SAM-e
 

S-adenosylmethionine

i have been taking it for awhile (4 months now i thinkg..i can go back and check) now after my dr suggested it. i had blood work that came back and said my liver function was on the low side ( just barely but still...) he couldn't give me any cause for that. i am not taking any rx's and very rarely use any otc pain meds.

the dosage i am on now may seem high, 400mg am and 400mg pm.

but..wowza..world of difference in many areas.

my hair, which used to grow like a weed and had slowed so far down i rarely need a hair cut. my last one had been in april! :eek: growing fantastic now. my fingernails, which i never had fake ones, always had my own long hard ones, had been peeling & cracking, are back to long and no chipping, peeling...breaking. and my skin...oh goodness. even hubby asked if i was sneaking off for facials or if i had "something" done.:rolleyes:

my pms...99% gone. i reserve the right to keep that 1% :p i have a VERY stressful life. and VERY high pain levels daily. i tolerate these stresses so much better.

oh...and the migraines...just about gone! maybe 1 per month.

i can't say that my sleeping has improved from. i wasn't expecting it to. i started taking a melatonin that also has L-Theanine and B-6 in it. hubby bought, it so i am trying it. (was going to try plain melatonin, but i opened the bottle before looking :o ) it helps me to actually fall asleep. but i still wake from pain.

is anyone else taking SAM-e? what is it doing for you?

*remember...check with your dr before adding any otc med*

That's very cool! :cool:

I wish I had some more time today so I could look up some more info. on that stuff... sigh... maybe later.

About the sleeping. There's a good study that showed large levels of B12 to improve the sleeping ability in teenagers. I know you're not a teen, but I've found it to be helpful also... and whenever I start to have trouble, I give myself a whopper dose of B12 meth.

See: http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...6150#post36150

SAMe is wonderful...
 

for some people. It was a Godsend for me back in 1999--- looking at that huge
scalpel the ortho was sharpening on my visits for my inflamed knee.

But I would really not suggest you take it later in the day. It can be very energizing, and cause insomnia. I only take 400mg now first thing when I get up.
If I go below 400mg/day, my arthritis flares.

There is a subset of people who react to SAMe with hypomania. It is not a large
group, but any hyper behavior is something you should pay attention to.

Dr. Walsh from Pfeiffer, has alot to say about who can tolerate methylation and SAMe and who cannot. I can't look it up right now, but those who cannot, should not take it.

From what I know the very high doses, don't need to be taken for a long time.
Most of the studies used only high doses at first, and then cut back to
maintenance ones.

I personally don't use SAMe except when I get up in the early morning, on an empty stomach. I take my 400mg dose then, with my thyroid med. I never went above 600mg/day.

I have severe arthritis, and spondo---the long word--- grade 2. I rarely require pain meds, and can still work, and get around. Just not as much as before, and I do baby myself, and sleep alot when I can.

i am between a grade 3 and a grade 4 spondylolisthesis. i got "lucky" :rolleyes: and got the progressive spondylolisthesis after an accident at age 12. long story.

i'll keep in mind and bring up the insomnia factor to my dr. he is wonderful about responding by email. :D

my insomnia is more from pain. i can't be in the same position for too long. if my ab and back muscles relax...i get slippage. the nerves being hit wake me up like being jabbed with a knife. then it takes me awhile to relax again and fall back asleep. usually around the time to get the monkeys up. :rolleyes:

samE also seems to be helpful for OCD in some people

but I sure am interested in all the other good stuff mentioned here about it!

Curious...
 

you should investigate Lidoderm patches.

They are really useful...and now very very commonly used. I started with them in the early days, and use them for pain when I get a flare.

We have had many posts on many forums here and "there" about them.

I can't recommend them enough.

Is there any problem with a person using the Lidoderm patch when already using a calcium channel blocker for high blood pressure? I ask because I recently read that the patch acts on calcium channels.

rose

re: SAM-e
 

Regarding liver tests, I had a similar experience a few years ago. I saw an MD who works with herbs and he prescribed 400 mg SAM-e twice daily, along with a few other herbs/nutrients (incl. 5-HTP). After a couple weeks (in which I did not seem to experience a benefit with sleep), liver enzymes AST and ALT became elevated, and he suspected that either SAM-e or 5-HTP had caused it. He then told me to stop taking the herbs, tested me again a few weeks later (in which the enzymes had returned to normal), and in a roundabout way told me he didn’t know what else to do.

Note: This was just my experience and doesn’t mean these nutrients will affect anyone else in the same way.

SAMe and the liver:
 

That is interesting West.

SAMe is being used in Europe to improve liver functions and treat cirrhosis.
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=13861436
More here:
http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag97/june-report972.html

You know, liver functions can go wonky when you have viral infections.
Mono can really throw them off for example. When a viral infection occurs, functions often improve within 6mos.

Concerning Lidoderm... very little is absorbed thru the skin into the circulation, from these patches. I ran Norvasc and Cardizem thru a drug checker and not interactions came up. That is, nothing has entered the data base YET.

Here is a paper on ion channels/lidocaine:
This is the definition of iontophoresis:

People take S-Adenosyl-L-methionine/SAMe to help their liver if they have chronic hepatitis. AFAIK it's supposed to help stabilize liver enzymes in the process. I also know that there are different types or grades in quality of SAMe, with some brands being more pure than other brands, a bit like with Melatonin. I used to get mine sent to me from USA at a time it wasn't available here readily.

Curious, glad it's helped you. I took it for a long time some years ago. I have read about it actually causing sleeping problems in people who are highly sensitive to the SAMe. No idea how often that occurs. About the low LTF's... Some of the tests can be low in certain illnesses, but the doctor would have looked at the whole list of the LFT's and got a better picture, so that low level might not have been of any cause for worry from what he could see. I reckon liver function tests as they're called really should be re-named as liver enzyme tests, 'cause although they measure liver enzymes pretty specifically, they don't _always_ give a good picture of the health of the liver anyway. depends.

west, Certain forums of Vitamin B3/Niacin can sometimes cause flushing or elevated liver enzymes if you were taking any of that. I'm not totally sure if 5-HTP can cause elevated liver enzymes, but I know that the SSRI medications can, so it this had happened to me, I would have wondered if the 5-HTP might have been the culprit. I'm not sure what conditions you might have, but there are a number of conditions where the use of 5-HTP should be really used with great caution and also be well monitored.