^ actually he said it was on the tail end of a heavy aya trip, not a low dose

The proof is in the pudding...

Sorry I don't have "data" for you.

If you think it's safe go right ahead and eat whatever you like on maoi's.

I just hate for people to have to find out things the hard way.


P.S I don't do "low doses" it would be a waste of my time

"why not take the pepsi challenge and eat 3grams syrain rue followed with some sesame chicken and then let us know what happens!"

I dont eat meat, but I have had up to 5g of rue and a few hours after eaten big bowl of miso(fermented soy), big plates of vegan sushi with lots of soy sauce, kim chi, sour kraut, kombucha, fermented brazil nut cheeses etc..and I have never had a problem once.

The only time I encounter problems is when coffee, tea, cacao or a few other stimulant herbs are present..or certain foods that are hard to digest.

I dunno about MSG, but a lot of people do have problems with MSG. I would just avoid chinese food in general unless it is traditional organic chinese foods..takeout chinese food is horrible for you reguardless. Who knows what you actaully experienced..sucks that you had to go through that and I can see how the only thing you can think of is that it si was tyramine interaction but you must concider the data and realize that it is very very highly unlikely. There could very well have been something else in that food that did cause an interaction with the RIMA's though.

This post was directed at someone else..But i should say that personally, while i don't think tyramine interaction was the cause of your experience, that doesn't mean i think its best to 'eat whatever you like' on maois. I find a plant-based diet to be the best for it personally and i stick to that. If i eat crappy food, i have a much rougher experience usually

Also..low doses are hardly a waste of time IMO. Try microdosing 10g a night for 2 weeks then get back to me

actaully, after reading that list of effects you had..it sounds alot in some ways like what I have experienced with harmalas at larger fully entheogenic doses. When you eat a meal sometimes after drinking or drink just after eating it can fully activate the brew in the gut to levels beyond anything you experienced prior at the same dose..

High dose harmalas are no walk in the park at all and can seriously make you feel like you have been poisoned. It seems that you experienced a high dose of harmalas and it shook you up..it happens I know how horrible it can be.

^ i agree with that

Eli, i've also had headaches on and after high doses of aya that were worse than anything i've experienced before

Nen, can you quote where they consider it to be "reasonably potent"?

The thing is, I dont have enough biochem/pharmacological knowledge, but from the paper if Im reading right, there isnt any substance at such IC50 values to harmalas in regards to MAO-B to make an accurate comparison.... The closest value is a bit higher than harmalas with IC50 at 35.7umol/l, and its a substance that is mostly an SSRI that has no interaction with tyramine. The closest value after that is 1.210uml/l, much lower, which is an irreversible MAO-B inhibitor, Iproniazid, which does have interaction. Maybe other experts can chime in.

Eliyahu, thanks for sharing your story. Im not disqualifying your experience but I still think there are many variables at play there. Me and several other people have eaten tyramine containing food without issues. Now, maybe we are pharmacological freaks, or maybe you are a pharmacological freak, or maybe its not related to tyramine but to some other content in your food (as per nen suggestion), maybe it was the 1 in a 100 abnormally difficult aya experience (regardless of tyramine), maybe aya was telling you very strongly not to eat that bad chinese food (again regardless of tyramine), etc etc

The point is, there are too many maybes to make an absolute claim, and specially to make inflamming claims such as relate harmala-food interaction to brain hemorrhage. I think the FAQ is correct because it IS an exageration people make regarding harmalas and the standard MAOI diet because those diets were made specifically for people taking irreversible MAO-B inhibitors orders of magnitude more potent than harmalas in MAO-B inhibition. The FAQ never claims its wrong to consider some kind of diet/food care, but it would be an exageration to maintain the standard MAOI diet and claim same health dangers if done otherwise.

as experience of several people seem to show plus the pharmacological evidence we have so far, one can consider it a safe practice to just eat reasonable and "light" foods (which im not sure if chicken chinese food fits) without worry about health dangers. Maybe you shouldnt do the "pepsi challenge" and eat it to find out if in those amounts it will have negative impacts, one could just as well follow the tips of eating light, even if it includes some bananas or cheese or yoghurt or whatever other things with tyramine, and not have to worry about one's health.

Lastly, if you think the FAQ is innacurate or can be improved/expanded, you can always edit the FAQ, and others can give their feedback and edit themselves too to adapt to the growing scientific knowledge as well as consensus found in discussions here.

Funny thing about tyramine is that it can EASILY give one a headache all on it's own.

Having taken sublingual caapi & rue alks many times now and not restricting my diet much (still eating kraut, coffee, cheese, tempeh, other soy, etc) I haven't had any issues with headaches or other problems.

Well I have overdosed myself on maoi before too, but that was very different....I thought it was going to kill me alright and I purged about 25 times ....
At one point it was seriously flying out of both ends at the same time. Not good because the trashcan got stuck between the toilet and the tub and I ended up puking everywhere.
which was better than the alternative

That was back when I first started with Aya and out of total ignorance I consumed. 250mg of harmine, 100mg of harmaline and five grams of syrian rue along with around 15 grams of mimosa.........
Most traumatic event of my life....but no headache at all.

..double-post, but i'll edit to repeat my point about relative MAOI sensitivity in individuals..
often genetically based, and certainly possibly dietarily related (more amines in system requires more MAO means more stress on MAO system leading to greater inhibition)

at a high enough degree of MAO inhibition (much greater than 99% of people go ever, and dangerous) serotonin becomes toxic leading to 'serotonin syndrone'..
.

endlessness wrote: ..from p650-651: ..first two examples (of relatively potent) are IC50 µmol/l Fluoxetine 35.7...Venlafaxine 48.0, and for potent MAO-A activity Fluoxetine 16.8 µmol/l (Table1).. then as examples of lower efficacy mirtazapine 235 and olanzapine 212 µmol/l (p.650)
just tryin to make sense of the data..and clear up some things in the maoi-conjecture-world..
i'm getting the impression values 15-30 are still potentially active (dosgae dependant), even if not super-strong like <5 for harmalas..at least, it would seem we need an IC value in the µmol/l early 100s or greater (MAO-A or B) to start defining 'weak'..
any bio-med experts about..?
.
ps. i don't think tyramine is as dangerous as often said, but i still think there are other compounds out there one may need to be careful of on high dose harmalas (and i wouldn't trust what else is in soy sauce, other than salt and tyramine)

..i'm afraid i've started researching a bit, so i (and you all) have more idea what i'm talking about..
so, in the interests of tyramine-MAOI understanding..
..a few sources report that Tyramine is equally broken down by MAO-A and B (tryptamine also) [citing Kalgutkar, A. S. et al. "Interactions of nitrogen-containing xenobiotics with monoamine oxidase (MAO) isozymes A and B: SAR studies on MAO substrates and inhibitors". Chem. Res. Toxicol. 2001.]

but it is more the irreversible MAO-A inhibitors which lead to serious tyramine problems..
[from Therapeutic applications of selective and non-selective inhibitors of monoamine oxidase A and B that do not cause significant tyramine potentiation.Neurotoxicology. Neurotoxicology. 2004 Jan;25(1-2):243-50.]
from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14697899

..so degree of tyramine interaction varies with type of MAO A or B inhibitor..

regarding judged potency of inhibition with IC50 values, from an interesting paper on MAOI flavonoids which i've posted in Passifloras thread here it seems that for potency, values of 1-5 microM is 'very good', 6-30 is still 'pretty good', and as we reach 100 microM were're getting into 'weak'..
note that the flavonoids apigenin and quercetin are about as potent as the ß-carboline harmine as an MAO inhibitior (A in particular)..will be following these compounds more (and wondering how they interact with amines)

sorry if i've bombarded with info..any critiques from bio-med experts out there?


.

I actually agree with this.

While its pretty obvious that haramalas are not as bad as other MAOI there is no doubt that some of us note reactions. I also had a pretty serious reaction after consuming a large amount of soy sauce (sushi) about 4 hours after taking aya.

HOWEVER. Having drank caapi only brews quite a lot in recent time I have noticed that the body reactions have occured less and less. It's like I'm getting used to the effects. This also makes me think it may not be a tyramine interaction. But as Nen noted there are plenty of biogenic amines that can cause toxicity reactions.

I guess the only point I'll make is the exact same point I made earlier in this thread. Every single one of us metabolizes stuff differently. I highly recommend everyone experimenting with Aya to initially follow the MAOI diet and slowly test the waters if you want to. There is no harm in erring on the side of caution.

Peace

This.

As nen has posted above, MAO A does have some tyramine interaction. Depending on what else people are consuming, these things can be wildly variable. Querciten is a fairly popular supplement these days (due to its antioxidant activity), and may be present in one's nutritional shakes or multivitamins even. This goes even moreso for Tribulus (which I enjoy quite a bit)... which is in a lot of sport and body building supplements and is a relatively potent MAO B inhibitor. (The kind that definitely should not be mixed with tyramines)

In fact, Tobacco is a fairly potent MAO B inhibitor. Naturally, most people don't consume it orally (it is extremely poisonous)... but smoking tobacco when on many drugs provides a pretty serious flash. My cats all love to smoke tobacco when using dissos, but otherwise find it rather disgusting and annoying.

I will wrap this up by saying that sublingual MAOIs only inhibit in the region that they are circulating... thus, have relatively minor effects on the gut. (also vice versa) For people to be talking about sublingual MAOI tinctures or pastes in reference to eating tyramines is misleading as they would have next to no interaction even if they were dealing in compatible sorts of MAO.

At any rate, there is ample good reason that ayahuasceros tend to insist on La Dieta. And, it is always better to err on the side of caution.

I must partly stand corrected here. For some reason we had gotten it wrong, tyramine is not only metabolized by MAO-B but also by MAO-A



This makes it so that in extreme amounts, its theoretically possible there are interactions with RIMAs and tyramine, but an order of magnitude less than non-reversible MAOIs. There is a pharmacological reason why tyramine is not such a big danger with RIMAs such as harmalas as shown in the diagram below



There have been researches with moclobemide which is also a RIMA and its shown very little to no interaction with tyramine, for example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3081926

Nevertheless, I agree it's better to eer on the side of caution, since there might be personal metabolic diferences which could be significative. But this should not be with panic/exagerations. I think people it's reasonable to advise to specially avoid aged cheese, which is the food with most tyramine, and fermented food. I've edited the FAQ entry on MAOI diet to include the information. Appart from that, eating light without specific restrictions should not really be a problem

Lastly, HyperspaceFool, the thing is that the indigenous Dieta has nothing to do with MAOIs. There are restrictions of foods that have nothing to do with tyramine, and there are allowed food things (fish for example) which could have significant tyramine content. Also, there are different diets in different mestizo/indigenous groups. For example alcohol would be absolutely forbidden in some groups, while in others (for example the shuar) there are even specific rituals where they consume fermented alcoholic drinks together with ayahuasca (maybe their maize beer even has tyramine?).

wait a minute... the MAO's can destroy the neurotransmitters that reside in the pre-synaptic neuron? The picture above shows a mean little MAO inside the pre-synapse. I thought MAO's destroy the chemicals that are drifting around the synaptic cleft that arent being absorbed into the receptors?

Both

So the ones that reside in the pre-synaptic neuron, do they only destroy neurotransmitters that have completed the re-uptake? or can they destroy any that have not yet left the neuron?


Thank you end

Both I think... I think the drawing is made in that way for easier viewing/simplicity. Maybe an expert can correct me if im wrong though, it's been a good while since I studied this stuff and wasn't very in depth.