Dietary Supplements: To Take or Not To Take?

I have copy and pasted an article from faqs.org about dietary supplements.  While I was researching a blog post on the same subject, I came across this well-researched article and thought, "Why reinvent the wheel?"  I hope anyone using, or who is considering using, dietary supplements (vitamins, minerals, herbs, and the like) will read this article.  As a disclaimer, I have used a variety of supplements over the years, but I have a certain amount of trepidation about them mostly because of the lack of regulation in the U.S. supplement manufacturing industry.  I have highlighted some key statements if you would like to cut to the chase...

The demand for dietary supplements in the United States catapulted what was once a cottage industry into a $14 billion per year business in the year 2000. In 1994, the U.S. Congress formally defined the term dietary supplement as a product taken by mouth that contains a "dietary ingredient" intended to supplement the diet . The dietary ingredients in these products may include vitamins , minerals , herbs, amino acids , enzymes , organ tissues, glandulars, and metabolites . Dietary supplements can also be extracts or concentrates, and may be found in many forms, such as tablets, capsules, liquids, or powders.

Round Two - Stomach Flu

Oh, the joys of parenthood.  Poor Connor spent all day Sunday vomiting.  Fortunately, it was a "daytime" illness and we got a good night's sleep.  He and I got a day off together on Monday so he could rehydrate and get some food back in him.

As per our family's M.O., one child gets sick, then a few days later the other two come down with it.  So today was the day.  I got a call from the school about 1:00 this afternoon to come pick up Phillip.  He has then proceeded to throw up every 30 minutes for the past 3-1/2 to 4 hours.  Poor guy!  He has been sleeping for the past hour, hope his tummy holds for a while now.

Who will be next?  Erin seems to be the hearty one.  Even when she does get sick, she seems to get a milder version of whatever the boys had.

I hate to sound selfish, but when the kids are throwing up I can't help but go into high-anxiety mode worrying that I will get sick.  Crossing my fingers and using a lot of soap and hand sanitizer.  However, ever since getting this Stupid Disease, I have vomited so much and been so miserable I think having the actual stomach flu might be a breeze.  That being said, I hope I don't find out!

Good News, Bad News (or maybe not or maybe I am in denial)

The good news is that my minispins have been virtually nonexistant the past several days and I think the brain fog has lifted a little, too.  But I am still having problems with my short-term memory.  I will even forget my train of thought mid-sentence.  Well, more so than I usually do.

101 (not really) Things I Have Tried

You can read the following post at a fellow MM sufferer's blog where I was a guest blogger.  She was kind enough to add some helpful links in the text, too, that I was too lazy to do myself.  :-)  Check it out at http://picnicwithants.wordpress.com/

When you are miserable and living in fear of leaving your home because of recurrent vertigo, you will try almost anything to feel better and get your life back.  From the day I was first diagnosed with Meniere’s disease, this is how I have felt.  Initially, I was confident I would respond to “conservative medical management.”  The odds were in my favor if you believe the statistics that 80% of people with MM do, in fact, manage pretty well on diuretics and a low-sodium diet that includes little to no caffeine or alcohol.  Even though salt, caffeine, and alcohol in the form of a glass of red wine with dinner were the cornerstones of my otherwise healthy diet, I was up for the challenge.  Bring it on!

Unfortunately, despite a complete overhaul in my diet that resulted in an almost ten pound weight loss, vertigo episodes lasting 8 to 12 hours continued to plague me anywhere from two to four times weekly.  During this time, my dedicated husband scoured the internet and came up with some alternative treatments for me to try. 

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

It is still early in the recovery phase since my last gentamicin injection.  It has been about 9 weeks since that time, but only 6 weeks since I started feeling the good and not-so-good effects of it.  No more vertigo being the positive outcome, but a sense of disequilibrium (pretty mild this time around) and general bobble-headedness being the necessary evil.

I have had a few days recently where I felt almost normal.  When I don't feel normal it is because my head feels disconnected from my body and my ear is buzz-sawin' to the max.  My eyes seem to have a delay in registering with my brain what it is I am seeing when I turn my attention from one point of reference to another.  And, after riding in, or driving, a car, it takes a minute or two for my body to stop moving.  It is the same sensation I have experienced after disembarking from boat rides - getting my land legs, so to speak.

Still hangin'

I don't have much to report from the Meniere's front.  That is good news.  Early last evening I had the closest thing to vertigo I've experienced in six weeks or more.  My ear suddenly started ringing very loudly, then I started to feel the creepy, wobbly, spinny sensation deep in head that usually precedes a full-blown vertigo attack.  But after an hour or so, it eased and by bedtime I was feeling back to my baseline.

My baseline these days is an occasional mini-spin, now down to only a couple of times a day.  My balance is much better and the tinnitus, for the most part, is just a constant, low hum.  I feel very little pressure in my ear now, too.  In fact, we just had a rainstorm roll through yesterday which, in the past, would have made my ear feel like it was going to explode with painless pressure.  But now, little to nothing.

So I am still grateful for gentamicin.  Just the other day I read a post on a Meniere's forum I follow from a guy who suffered for something like eight years with debiliating, weekly vertigo before trying, and getting relief from, gent.  That could have been me.  He was afraid to do anything "permanent" or risk hearing loss (a small risk with the low-dose method) as so many people have been warned not to do anything destructive.  Instead he suffered, in my opinion, needlessly.  But now he is preaching the wonders of this treatment, having his life back and perhaps wondering why he waited so long.  Yes, no destructive treatment should be gone into lightly.  You need to be sure you know what you are dealing with as Meniere's can be, and often is, misdiagnosed.  But with the right tests and doctors, there is hope and the potential to control the worst of the symptoms.

I still promise to post more about different treatments I have tried and read about.  But as this disease has taken so much of my life already, I hate to give it too much more time now that I can function again.  I do know that someone else might benefit from my experience, so I will try to get back here soon and write more.