Four weeks ago, I was still suffering from the damage caused by a trip to a different city, a trip that I took in the second half of March. Back then, I had to stop eating every three hours; I had to eat more liquid food and eat more sweet foods (natural juice, for example) to make sure I could take a taxi for 5-10 minutes every day. This is due to symptoms similar to those of IBS-D whenever I am in a moving vehicle. My symptoms are made worse by the fact that access to a restroom is severely restricted while on the move.
I had chest pain, chest tightness, and shortness of breath that didn’t go away. I also had to deal with a bout of HSV, and it felt like I could not recover well enough to walk again 200-300 m per day. I thought I’d give ivermectin a try for my HSV infection since there seems to be enough evidence of its anti-viral properties.
I did what I always do when trying out any new drug or supplement - I opened the capsule and split the content in four, then I took a quarter of the capsule, which is 3 mg. I didn’t feel anything, so I thought I should double the amount. The next day I took 6 mg, and after about three hours, the chest tightness and the shortness of breath were almost gone. I didn’t think it was because of ivermectin. However, I decided to take continue taking it. Most of these symptoms were better, and I could walk more inside the house, and I was able to sleep better without waking up at 2-3 a.m. to tachycardia and shortness of breath.
After two days, I forgot to take it on the third day. I woke up during the night with shortness of breath, chest tightness, pounding heart, and headache. This has been happening since 2015, so it was just something normal. But in the morning, I thought that the only thing that changed that evening was that I forgot to take the ivermectin dose. So I searched the online medical libraries for ivermectin and cardiomyopathy/heart failure.
It didn’t take long until I found this study: Antihypertrophic Effects of Small Molecules that Maintain Mitochondrial ATP Levels Under Hypoxia, Authors - Hiroaki Naga, Tomoko Satomi, Akiko Abiru, Kazumasa Miyamoto, Koji Nagasawa, Minoru Maruyama, Satoshi Yamamoto, Kuniko Kikuchi, Hiromitsu Fuse, Masakuni Noda, Yoshiyuki Tsujihata.
I will quote here the highlights from this study, but I highly recommend reading the entire study:
”• High-throughput image-based phenotypic screens based on mitochondrial ATP under hypoxia were developed.
• Mitochondrial ATP protectors, including ivermectin, were identified in cardiomyocytes under hypoxia.
• Ivermectin increased mitochondrial ATP production by inducing Cox6a2.
• Mitochondrial ATP protectors inhibited hypertrophic responses in human iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes.
Impaired mitochondrial ATP production in cardiomyocytes is one of the major causes of heart failure. A drug that maintains ATP production would, therefore, be an attractive heart failure treatment option. We performed high-throughput image-based screens under hypoxia, and identified mitochondrial ATP protectors, including the anti-parasite drug, ivermectin. We show that ivermectin increased mitochondrial ATP production by inducing Cox6a2 expression and inhibited the hypertrophic response of human iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes. Pharmacological inhibition of importin β, a target of ivermectin, exhibited similar protective effects. Our studies indicate that compounds maintaining mitochondrial ATP under hypoxia may prevent pathological hypertrophy and improve cardiac function.”
I am not very good at explaining what all these things mean with ordinary words that are easier to understand, but I hope those who can do it will do it on their platforms.
The week that followed, I took 12 mg in the morning and 12 mg in the evening, and it was very good at keeping at bay my cardiac-related symptoms. I noticed that taking more than 24 mg/day gave me some adverse side effects. The following week I took only 12 mg in the evenings, and I was OK during the night, and the effects of ivermectin were maintained.
However, my general fatigue was still present; my ability to walk outside every day again was still missing. So I decided to take a supplement that I had long thought about taking, but I wasn’t sure it would help in any way. It seemed like a stretch. But taking it for the past two weeks improved all of my symptoms so well that I no longer had to take ivermectin. And last week, I walked 1.3 km in one go at 32 degrees outside, I chose to walk in full sun, and I was OK. I didn’t experience muscle pain, fatigue, joint pain, or aggravation of my cardiac symptoms. Before this walk, I also worked quite a lot every day in my little garden, and I was OK.
I’ll write about what I am taking in my next post.
P.S.: In case you’re wondering, ivermectin did not help with my HSV infection at all.
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