Thread by @sayerjigmi

🧵 The natural health community in 2025:
"Ban artificial food dyes! They're neurotoxic!" 🚫

Also the natural health community:
"This 150-year-old petroleum-based textile dye is my favorite brain supplement!" 💙

The cognitive dissonance would be funny if it weren't so dangerous. Methylene blue — yes, the same aniline dye derived from coal tar that our ancestors used to color cloth — has somehow become wellness culture's dirty little secret.

Let me show you what's really happening when you swallow that electric blue "nootropic"...👇

1⃣Methylene blue (MB) is being marketed as a mitochondrial booster and cognitive enhancer.

But here's what they're NOT telling you:

❌It's a petroleum-derived synthetic dye
❌Has an FDA BLACK BOX warning
❌Can trigger fatal serotonin syndrome with antidepressants

2⃣Recent human research shows MB actually DECREASES brain blood flow in healthy people.
A 2023 study found it:

❌Reduced cerebral blood flow
❌Decreased brain oxygen metabolism
❌Suppressed glucose utilization

The opposite of what biohackers claim it does.

📍Source: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36803299/

3⃣Methylene blue can harm neurons at relatively low concentrations—but the context matters.

Studies show that in neuronal cell experiments (in vitro):
❌ Around 10 µM (≈3.2 µg/mL) can trigger oxidative stress, impair electrical signaling, and cause neurons to lose branches and degenerate.
❌ This is where cells in a dish begin showing measurable toxicity.

👉 What does “damages neurons at 10 µM” mean in plain English?

It means that at this concentration, nerve cells start to malfunction, stop communicating properly, and eventually die off in lab experiments.

📏 To give perspective:

❌10 µM = about 0.003 mg per milliliter of fluid.

❌Some MB supplements recommend 0.5–4 mg per dose—but whether that leads to 10 µM levels in the brain depends on absorption, blood-brain barrier penetration, and metabolism.

⚠️ The takeaway: while low-dose MB is often marketed as “brain fuel,” studies remind us that the line between helpful and harmful is thin. Dose, context, and biology matter—and what looks like a nootropic at one level can become a neurotoxin at another.

📍Source: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17…

4⃣Here's the most disturbing part:

❌Forensic autopsies of patients given MB show their brains turn BLUE-GREEN after death.
❌The dye accumulates in brain tissue and oxidizes postmortem, revealing just how much has lodged in your neurons while alive.

Learn more: sayerji.substack.com/p/the-blue-bra…

5⃣MB can cause:

❌Hemolytic anemia (in G6PD deficient individuals)
❌Tissue necrosis at injection sites
❌Dangerous blood pressure spikes
❌Heart arrhythmias
❌Oxidative stress (yes, the "antioxidant" becomes a pro-oxidant)

The serotonin syndrome risk is REAL.
Multiple deaths reported when MB combined with SSRIs/antidepressants.

MB acts as an MAOI at higher doses, causing:

❌High fever
❌Muscle rigidity
❌Seizures
❌Potentially fatal neurochemical chaos

6⃣But here's the good news - nature provides SUPERIOR alternatives:

Chlorophyll (green plants):
✅Absorbs same red/NIR wavelengths as MB
✅Actually safe
✅True antioxidant
✅Enhances mitochondrial ATP production

7⃣Phycocyanin (blue spirulina):

✅Nearly identical light absorption to MB (620-640nm)
✅4x safer than MB
✅Crosses blood-brain barrier WITHOUT staining it blue
✅Proven neuroprotective effects
✅No drug interactions

8⃣Anthocyanins (berries, butterfly pea):

✅Powerful brain antioxidants
✅Reduce dementia risk
✅Improve memory
✅Combat neuroinflammation
✅~200 benefits indexed on the GreenMedInfo.com database: greenmedinfo.com/substance/anth…

Turn your tea blue naturally (not your brain!)

9⃣Better brain stack WITHOUT the industrial dye:
Morning:

✅Spirulina + berries smoothie
✅Red light therapy or sunrise exposure
✅CoQ10 + PQQ
✅Lion's Mane + Omega-3s

You get photobiomodulation benefits without petroleum derivatives.

🔟Bottom line: MB is an emergency antidote being misused as a daily supplement.

No long-term safety studies exist for healthy people taking it regularly.

If we reject coal tar dyes in food, why accept them in our brains?

Choose coherence. Choose nature. See red over methylene blue.

👉Read my substack deep dive on the topic here: Synthetic Blues: When Biohackers Choose Petroleum Over Plants sayerji.substack.com/p/synthetic-bl…