Comment · Mon, May 11, 2020
Bacopa right dosage
Original post in this thread
zxref · 4 points
Dosage and potency from studies are all over the place. 55% allegedly is 300mg, pure powder is 1200 mg and supposed to be 10% .. ND says 55% is only 10% really.. what dosage then..the reason being is planning to buy your new extract, ty
What they were answering
v_sleep_of_reason · 3 points
I get a similar effect--a full 300mg tablet keeps me awake and mentally active while a half dose or less will usually help me sleep.
My theory on this is it has to do with one's prior acetylcholine levels--if they're higher than average, then enough bacopa will raise acetylcholine to the point of increasing alertness despite the serotonin/GABA effects. This fits for me since I can't even take much ALCAR, let alone choline supplements, without anxiety and jaw tension.
On this point, a friend of mine can't take bacopa at all--she tried a single capsule of Synapsa and was, for the next day or so, very detached and depressive with occasional panic attacks. My impression was that her natural acetylcholine levels are so high that raising them at all was intolerable for her.
I'm sure I'm oversimplifying how this works to some extent, but the general idea fits as far as I understand this stuff.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb
Interesting! So if you take 150mg of our bacopa, you can sleep well. However, if you take 300mg you stay up. It very well could be ACh. Did you know that GABA is released from cholinergic neurons, too? In fact, cholinergic neurons in the hippocampus can form GABAergic synapses. So I think GABA and ACh are more linked than most people assume. This could explain why some things that affect both acetylcholine and GABA are biphasic in their responses. The three things we most often see a biphasic dose/response curve to are bacopa, lemon balm, and magnolia bark. All three of them affect both GABA and ACh.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05136-1
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4584188/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4371381/
I think the GABA system is extremely complex. It looks like GABA signaling affects ACh signaling, too. So we have a complex back and forth between GABA and ACh signaling.