I've been taking ActGene HEPPS (Amazon) @ 1g/day for 9 days, as measured on my precision scale. I dissolve it in a few ounces of fruit or veggie juice, then drink it on an empty stomach in the morning. I take it with a Curcubrain (400 mg Longvida) and Swanson olive leaf extract (150 mg oleuropein). I take another olive leaf extract an hour or so later, in order to ensure that plenty of oleuropein is available during abeta oligomer destruction (and thus monomer formation).
At night, I take 500 mg of niacinamide, and started doing so at the same time as starting HEPPS. (I had taken niacinamide many times before, but had long since stopped, frankly for no good reason.)
The first time I took it, I sipped the juice gradually over the course of half an hour, sitting in my car in the emergency room parking lot just as a precaution. I noticed a mild metallic taste in my mouth, and experienced some very sharp visual thoughts, but not hallucinations, most likely due to incidental and minor psychoactive aspects of the compound or its impurities. (It always leaves me slightly nauseous for an hour afterward.)
The next two days, I noticed more brain fog than usual. I felt a bit like a zombie, and my friend pointed out that my face was uncharacteristically expressionless. It was bad enough that I started formulating a theory for how it was the taurine, and not actually HEPPS, which had helped Turnbuckle.
On the fourth day, I awoke with a posterior headache. It grew in intensity for an hour or so, to the point of being moderately painful, then slowly subsided. As I lay there, I was able to recall dreams characterized by fluidity and consistency. That is, they flowed logically and exhibited clear imagery and temporally consistent experiences, despite being physically implausible in certain aspects which are typical of dreams. This has continued more or less ever since.
The fifth day involved a second such headache, which once again grew and then waned, although with less intensity. I've not had another since. For the record, I virtually never get such headaches, although I do get them in other regions. It's not at all clear to me why this occurred; it could be some sort of coincidence. Or, if you believe that the activity of HEPPS is responsible, then this would correlate with abeta monomerization followed by immune (microglia) macroautophagy -- in other words, the immune system cleaning up the mess left by disaggregation, firing off inflammatory cytokines in the process. The only other interesting coincidence is that I received my worst ever head injury at age 8, right in the region in question: I was hit in the head with a wayward basketball, resulting in severe tunnel vision for hours, likely indicative of a bleed in the occipital cortex. It therefore wouldn't at all surprise me if my oldest and most pathological abeta aggregates are in that area, consistent with the headache.
It was also on this day that I suddenly remembered the name of a neighbor who I rarely see walking her dog. For months, I had tried to recall it without success. Like most people, once I've forgotten a name for a few days, it's just plain gone unless something jogs my memory.
And then, tonight, I was thinking about a particular art gallery that had captured my interest a couple years back. I noticed about a year ago that, although I could recall many details about it, I had forgotten its name, which is one-of-a-kind and meaningless, and therefore difficult to remember. I realized, fortunately, that I could search my email archives and find it using various keywords. However, I decided not to, but instead use it as a kind of memory test, should I ever be able to recall it. I just did so, and then verified the spelling by doing an email search. I don't recall ever having been able to do that after such an extensive period of forgetting, and yet, it's happened twice in the past week. It's as though the information has been there all along, yet I was unable to access it despite considerable effort over an extended period of time.
My diet is basically carbosis with low protein and modest fat (olive oil and a bit of c60mct), so while I don't have the energy that I did in ketosis, I don't have the sleep disruption or persistent nausea, either. In any event, my dietary habits have been relatively stable since a month prior to HEPPS. Suffice to say that I consume enough glucose in a day to frighten the daylights out of most low-carb advocates! Also, I don't supplement taurine and never have.
Is HEPPS responsible? It seems like a longshot, given that, thus far, it only works on "faux Alzheimers" induced by abeta injection, and there are so many other forms of AD pathology, particularly in more advanced cases. So it shouldn't help me much unless the bulk of my problem is due specifically to AB42 aggregates, if I've understood the study properly. I also happen to be on sirolimus (3 mg/week), and have been for about 5 weeks now, although I think its influence is more on sugar regulation than memory. Still, I'm at a loss as to explain all of the above. And finally, my visual memory is quite good, and has been since the third day or so. I can visually remember salient or surprising aspects of my travels around the neighborhood, including people and animals that I saw while out for a walk. This could well be due to the mushrooms I've been eating rather more of lately, but it is what it is. Maybe it's all luck, but in any case, thanks to Turnbuckle for taking an enormous risk in order to help the community!
