a cell govern its shape, elasticity, strength, stiffness, and the way it handles its interactions with the environment.

150 years ago, biologists knew that white blood cells accumulated in an infected area, forming pus. The standard view was that the infection had damaged the blood vessels, and that the cells, leaking out of the blood vessels, simply passively accumulated in the infected area. Some white cells in circulating blood were seen to contain bacteria, and this was seen as a way that infection could spread through the organism, passively carried by infected white cells through the organism. This was a very "philosophical" view, in which an infection was an active invader of a passively deterministic machine. The philosophy is still apparent in contemporary "oncology," in which attention is focused on killing the actively destructive, invasive cancer cells.

Although Mechnikov's description of active phagocytosis was gradually accepted after 1908, textbooks throughout the 20th century preserved as much as possible of the antique mechanistic view. An inflammation, caused by an infectious organism, still simply damaged the blood vessels, loosening the structure and causing spaces between cells to open wide enough for white cells to pass through.

In the 1940s, people had seen white blood cells entering other cells. In 1956, Humble and others made time-lapse movies of lymphocytes entering cancer cells (in tissue culture), and named the process "emperipolesis" (wandering around inside). In their film that I saw, "wandering" didn't seem to be quite appropriate--a cell approaches another cell, enters it, slightly displaces the nucleus of the cancer cell as it passes behind it, and, having circumnavigated the interior of the cell, leaves it, with no noticeable damage. "These cells pass freely in and out among the other cells present until they come upon a malignant cell or a megakaryocyte. The only other type of cell to which they show affinity is one undergoing mitosis."

There have been many attempts to deny that emperipolesis takes place. Typically, electron microscope images of dead cells are used to show that "simple phagocytosis" has taken place, with digestion of the lymphocyte. During this same period, it had been found that when white blood cells leave the blood stream to enter a damaged tissue, they actively pass directly through the cytoplasm of the endothelial cells forming the wall of the capillary, but textbooks continued to describe the opening of spaces between endothelial cells to allow them to exit (Carman and Springer, 2008). The passage of particles into and through the wall of the intestine is similarly described in ways that avoid a direct contact between the foreign material and substance of the cytoplasm. The membrane theory inspires a lot of imaginative research.

Since the 1960s, several techniques of electron microscopy have showed an elaborate filamentous internal structure of red blood cells. The type of protein making up the filament varies in the different regions of the cells, and maintains the shape of the cell even when the hemoglobin has been released from the cell. The hemoglobin obviously interacts with the structural proteins of the cell, but it isn't responsible for the characteristic shape of the cell. Since similar filament proteins occur in other types of cell, creating their shape and movement, a mechanical view of the living structure is a mental barrier making it impossible to think of one cell "wandering around" in, or even simply passing through, this system of microscopic cables and rods.

The electrophoresis experiments show that the mitotic state or the cancerous state, involving a reduced state of the sulfhydryl system, affects the sulfhydryls on the surface of the cell. Lymphocytes apparently detect the same external field, reflecting the internal state, that accounts for the behavior of cells in electrical fields. (Incidentally, I think it's significant that Humble, in the years before he made the emperipolesis movies, had been studying the effects of electrical fields and radiation on cells: Goldsmith and Humble, 1951; Humble, et al., 1954.).

If the facts of trans-membrane migration and emperipolesis can be recognized, then it should be possible to accept the movement of large molecules into and out of cells. Most of the sulfhydryls circulating in the blood stream are part of the albumin molecule (its cysteines). When free fatty acids are present in the blood, they nearly all bind to albumin, and as they bind, the compact folding of the albumin molecule opens up, exposing more sulfhydryls. A greater burden of fatty acids affects the ability of albumin to enter cells. Ordinarily, albumin enters cells carrying thyroid and other hormones. Polyunsaturated fatty acids and saturated fatty acids differently affect the state of the sulfhydryl groups of albumin, and their interactions with the sulfhydryls of cells, as well as the molecule's ability to carry hormones. The state of the cell influences the way it will respond to contact with albumin, in its different states.

The redox state of the cell is one of the main factors governing the number of structural fibrils in cells, and their strength. Stress, and a reduced, glycolytic state, stiffens the cell's structure, for example by increasing the polymerization of microtubules, as the sulfur on the subunits' cysteine is reduced.

Against this background, in which the balance of a cell's oxidative state governs its shape, behavior, metabolism, and interactions with its surroundings, the actions of methylene blue and other dyes that formed the basis for Ehrlich's view of immunity and chemotherapy, become more meaningful biologically.

The old paradigm made it hard to understand how polyunsaturated fats, endotoxin, estrogen, and nitric oxide could often produce such similar harmful effects, and how things such as aspirin, progesterone, emodin, dichloroacetate, and methylene blue could so often have similarly therapeutic effects. As in Luca Turin's study of odors, obviously something other than molecular shape explains their biological effects.

When I was trying to understand how unopposed estrogen produced so many effects that were similar to a lack of oxygen, or an excess of polyunsaturated fats, or radiation injury, I saw studies showing that cold caused cellular microtubules to dissolve, and that estrogen could cause them to reform, stabilizing them against the cold. At that time, water's structural response to temperature change was known to account for the inactivation of certain enzymes by cold, and this was understood to be the same mechanism that caused cold to dissolve the microfilaments. Since the cold inactivated enzymes were also activated by estrogen, it seemed likely that estrogen was acting on the various enzymes and on the microtubules by affecting the way cell water responds to temperature changes. One of the cold inactivated enzymes is thioredoxin (which reduces cysteine); in the active state, this enzyme contributes to the formation and stabilization of microtubules and actin. The more "ordered" state of water corresponds to a more oxidized state of cysteine groups in proteins, and the living state requires a precise balance of structure and oxidative state.

Methylene blue can form a link between a cell's reductants, such as cysteine and glutathione, and its oxidants, including oxygen and hydrogen peroxide. By oxidizing cysteines (Crowe, et al., 2013), it can prevent the polymerization of microtubules.
Microtubules, which make up the mitotic apparatus that separates the chromosomes and divides the cytoplasm when cells are proliferating, activate the enzyme that synthesizes nitric oxide. Nitric oxide blocks oxidative energy production, and activates the characteristic cancer metabolism, aerobic glycolysis (Brix, et al., 2012), creating the state of "pseudohypoxia."

When an inflammation was created experimentally to test the ability of blood cells to transmigrate through endothelial cells, treatment with methylene blue increased the transendothelial movement of granulocytes, T- and B-lymphocytes, and monocytes, but it didn't have that effect on a T-cell line derived from a person with leukemia (Werner, et al., 2013), showing that it was a selective process, rather than just an increased permeability. An excess of nitric oxide increases general permeability of blood vessels.

Methylene blue, by its ability to be reduced and oxidized, can restore respiration to cells whose mitochondria have been damaged in various ways, even by cyanide (Barron, 1930). That's involved in its recognized use to treat shock, correcting the inability of mitochondria to use oxygen. Nitric oxide blocks the use of oxygen in shock, and methylene blue blocks the synthesis of nitric oxide, while at the same time it activates mitochondrial energy production. Besides the restoration of cellular respiration, methylene blue probably acts more directly on cellular structure and sensitivity, for example by oxidizing sulfhydryl groups that regulate the "excitatory amino acid receptor," providing protection against excitotoxity, again functioning in direct opposition to nitric oxide.

Methylene blue is being investigated as a treatment for the major brain degenerative diseases, psychoses, anxiety, depression, and cancer. In a small daily dose of 15 milligrams, in a well controlled study, it was effective against severe depression (Naylor, et al., 1987), and many animal studies show that it is effective against anxiety. There are probably many things involved in these effects on the nervous system--the anti-excitatory action, a variety of anti-estrogen effects, and increase of thyroid hormone while decreasing pituitary hormones--but they all seem to involve protection against nitric oxide.

Over-production of nitric oxide is involved in many of the symptoms of viral infections, including herpes, and the therapeutic effects of methylene blue suggests that natural resistance to viral infections might depend on maintaining a safely oxidizing redox balance.

Reversal of cancer metabolism by methylene blue (Poteet, et al., 2013) is another of its effects that probably involves reversal of the effects of nitric oxide, since nitric oxide promotes aerobic glycolysis and tumor growth (Caneba, et al., 2014). Several aspects of immunity, relating to cancer as well as to pathogenic organisms, are changed favorably by methylene blue and unfavorably by nitric oxide. Ehrlich's belief was that a "magic bullet" drug was specifically toxic to a pathogen, and the immune system was believed to operate analogously, with its effect focused on eliminating pathogens. The newer view is that, in maintaining its own organization, the body makes adjustments that affect the way it relates to potential pathogens, to prevent harm by creating an internal environment that's incompatible with the pathogenic processes. Bacteria and parasites, like cancer cells, apparently undergo autophagy and apoptosis when the host's conditions are changed in certain ways (toward a more oxidizing balance).

Phagocytosis, besides being important in immunity and eliminating cancer cells, is an essential part of maintaining the organization of our tissues, as Mechnikov understood, and an excess of nitric oxide impairs this basic cellular function (Becquet, et al; 1994). Phagocytes themselves, in an activated/stressed condition, are a major source of nitric oxide, so it's best to keep cells in a state of readiness, but with a minimal degree of activation. Rather than "stimulating the immune system," a supportive environment allows us to keep optimal levels of thyroid, progesterone, and the other pro-oxidative stabilizing factors. Vitamin C and vitamin E both have important roles in preventing excessive nitric oxide production during various types of stress, including sepsis (Wilson, 2009, Wilson and Wu, 2012) and aluminum poisoning (Satoh, 2007). Naringenin and related substances (Chao, et al., 2010; Frasca, et al., 2010) in orange juice make it an especially effective source of vitamin C for controlling nitric oxide.

Stress-related problems such as asthma are usually worse at night, with increased NO production at that time. In healthy people (Antosova, et al., 2009), the peak of NO production follows the peak of cortisol production, high in the morning, low in the evening, but the diurnal cycle probably becomes exaggerated with aging.

In the same way that dietary restriction of methionine, cysteine, and tryptophan has protective effects against aging, limiting dietary arginine (the nitric oxide precursor) seems likely to protect against many of the inflammatory and degenerative conditions that are associated with aging. The history of methylene blue might be a useful guide for understanding the roles of oxidation and reduction in physiology.

REFERENCES
Eur J Med Res. 2009 Dec 7;14 Suppl 4:6-8. Exhaled nitric oxide - circadian variations in healthy subjects. Antosova M, Bencova A, Psenkova A, Herle D, Rozborilova E.
J Exp Med. 1930 Aug 31;52(3):447-56. The catalytic effect of methylene blue on the oxygen consumption of tumors and normal tissues. Barron ES.
Toxicology. 1982;24(1):33-43. Inhibition of hepatic lipogenesis by salicylate. Beynen AC, Buechler KF, van der Molen AJ, Geelen MJ.
J Neurosci. 2012 Jul 11;32(28):9727-35. Endothelial cell-derived nitric oxide enhances aerobic glycolysis in astrocytes via HIF-1α-mediated target gene activation. Brix B, Mesters JR, Pellerin L, Johren O.
Cell Death Dis. 2014 Jun 26;5:e1302. doi: 10.1038/cddis.2014.264. Nitric oxide is a positive regulator of the Warburg effect in ovarian cancer cells. Caneba CA Yang L, Baddour J, Curtis R, Win J, Hartig S, Marini J, Nagrath D.
Curr Opin Cell Biol. 2008 Oct;20(5):533-40. Trans-cellular migration: cell-cell contacts get intimate. Carman CV, Springer TA.
Nutr Res. 2010 Dec;30(12):858-64. Naringenin more effectively inhibits inducible nitric oxide synthase and cyclooxygenase-2 expression in macrophages than in microglia. Chao CL, Weng CS, Chang NC, Lin JS, Kao ST, Ho FM.
J Biol Chem. 2013 Apr 19;288(16):11024-37. Aminothienopyridazines and methylene blue affect Tau fibrillization via cysteine oxidation. Crowe A, James MJ, Lee VM, Smith AB 3rd, Trojanowski JQ, Ballatore C, Brunden KR.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Mar 1;108(9):3797-802. Molecular vibration-sensing component in Drosophila melanogaster olfaction. Franco MI, Turin L, Mershin A, Skoulakis EM.
Nat Prod Res. 2010 Sep;24(15):1469-80. Involvement of inducible nitric oxide synthase and cyclooxygenase-2 in the anti-inflammatory effects of a red orange extract in human chondrocytes. Frasca G, Panico AM, Bonina F, Messina R, Rizza L, Musumeci G, Rapisarda P, Cardile V.
J Clin Pathol. 1951 May;4(2):200-3. The Effect of a Direct Electric Current on Normal and Antibody-sensitized Red Cells. Goldsmith K, Humble JG.
P. Guttman and P. Ehrlich, "On the action of methylene blue on malaria," pages 15-20 in The Collected Papers of Paul Ehrlich: Chemotherapy, edited by F. Himmelweit, 1960.
Br J Haematol. 1956 Jul;2(3):283-94. Biological interaction between lymphocytes and other cells. Humble JG, Jayne WH, Pulvertaft RJ.
J Physiol Pharmacol. 2006 Nov;57 Suppl 5:125-36. Ascorbic acid attenuates aspirin-induced gastric damage: role of inducible nitric oxide synthase. Konturek PC, Kania J, Hahn EG, Konturek JW.
Anal Chem. 2004 Mar 15;76(6):1571-9. Dielectrophoretic concentration and separation of live and dead bacteria in an array of insulators. Lapizco-Encinas BH, Simmons BA, Cummings EB, Fintschenko Y.
Effects of joule heating on electrophoretic mobility of titanium dioxide (TiO2), E. coli, and S. aureus (live and dead), Lee PF, Misran M, Wan Abdullah WAT, pages 60-68, in 5th Kuala Lumpur International Conf. on Biomed Vol. 35 Ting, Hua-Nong (Ed.) 2011.
Br J Pharmacol. 1996 Jul;118(5):1085-94. Cytoskeleton-dependent activation of the inducible nitric oxide synthase in cultured aortic smooth muscle cells. Marczin N, Jilling T, Papapetropoulos A, Go C, Catravas JD.
J Gen Physiol. 1966 Mar;49(4):717-25. Cellular electrophoretic mobility and the mitotic cycle. Mayhew E.
Behav Brain Res. 2011 Nov 20;225(1):328-33. Involvement of nitric oxide-cGMP pathway in the antidepressant-like effect of ascorbic acid in the tail suspension test. Moretti M, Freitas AE, Budni J, Fernandes SC, Balen Gde O, Rodrigues AL.
Biofactors. 2010 Jan-Feb;36(1):60-9. doi: 10.1002/biof.73. Vitamin E protects against stress-induced gastric mucosal lesions in rats more effectively than vitamin C. Ohta Y, Imai Y, Kaida S, Kamiya Y, Kawanishi M, Hirata I.
J Biol Chem. 2013 Mar 29;288(13):9153-64. Reversing the Warburg effect as a treatment for glioblastoma.
Poteet E, Choudhury GR, Winters A, Li W, Ryou MG, Liu R, Tang L, Ghorpade A,
Wen Y, Yuan F, Keir ST, Yan H, Bigner DD, Simpkins JW, Yang SH.
Biomed Biochim Acta. 1991;50(7):921-30. Effects of salicylate on hepatocyte lactate metabolism. Rognstad R.
Biol Pharm Bull. 2007 Aug;30(8):1390-4. Involvement of NO generation in aluminum-induced cell death. Satoh E(1), Yasuda I, Yamada T, Suzuki Y, Ohyashiki T.
Biol Pharm Bull. 2007 Aug;30(8):1390-4. Involvement of NO generation in aluminum-induced cell death. Satoh E(1), Yasuda I, Yamada T, Suzuki Y, Ohyashiki T.
PLoS One. 2013 Dec 10;8(12):e82214. Methylene blue modulates transendothelial migration of peripheral blood cells. Werner I, Guo F, Bogert NV, Stock UA, Meybohm P, Moritz A, Beiras-Fernandez A.
Biofactors. 2009 Jan-Feb;35(1):5-13. Mechanism of action of vitamin C in sepsis: ascorbate modulates redox signaling in endothelium. Wilson JX.
Subcell Biochem. 2012;56:67-83. Vitamin C in sepsis. Wilson JX, Wu F.
Fiziol Zh. 2011;57(2):90-8. [Effect of vitamin C on the condition of NO-synthase system in experimental stomach ulcer]. Zhuroms'kyi­ VS, Skliarov OIa.

 

[BingDing]

Cool, thanks messtafarian!

Have you decided on a dose to try? I've been using 6 mcg (I think) and can't report any real noticeable effect, though in general I'm doing good.

 

[honeybee]

Did you get his permission to post this article? I think there are reasons why he still publishes on paper and not all of his articles go in the Internet.

 

[messtafarian]

:) Actually honeybee I don't think he would mind. But if mods think it should come down they'll take it down.

 

[lexis]

Vitamin B12 inhibits NO production too.

 

[messtafarian]

Good point, that's true.

I've taken lots of b12 before and I'm not sure if it did anything. I actually used to just take a ton, until I had so much in my system a doctor told me to stop taking it, lol.

 

[Velve921]

Has anyone used this product and seen mind blowing results? Based on that blog it would seem like a good thing to try?

 

[messtafarian]

Hi there :)

Methylene Blue is not a product, it is a chemical that is most commonly used to disinfect water in aquariums. However a long time ago it was used in jungle medicine. In the late 19th and 20th centuries it was used to treat malaria with excellent success.

It has also been in trials at low doses to treat Alzheimer's disease since it has some good effect on mental clarity for unknown reasons. I believe the reason is that a number of these more modern diseases such as Alz, dementia, parkinsons, and the autoimmune triads are caused by either viruses or very clever bacteria. MB crosses the blood brain barrier and might kill virii that are hiding there. That's my theory.

What kind of mind-blowing results were you looking for? Not being snippy, just wondering what problem you want to solve.

 

[Such_Saturation]

I've seen so many crash and burn while going after "mind blowing results".

 

[messtafarian]

I think that's how everybody starts off here, SS :). Woe to he, lol.

Anyway found a nice little page with lots of chemists discussing the drug Rember, Tau proteins, amyloid plaque and Alzheimers. Oh boy people really really want this stuff. It's just that no one knows how much to take, including me.
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/20 ... meback.php

 

[pboy]

does it have any taste or smell?

 

[messtafarian]

Odorless and tasteless, especially at that dilution.

 

[Velve921]

Looking to assist with Symptoms of depression...any good results?

 

[narouz]

A good starting point would be for someone to transcribe
or at least closely relay
what Peat said about MB in the latest KMUD.
He said quite a bit.

If nobody else does it, maybe I can get to it this weekend.

Peat is usually quite cautious in recommendations.
He seemed to indicate pretty clearly it was very safe even at quite high doses.
At least that is what I heard.

As I mentioned earlier,
I believe he mentioned 15 grams per day in divided doses
as what he has seen in his research as appropriate for depression.

But he discussed other uses.
I believe he discussed MB relationship to the quinones.
And also as the substance which spun off
the first wave of...what?...
was it the first anti-depressants?
I made some notes, so I will try to clarify.

 

[messtafarian]

Ewlevy1, I have not read any personal accounts of anyone using methylene blue to treat depression and it is not currently ever conventionally prescribed for depression. Doc Peat would probably say that one great thing to do to improve mood would be to lower serotonin in the bowel by eating grated carrot, or even by taking an antagonist to serotonin.

I am not entirely sure if I would say that MBlue would treat depression satisfactorily because it is an MAOI inhibitor and thus preserves serotonin ( and dopamine) in the brain. This is brilliant for Parkinson's and Alzheimer folks because they are deficient in dopamine and they would hypothetically feel relief right away.

If you are depressed, what we think around here is that you actually could use less serotonin, not more, so before you go off drinking MBlue for depression, maybe try grated carrot, thyroid, sugar, and b vitamins :).

[ moderator edit: replies moved to Euphoric After Last Email [Methylene Blue, H. Pylory] ]

 

[juanitacarlos]

I recall what he said specifically was that MBlue was nontoxic even at high doses...HOWEVER if anyone undertakes a real trial of this stuff they should seriously review the recommendations for people who are taking powerful MAOIs. NO alcohol, NO aged cheeses, fresh food only, and absolutely no SSRI drugs. I was reading a case history where a person died from a combination of lorazepam ( benzo) and Mblue, which means it is probably effeting GABA receptors as well.

Be careful out there~!

I agree with the no SSRI drugs, but my understanding is that MB is a reversible MAOI, so should not require the same dietary restrictions (i.e. tyramine) as irreversible MAOIs which do need dietary restrictions. I'm still researching this further, and will be starting a trial in a few weeks.

And yes, be careful out there.

 

[Velve921]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/3555627/

Here is a study on depression.

 

[Lin]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/3555627/

Here is a study on depression.

Wow, that is from 1987! Isn't there anything more recent?