Hello everyone, I’m new here. I was browsing the site and decided to be a bit spontaneous and write about a recent experience I had, since I might as well.
Last year I relapsed, and was given Paliperidone Palmitate at the hospital, with helped me a lot, but because I was drinking so much coffee, I was still symptomatic. I was in “partial remission”, as described in the ICD-11. After I came home, I reduced to 2 cups a day, and my symptoms were greatly reduced, but even so, I still had some minor symptoms.
To make a long story short, about a year later, I was still in “partial remission”, and so I decided to try quitting the coffee altogether to see if it helped. To my surprise, a little over one month later my positive symptoms were almost completely gone. I almost never hear voices anymore, except maybe once in a while (very rarely, I haven’t noticed anything lately), and even though I do have some traces of visual hallucinations, they’ve faded significantly and become relatively insignificant. Unfortunately, my cognitive and negative symptoms became worse, but it was better than the horrible hallucinations I was having.
I also been taking an Omega 3 supplement and a multivitamin + D vitamin, which has also been helping me a lot, and while I avoid coffee, I’ve recently discovered that green tea helps with my negative and cognitive symptoms, and also my helped me loads with my mood! I’m also considering matcha, since I’ve heard rumors about it reducing even the positive symptoms of schizophrenia.
With that said, as much as I love coffee, my symptoms were greatly reduced by quitting. I just thought I should share for those whom it may concern, thank you and farewell.
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Hm, interesting that you say lack of caffeine made negatives worse. I was considering trying to go off caffeine
Welcome to the forum by the way!
Going off definitely helped with the positive symptoms, but yes the negative symptoms and cognitive symptoms got worse. I’ve read that moderate intake of caffeine is actually helpful with the negative and cognitive symptoms but can potentially worsen positive symptoms.
I’ve been trying green tea now though, and so far I haven’t noticed any positive symptoms. I read that green tea contains l-theanine, and apparently l-theanine can reduce positive symptoms, as well as countering the side effects of caffeine. It also helps with cognition and mood, and apparently the combo of caffeine and l-theanine works even better than caffeine or l-theanine alone. Apparently matcha contains 5x the amount of l-theanine than normal green tea, and so I’m gonna give that a try when I can afford the gear for it.
I read in an article that green tea and matcha can help with schizophrenia, but I can’t post a link apparently since I’m new. I also read a post by another user on here that said that matcha reduced his symptoms by quite a lot, which I found compelling.
With all that said, coffee only contains caffeine but not l-theanine, which I can only guess makes a difference.
The green tea I’m drinking certainly helped though! Whether it not it causes any positive symptoms remains to be seen.
Thanks!
I take L-Theanine daily. I tried matcha (disgusting) and I drink a lot of green tea. It has never made a difference for my positive symptoms other than, as it is helpful for anxiety, L-Theanine helps lower positive symptoms in that lower anxiety means lower positive symptom activity. So it treats the precursor: Stress.
Caffine helps my negs some, but I have a bad heart and have mostly been forced to stop using it. I have had the best results from quitting eating crap food, switching to a healthy diet (Mediterranean), doing regular exercise, and losing weight. Now I have a lot more energy and can cope with the negatives more forcefully.
Hope this helps and welcome.
L-theanine is legit. Helps my anxiety a lot.
Green tea helps my anxiety a lot.
That’s interesting! I heard that diet can help quite a lot.
I read that matcha is somewhat of an acquired taste though, I hear that a lot of people really dig it!
Worse than home fermented sauerkraut and that took some getting used to. I would recommend looking into probiotics. You can buy them, but they are limited and expensive. A dietician turned me onto fermenting my own because of the miniscule cost and the difference in health is noticeable after a few weeks. Energy levels, digestion, immune response, and mental stability. I have jars of kraut fermenting all over the place now. It’s just cabbage, sea salt, and sterile water.
I drink kefir actually! I found out more of the bacteria make it to the gut than with probiotics because it’s sort of protected by the milk. It’s helped me out a bunch actually.
I know you don’t consume caffeine, but green tea and matcha can also help with the gut microbiome, as can coffee. It’s too bad I can’t drink coffee anymore though.
Yes, you need insanely high CFU counts as well so that some make it through. That’s why yogurt is good in theory, but not so good in practice because not enough bacillus survive transit.
Very interesting testimony ! Could you tell us at which frequency did you have symptoms before cutting down caffeine and finally stopping it ? I strongly consider quitting it totally.
It’s difficult to say actually, I was addicted valium one time for couple years so my memory is sort of shot. If I remember correctly though, it was sort of a mild - moderate constant, but at the same time the symptoms would sort of come and go and bit over the course of the months. My memory is a bit fragmented so it’s hard to tell, but I remember that after I had quit the caffeine entirely for about a month the positive symptoms were almost completely gone. I think some minor unconscious things were still there, but I wasn’t hearing any voices, nor was I struggling with delusions, at least from what I could tell.
I drink decaf coffee because the antipsychotics speed the heart up some. Caffeine has like a 12 hour half life, it’s in your body for awhile. I have less bowel movements on decaf, caffeine can be a stimulant that aids in pooping.
4-6 hours actually.
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