21Jan 2012 by Marjorie No Comments

As a matter of fact, yes I have poisoned myself with supplements

side effects
I've gone on and on about how many so-called side effects of supplements are actually interactions with other nutrients that are being depleted. After all, it isn't really likely that you're deficient in only one nutrient, and they all work together in ways no one on the planet seems to have catalogued entirely. The "nerve damage" so many experts warn against for vitamin B6, for example, is often just a temporary symptom caused by lowered vitamin B12 levels and easily avoided. However, I have in fact on two occasions taken what turned out to be deleterious doses of a supplement, resulting in one chronic toxicity episode and one acute one. The first self-induced toxicity incident (SITI) was about three years after I started taking supplements. I had been taking one…
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13Aug 2011 by Marjorie 20 Comments

A fruitless search for digestive experts

symptoms and conditions
Updated 1/6/13: As with the fatigue issue, vitamin D seem to help this a lot, but only when I started following this neurologist's recommended doses for repletion. In September 2008 I started a journey that serves as a good example of the limits of the American health care system, where you can go through three months, 15 doctor visits, $7,000 in medical tests, three prescriptions and five over-the-counter medications trying to treat your abdominal pain, and after you lose ten pounds due to said pain, you are asked by the "specialists" if you have an eating disorder. To make a long and unladylike story short, starting in the fall of 2008 I would inflate like a beach ball whenever I ate a full-sized meal, and my innards would feel like…
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20Jul 2011 by Marjorie No Comments

Kinda-sorta helpful approaches to sciatica

symptoms and conditions, treatments
I don't know how non-telecommuting workers cope with a bout of acute sciatica if they can't take time off. There is no way I could've functioned at my desk. I tried one morning and had to return home to recline with my laptop for five more weeks, fantasizing about slitting my backside open with an Exacto blade, pulling out the nerve, and drowning it in a bin of icewater. Perhaps they're doped to the gills? All my doctor offered me was Aleve, which was a joke. Finally I went to Needleman the acupuncturist. I spent an hour on my side with needles from the nape of my neck to my ankle, like a brontosaurus. By the time I left the pain was gone, but it crept back during my 30-minute…
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30Jun 2011 by Marjorie 17 Comments

Headaches and migraines

symptoms and conditions
Updated 03/12/13: P5P, a form of vitamin B6, seems to have solved a lot of this. See related link below. My two migraine episodes were the usual tennis-ball-filled-almost-but-not-quite-to-bursting-with-boiling-oil-behind-your-right-eye kind of thing, caused by the old cliché MSG. The first culprit was a Chinese restaurant. The second, after I "got healthy," was a package of sunflower seeds. All I'm saying is that never happened to me with Oreos. Later I developed headaches, but not full-fledged migraines, from the amino acid L-glutamine, which I used to heal my celiac-ravaged lower intestine. Apparently this is a common reaction for people who also react to monosodium glutamate (MSG). The body can convert glutamine into the amino acid glutamate. It was still very helpful but I had to be careful how much I used. As…
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16Jun 2011 by Marjorie No Comments

One cause of sudden-onset vertigo

symptoms and conditions
During my last and final attempt to get my abysmal iron levels up with doses of 75-100 mg/day, I managed to bring upon myself a nice case of vertigo. (It also caused cystic acne.) After a week of the iron it was suddenly difficult to sit upright without vomiting, much less stand up. I considered going to the ER but the only other time I'd done that I had to wait four hours. By the time I got up the nerve to go, I felt well enough to cope. I stopped taking the iron, obviously, and the vertigo improved to manageable levels but still kept hitting me a few times a day. I also had dry eyes, which I had learned earlier was what happens when my vitamin A levels…
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05Jun 2011 by Marjorie 1 Comment

No joy on the @#*! eye floaters

symptoms and conditions
As if being myopic isn't bad enough, what with the glasses in grade school and the terror of being caught in your spectacles by unannounced visitors, you also suffer the annoyance of your vitreous gel separating from your eyeball, lots of little cells floating up from the tear site, and groups of them forming into chains and blobs. Right smack in front of your retina. Like dust on a camera lens. All the time. In the winter, against the white snow, they are maddening. It got to the point where I was ready to rob a convenience store and drive to an optometrist in Virginia who uses a YAG laser to shoot the chains and blobs into oblivion. But then I got my contact lens prescription updated and my astigmatism…
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