Regardless, I don't understand why biohackers are often obsessed with things like methylene blue when targeted modulators usually exist. If someone is obsessed with "mitochondrial function" I'd expect him to look at methoxatin or something along those lines before something as broadly active as methylene blue. If someone wants MAO inhibition pharmaceutical options are probably better in terms of controllable isoform affinity. I don't see any reason to prefer something less well-studied for MAO inhibition over e.g. rasagiline or moclobemide.

Thanks, ha ha.

That's 5X what is considered a safe dose.

Up to 2mg/kg/day is considered safe. Double that with care. But they were dosing every hour for days!

I think the whole "nootropics" and "biohacking" community would benefit from mandatory introductory reading to understand that disrupting homeostasis in a durable and meaningful way is actually darn hard to do without serious side effects.

https://x.com/craigbrockie/status/1865776415934947687

One of the claims against this company is that they were preventing other companies from getting their hands on generic thalidomide, because they didn't want competitors to do research that might uncover similar analogs.

(I'm also not convinced that the results for methylene blue are especially promising or unique, but that's another matter :P)

There's plenty of research done on things which can't be patented or used to turn a profit in some way. People do research on diet, exercise, vitamins, and pharmaceuticals which are now generic like aspirin etc. just to name a few off the top of my head.

There's also public funding available for research which isn't intended to make money for any particular corporation.

Methylene blue turns your urine blue. How does someone conduct a double-blind studies with a substance that very clearly indicates whether or not you are taking it?

Another issue is it's hard to get grant money to run studies in general. What would the goal of the study be? What would it measure?

Do you you think that everybody is cynical and is motivated by dollars? Since it is an inexpensive, readily available compound, what prevents biohackers from doing a small scale (say, N=100) double blind trial against some relatively inert compound that makes your pee blue?

A close cousin to this claim is the old chestnut, "A tinkerer invented a carburetor that allows any care to get over 100 mpg, but then the oil companies bought out and buried the patent!"

> Then you realize: methylene blue can't be patented and it's manufacture is no secret

This isn’t an impediment at all. There are numerous examples of old, simple drugs being repurposed for new conditions at different doses or different delivery mechanisms with very high price tags attached.

Selegiline is one such example. It was repurposed for depression as a transdermal patch and very high prices.

If methylene blue worked for the conditions claimed, it would be used clinically. The myth that big pharma is ignoring a compound that works doesn’t hold water.