What methylene blue can (and can’t) do for the brain | Hacker News Reader

What methylene blue can (and can’t) do for the brain

neurofrontiers.blog

165 pointswiry123 comments

Methylene Blue is fascinating because it has been present in alternative medicine, biohacking, and nootropics forums for decades. It seems everyone in those communities discovers it eventually, thinks it must be a miracle substance, and then either feels nothing or has some initial positive effects that are either placebo or diminish quickly with tolerance.

From the anecdotes I’ve read over the years, very few people continue taking it. They either feel nothing, get some worrying side effects, or the initial effects they experienced (or placebo) disappear after a couple days or weeks. The most positive posts seem to be correlated with people taking a dozen medications and supplements at the same time, so it’s impossible to know what’s causing their experience.

Another ever-popular medication in these communities is Selegiline: Also an MAOI but selective for MAO-B at low doses (warning: it’s easier to reach MAO-A inhibition with repeated dosing, especially sublingual, than many internet sources claim). This one draws in people who are in their “dopamine explains everything” phase of learning neuroscience and think it must be a hack to get “more dopamine”. Again, few people continue it and many are confused about why they end up fatigued or tired while taking it instead of turning into the guy from Limitless. Neuropharmacology isn’t as simple as taking drugs to push neurotransmitter up.

Selegiline was repurposed as an anti-depressant recently, but it’s delivered transdermally and only showed efficacy at levels high enough to be a full MAOI.

Excellent summary. As someone who has taken both and spent an inordinate amount of time on Longecity, this is pretty spot on.

I remember there was a year on the imminst where everyone was trying methylene blue and reporting amazing effects.

Pretty much accurate, this is also my perception.

I think the whole "nootropics" and "biohacking" community would benefit from mandatory introductory reading to understand that disrupting homeostasis in a durable and meaningful way is actually darn hard to do without serious side effects.

https://www.thecut.com/article/supplements-made-me-lose-my-m...

A recent cautionary tale about someone who took St. John's Wort because they didn't want to take antidepressants, then quit the SJW too quickly... which functionally put them into (prolonged, agonizing) SSRI withdrawal.

SJW inhibits serotonin uptake and also has numerous other targets. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the alternative medicine world to consider it safer or more gentle than SSRIs.

Yeah, I thought it was ironic (and a little funny) that people promote it as an SSRI alternative even though it's just a less precise, less regulated SSRI. It's like telling someone to skip their quinine pills and chug a bunch of tonic water instead!

To be fair, tonic water (with some gin in it) tastes a lot better than quinine pills!

> understand that disrupting homeostasis in a durable and meaningful way is actually darn hard to do

This is a huge problem in online ADHD communities, too.

The ADHD subreddits are a constant stream of people having “Wow I feel amazing” reactions after taking their first stimulant dosage, followed a week later by complaints that it “stopped working”. It’s a constant cycle of informing people that the euphoria they experienced was a side effect, not how they’re going to feel for the rest of their life taking a stimulant.

Yeah I remember that high lasted for several weeks.

Yeah there's functionally no good solution besides occasional stimulant use and staying off them the rest of the time. I vaguely recall some literature that claimed many patients had basically no benefit by some period (believe over a year) which matches friends' anecdotal experience. Exceptions exist; they aren't super common.

Direct dopamine regulation is just a crappy target for this. TAAR1 agonism may be a better target. I've heard some sketchy reports that things in the class of bromantane might be good options, as it acts to epigenetically upregulate dopamine synthesis rather than altering clearance, but not super well-investigated and noot bros are a little weird here (initial research chose it for a balance between physical work capacity increase vs. cognitive benefits, whereas a cognition-focused analogue might perform better.) HDAC inhibition is vaguely interesting but much too large a target.

There are some possibilities to work on, but basically this remains a very unsolved problem, and rhetoric around tolerance often reminds me of the oxycodone "pseudo-addiction" language as much as anything. "Your brain is dopamine-deficient!" No, homeostasis means this probably isn't the case. There may be deficits in signaling but it's not an issue with the concentration of a neurotransmitter.

> Yeah there's functionally no good solution besides occasional stimulant use and staying off them the rest of the time.

This is literally the misunderstanding I was talking about.

The startup euphoric effects are a side effect, not the main ADHD therapeutic function. This is the confusion that leads people off track, especially when they’re prescribed too high of a starting dose.

Taking the stimulant every day and acknowledging that it’s not supposed to be euphoric is the only way to use them for actual ADHD treatment. The attention-enhancing effects largely remain.

This is also where the “stimulant medications affect ADHD people differently” myth comes from. The real reason is that the ADHD patient has taken the med for years and doesn’t get a stimulant rush when taking it. The college student who borrows the fully-titrated dose from their friend is speeding around because they are stimulant naive.

> Direct dopamine regulation is just a crappy target for this. TAAR1 agonism may be a better target.

Amphetamine (Adderall) is a TAAR1 ligand. Guanfacine (non-stimulant ADHD medication) is as well.

> I've heard some sketchy reports that things in the class of bromantane might be good options, as it acts to epigenetically upregulate dopamine synthesis rather than altering clearance,

Bromantane is thought to upregulate expression of some genes related to dopamine, but it also might have some effects on the sigma receptor, act on a potassium channel, and it does have some dopamine reuptake inhibition though the exact amount is up for debate.

Anyway, people often equate ADHD and dopamine, but norepinephrine is actually the common thread among all ADHD medications. Like you said, there’s a lot of “dopamine deficiency” broscience on the internet that doesn’t really match the science.

> This is also where the “stimulant medications affect ADHD people differently” myth comes from

This doesn't seem right, the effect people talk about isn't a non-ADHD person taking adderall and going off the wall— it's someone with ADHD taking a stimulant, even a pretty high dose, for the first time and it having very little effect outside of a mild calm and focus.

It very well might be a myth that this is related to my ADHD and it's caused by something else weird with my body but I can vouch for this experience. I was offered a 30mg adderall at a party and it didn't do much of anything for me except I felt "normal." No euphoria, just kinda sleepy, but I could think about stuff and my brain wouldn't hurt after a while which was nice.

Has this been characterized in literature to any significant extent? This isn't a "challenging" question btw, I hear it repeated but wonder to what extent it's actually true vs. people's later perceptions coloring it and/or odd internal perception. The latter I think is possible because I've read anecdotes from people who say they don't feel much, yet they go from demotivated to get up and do something to sudden motivation to do lots of different things besides what they got up to do, which reads to me as overshooting the mark in terms of effect if not in matching patient's expectations of "how it should feel".

In my experience people are VERY bad at evaluating how they are affected by amphetamines. Ive given many people amphetamines and the response is usually "I dont feel anything at all" meanwhile, their pupils are huge, theyre tapping all their feet and fingers, and theyre hyper focusing on some minute detail of something without even realizing it.

Exactly. This is an extremely common phenomenon among several drug classes.

The part about feeling “normal” is a common report, as people misinterpret the temporary good feeling as how they think everyone else must feel all the time.

> it's someone with ADHD taking a stimulant, even a pretty high dose, for the first time and it having very little effect outside of a mild calm and focus.

Subjective self-evaluation of drug effects is a fascinating topic. It’s a common theme in drug use for people to self-report effects that differ from what other people observe.

For example, benzodiazepine users will commonly report that benzos don’t inebriate them, they just make them feel “normal” while outside observers can clearly see that the person is impaired. In abusers, this phenomenon of false sense of sobriety is a known problem and leads people to drive cars and do other things they’re clearly incapable of doing while drugged, all while believing they’re perfectly sober.

Even with SSRIs, doctors and family members around the patient will report dramatic improvements while patients own self-rating of their condition stays low for a long time. Others can visibly see the improvement in the patient before the patient acknowledges it.

Cocaine and stimulant abusers will often think they feel “normal” or “calm and focused” while talking a mile a minute or doing things like hyper focusing on minutia. My friends who work in an ER have some stories.

What I’m getting at is that it’s common for first-time stimulant users to interpret the euphoria, confidence, and connectedness as a feeling of being “normal”.

The “this is how normal people must feel” thought is a common report from people taking several classes of drugs for the first time and experiencing the brief euphoriant effect that temporarily silences anxieties, dysphoria, worries, and replaces it with a false sense of positivity. Add on top of this the placebo effect that comes from all of us having heard the “ADHD people react differently” and it translates to first-time users interpreting the effect differently.

I don't know of outstanding literature on it, but the easiest thing to cite on the eventual inefficacy of methylphenidate is this: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17667478/ Take a glance at table 2, but the headline for the paper is that 2 in 3 of those children had no benefit from medication past 2 years.

It's hard to find data of this quality for amphetamines but the story is pretty similar over time: https://sci-hub.se/https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007...

You can make solid cases that this should be slower for XR or prodrug formulations like lisdexamfetamine, but the general trend is quite solid.

Amphetamines are TAAR1 agonists, and this is indeed a significant part of their activity, but not the largest. The point is that a higher dose of a selective agent might present a better treatment option. Interestingly methylphenidate, which shows better long-term potential, can block amphetamine's effects on dopamine efflux: https://jpet.aspetjournals.org/article/S0022-3565(24)33772-3...

Of course adjusted patients won't get a rush, but there are two ways this can go: some patients do seem to have ongoing benefits from those stimulants. A large group seem to see a more complete loss in efficacy rather than a loss of euphoria. I picked two studies that presented a more pessimistic view, but most of the literature finds that there is some gradient of the benefit patients retain, and that there's a significant proportion for whom an increased dose is required.

People have speculated on other mechanisms for bromantane's effects, sure, but sigmaergics and the underlying receptors are still not particularly well-understood. This means it's pretty hard to speculate as to whether it's a productive target, unless you're aware of some promising new characterization of its function or promising investigational literature for treating ADHD which I'm not (quite possible).

Noradrenergic drugs can help some types of ADHD, true. I am of the opinion that the tendency to "unify" conditions (also c.f. the conception of "autism spectrum disorder" for a massively heterogeneous and polygenic issue with a correspondingly-wide range of presentations) is a mistake. The fact that some people seem to derive a lot of benefit from atomoxetine while many others don't suggests that it's a colossal mistake to treat these as the same condition.

It's an interesting problem, but I'm convinced the more treatment-resistant/tolerance-prone type of attention deficit that's likely more strongly associated with the dopaminergic system is by no means a solved or easily-solvable problem. In this context, I brought it up because that's what most closely matches with the interest of the biohacker/nootropics bro crowd.

> but norepinephrine is actually the common thread among all ADHD medications

Anecdata, but my ADHD (and depression!) didn't significantly improve until I was on both lisdexamfetamine and buproprion. Both drugs lift production of both neurotransmitters, but they "specialize" in dopamine and norepinephrine, respectively.

From personal experience the right enantiomer at a low dose works longterm without any breaks. It’s not a panacea though. If you’re tired or you don’t have the will power, you’ll still twiddle your thumbs—except you’ll be really into the twiddling.

My issue was that even with the will power, sleeping and perfect nutrition, etc, my brain physically wouldn’t do it and it was extremely demoralising. Again, not a panacea and if you don’t actually have a condition I think it would be foolish to take (you may feel like you’re doing more but it will likely be at a lower quality).

Interesting, are you saying you found a difference in efficacy or tolerance? Was it based on enantiopure d-amphetamines or the ratio of d/l-enantiomers?

For some reason people without ADHD really want to make it not a thing, but anyone who actually has it knows these drugs can be life changing

The feeling of wanting to do productive stuff but being physically unable is hard to describe but it's really not a good feeling and moderate doses of dopamine raising agents really can alleviate it consistently and for the long term

This isn't always true. Stimulants can -- for a subpopulation, at least -- meaningfully improve focus in ADHD individuals in long-term measurable ways and low risk of side effects. This contrasts starkly to ordinary people, who will quickly build up a tolerance to typical stimulants. The difference is measurable with clinical tests.

I am not sure why you are being downvoted. Stimulants work very well for long term treatment of ADHD. It's the gold standard with >90% success rate.

Being downvoted cause they werent paying attention to what the comment above them was saying. The Euphoria WILL always wear off, doesnt mean it doesnt continue to treat symptoms.

Also yes stimulants are the gold standard but I would argue that our metrics for success are bunk

Generally speaking (there are exceptions) ADHD people do not experience euphoria when taking stimulants. I never have, not even the first time. It’s known as the paradoxical reaction.

Some people do develop tolerance, but usually building an off day into the schedule is enough to counter that.

Stimulant tolerance means you aren't taking enough magnesium. Or for Vyvanse, your diet is too acidic.

that is absolutely just straight up untrue. Yes excessive stimulant usage depletes magnesium, mostly cause you forget to eat. And yes for both vyvanse and adderall, if your stomach is too acidic it will decrease bioavailability, but neither of things things have anything to do with tolerance, which accrues on a semi-permanent basis every time you take the drug.

That is what the parent is saying. Just because it no longer works as a stimulant, it doesn't mean treatment should be discontinued.

> This contrasts starkly to ordinary people, who will quickly build up a tolerance to typical stimulants.

This isn’t really correct.

Everyone builds up tolerance to the euphoric effects. People expecting stimulants to make them happy, motivated, and energized forever are going to be disappointed, ADHD or not.

The concentration enhancing effects are more durable because they’re not re-regulated exactly the same as the euphoric component.

This is the real reason why ADHD people find long term value in stimulants but non-ADHD people do not. They were taking the drug for different reasons.

It’s also possible to overshoot the dose and get to the point where too much drug is counterproductive. This is a common problem for people chasing that euphoria who have doctors who don’t care and keep writing for higher doses. In many patients when the drug “isn’t working” a dose reduction can actually put them back where it’s effective as an ADHD medication.

The nootropics and biohacking community would benefit most of all by being told repeatedly every time they post online about their “stack” that a good night’s sleep and adequate water intake is more effective for cognitive function than every powder ever put into a pill.

Frequent exercise is also far more effective for cognitive function than anything you can get in a pill.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5934999/

Good sleep and frequent exercise are both amazing. That said, without a good to excellent diet or supplements, exercise can deplete things which in turn compromises sleep and recovery.

How do I know? My sleep quality was shot to shit. Tried Mg supplements on a hunch, and got a massive improvement in sleep quality and exercise metrics (I put the latter down to better sleep, not anything in the supplements). I'd tried all the other sleep stuff, no caffeine after 3pm, various GABA modulators, found the somewhat improved sleep quality wasn't worth morning foggyness and lack of motivation, and I didn't like the fog they cause generally (you sleep, but, like alcohol or weed, it's not _clean_ sleep.)

I mean Ive been out of the loop for a while but that was always a huge disclaimer that was frequently repeated

Selegiline is also known as Emsam, the patches reportedly Sam Bankman-Fried was on, alongside ADHD meds. I recall reading how this may have been a large driver of his compulsive risk it all decision making that eventually brought it all down.

Delivery through transdermal patch (Emsam) is different than other presentations of Selegiline, and we don't know the doses he was on. I've heard a low dose of Emsam (6mg) gives a better, more stable dopamine baseline, without getting into MAO-A inhibition that happens at upper doses.

> I've heard a low dose of Emsam (6mg) gives a better, more stable dopamine baseline, without getting into MAO-A inhibition that happens at upper doses.

This is the broscience theory that you find on Internet forums, but it didn’t play out positively in the actual clinical trials. Getting into full MAOI inhibition was necessary for positive effects.

The “more dopamine” theory appeals to people who treat the brain as a simple machine where you’re adjusting levels of different chemicals, but doesn’t really work out in practice. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter du jour in these circles, but mood and mental health are more than one chemical.

Thanks for the info, I was missing an update on this space. If there's no solid, reproducible evidence of cognitive or energy benefits at this level -and full MAO‑A engagement seems necessary for those effects, then that doesn't look good.

About your second paragraph, I agree and I wasn't validating the bro part, just that I read about Emsam once. I guess it's mostly influenced by the popularity of performance enhancers in general, be it wakefulness enhancers, stimulants, etc. People are always trying to find "the edge", without the tradeoff, basically chasing a mirage.

Maybe a neglected topic in this theme has been the acetylcholine pathway. Cobenfy, for example, has been approved for treating negative symptoms of schizophrenia and it's not a classical drug in that space.

In my experience with hard drugs, the human body has an amazing ability to build tolerance, but in a way that biases against positive effects.

So, for example, a first-time user may consume quantity X of a drug, and get the positive effect Y and negative side-effect Z. An experienced user may consume quantity X and only get a negative side-effect 1/3 or 1/4 Z. But also only get a positive effect of 1/10 Y.

So even though the ratio of Z/X has decreased (less negative side-effect per unit of substance) so has the ratio of Y/X (less positive effect per unit of substance). Most importantly, the ratio of Z/Y has increased (more negative side-effect per "unit" of positive effect).

I find no reason to disbelieve the existence of performance-enhancing chemicals (or mood-enhancing, or anything else). Perhaps Methylene Blue does do what it's fans think it does -- at first.

If you want to get some work done, coffee can really help, Red Bull even more so, and speed even more so. The question is what happens on day 3, week 3, month 3, year 3 of continuous use.

Please be careful with this. It is a powerful MAOI. Someone I know lost their son who was trying to treat their depression with methylene blue. They had a fever, seized out and died, all symptoms of severe serotonin syndrome.

I took it daily for a couple months, at a good sized dose (approx 20 drops per day). I stopped because

1. I didn’t notice any difference.

2. It’s really messy, as in it (semi permanently) stains your counter tops blue if you so much as let a fraction of a drop land somewhere, including the dehydrated dust. I ended up buying some lab glassware cleaner to help clean it up.

3. It temporarily stains your teeth blue. It also turns your urine blue/green, but that’s no big deal as long as you’re expecting it.

That said, I also didn’t experience any negative effects that I could perceive.

It’s like that song

Sounds like it gets you in the mood for the 2024 Schoolboy Q album ‘Blue Lips’

> It also turns your urine blue/green

Doesn't it also turn your internal organs blue/green?

Not concerning per se... but concerning.

I never looked. Seriously, methylene blue has been used as a drug for more than 100 years. IIRC, it’s the first drug the FDA approved. I think the body clears it reasonably quickly and I would not expect it to permanently stain your insides.

Before taking methylene blue, and if you have genetic origins from high risk areas (Mediterranean, African, SE Asia), make sure you know that you don’t have G6PD. As with all antimalarials, G6PD may result in haemolysis. Of course it’s also on every blue dessert etc. , but don’t take your previous exposure as sign of immunity. Haemolytic episodes are possible but not given and as such you can consume the substance with minor signs for years and still end up with an episode.

Given how long it's been around, the promising results, and how many people have been using it for "biohacking" for decades, it was at first a little surprising to hear how little double-blind clinical research exists. Then you realize: methylene blue can't be patented and it's manufacture is no secret. So no one is going to make big money from it, therefore no money goes into clinical research. All too familiar story, and it really calls into question the whole "clinical trials are the arbiter of truth" mentality if the one making that claim also controls the purse strings!

I'm not sure that "can't be patented / manufacture is no secret" is necessarily the research bottleneck here, because you can make a lot of money selling analogs or derivatives of old, boring drugs. There was an interesting ProPublica story recently about a drug manufacturer raising the price of their (patented) cancer drug to eye-watering levels... and the drug in question is an analog of thalidomide! https://www.propublica.org/article/revlimid-price-cancer-cel...

One of the claims against this company is that they were preventing other companies from getting their hands on generic thalidomide, because they didn't want competitors to do research that might uncover similar analogs.

(I'm also not convinced that the results for methylene blue are especially promising or unique, but that's another matter :P)

In fact, well known grifters are currently making a boatload selling it with huge markups and branding.

I have only vaguely heard of this substance so I may be missing some important context, but I don't think this attitude really holds up under scrutiny.

There's plenty of research done on things which can't be patented or used to turn a profit in some way. People do research on diet, exercise, vitamins, and pharmaceuticals which are now generic like aspirin etc. just to name a few off the top of my head.

There's also public funding available for research which isn't intended to make money for any particular corporation.

> it was at first a little surprising to hear how little double-blind clinical research exists.

Methylene blue turns your urine blue. How does someone conduct a double-blind studies with a substance that very clearly indicates whether or not you are taking it?

Another issue is it's hard to get grant money to run studies in general. What would the goal of the study be? What would it measure?

Can't the placebo also contain some form of dye?

It'll be a bit more complicated than that since the dye would have to get from your gut to your blood and then into the urine without breaking down and without other side effects. It's possible but probably not the easiest thing.

You'd be looking for a dye that survives in the blood and urinary tract and imparts blue/green colors to the urine and that isn't reactive or toxic.

And generally speaking, when you are looking to treat something in a double-blind test, the control isn't placebo, it's the standard treatment.

It's a tricky enough problem that when double blind studies have been done, the control will generally simply have a lower dose of methylene blue rather than no dose.

This same claim is used all the time, but it is hollow without more evidence.

Do you you think that everybody is cynical and is motivated by dollars? Since it is an inexpensive, readily available compound, what prevents biohackers from doing a small scale (say, N=100) double blind trial against some relatively inert compound that makes your pee blue?

A close cousin to this claim is the old chestnut, "A tinkerer invented a carburetor that allows any care to get over 100 mpg, but then the oil companies bought out and buried the patent!"

I used to subscribe to this argument but there is unlimited research on things that can't be owned.

Methylene Blue is available as a prescription medication. It’s used in several conditions. You could even get your local compounding pharmacy to produce methylene blue capsules for you if you could find a doctor to write the prescription.

> Then you realize: methylene blue can't be patented and it's manufacture is no secret

This isn’t an impediment at all. There are numerous examples of old, simple drugs being repurposed for new conditions at different doses or different delivery mechanisms with very high price tags attached.

Selegiline is one such example. It was repurposed for depression as a transdermal patch and very high prices.

If methylene blue worked for the conditions claimed, it would be used clinically. The myth that big pharma is ignoring a compound that works doesn’t hold water.

You can patent specific therapies using unpatented drugs. For example, if the patent doesn't already exist and there's no prior art, you could patent methylene blue therapy for the treatment of athlete's foot.

Complete bullshit. You believe there is absolutely no-one amongst the hundreds of thousands of PhDs who aren't interested in exploring low-cost medicines, years after years, for decades.

There are no "promising results": there is placebo effects, survivorship bias and snake-oil peddlers.

How this guy is still alive after all the drugs he did in his youth, and all the testosterone/steroids he takes now, is a mystery to me.

Also, overdoses on methylene blue, apparently: https://x.com/iAnonPatriot/status/1887232439770087608

I don't care what kind of quackery it takes to look like this at 71. Sign me up.

https://x.com/craigbrockie/status/1865776415934947687

Eating clean, daily exercise. Treating conditions with lifestyle changes instead of medication - where feasible. That’s it for most people. He’s not cracked some secret code, but he uses it to push his wacky beliefs

"Physician heal thyself" should definitely be a baseline in the health and medical establishment -- but it aint.

Being in the top 5% of healthy people for your age bracket should be table-stakes and we definitely do not have much of that.

Since I stopped going to the doctor and instead started managing my own health, I have been worlds better. I order my own blood work, healed my Achilles tendonitis on my own instead of having surgery, order my own medication where possible, etc. I still go to a dentist, get a doctor for a colonoscopy, etc as there are obviously things that I cannot do on my own. Everything else though I handle, just pulling in specialists where required. Going to a regular doctor is a lesson in frustration, they don't care, just want to prescribe whatever drug their hot pharmaceutical rep is pushing and have zero interest in working in the grey.

> Achilles tendonitis

Do say more. Nursing some achilles tendonitis on one leg right now.

it takes a long time but if you stick with it, it works.

Tendon stretches 2x a day with resistance bands. First thing in the morning and night before bed.

3 sets of ~30 - start light and move up. I just got a set of rubber bands off amazon for ~$25

Vitamin C - take at night

Collagen supplement - I just got the powder and I mix it in water - take at night with the vitamin C

Peptides TB-500

BCP-157

GHK-Cu

Ask chatgpt about how much sterile water to mix with the peptides and for a dosing chart

Peptides can be injected subq in belly fat or closer to the injury in the calf - don't inject into the tendon. GHK-Cu is also going to help your skin look good so a little bonus.

Recommend doing the band workouts, vitamin c and collagen for a month to gauge progress. You can move on to the peptides after that, lots of people don't like shots so would recommend starting with the less invasive parts of the plan and scale accordingly.

took 3 months but I went from getting out of bed and having to hop around for 2 hours until the tendon warmed up to getting out of bed and no pain. Its still not 100% but I can jog lightly now and do heavy calf raises without issue. Alternative was surgery.

Note: my tendon did not rupture, that's a whole other ball game where surgery is pretty much a must.

Thank you for that.

For your consideration, I just ran across Dr. Keith Baar of UC Davis via Tim Ferriss' podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnFzjcPTSsc

He is recommending isometrics for tendon health, which is something I'm also going to incorporate.

I don't believe it's just that. I'm pretty sure he's taking testosterone as well

He is absolutely on test.

Yes. Regular bloodwork is also important. Once a year or twice a year if you’re over 35

Pretty sure he admitted to being on TRT. And good for him, do not go gentle into that goodnight.

You know a lot of people that just eat clean and exercise daily that look like this in their 70s? I don't know any...

For %99.999999 of the population looking like this and being as physically fit without drugs in their 70's is impossible.

I would much prefer to take testosterone to look like RFK and be as physically capable as he is then age naturally like all of the 70+ year old people I know. Most of them have trouble pulling themselves out of a pool

> You know a lot of people that just eat clean and exercise daily that look like this in their 70s? I don't know any...

Yes

> For %99.999999 of the population looking like this and being as physically fit without drugs in their 70's is impossible.

Incorrect

> I would much prefer to take testosterone to look like RFK and be as physically capable as he is then age naturally like all of the 70+ year old people I know.

Sure

> Most of them have trouble pulling themselves out of a pool

Incorrect

He sounds like his brain has been fried Jordan Peterson-style multiple times and trembles like a hairless dog stranded on an iceberg. If this is what you think a strong 71 looks like you’ve been surrounded by bad examples your entire life and lack perspective.

That's a disease called spasmodic dysphonia.

Nice going.

If he claims to have that disease my instinct tells me he is lying.

As a habitual liar the pendulum of doubt swung to “presume bullshit” with junior a long time ago.

Honestly yeah, the guy's a bullshitter and he's got no business being near public office let alone being in charge of health policy.

It can turn it blue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylene_blue#/media/File:Gro...

It can also stain the heart and other tissues. But worth noting this was a much higher dose than your typical "biohacker" uses. The levels used in a hospital for things like methemoglobinemia, septic shock, whatever are many times larger.

Regardless, I don't understand why biohackers are often obsessed with things like methylene blue when targeted modulators usually exist. If someone is obsessed with "mitochondrial function" I'd expect him to look at methoxatin or something along those lines before something as broadly active as methylene blue. If someone wants MAO inhibition pharmaceutical options are probably better in terms of controllable isoform affinity. I don't see any reason to prefer something less well-studied for MAO inhibition over e.g. rasagiline or moclobemide.

probably for the same reasons as why people are obsessed with colloidal silver. someone once told them it was good, so they just went with it.

maybe it has to do with how easy it is to procure?

Availability: no gatekeepers. methylene blue predates the FDA and is grandfathered. Unless you want to break the law, it will be hard to biohack with rasagiline or moclobemide. Also probably some safety in using something that's been used long enough to be grandfathered.

Just about any medication you want can be freely ordered from abroad. It is not against the law to use either, as they're not controlled substances. It is illegal to sell them for medical use without complying with pharmaceutical standards and a prescription, but it is not illegal to buy them.

I think having to order your drugs from another country is pretty clearly a "gate keeper": you're basically making the point you're trying to argue against.

I order plenty of things online (From other countries) and other than having to wait a week, it's trivially easy. Is it that much different when it's medicinal products?

You mean why would it be risky to ingest substances into your body from an untrusted source? I think that question answers itself.

A while back I grabbed a topical corticosteroid cream from an indian subsidiary of an American pharmaceutical company because it was cheaper, faster, and easier than a dermatologist visit. It's often not a shady no-name manufacturer. Some guys in the bodybuilding world will get their steroids through Bayer's turkish subsidiary. Etc.

> steroids

I don’t knot that steroids is a good example to support your case. Anabolic steroids are classified as Schedule III controlled substances under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) in the United States.

Correct, my point is that you often wind up purchasing overseas from foreign subsidiaries of the same companies that make the prescribed and dispensed stuff here. You're still purchasing and using pharmaceutical-grade. The legal question is separate.

A large amount of pharmaceutical ingredients come out of China, and are safely used in American drugs approved, inspected, and tested [hopefully] by FDA. For those supply chains that are supposedly well regulated there's less risk than just purchasing from some unknown/untrusted entity that also happens to be in China, who might have put in all kinds of impurities or even poisons either by accident or on purpose.

Maybe this is a very european sentiment, but I "trust" an italian or german pharma lab just as much as a dutch or american one.

True, the main country who has proven itself to be untrustworthy and doing it's best to covertly poison America and the West in general is...you guessed it... China.

> Just about any medication you want can be freely ordered from abroad. It is not against the law to use either, as they're not controlled substances.

Interesting, so buying prescription medication from abroad (and without a prescription of course) is not illegal as long as it isnt a narcotic?

If it's a controlled substance, no. It's illegal to say "I'm selling you a drug" that's not an approved, appropriately-produced drug that's either OTC or dispensed with a prescription.

Because these are usually ordered from overseas companies that aren't governed by U.S. regulations, they're in the clear. Because it's not actually illegal for you to buy it, you're in the clear.

N.B. some "nootropics" are still controlled substances. For example, modafinil is I believe schedule IV so you technically could be prosecuted though it's unlikely.

FYI: Possessing non-controlled prescription drugs may be illegal depending on your state. It’s generally a misdemeanor offense.

Whether you’d get caught or not is a separate matter, but don’t assume that it’s legal without checking local laws.

If it's a prescription medication in the jurisdiction you receive it, the possession itself of a prescription drug without a prescription can be illegal on its own.

Pretty sure peptides fall under this category as well. Illegal for widespread use but legal for 'research' purposes. There are dozens of sites though that openly sell them.

Probably because you can buy it at a dish supply store like I did almost 20 years ago.

Plenty of people are taking Methoxatin (PQQ) as well, I'd argue its more common to take than methylene blue.

Sent me down a rabbit hole — found the Blue Fugates of Kentucky: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Fugates

Thanks, ha ha.

thank you, this is the only answer I want

Maybe an irresponsible link right here: https://wikijo.blogspot.com/2007/08/chemistry-methylene-blue...

> the ordered dosage of methylene blue was 1mg/kg/hr

That's 5X what is considered a safe dose.

Up to 2mg/kg/day is considered safe. Double that with care. But they were dosing every hour for days!

I like how the description says gross pathology.

> (MAO) inhibitor

That triggered my "uh-oh" alarm.

Anyone familiar with MAO inhibitors as a psych med, know that they can have really serious side effects, when you eat certain things (like chocolate or caffeine). It can kill you[0].

However, I guess that this stuff doesn't have those side effects.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK539848/#:~:text=MAOIs%...

I am prescribed an MAOI (tranylcypromine). Coffee and chocolate are perfectly safe to eat, along with most foods. The foods you really need to avoid are highly aged cheese, leftover or improperly stored meats, and fermented foods like soy sauce or kimchi. Even of those foods to avoid, you typically need to eat large quantites of them on an empty stomach to get a life threatening reaction.

Ah. Thanks for the clarification.

I had heard chocolate and coffee, but I have no personal experience.

This article author doesn't really seem to understand anything, he simplifies things that are complicated like serotonin and other hormone balancing and complicates things that are simple like mitochondria electron exchange. You can't really come to any conclusions from this except that methylene blue is possibly nootropic and people are experimenting with it.

Alternatively, if your tropical or marine fish ever suffer from white-spot disease (actually a nasty protozoan), you use methylene blue to kill the parasite.

Knew it from fishkeeping and how it stains everything except glass. Then I saw it helps make the less-than-natural environment to certify biodegradable plastic. Didnt know human consumption is still permitted.

Methylene blue is a vasopressor, particularly good at reversing vasoplegia after cardiopulmonary bypass.

Here’s a much better treatment of methylene blue than this article:

https://youtu.be/CnIJbbCvFdQ?si=lQ1i2Ah7ZIt6hewT

Is it? I don't see any sources linked to any studies at all in the description. I do however see an extensive list of affiliate and sponsor links to everything from sketchy supplements to anti-aging clinics featuring blood analysis to the evergreen classic: penis pumps.

The studies referenced are highlighted and spread throughout the video for each point he talks about.

I’m not sure what penis pumps have to do with the quality of his research, they’re a legitimate medical device used in patients with erectile dysfunction. [1]

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9497591/

Sure, they have a legitimate function. So do ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. But they exist in a very particular and not-at-all reputable advertising niche. One that is noteworthily and heavily represented here.

An hour is a significant time investment. Not linking to your sources increases the bar for verifying claims high enough that it's suspicious to not do so.

I can't verify your claims about dosage. I can investigate the claims made in this article. If you want to strengthen your argument and ensure you aren't walking yourself down a path based on nothing but other people's ability to weave a narrative, you should seek out stronger sources for topics you care about.

Is anyone else getting an ActivityStreams JSON dump of this post instead of an HTML view?

Sounds like something you should only consume in Heisenberg quality.

Didn’t Mel Gibson say it cures cancer? On jre

no, that was ivermectin and fenbendezole he spoke of.

To improve your health never start with adding a chemical! Instead remove chemicals and toxins first and foremost.

> To improve your health never start with adding a chemical! Instead remove chemicals

Vitamins are chemicals.

This is true. I've had so many problems where the pills and creams were time and money down the drain, and the solution was to cut something out of my diet or lifestyle. Less is more.

Yes, all those people trying to get rid of pneumonia should stop antibiotics and try organic detergent instead.

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