yosoydiego

UP with this: https://www.reddit.com/r/HPPD/comments/dghfbx/ketogenic_diet_for_hppd/

Question: did you notice any effects on your sleep? I've been reading that it may enhance or create lucid dreaming, more REM state, etc

Have you posted it somewhere else? Honestly, I love forums like this one... but sadly, Facebook and Reddit have way more movement, perhaps you should post there and see if your treatment helps someone else, and eventually confirming your hypothesis

This went quiet...

Awesome, congratulations! Keep updating!

Interesting website, also touching on the gut relationship: https://visualsnowman.com/

More food for thought (it's short, must watch!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4CBy0uVqRc

The following 2 photos are from the book "Why we sleep", which summarizes a lot of research into sleep. Here it mentions the relationship between cortisol and gut bacteria. IMO, and in line with what was discussed here, both having potential as real HPPD cause. Or perhaps not cause, but "mechanism", because the "cause" could still be considered, strictly, drug use... but it would be only one of the many possible triggers. As I mentioned previously and in my first post: my girlfriend and me starting having the same sleep issues after our last drug intake, even when the experiences were 100% ok and mild. We would wake up revved up at 2am, and could feel an "alien" anxiety, something that could be explained as "artificially high levels of cortisol". I'm still waiting for a blood cortisol test result, but by that time I was already much better. High stress for a long time on its own could be terrible. Influencing the gut and immune system, even worse. Just food for thought.

Could you tell more about your story?

"MDMA and weed are very much drugs capable of giving visuals" ... NOT in MOST users. If they were giving you visuals "before" HPPD, most likely you had some kind of dysfunction already, or some propensity to "HPPD", or something like that. Perhaps you had mild "HPPD" your whole life, way before drugs... i.e. what a huge amount of other people know as Visual Snow. "a greater risk of prolonging your hppd"... speculation, there is no way to know that. Makes sense, of course, but stating as a fact is wrong. In my opinion, a "HPPD" diagnosis could be the worst to happen to you. Ok, clonazepam, I get that. But apart from that, usually the process is: - Get diagnosed HPPD, no more studies done, no more iterations. You're to blame for having taken drugs. Incurable, untreatable, and the only change that you need to make is don't do drugs anymore. - now, if you DON'T get diagnosed HPPD (either you haven't taken drugs, or you deny it and they don't test it), you start being tested for a whoooole array of different conditions that might trigger the same symptoms, and perhaps, in some cases, finding a "proper cause", like you can find examples of people with stress, nutrition, fungus, bacteria, etc. Of course, chances are big that you're going to end up in the "Visual Snow" box, with more or less the same fate as an HPPD diagnosis. HPPD seems like the end of the road, that equals resignation. In fact a repeated advice is "don't think about it, don't obsess it, don't google, etc"... and it makes sense, of course, reducing the stress associated with the condition, moving on. But... well, you get the point

Haven't heard of a mother/son transmission. Just found another sufferer, this time "Visual Snow" (hehe), which found remission in keto-like diet: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/thosewithvisualsnow/crying-tears-of-joy-because-the-vs-is-almost-gone-t8495.html BTW... we're just proposing crazy hypothesis here, but there is another post in this forum talking about a recent study finding cause and cure for HPPD... that makes me stressed, that some people might have more information and don't want ("can't") share it. I guess it's the way the world works... but I don't like it

Plenty. You can read experiences on reddit, probably facebook (i hate it), and they have a quite popular forum too: tapatalk.com/groups/thosewithvisualsnow/ Many get extremely surprised when someday they find out that this exists, and that the rest of the world actually sees the world DIFFERENTLY! Sounds mind blowing... but it happens. It's probably as "popular" as HPPD... the only difference being (imo), they haven't used psychedelics.

Nop... how is that relevant to this thread?

Love, deep love As you can see in my first post, sleep issues after drug use. Could be obsessive, but the thought of anything happening to my girlfriend is something just unbearable. I'm happy to trip forever, or to never trip again, whatever... but just leave my girl be healthy and happy

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.inquisitr.com/2372326/a-new-link-between-candida-and-schizophrenia-from-george-washington-university-researchers/amp/

Genetic, Transcriptome, Proteomic, and Epidemiological Evidence for Blood-Brain Barrier Disruption and Polymicrobial Brain Invasion as Determinant Factors in Alzheimer's Disease. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30480234

No more news from that guy no, I messaged him, let's see. BTW, "kefir" is not a home made cocktail, it's currently a fairly common dairy product, with probiotic characteristics. He's not trying to sell his product or anything like that, kefir is like a runny yogurt, horrible indeed... but cheap and easy to find in any supermarket, and even possible to make at home. And ndeed, keto is hard to keep... but plenty of people do it just for fun, or to lose weight. Nothing impossible at all, and it's been around for ages, safe overall. Keto alone might not be enough though. Look more in the direction of candida elimination/reduction. The gut-brain relationship research has exploded recently, they are even researching into Alzheimer's being caused by a bacteria, or at least strong relationship. Sounds hypochondriac.... I know But wouldn't you be willing to at least give it a try some time, if there is any chance it would even improve the symptoms, let alone "cure" hppd?

More food for thought on the gut relationship: https://www.reddit.com/r/HPPD/comments/b52k3s/i_accidentally_improved_nearly_got_rid_of_my_hppd/ Any stomach related experience around here?

Similarly, and I guess this one has been more discussed everywhere, ketamine seems to help some people. Maybe in the short term, and worse long term? https://www.reddit.com/r/HPPD/comments/d9gnm2/anyone_have_experience_with_ketamine_please_share/

Just copying here what someone replied on reddit: Of course the part of sleep deprived and/or cocaine has to be taken out of the anecdote, but apart from that, he seems positive that nitrous on its own is neutral to his hppd. Clearly, it's still only ONE experience. But I think it's worth questioning why a drug that is both psychedelic and dissociative, seems to be neutral to a condition characterized by both psychedelic and dissociative effects... Granted, nitrous effects are really short, and probably a fair comparison with other drugs would only come from a serious binge. But... it has potential as a depression treatment, with depression being a common "side-effect" of HPPD. And, it seems to lower cortisol levels, with cortisol being a stress-indicator, and stress being a clear HPPD trigger and worsening factor. Maybe laughing gas is not something to laugh about

The thread name is the name of a fabulous blog, highly recommended. I have a lot of questions. I guess some of this questions have been asked already, but perhaps you can help me to summarize the answers. Why the term is HPPD, (persisting = continue to exist; be prolonged.), when most of the time it appears WELL AFTER the last psychedelic intake? What would be the most prevailing hypothesis on WHY some times it could take SO long for any symptoms to appear? Pharmacologically, all drugs are cleared from the system in a maximums of some days. Why there is a whole separate condition (Visual Snow), equally "popular", with the only CLEAR difference being that the people in that group never took drugs? Extending a bit from Visual Snow, there is a myriad of conditions with the same symptoms, that only seem to differ in the condition of "previous drug use". Conditions leading to DP/DR/Hallucinations with fairly high incidence: schizophrenia, sleep deprivation, pregnancy, narcolepsy, epilepsy, dehydration, stress, depression, dementia, parkinson's, etc etc. The symptoms of hppd seem to be really common. Probably adding all those factors, the percentage of general population that hallucinates is greater that the percentage of psychedelics users that suffer from HPPD. Couldn't the prompt HPPD diagnosis (by means of the simple question: "Have you taken drugs?"), be masking other issues? There seems to be many ways to arrive to the same "damage". Wouldn't it be logical to have a common root cause? Drugs don't seem to be it, although they are clearly a trigger or a worsening factor. Why if different psychedelics have different type of visuals, the visuals experienced in HPPD are more or less of the same kind? Wouldn't it be logical that the visuals would resemble the visuals of the drug that caused it? Why drugs that are not visual at all (caffeine, mdma, weed), are among the worst triggers of symptoms? Why most anecdotes point that drug use worsen the symptoms but only temporarily, going back to baseline after a week or so? If it's a kind of direct damage to the brain, wouldn't it be expected to be more cumulative? Why would someone want to get the "HPPD" diagnosis, when there is no treatment or solution. What's the difference with just being "undiagnosed", "unrecognized", still analyzing, etc? I guess for most people the certainty of a diagnosis, a name to their condition, would bring some kind of peace of mind, which seems to be a huge step into remission.

Indeed, sorry that I was offline for a few days and couldn't update on that, but I realized that immediately. Also edited my post there to make it less relevant, and also thought about posting warning of the dangers of chlorine dioxide, MMS, and all that sh*t, but I realized it was done already... and the desperate people will ignore all those warnings anyway, so there isn't much that we can do. That sh*t is even being fed to autistic kids... I hope the "brains" behind it all rot in hell. So, I'm sorry for linking to that topic. Having said that, despite the bullsh*t of the MMS and the likes, I'd not disregard the bacteria idea, or something similar, just thinking out of the box, as dasitmane is doing too. I keep thinking that the current hppd "understanding" makes no more sense than any random weird hypothesis.

The key to turn anecdotal data into useful information, is turn humans into numbers... even if it sounds cruel. Big numbers, statistics. You can't rule out, for example, kratom, because ONE user had problems with it, specially considering that you never have ceteris paribus and you'll find anecdotes like the above, where kratom was mixed with weed. In general, kratom is an opioid, and opioids seem to be "ok" in hppd terms. (Again, I'm not a fan of kratom in any sense, it's just an example) Anyway, Nitrous isn't a common drug, specially not combined with other stuff, so I know it's a difficult question, but looking forward to reading more about it

Salvia (Sage): A Review of its Potential Cognitive-Enhancing and Protective Effects https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5318325/ Hallucinations - acetylcholine https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2996210/ Acetylcholine and hallucinations: disease-related compared to drug-induced alterations in human consciousness. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8546852

Jay1, I appreciate the answer, but I strongly disagree. HPPD is far from understood, and as such, having an open mind and questioning everything, could be key. Throwing an blanket statement over it won't help anyone. What you said: "No drug is 100% safe for 100% of hppd sufferers, not a single one" , is clearly WRONG, because you can't know that, you don't even have a fraction of a fraction of the data necessary to make that blank statement. Specially if we use the term "drug" as it should be used, as ANYTHING that affect our bodies, not only the illegal ones, which is only a semi-arbitrary selection. Undoubtedly the same "DON'T DO ANY DRUGS, IT WILL MAKE YOU WORSE" has been repeated once and again to people with depression, PTSD, etc etc, and there you have it now... ketamine, psylocibin, mdma, LSD, nitrous, etc, showing more than promising prospects of being unbelievable breakthrough treatments. Of course, common sense has to be applied. If LSD is clearly linked to worsen HPPD, I'm not going to ask if DOI, AL-LAD, ETH-LAD, etc, worsen HPPD... most likely, they will. But nitrous for example is a complete different entity. In fact its classification as "drug" is dubious, if that's what worries you, as it's usually legal, but only if you eat it, not if you inhale it hehe. But mainly, it has had (and still has) way more excellent medical use than what it has recreationally, and the study on depression might be opening even more doors for it. Opioids, the worse kind of drugs, are also not linked to HPPD. In understanding those differences, could lay the key to actually understand what's going on behind it all. "keep an open mind, but not so open your brain falls out"