Does Phenibut Boost Your Immune System?
We live in an age of abundance — there are enough resources on the planet for every man, woman, and child to eat well and live healthy.
And yet, despite our plentiful lives and the wonders modern medicine, people living in the United States are sicker than ever.
Why is our health getting worse as technology progresses?
What’s happening is that our lifestyle choices immune systems are weaker now due to a number of plaguing factors.
Why is this? Well, reacting to fear and stress is essential for the survival of humans and all other animals. Our innate behavioral stress response is called the “flight or flight“ response.
While acute stress disorders were restricted to just survival in the past, it is not the same case today. A host of factors such as stressful work, unhealthy food, relationships and society contribute greatly to thwart the body’s immune system.
Increased stress levels also enhance the production of cortisol, a hormone that is associated with weakening the immune system.
Various studies show that chronic stress affects the immune system and its ability to combat infections, making one more vulnerable to common infections such as cold, cough and flu.
Fighting Stress – the Wrong Way
Stress is a part of everyday life. When in the things are going bad in life and stress begins to pile up, the only thing on your mind is escaping the pain. Stress gives you headaches, backaches, shortens your temper, and reduces sleep. How do most people get rid of it?
here are good ways to deal with stress, and then there are bad ways — it’s the way you deal with and manage stress in your life that determines how it will impact your health, mental stability and quality of life.
If you tend to deal with stress in less-than-healthy ways, you are compounding the negative impacts of stress on your health by exacerbating the stress levels and creating new problems in your life and health.
The following are some common unhealthy ways of coping with stress, along with some of the negative effects of each:
1. Too Much Caffeine!
A cup or two of coffee is common in the corporate world, as evidenced by the popularity of Starbucks and other coffee houses. And while the occasional coffee cup of joe won’t kill you, it’s important to remember that caffeine is, in fact, a drug, and it’s possible to have a full-blown caffeine addiction.
More likely and common, however, is caffeine dependence, where people use caffeine to jump-start their energy in the morning, use it throughout the day to stave off a ‘caffeine crash‘, and then find their sleep disturbed by caffeine, causing them to wake up tired and stressed, needing another caffeine jolt to get going again the next day.
Further, simply ingesting caffeine at any dose can trigger cortisol release into your bloodstream. Cortisol is the stress chemical, and too much of it leads to anxiety, mental fog, and depression.
If you absolutely have to have that cappuccino or latte in the morning, try timing it after a short nap. This is referred to as a “coffee nap“, and just means taking a short power nap before waking up and having that cup of joe.
2. Smoking
Many people deal with stress by smoking. Nicotine is a depressant and it is commonly used by smokers to ease stress and anxiety. Unfortunately, the depressant qualities of nicotine found in cigarettes make and the other ingredients in cigarettes can lead to serious health problems like lung cancer.
For smokers, a cigarette can feel like a good stress reliever. In fact, during times of stress, having a smoke feels almost necessary, and quitting the habit can seem virtually impossible. (Due in part to physical addiction and in part to habit and other social and lifestyle factors, it’s been said that quitting smoking is as difficult as quitting heroin!)
Unfortunately, we all know that cigarettes can be costly—financially speaking and especially health-wise—and because smoking creates much more stress than it alleviates, it’s more than worth it to kick the habit.
3. Drinking alcohol
Drinking is another bad way to deal with stress. Like nicotine, alcohol is another depressant. It eases the anxiety that normally accompanies stress. Alcohol can become an addiction and it has negative impacts on both your psychological and physical health.
Many people find that a glass of wine can be a good way to unwind at the end of a stressful day, and most physicians and researchers agree, citing studies that show that red wine has benefits for heart health.
However, drinking can be a slippery slope, as excessive drinking can cause problems in virtually every area of a person’s life, causing much more stress in the long run.
If you struggle to control your drunk count, try to steer clear of drinking alcohol as a way to relieve stress.
4. Overeating
Becoming a couch potato will never solve problems, unless your particular problem stems from being too fit, healthy, or social.
Eating too much, for some, is akin to taking a drug. Radical changes in blood sugar levels can affect your moods, dulling the emotional symptoms of stress. Lying on the couch creates a sort of odd euphoria, which may have something to do with comparing your own life to those of the people on daytime talk shows.
Most of us let our friends Ben & Jerry help us reduce stress with ice cream on occasion (or at least most of the people who took this poll on emotional eating said they did), but if eating the wrong things becomes a main coping mechanism for stress, it can lead to compromised health, excessive weight, and additional stress stemming from these effects.
5. Compulsive Spending
People have many ways of relieving stress or of filling a void inside themselves. While buying yourself a nice gift once in a while can be a nice pick-me-up, compulsively buying things to relieve stress or feel good about yourself causes more financial stress in the long run.
Further, spending money you don’t have on things you don’t need causes feelings of shame, a cluttered home, and add to the stress you were trying to alleviate.
Enter: Phenibut
Phenibut is a nootropic, a class of drug and supplements that are commonly referred to as smart drugs or intelligence enhancers.
It is considered a functional nootropic that enhances cognition, intelligence, memory, concentration, and many other neurological functions. Moreover, numerous anecdotal reports have shown that Phenibut induces anxiolytic effects, which means reduced anxiety and better sleep.
Traditionally, Phenibut has been used strictly for anxiety and stress disorders — its use as an immune system booster is a relatively new development.
Moreover, recent reports show that Phenibut has a mild stimulant effect (like drinking a strong cup of coffee or tea) by boosting the levels of dopamine in the brain.
Furthermore, research has shown that Phenibut has almost no observable negative side effects. As a result, there has been a recent surge by many health-minded individuals looking to use Phenibut to ward off sickness.
Using Phenibut To Reduce Stress and Boost Immune Activity
Phenibut is a derivative compound of GABA, a small chemical in the brain. It is also a nootropic,
As Phenibut is available for purchase legally in many countries without any prescription, its popularity is on an increase; this has started attracting the attention of Western medicine practitioners. Phenibut was first synthesized as an experimental medicine to aid the Russian cosmonauts and help them cope with stress levels without affecting their performance in space.
Astronauts who experienced stress as a result of living in space for extended periods of time were prescribed Phenibut. Studies in Russia have also shown that it may be effective for treating insomnia, post traumatic stress disorder and stuttering.
It continues to be used widely in Russia to treat stress. However, its use grew beyond just reducing stress and anxiety, and today it is also used as a sleep aid and immune-boosting supplement.
Why Phenibut Reduces Stress
To understand why Phenibut is effective in treating stress we need to understand a little about its causes.
Anxiety is generally believed to be caused by overactive neural activity. This internal chatter can be reduced naturally by diet, exercise, or meditation, and artificially with Phenibut and other anti-anxiety medication or remedies.
Not only does this reduce anxiety in the user it also makes it easier for them to sleep. Improved quality of sleep has the additional benefit of helping users feel less anxious and stressed.
Stress is Considered “The Norm” in Western Culture
When we experience excessive stress—whether from internal worry or external stimuli—a bodily reaction is triggered, called the “fight or flight” response. Originally discovered by the great Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon, this response is hard-wired into our brains and represents a genetic wisdom designed to protect us from bodily harm.
This response actually corresponds to an area of our brain called the hypothalamus, which—when stimulated—initiates a sequence of nerve cell firing and chemical release that prepares our body for running or fighting.
The never-ending stimuli in major cities heavily tax our adrenal medulla, causes people to be “on edge”, jittery, and anxious. Epinephrine released by the adrenal medulla are received by a number of organs associated with the sympathetic nervous system.
Quick Explanation of the Fight or Flight Response
Stress-related disease emerges, predominantly, out of the fact that we so often activate a physiological system that has evolved for responding to acute physical emergencies, but we turn it on for months on end, worrying about mortgages, relationships, and promotions.
Tests also showed that those under stress had become less sensitive to cortisol which is a stress hormone which reduces immune function. This causes the body’s inflammatory response to grow.
Other elements of our modern lifestyle are also causing stress levels to rise. New research at London School of Economics shows that our over reliance on technology and long work hours are contributing to stress.
In addition, modern unhealthy diets have are high in fat and salt, exacerbating this problem.
Enhancing Immune Function With Phenibut
To study the effects of Phenibut on the immune system, a number of animal studies have been performed by researchers. All of these studies deal with how Phenibut helps in relieving immune stress, and thus aids in enhancing the immune system.
Below you can find a summary of the findings of these studies and what they mean for reducing stress in humans.
GABA alleviates emotional disorders
In a Russian study conducted in 2010, rats and mice were administered GABA derivative compounds such as Phenibut and Baclofen to study their behavior and immune responses.
The results were startling. The rats and mice had the functionality of their immune system enhanced drastically, and in some instances, disturbances in their behavioral responses were corrected to a significant extent.
What was even more startling was that the compounds also enhanced the intelligence of the rats and mice and increased their concentration levels. The animals were able to pass the “Suck” test (an activity to determine the directional investigative abilities or rodents) with flying colors.
The takeaway from this study was that we (humans) could potentially replicate the same effects at home by taking Phenibut at similar doses.
Further, this shows is that Phenibut restores the immune system, even after it is been seriously compromised (great news for overeaters, big spenders, and over-indulgers of every kind). It also demonstrates that anxious behavior patterns can go away with Phenibut use.
Phenibut salts have immunocorrective properties
Another comparative study detailing the effects of Phenibut and its derivative compounds was published in Russia in 2009. The study was performed to find the immune-correcting effects of Phenibut and other derivative neurotransmitters, and their role in normalizing the cellular and humoral immunity in the body.
The study was performed on animals treated with cyclophosphamide, a drug used to induce autoimmune response from the body. Administering Phenibut was shown to have profound immune-correcting effects by normalizing the immune system functions to their original state.
What was surprising is that even other organic salts derived from Phenibut showed similar results. Hence, it can be concluded that improving immunity is an inherent property of such class of chemicals.
Thus, Phenibut was shown to have an enhancing effect on the immune system functions even in animals suffering from immunity disorders. If you are suffering from a weakened immune system, then trying Phenibut is not a bad idea, but only if taken in recommended dosages.
Moreover, other research has shown that there are almost no negative effects of Phenibut, making it one of the safest immune boosting drugs.
Immunomodulation with phenibut
An additional comparative study performed in Russia in 2010 was conducted on mice to study the immune-modulating effects of Phenibut and its derivatives. The mice were induced with immunodepression by administering them with cyclophosphamide, but low dosages of Phenibut (25 mg/kg) were shown to have vast improvement in their immune system reactivity and restoration of immune-affected organs.
This result clearly stands as an evidence for the profound immune system correcting properties of Phenibut. Moreover, it was also found that Phenibut mostly influences immune response pertaining to anxiety and stress levels, which is the common cause of lessened immune system functionality in most of the people.
Hence, small dosages of Phenibut taken regularly can alleviate stress and anxiety levels, and even play a great role in realizing the strengthening of the immune system. The immune system modulating properties of Phenibut were thus proven to be very effective.
Phenibut regulates the immune system
Yet another distinct study was conducted to study the immune-regulating effects of Phenibut on animals induced with immune stress due to lipopolysaccharides, which is found in the outer membrane of most bacteria and brings out a strong immune response in animals.
It was found that injecting Phenibut within a span of 5 days from the infection was enough to regulate the hyperactivity caused due to increased immune response, and it also restored the number of phagocytic cells, which are responsible for protecting the body against harmful foreign bodies by digesting them.
Hence, it can be derived that Phenibut shows high immune-regulating properties and restores the immune capacity of the body to its original levels. A strong defense against foreign particles such as bacteria, virus, and other dying cells means that one can better protect themselves against commonly occurring diseases by regular self-administration of Phenibut at home.
Where to go from here
Comprehensively, it can be seen that Phenibut acts an important role in restoring functions of the immune system.
In all the four scientific studies outline above, the immune system of the animals was stressed to a great extent either through natural or induced circumstances. Administering Phenibut showed a direct positive correlation in all the cases with a valid immune response.
All the studies summarized above support the research carried out in Russia decades ago, which demonstrated Phenibut’s potential as a stress relieving drug and supplement. While none of these tests were performed on human subjects, the results show great promise for using Phenibut as an effective tool to restore the body’s immune system.
As discussed earlier, people in western societies are exposed to a host of modern problems such as poor diet, long working hours and disjointed relationships. All these factors create a lot of stress in our lives, and consequently weaken our immune systems.
Using Phenibut is an encouraging approach to readdress this balance.
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