Dopamine derangement may be the problem in BPD

Hi you might be interested in this. There are studies giving some evidence that a derangement of various dopamind pathwayz in the brain being the cause of BPD. Dopamine is the brain chuemical that gets released that causes us to feel pleasure. Their are several foods that will invariabl cause you to (increase) release this pleasure causing chemical, blackberries being the best one, but also blueberries, and black grapes and concord grape juice but not the grocery store version like Welch's which is not 100 percent concord , it contains part white grapes, but the health food stor versions, containing only concord grape juice as the nnly ingredient.. You can buy a pound of frozen blackberries for 3 or 4 dollars.

So on about five occasions I hav e had my BPD friend Mary eat some, like last night she ate about five or sixe blackberries if the stomach is emtpty so no competing foods is the ideal time to test this because the pleasure is most intense, and dont eat anything after the blackberries for the purpses of thisi test, takes less than five minutes to begin after eating. Invariably she changes once the dopamine starts, all of her BPD behaviors get extraordinarily magnified. Distorted perceptions, rage, mixed in with sadness flipping back and forth and other emotions running amok switching back and forth in an instant for minutes, I become the hated devil in her mind , so to speak, whereas before she ate them we were enjoying each others company, and I guess you could say impulsive althouugh the dopamine increase sedates her partially when she isi just sitting ther not up and raginigg, and so the impulses are muted by that partial sedation. These fods relax and calms me and she gets sleepy but isi easily aroused into agitation as I said. Just the opposite of what happens to a non when we eat these 4 foods.

And whereas non BPD's become generous, happy, and liking people more, she becomes just the pposite, antisocial, wanting to be alone , insulting. each time we have tried this experiment.
a she will not see that it was the blackberries or other of these fods leading to dopamine release,that is causing this sudden behavior change, she its some behavior of mine , she insists. She even accused me of something bad due to a gross distortion of something I was doing that no other human would have thought, nor would she unless in this heightened BPD state. The personality change was so drastic and so quick she resembled someone with multiple personalities. I was looking at a wholly different person.

So you all might try this and ask someone to observe to see if this happens to you because you may deny it isi happening just as my friend tends to do. So this would explain perhaps why the dpamine reducing antipsychotics like seroquel ,that are prescribed for schizophrenics work to at least some degree in BPD. But my meager understandiing of dopamine pathways from reading tells me that there are a number of them and maybe the antipsychotics dont fully work on the one in BPD as well as they do in the one or ones involved in schizophrenia so maybe there is a better way to get at the one in BPD.

I know I can definitely reduce my dopamine (measured by how pleasuraable my brain feels. Any kind of soy reduces my dopamine, and my serotonin (serotonin has also been proposed to be involved in BPD.) and so may one could see if drinking some soy milk reduces BPD symptomes (lasts about six hours. Sweet potatoes are another of my favorite dopamine suppressors, so I'll try both on my triend and see if they reduce her BPD behaviors and let you knoow. But she hates to experiment. Hates and usually refused to, I wonder if that isi a BPD trait because the other 2 I know are that way too.

As I have posted here before ,staring at tv static or snow with the sound off drastically reduces my friend's BPD symptoms within 3 minutes of staring , lasting a number of hours. It causes the person to go into the thera brainwave state and slightly reduces dopamine as it raises endorphins I believe from experiments on my self, enddrphins are the brain chemical responsible for the pleasurable response to the opiate drugs including oxycontin, heroin, etc.

Steve Lord

Let's not get overboard here. Neuro-transmittors are group names, there for each several sub-types with different shapes to fit different receptors in the brain.

So such a sweeping statement isn't correct.

Furthermore it isn't the cause if it exists, but a result.
Oxytocin is like using a sledgehammer to drive a nail in. It's seriously overhyped as of late as a cureall for anything from autism to psychosis.

Sure, if you give someone a shot of heroine they'll be happy too. Not really a solution.

I'm not sure this is relevant but I read this and somehow ended up on this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAj7ogsM ... re=related

It totally relaxed me. I'm curious about the dopamine info you've posted about... off to do some research! What is the relationship between brain waves and neurotransimitters? More dopamine in Alpha, theta? less in others? Curious! Thank you for giving me some focus today.

Best

Does anyone hear have any interest in eating some blackberries or blueberries or black grapes or concord grape juice as the only ingredient in the juice on an empty stomach and eating nthing afterwardand tellling posting what your response is? Very curious whether they match my BPD friend or can you describe what you feel and what your response is?
If you dont eat any tomato products foor awhile then tmatos will cause you to produce a lot of dopaomine too.

Thanks, Steve

I will try the blackberry experiment sometime and post the results. I imagine my response will be something like "Oh man, these blackberries are freaking delicious."

betterlatethannever wrote:I will try the blackberry experiment sometime and post the results. I imagine my response will be something like "Oh man, these blackberries are freaking delicious."

Thanks Better, better late than never. Id say also to do it in the presence of another so you will exhibit behavior and feeliings towards someone .

lockett wrote:

betterlatethannever wrote:I will try the blackberry experiment sometime and post the results. I imagine my response will be something like "Oh man, these blackberries are freaking delicious."

Thanks Better, better late than never. Id say also to do it in the presence of another so you will exhibit behavior and feeliings towards someone .

Good point! I also think that a certain variety of hot baked goods may be useful for the purposes of this experiment.

You are all welcome to try anything you want. But unfortunately it's really not that simple.

There loads of Dopamine subtypes, all act differently on different parts of the brain. A dopamine subtype for example is very important for muscle control, Parkinsons is a lack of that dopamine subtype.

Another is involved with downregulating the nervous system, as in calming you down (benzodiazepines, alcohol work on that)

Yet another does something else.

So taking products which are said to stimulate a certain neurotransmitter production can have as many negative as positive effects depending on what you look for since (assuming they do work) they would stimulate the production of all subtypes.

So any effect you might encounter is largely/mostly/completely placebo. But it's your dime.

betterlatethannever wrote:

lockett wrote:

betterlatethannever wrote:I will try the blackberry experiment sometime and post the results. I imagine my response will be something like "Oh man, these blackberries are freaking delicious."

Thanks Better, better late than never. Id say also to do it in the presence of another so you will exhibit behavior and feeliings towards someone .

Good point! I also think that a certain variety of hot baked goods may be useful for the purposes of this experiment.

Better, I ate every food one at a time ver a period of time to see what happened to my doamine. Baked goods reduced it.

Steve

petrossa wrote:You are all welcome to try anything you want. But unfortunately it's really not that simple.

There loads of Dopamine subtypes, all act differently on different parts of the brain. A dopamine subtype for example is very important for muscle control, Parkinsons is a lack of that dopamine subtype.

Another is involved with downregulating the nervous system, as in calming you down (benzodiazepines, alcohol work on that)

Yet another does something else.

So taking products which are said to stimulate a certain neurotransmitter production can have as many negative as positive effects depending on what you look for since (assuming they do work) they would stimulate the production of all subtypes.

So any effect you might encounter is largely/mostly/completely placebo. But it's your dime.

This is what I believe is happening. Man evolved in the jungles of Africa, eating a diet of fruits and leaves, vegetables. In my long testing only fruits and vegetables increase dopamine, all other foods reduce it., make my brain feel duller. Evolution works by creating a gene whereby our survival is enhanced if we do something that triggers that gene if we do something that enhances our survival thereby rewarding us with pleasure to entice us to do that behavior again. Those dark fruits contain pigments in the anthocyanin familly that especially enhance our survival by improving various of our physical and mental functionings, thus triggering our dopamine reward. IF we have a deficiency of some essential nutrient , any food containing that nutrient will cause us to produce the dopamine reward, I have found through this testinig, UNTIL we are no longer deficient. in that nutrieint. As opposed to all other foods, only these four do so no matter how often i eats them, one cant eat enough so the body says, ok thats sufficient.

Baked goods would have enhanced our survival once we moved out into the plains of Africa and were only then threatened by famine so sweets and fats became useful in preventing famine by both fattening us up, thus our tongues evoved not our brains , unless these baked goods contain something we are deficieint in like omega 3 in flax oil, etc, and probably are made with the fats that make my brain feel duller, the worst being soy and safflower oil, canola is not good either , reduces dopamine. We crave them and our taste buds were rewarded when we eat them now, but not our bodies.I guess there is a very short lived dopamine reward as long as we have these lovely tasting meats and baked goods etc on our tongue, which would disappear immediately after swallowing, but offset by the dull reduced dopamine feel to the brain after eating them that lasts for hours. Those four black or purole fruits calm and relax me, makefeel good and have recently been proposed, in a medicial journal article to aid in Parkinson's,blue so all 3 of Petrosa''s posted uses for dopamine are covered by eating one of these fruits.

Steve