Lidocaine: A Life or Death Dosing Guide
By Nicholas Stumphauzer @NStumphauzer
Sourcing [for research purposes only] (Carolina Chemical): https://carolinachemical.com/product/lidocaine-powder/
Dosing:
First and foremost, get a milligram scale. Do not take lidocaine powder without utilizing a milligram scale. Failure to do so could result in death.
No dose need exceed 250mg. Benefits occur at 1/10th that dose.
For GI distress, a solution in distilled water that results in the consumption of 10mg/mL can be useful, with 1mL consumed at a time. However, the numbing of the back of the throat and esophagus can be very disconcerting, and thus my preference is to take the lidocaine in a gel capsule.
If you want to projectile vomit, mix baking soda and lidocaine and drink it (“GI Cocktail”).
I have personally almost died as a result of taking >400mg in a single dose. It resulted in aphasia (loss of ability to understand or express speech, caused by brain damage), suppression of breathing, and loss of balance. It was by the grace of God that I became nauseous enough to self-induce vomiting which stopped the rapid increase of blood levels of the lidocaine.
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With all the warnings aside, here are some reasons why it might be useful to take appropriate doses of lidocaine.
Quotes from Ray Peat, PhD in 2019 about lidocaine:
[DR = Danny Roddy, RP = Ray Peat]
DR: So lidocaine's benefits are far more than just anesthetic?
RP: Yes, much more—similar to procaine, but without the risk of allergic reactions, since it prevents mast cell degranulation. It's nerve-protective, antistress, antiinflammatory, antioxidant, anti arrhythmia, memory improving, anticancer.
DR: In your opinion, what specifically, are the most anti-inflammatory substances a person could use or take?
RP: Some of the most potent are also destructive to all tissues. The safest are sugar, aspirin, pregnenolone, DHEA, progesterone, thyroid hormone, lidocaine, testosterone, and food sources of magnesium and calcium.
DR: Do you think lidocaine is safe to use every day?
RP: In large amounts, it is very, very slightly potentially carcinogenic to the liver, but no one has ever seen it happen. It's that it's metabolized when concentrated and given separately are carcinogenic, but giving the lidocaine, all the effects are anti-carcinogenic.
DR: Is 50-100 mg safe to use every day?
RP: I think it's safe.
DR: Would that be something that you would consider an anti-stress, anti-aging, extremely safe thing for prolonged use?
RP: Yeah. I for a while kept a dish, and tried to remember to take some all the time, but something happened and I forgot about it, but it's something I would mean to do if I remembered.
LIDOCAINE IN CREAMS AND GELS?
"Some of the excipients could be harmful, some contain dangerous preservatives and emulsifiers." ... "Ideally, lidocaine should be pure USP, in water."
Lidocaine was found to:
• Inhibit mobilization and activation of mast cells
• Protect the gastrointestinal tract, brain, and lungs from an excess of intracellular calcium
• Act as an anti-inflammatory agent similar to aspirin
• Improve gastrointestinal motility post-surgery
• Reduce nitric oxide production
• Benefit patients with hypertension and endotoxin shock
(Thank you Danny for collating all this great information on lidocaine)
[notes above enclosed with [] from anabology]
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Blurb from anabology:
There have been multiple theories of anesthesia across generations. The most perplexing out of this class of drugs are the 'general anesthetics,' which include completely unreactive gasses such as Xenon. The canonical explanation (in membrane-pump/receptor theory) is that anesthetics block or open ion channels, or bind specific receptors that mitigate excitation.
There are robust observations though that cannot be readily explained by this theory: the more hydrophobic an anesthetic is, the more it anesthetizes an animal. Likewise, the higher propensity the molecule has to nucleate ice cystals, the less you need of it to anesthetize mice. In the 1960s, Linus Pauling created his 'hydrate microcrystal theory of anesthesia' (clathrate microcrystals). This posited that non-reactive anesthetics would interact with cell water to stabilize ice-like structures and trap a cell into a resting state.
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi similarly had theories of cell water that considered the solvent to be on a spectrum between ice and liquid depending on cell state. Gilbert Ling had alternative views of the cell water structure (explicitly non ice-like structures were proposed), but he shared the sentiment that molecules could cause a cell enter a resting state with the state change being propagated long-range through cell water. In the 1970s, Raymond Damadian showed that cancer cell water was more disorganized and less structured than healthy cell water. Thus, he created the MRI machine, which can detect cancer based on its abnormal water dynamics. In all models of the cell that consider water, the anesthetized resting state of cell water would be considered to have higher 'structure' or 'order.'
This history illustrates the point that molecules such as lidocaine, which on the surface look like a simple anesthetic, may work through effects that are global and not restricted to nerves. They may cause an inflamed non-excitable cell to rest. They may cause a cancer cell to 'calm down.' Reductionist biochemistry fails to account for global physical changes that determine how a cell 'feels.'