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What methylene blue can (and can’t) do for the brain
Methylene blue is touted as yet another universal boost-all, fix-all drug, the ultimate biohacking tool. Find out why that's not exactly true.
In recent months, a substance called methylene blue has once again made the rounds as a potential “everything” booster, a “wonder supplement” claimed to improve your memory, give you more energy, cure mood problems and so on and so forth. That’s because living, breathing humans tend to be a slightly more complicated soup of cells full of knobs, dials, feedback loops, and circuit breakers that interact in very unpredictable ways to dash even the best of therapeutic promises. More seriously, in people who have something called G6PD deficiency, methylene blue can trigger hemolytic anemia, a condition in which red blood cells get destroyed faster than they are replenished and which can be life-threatening.
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