Experiment concluded. I forgot to say that we aren't on any medication, and we didn't take anything other than the odd cup of tea. I had a melatonin on a few nights in the first week because I couldn't sleep (maybe the aya making me alert???).
DOSAGE PROGRAMME:
I took the aya icecube supplement for 18 days every morning.
My friend wanted to join in so took the supplement for 18 days also, but she began alternating to every other day, so she had 10 doses in all over 18 days. She was more sporadic in timing of taking the supplement, sometimes morning and sometimes night.
EFFECTS:
We both got a mild headache after our first supplement. That one may have been a little stronger because it was the dregs from the pan and had more bits in. My friend got another headache after her second supplement the next day, I got a tiny one too but not much at all. After that no more headaches.
I was already a little down in the dumps but I actually got worse during the first week, feeling pretty down, although I generally felt good immediately after my morning aya. I felt as if my emotions had been heightened. I felt more spiritual, more anxious, more happy, more sad, etc... less level than usual. About half way through I got some bad news and got really worried and sad for the rest of the experiment. I don't know if the aya was making it worse, but I suspect so, I suspect that it was heightening my worry and sadness. The cause of worry was half resolved on the last day of the experiment, so I can't tell if my lack of worry afterwards was due to the semi-resolution or coming off the aya supplements.
I told this to my friend when the experiment ended. My friend had also been feeling more emotional than baseline during the experiment, but she had assumed it was her 'hormones'. (I am male, by the way) Also, we live together at the moment so we could have been affecting each other.
CONCLUSION:
From this limited experiment I am not sure if taking supplements at this dosage and frequency etc did us any good while we were taking it. We felt it heightened our emotions, and as bad stuff happened it was negative emotions being heightened. If this is not placebo, I don't think I would recommend aya supplements for depressed people.
However, as neither of us were clinically depressed maybe it is possible someone more depressed could benefit if there is something going on with brain chemistry that we couldn't notice because we weren't clinically depressed.
Neither of us noticed any improvement in our happiness levels in the week after the experiment compared to before the experiment. That doesn't mean there wasn't an improvement, I suppose, but we didn't notice one so it's safer to assume there was no benefit.
I don't think a clinically depressed person would benefit from feeling spiritual and emotionally heightened all day long. I think that the traditional dosage- a sporadic large one- works better.
POTENTIAL FOR FUTURE EXPERIMENTS
This experiment should really be done on clinically depressed people. But that seems pretty harsh to me, given how it might heighten negative emotions. It would be good though if someone experiencing depression tried it and reported back though (making sure to stop immediately if their condition worsens).
Would anyone like to replicate the experiment and report back?
I wonder if, say, a weekly dose of aya at sub-purge levels would be better? If anyone knows what dose of aya will not cause a person to purge, please let me know and I'll perform another experiment, for a month or so.
