I realize that I am responding to an old thread, but I think its important that I share the difficulties that I have experienced with Pramiracetam:
Onset: I took 1000mg of pramiracetam on 3/24/2011 (Ordered in bulk form (50 g) from Cerebral Health) and didn't notice anything. On 3/28, I took 1200mg of Pramiracetam and 1200mg of Choline Bitartrate (ordered in bulk (50g) from superiornutraceuticals.com) at the same time and didn't notice anything. Next day, I did the same dose and nothing noteworthy. Next day, I worked out and did the same dose of both immediately afterward. Ten minutes later, I felt nauseous, sweaty, dizzy, and confused. I was unable to understand spoken language or written text and had short term memory loss. Also was unable to carry on a train of thought - felt like I was in a "zombie" state, unable to formulate any ideas. Difficulties continued for months, leading to depression. Difficulties continue to this day, as stated below.
Symptoms:
1.) Difficulty understanding and remembering what I read
2.) Difficulty understanding and remembering what has been said to me, especially if there are long monologues where I am not interjecting.
3.) Scrambled thoughts. Never able to carry on extensive train of thought without writing or talking and it is very difficult to remember previous trains of thought. Hard for me to plan and execute simple multistep plans. Forget the steps, don't understand the logic behind the steps.
4.) Small working memory.
5.) Severe concentration problems.
6.) Extremely difficult to recall things...takes a long time and there isn't much detail.
7.) Learning problems.
8.) Forgetting what I am doing when I'm doing it every 20 seconds.
9.) Sporadic Ringing in the ears.
10.) Executive dysfunction:
http://en.wikipedia....ive_dysfunction. Specifically impulsive and disorganized.
11.) Very difficult to access knowledge for normal thought processes without speaking or writing. Often surprise myself with things that I am able to recall when speaking or writing.
12.) Inability to remember previous events in the day or previous days.
13.) Constantly abandoning trains of thought due to distraction and not being able to remember them.
14.) I can never remember what I thought about on previous days...I would describe it as conceptual memory impairment. Im thinking about the same things everyday, but they are new to me everyday. Realizations and conclusions that I have made in my head are gone the next day, so it is extremely hard to build a time expansive working memory to make decisions.
15.) I have these attacks in the afternoons where I have a bombardment of half formed thoughts that causes me to be really irritable and uncomfortable. The best term would be extreme restlessness. It may be linked to eating carbs, but I'm not sure. It definitely seems worse when I eat sugar. This may be due to an imbalance in neurotransmitters (i.e. more excitatory ones (glutamate) that inhibitory ones (GABA).
Summary: What I would imagine ADD to be like. My consciousness is disjointed and non-fluid.
Theory:
The Pramiracetam increased the activity of Nitric oxide synthase, which increased the production of nitric oxide in the cortex and lead to neuronal damage.
Comments:
It should be noted that at the time that this reaction occured, I was only taking the two supplements mentioned above. I still have the difficulties listed above to varying degress and still haven't found any clear answers about what exactly happened. I'm not sure if it was the NO induced cell death that caused the reaction or a contaminant in one (or both) of the supplements. Unfortunately, in the aftermath and panic of the first week after this happened, I threw away what remained of both supplements....so I can't test them to find out their purity. I did find
evidence that Cerebral Health received at least one warning from the FDA for not testing their source materials. Anyways, I went to a neurologist several times and had a CTscan and MRI, which showed nothing. I tried hyperbaric oxygen therapy a couple times because the research I did indicated that it could increase growth hormones and heal parts of the brain, but found that it made the mental confusion worse. Anyways, I've kind of run out of options to try to correct this. I'll do hair testing for heavy metals toxicity and try to get involved in an fMRI study to try to at least pinpoint the area of my cortex that isn't working correctly, but beyond that there isn't much I can do. I've read the
thread on DHA+uridine+choline for neural regeneration, but I'm a little scared considering what happened the first time I tried cognitive supplements. Anyways, any insight would be really really appreciated as I have trouble analyzing things myself. I would really LOVE to hear from MrHappy, as he seems to have some very good insights into many different topics discussed here at Longecity, as does JChief and many others. I hope that at some point in the future, I will be able to correct things somewhat...its really quite torturous living like this.
