The doctor I work with is Dr. Chad Oler, who's contact info can be found here: link. Also, I understand that some may be wary of a ND, but he undoubtedly knows what he is doing with the amino acids and has worked with Dr. Hinz for i think nearly 15 years. If you are interested in scheduling a consult with them just call the phone number on that website and you should be able to get in relatively soon. If you do decide to do that make sure you have all the lab tests and history of what you have done so far organized and ready to go for the consult so you can make sure he is educated on what you have done so far. Again, if you really want to pursue this you really have to work with a doctor who has studied this and had many patients before. Also talking to him and explaining the nausea issue, he would likely be able to identify the problem better than I could and help solve it to move forward.

Backpacker, I think you make some valid points especially with antidepressants, tricyclics, etc. but what these doctors are doing is based on nearly 20 years of research mainly done by Dr. Marty Hinz on using amino acids in combination to obtain competitive inhibition whereby serotonin and dopamine are competing in transport(by the OCT-2 transporter), synthesis(by the AADC enzyme), and metabolism(by MAO and COMT). With the lab tests they are looking at urinary levels of serotonin and dopamine which are not directly interpreted as the levels in the brain because serotonin and dopamine are newly synthesized in the kidneys from tryptophan, 5-htp, tyrosine, and l-dopa. So with this newly synthesized dopamine and serotonin they are looking at how the OCT-2 transporter responds. Honestly it is too complicated to cover in a post on here, but if you are interested in learning more about it read their peer-reviewed papers(which can be found on pubmed or his website neurosupport.com). There are also many videos that can be found on neurosupport.com/videos, that explicitly detail his findings and research and why it works to solve monamine disease states. A good video for parkinsons disease can be found at: 216 5 1 Making the best treatment better - YouTube

Thanks for the post on your Rx experience. My husband had a family member go that way and while it really did save her life in the beginning, it seemed to be less effective over time, no matter how many times she switched meds. My husband never went that direction but has tried many "natural" means with little help. He tried the amino therapy approach a few years ago and started to see some positive effect but the nausea was too much and interfered with his job. But now that nothing else has worked, we started talking about researching the nausea issue to see if he could give it another go with that method again. So glad I found this board and thank you for the recommendation for Dr Chad. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when I was reading about Dr. Hintz several years back didn't he pursue this line of research because of his own battle with Bipolar? We do our best research when it's personal!

My reseach on Dr. Hintz, indicated the same condition. I stayed away from him because of the findings of the numerous State Medical Boards.

Still, one of my former partners, at age 34 was Dx, and w/Biplolar. Psych said with meds + talk he'd be ok. He's still practicing full-time.

Thank you billbobby. I have been reading on Hinz......since 2008. He and his daughter appeared initially to me to be more businesspeople than DR/daughter.....

The companies' owners, Martin C. Hinz of Florida and his daughter Amy Gunthert-Hinz of Duluth, signed a consent decree Tuesday agreeing to change their marketing tactics.

Their attorney Josiah Lamb said neither Hinz nor his daughter would comment. In a statement, CHK said its products are safe and effective.

"We have been in contact with representatives of the FDA, and we expect to resolve this matter shortly by making appropriate changes to our promotional materials and resume selling," it said.


Hinz holds an active medical license in Minnesota, where he attended the University of Minnesota Medical School, according to the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice.

The companies' owners, Martin C. Hinz of Florida and his daughter Amy Gunthert-Hinz of Duluth, signed a consent decree Tuesday agreeing to change their marketing tactics.

However, the board has taken several disciplinary actions against him, starting in 1996 when it suspended his license after he was hospitalized in Duluth for bipolar disorder with sleep deprivation. Later actions show continued concern over his ability to practice. It suspended his license again in 2001 after a skills audit "identified concerns with [his] medical knowledge, prescribing practices, competency, and recordkeeping," but stayed the suspension contingent on his full compliance with the terms, provisions and deadlines set by the board. The license was reinstated in 2005.

"concerns with [his] medical knowledge, prescribing practices, competency, and recordkeeping"

not what I look for in a DR......but that's just me.....and I am fairly well versed in the pairing of a carboxyl and an amino and their participation in proteins....


peace

BP

I thought Dr. Hintz used a combination of the amino therapy and non Rx Lithium to resolve his bipolar? Again, this is just trying to remember what I read several years ago. A long while back, a friends daughter showed up with bipolar out of the blue while attending UCal Berkeley and her behavior was pretty bizarre in the manic phase. Why does bipolar seem to hit the high IQ/talented more frequently? Tragic.
Thank you for the suggestion of substituting L-Methionine. Our doctor never suggested that. Am I remembering correctly that after they resolved the depression/anxiety that some people could work back down to needing just the cysteine? Would this mean that the sulfur aminos are the back bone of the program and the 5-HTP, tyrosine, l-dopa are just trying to get you balanced faster? I am not a chemist type so understanding how it works takes me a bit of time and not too few questions, unfortunately.

From all the videos I have watched where Dr. Hinz discusses how he got into using the Amino Acids, he does not reference it was from him having Bi-polar. He actually ran a weight-loss clinic in Duluth, Minnesota, which was/is one of the only cities in america where health insurance covers weight-loss treatment. So back in the mid 1990's his main focus was on treating patients looking to lose weight. The focus his clinic had was on using different drugs at the time to manipulate the patients appetite so that they would not crave food and thus be able to lose weight. During this time the main drug combination that was used were Fenfluramine/phentermine otherwise known as Fen-Phen. Within a few years of its main stream use, there were multiple studies showing up that showed there were side effects that affected the heart(I think, I don't remember for sure what the side effects were), so it got pulled of the market.

With this happening, Dr. Hinz now had no way to be able to curb his patients appetite, which meant he could not do anything for patients looking to lose weight. He then talks about how he read some literature about how some physicians were having success at curbing appetite using SSRI and SNRI drugs. So he transitioned to using those to see if he could get a similar result. With doing so, he found that none of his patients were getting the results that the physicians he read about were getting. So he called the physicians who wrote the medical report up, and realized that all of the patients who were being treated by those physicians had never taken Fen-phen, whereas every single patient he was treating had taken it. So he reasoned that in some way Fen-phen had affected patients to render SSRI's and SNRI's useless.

Since he understood that Fen-phen functioned in a way that resulted in depletion of monamines, he theorized that this depletion is what rendered the SSRI and SNRI drugs worthless since there would not be enough monamines for the drugs to work with in the system since they would already be depleted. So because of this, he then started working with amino acids, initially it just being 5-htp and L-tyrosine. They started databasing the results from using these substances and overtime they started to see patterns in patient responses, the way urinary levels of monoamines respond to changes in dosage, and defined what urinary levels optimize and eliminate symptoms for different disease types.

Sulfur amino acids, 5-htp, L-tyrosine, L-dopa, and L-trytophan all function together in one system with each having an effect on the other. For instance if you just take a sulfur amino acid like cysteine without taking a dopamine and serotonin precursor like L-tyrosine and 5-htp then you will cause dopamine and serotonin depletion. See here: Neurotransmitter depletion | AMA Certified Category 1 CME Relative Nutritional Deficiency Conference. For each patient and whether they need to continue to take the amino acids or not depends on the etiology of the condition. If the cause of the disease is post synaptic neuron damage, then to have continued symptomatic alleviation you have to take the amino acids for life. Your brain functions in bundles with different areas controlling different functions. If your substantia nigra is the origin of damage then you get symptoms of parkinsons disease, if the area controlling mood/affect is damaged then you get symptoms of depression, etc etc etc.

But lets say that the cause of the disease is depletion of the neurotransmitters, whether it be from taking a reuptake inhibitor, a poor diet, or taking any of the amino acids in improper balance with the others. In this case once you properly restored the needed chemicals to the necessary levels, you could then quit taking them and still achieve symptomatic relief since the depletion has been addressed. The third etiology of symptoms is from genetic anomalies. These are usually similar to the damage patient, with symptomatic relief only being maintained with continued amino acid intake.

Also, if a patient has Bi-polar and is treated, then yes they do take both amino acids and a mood stabilizing drug like Lithium. The way to identify these patients is that if they do not achieve relief of depressive symptoms when put in the phase 3 therapeutic ranges for serotonin and dopamine, then they are identified as being bi-polar. Here is an excerpt from the study they did on differentiating depression from bi-polar:

"This study contained 1600 patients who were diagnosed with recurrent major depression under the DSM-IV criteria. All patients had no medical history of mania or hypomania. All patients experienced no relief of depression symptoms on level 3 amino acid dosing values of the amino acid precursor dosing protocol. Of 1600 patients studied, 117 (7.3%) nonresponder patients were identified who experienced no relief of depression symptoms when the serotonin and dopamine amino acid precursor dosing values were adjusted to establish urinary serotonin and urinary dopamine levels in the Phase III therapeutic ranges. All of the 117 nonresponders who achieved no relief of depression symptoms were continued on this amino acid dosing value, and a mood-stabilizing drug was started. At this point, complete relief of depression symptoms, under evaluation with DSM-IV criteria, was noted in 114 patients within 1–5 days. With further dose adjustment of the mood-stabilizing drug, the remaining three nonresponders achieved relief of depression symptoms."

Hope this helps!

Thank you for that terrific explanation in lay terms. And I realized I'm spelling his name wrong, too. I remember now that help with weight loss was mentioned, but as it wasn't our issue, it passed from memory. I can see he must have used what he found for his own Bi-polar condition, but it wasn't the catalyst for the original research. Fascinating path of discovery. We are going to pursue this avenue again and see if we can overcome the nausea and get some better results. Goodness knows, we've exhausted other natural channels and we don't want to pursue the conventional avenue. Thank you!

You're welcome! Glad to hear you are thinking about moving forward with this. Are you planning on getting in contact with Dr. Oler? I really think you should see his issues resolved if you stick with it. Just make sure that you follow all the instructions that are given, especially the ones associated with taking the test. He gives out a paper with all the instructions when you order tests and after every consult so it shouldn't be too hard. Make sure if you do this to let us know how things work out for you, and if you have any issues and need help let me know!

Also, did you ever find out what dosages he was on and basically what the doctor you worked with before did? I'm kind of curious as too what potentially went wrong if you don't mind sharing!

Unfortunately, I am away from home for several weeks and I have my husband looking for a needle in a haystack after a move, so the poor guy is trying! I will definitely post the lab work, if we can find it, and any results we have as we go along. It may take us a few months to get it underway as we are at that phase of life taking care of elderly parents who don't live nearby. If anything, spending time around our parents only emphasizes the need to get this area under control for our children, so they don't have to battle the same elusive health issues. And thank you for recommending Dr Oler. We were looking for another doctor to try the method with and he sounds like the most knowledgable. Thank you!!

Before I could get home, my husband got a hold of Methionine and tried it himself. Let me back up and say that this man has an iron stomach so when the cysteine bothered him it was very unusual. Because of his iron stomach he decided to jump in all the way and took the max dosage of methionine split in three over one day. Not only did he handle it just fine, but in only hours, he experienced the positive uplift that it had taken weeks to reach on the previous cysteine version with its accompanying supplements. He can't wait to go with the whole package and see what that brings. Can't thank you enough for the methionine information!