Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Your body › Food, caffeine and fuel
This is often why a supplement looks like it caused a relapse or a sudden run of side effects. Nothing about the prescription changed, so the pattern is easy to misread. If something you take regularly suddenly stops working, or starts feeling too strong, one of the questions worth asking is what has recently arrived in the cupboard.
Eat and drink the sustenance God has provided and do not cause corruption in the land (Quran 2:60). Permission and caution arrive in the same line, which is roughly the position herbal remedies sit in.
البقرة
۞وَإِذِ ٱسۡتَسۡقَىٰ مُوسَىٰ لِقَوۡمِهِۦ فَقُلۡنَا ٱضۡرِب بِّعَصَاكَ ٱلۡحَجَرَۖ فَٱنفَجَرَتۡ مِنۡهُ ٱثۡنَتَا عَشۡرَةَ عَيۡنࣰ اۖ قَدۡ عَلِمَ كُلُّ أُنَاسࣲ مَّشۡرَبَهُمۡۖ كُلُواْ وَٱشۡرَبُواْ مِن رِّزۡقِ ٱللَّهِ وَلَا تَعۡثَوۡاْ فِي ٱلۡأَرۡضِ مُفۡسِدِينَ
Remember when Moses prayed for water for his people and We said to him, ‘Strike the rock with your staff.’ Twelve springs gushed out, and each group knew its drinking place. ‘Eat and drink the sustenance God has provided and do not cause corruption in the land.’
Qur’an 2:60read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
An ordinary substance moving a clinical picture is not exotic. A review of caffeine in bipolar disorder found evidence that both intake and abrupt withdrawal can affect mood and sleep. The studies were few and mostly observational, so it is a caution rather than a precise rule, and it makes the general point that what you take alongside your treatment is part of the treatment.
Frigerio S, Strawbridge R, Young AH. (2021). The impact of caffeine consumption on clinical symptoms in patients with bipolar disorder: A systematic review.. Bipolar disorders doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
If a plant speeds up or slows down the enzymes that break a drug down, the amount reaching you shifts even though the dose on the box has not.
A sudden change in how your medication feels needs a call to the prescriber rather than an adjustment of your own.
When researchers ran DNA testing on 13 herbal products, only 2 contained the plant on the label. Three had none of it at all, and several were padded out with rice, soy or wheat that nobody had declared.
Before settling on a purely psychological account of months of anxiety or broken sleep, it is worth having the ordinary bloods done. Low iron, low vitamin D or low magnesium can produce symptoms that look exactly like a mental health problem.
Food and movement are powerful, and hardly anyone keeps them up as prescribed. So the question is not what works best on paper. It is what you will still be doing in six weeks.