I have been down the road of supplementing. It can
be very expensive, exhausting and bewildering. There are products out there
that can help, but it is tireless, searching to find the few that are vs. the
many that aren't. Unfortunately, the Wellness industry's intentions can be a
bit tainted with greed, and they often do prey upon the desperate…the thousands
of people being let down by mainstream, medical healthcare.
Knowledge of nutrition is very important, and
trying to find a natural form of a medication needed to treat a specific
condition, especially if you already know you have the condition and have the
option of it or a drug. Don't feel guilty if you need to take a drug, just try
to look at your other options with curious discernment. Try and find out all you can about
interactions and safety, even if it means popping into a naturopath for one
single visit.
You might find a treatment, even conventional,
where the benefit outweighs, and the side effects are fairly nil… but those do
tend to be more unusual, in highly sensitive especially. I have to be on a
medication for gut motility. It's a small dose with dinner, but without it the
muscles in my digestive system don't work right and that in itself can cause me
a lot of internal havoc. Imagine when stuff that isn't supposed to stay inside
you, does. Eek.
Sensitive people do seem to usually respond better
to things that are closer to their natural state. For example, I had a thyroid
imbalance that was quite intense for a while. I didn’t take synthroid but
rather, a small amount of the natural
thyroid glandular in which I ordered form the USA quite inexpensively. It
helped a lot, and I don’t seem to need it anymore, though I still support my
adrenals and take herbs for balance. Synthetic forms of things tend to affects
me too dramatically. That’s just a personal example.
It's best to just learn about nutritional
values of foods, and tailor a diet to health needs; then maybe using 1-4
quality supplements that you have narrowed it down to/ it’s preferable to do
this with the help of a good and honest naturopath, if you can scrape together
some funds. I say honest because, sadly, many wellness practitioners are quite
greedy, or they can further overwhelm you with a million theories. It’s good to
find one whose concrete, and can help you simplify, and yet is still holistic.
The problem with conventional medicine is that it’s too compartmentalized; not
taking into account how several co-occurring conditions can affect each other.
I've been down the road of visiting a vitamin store
in a state of feeling unwell and desperate; and being given so much exciting
and over-stimulating info that my head, and gut intuition for that matter, wanted
to simultaneously explode! I'm tired of it and I don't have more than a couple
hundred at most, to spend per month. Also, when you overwhelm your body with
too many "supplements" it'll get confused with all the “signals” and
they won't work accordingly.
It could even overwhelm your liver and kidneys, which
can backfire in many ways.
I think quality is so much better than quantity. If
you're on a budget, you will only be able to choose you're best small few of
quality anyway, or even just a quality diet and one or two extra at best. All
of the above is always better than buying a bunch of crappy
"vitamins" from the drugstore.
Also, for a multi vitamin, I'd say get one good,
normal potency multi vitamin that is organic and from food. Do not use a synthetic one. For example, the calcium in
it comes form coral, the vitamin C from orange peels. I'm a bit of a hippie
this way. I believe what's from the earth, the body will more naturally recognize.
Science is in debate about this, with one side
saying it is shown that the body responds more positively to the naturally sourced,
and the other side saying it doesn’t matter. I lean heavily toward the first
hypothesis. Autistics and highly sensitives tend to fare better with the
naturally sources. In my case, synthetics make me feel sick. I have genetic
mutations that cause me to not process synthetics very well, especially
B-vitamins. Many autistics/sensitives are likely the same.
I know what my body can’t handle, because it tells
me! I think it could be because I'm autistic, and quite reactive. If one
doesn't have any specific health issues and just wants to be preventative, or
is feeling generally run down/fatigued, my suggestion would be to just get the
one good multi vitamin, and eat a good diet avoiding simple sugars, wheat and
most preferably dairy, at least in excess. Studies and empirical accounts have
reported that most autistics don't process dairy and gluten well, and in turn
gluten and casein, (which is milk protein, not the lactose FYI) into opiates/toxins.
There’s even info about that on wiki.
Anyways, I speak from my own experience dealing
with "fibromyalgia" as they're calling it. FM comes with “the works”;
pain, IBS, chronic fatigue, brain/memory fog, anxiety, sleep issues, blood
sugar instability and many more. I also have premature-onset osteoarthritis.
However, I've come to a point where I'm on a quest for simplicity.
Maybe I'm a bit of a “mad scientist” in such
matters but I'm seeking out that effective and sensible, not overly and
unnecessarily complex, formula that'll help me heal. I actually raised my white
flag, many times before and especially more recently. I realized that all my
own aspie minded knowledge can simply bite me in the rear and exhausting me to
hell...especially when I'm dealing with my own body.
It's harder to see sometimes, when you're lost in a
first-person complexity. I decided it was time to invest in a few visits with
the right naturopath, for sensible guidance and an outsiders' view, would be
the best way to move on from chasing my tail.
With chronic health issues that are systemic, it
gets very complicated. You can get very lost in your symptoms. It can become
necessary to somehow set aside some funds (somehow; even if it's just for a
couple of visits) for an astute professional, a naturopath or herbalist even, whom
you trust and click with, to help you discern and heal. There may even be
options for free or sliding scale student clinics, and whatnot. If you can’t do
that, take it easy, and just try to be as simple as possible. Allow your body
to tell you what’s up, by sticking with simple health routine, and observing
symptoms as they come up.
I'll be seeing someone soon, just for a review. The
goal is to simplify everything and identify the underlying issues in the right
order. I love it when things make sense to me and I don't have to be the one
exhausting myself. So, that's my experience on all this self-help
supplementation stuff, and where I currently stand with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.