I don’t think amount of my sleeping diverges much from 8h/day, but it’s very irregular. I don’t take modafinil unless in special circumstances, but ask people who do so a lot.
With ECA I have personal experience, and you can ask pretty much anyone who tried it, or tried any amphetamines, which act in a very similar way. As far as I know it does not raise resting heart rate.
Pubmed has plenty of studies of ephedrine and weight loss; I don’t have any particular links ready right now, but it shouldn’t be hard to find them if you’re interested.
I have tried many stimulants for my attention problems, including amphetamines, and all (except a norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor) raised my resting heart rate unacceptably, from 65-70 to 85-95. I think I might try ECA and report back.
Amount of ephedrine in ECA stack is really pretty low. It won’t have significant stimulant effects past the first couple of days, caffeine in the stack is probably more stimulating than ephedrine.
The stack is good exactly because it provides good appetite suppression to stimulation ratio. You can reduce your hunger by taking a lot of amphetamines, but stimulation will be huge before appetite suppression becomes significant.
And you seem to have some heart problems. In such case, maybe it’s a better idea not to take even mildly stimulating drugs, and go for a willpower-based diet, preferably one with a pseudo-cultish background like paleo or Atkins to help you stay on track.
(I recommended ECA for appetite suppression and fat loss, I don’t have any opinion on their use for attention deficit or any other problem).
Also, have you tried selegiline? Sulbutiamine? Nothing magical, but worth a play. Selegiline in particular I’ve found to boost motivation. That makes the constant effort of turning back to whatever I was supposed to be paying attention to less of a drain on willpower.
Try intense cardiovascular exercise for 50 minutes every day. It’ll lower the heart rate, never mind the boost to cognition! Not entirely joking. Stimulants impact both my blood pressure and my heart rate. With exercise I can reduce my non-wired resting heart rate to 40 and blood pressure to borderline hypotension (when in a near meditative state and according to my monitor). That’s two side effects down!
Swimming is great for dodgy knees. If you can afford it, buy a waterproof mp3 player and listen to it while you swim to help with the boredom. (Obviously, it doesn’t have to be music—put anything on there!) I wish I could buy one of those.
Waterproof mp3 player? Hadn’t thought of that. I’m going shopping. There are only so many miles I can run before my knees wear out and more cross training (that isn’t boring) is always good.
surprisingly simple physical therapy exercises + cycling has done wonders for my knees. i also take a glucosamine / chondroiton complex, and ground flax seed for omega 3s, but i’m not sure how much credit to give them.
I didn’t find any that consistently worked. I’m pretty sure at this point that my problem wasn’t ADD at all, but rather depression. I’m currently on lamotrigine, and my attention problems have greatly improved. All the stimulants seemed to help some at first, but quickly lost their efficacy. (Except the Strattera, which didn’t help at all.)
I don’t think amount of my sleeping diverges much from 8h/day, but it’s very irregular. I don’t take modafinil unless in special circumstances, but ask people who do so a lot.
With ECA I have personal experience, and you can ask pretty much anyone who tried it, or tried any amphetamines, which act in a very similar way. As far as I know it does not raise resting heart rate.
Pubmed has plenty of studies of ephedrine and weight loss; I don’t have any particular links ready right now, but it shouldn’t be hard to find them if you’re interested.
I have tried many stimulants for my attention problems, including amphetamines, and all (except a norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor) raised my resting heart rate unacceptably, from 65-70 to 85-95. I think I might try ECA and report back.
Amount of ephedrine in ECA stack is really pretty low. It won’t have significant stimulant effects past the first couple of days, caffeine in the stack is probably more stimulating than ephedrine.
The stack is good exactly because it provides good appetite suppression to stimulation ratio. You can reduce your hunger by taking a lot of amphetamines, but stimulation will be huge before appetite suppression becomes significant.
And you seem to have some heart problems. In such case, maybe it’s a better idea not to take even mildly stimulating drugs, and go for a willpower-based diet, preferably one with a pseudo-cultish background like paleo or Atkins to help you stay on track.
(I recommended ECA for appetite suppression and fat loss, I don’t have any opinion on their use for attention deficit or any other problem).
That’s what I was interested in it for.
Also, have you tried selegiline? Sulbutiamine? Nothing magical, but worth a play. Selegiline in particular I’ve found to boost motivation. That makes the constant effort of turning back to whatever I was supposed to be paying attention to less of a drain on willpower.
Try intense cardiovascular exercise for 50 minutes every day. It’ll lower the heart rate, never mind the boost to cognition! Not entirely joking. Stimulants impact both my blood pressure and my heart rate. With exercise I can reduce my non-wired resting heart rate to 40 and blood pressure to borderline hypotension (when in a near meditative state and according to my monitor). That’s two side effects down!
I did that for a while. Unfortunately it’s incredibly mentally painful for me—intense boredom. Also, I have weird knee problems.
Swimming is great for dodgy knees. If you can afford it, buy a waterproof mp3 player and listen to it while you swim to help with the boredom. (Obviously, it doesn’t have to be music—put anything on there!) I wish I could buy one of those.
Waterproof mp3 player? Hadn’t thought of that. I’m going shopping. There are only so many miles I can run before my knees wear out and more cross training (that isn’t boring) is always good.
If exercise is boring, get a good MP3 player and some audiobooks.
Or with sufficiently loud and raging music, you might be able to get yourself in a state where you don’t think, just keep going.
Works for me. Not really for swimming.
surprisingly simple physical therapy exercises + cycling has done wonders for my knees. i also take a glucosamine / chondroiton complex, and ground flax seed for omega 3s, but i’m not sure how much credit to give them.
That sucks.
Out of interest, which of the stimulants did you find the most useful?
I didn’t find any that consistently worked. I’m pretty sure at this point that my problem wasn’t ADD at all, but rather depression. I’m currently on lamotrigine, and my attention problems have greatly improved. All the stimulants seemed to help some at first, but quickly lost their efficacy. (Except the Strattera, which didn’t help at all.)
I’m on Lamotrigine myself. Great stuff.