Luckily I'm on very few prescription meds. Celebrex for pain, low dose trazadone for sleep and tramadol if I have a really bad pain day which isn't very often.
Supplements however are another story. I have tons of them. Every doc I go to puts me on more of them. I have been to eight health care practitioners and see four of them regularly and almost all of them have put me on one supplement or another. I also have tapped the patient community to see what has worked for others with the same illness such as melatonin for sleep or the methylation protocol which includes three different pills and several drops. Between all the docs and the patients, I ended up with a pill collection that took up an entire shelf in my fridge and an entire chunk of counter space in the kitchen. However, between neglect, trial and error and plain old forgetfulness I ended up taking roughly 20 pills per day, frequently less (did I mention the forgetfulness?).
At this point in the game, I don't even remember who told me to take the things, never mind dosing and the reasoning. I have no idea if most of them are even doing any good. I know about five of them help but the rest I'm taking because someone told me I needed to.
Two weeks ago I went to my chiropractor. He is strongly intuitive: i.e. he can sense things in the body, what is wrong and what is right. He can also sense energy flow. I trust him completely and he has helped me overcome many physical problems. Anyway, we were talking and he mentioned muscle testing supplements and a light bulb went off. Why the heck hadn't I thought of this sooner!?! So I made a special appointment for today for a long session. I had my adjustment and then my son emptied out the two boxes of supplements onto the desk and we sat down for a muscle testing session. We had some surprising results. Stuff he swore by, I didn't need. Stuff he wouldn't have given me, I do need. Stuff I thought was helping me, he told me not to take. He is sensitive enough that I even got dosing levels from him. My son took notes and most of the pills were a no go. Woohoo!!
I went away so happy. I'm down to my original meds and eight supplements. Six for right now and two to add in when I'm done healing from the oral surgery I had on Monday. I got home and felt like a weight had been lifted. I had tried to go through the supplement lists with my two CFS docs and I either ran out of time or they guessed at what I should be taking or guessed at dosing. But now I have some answers tailored specifically to my body's needs. My body let him know what I need to take and what not to take and how much. I'm so happy that the number has been so drastically reduced. I got to throw pills out. I got to clean out my fridge shelf. Them I rearranged all the ones I not using right now and put them in storage in the fridge. I only have the ten bottles out on the counter and I'm ecstatic! I feel like I have made some progress with my illness. I feel like I'm a little better. I feel a little bit more normal. I'm also so very happy that someone took the time to finally help me figure this out. I have a custom tailored med/supplement plan. Now to see if I get some improvement out of it....
Notes: Muscle testing is formerly called Applied Kinesiology. There is a lot of debate surrounding it regarding whether it is legitimate or not. I have had it fail me before when I had nutrition testing done this way. However, I think with my chiropractor's strong intuitive abilities I trust his ability to do the muscle testing in a way that is valid and will help me. So readers, take this with a healthy dose of skepticism. Do some reading and decide for yourselves if you want to give this a go. If you noticed I didn't include my meds in this testing. I do trust traditional western medicine for some things. However, they tend not to be well versed in vitamin and mineral supplementation. For more reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_kinesiology
International College of Applied Kinesiology
Applied Kinesiology Center of Los Angeles
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