34 replies to this topic

[iseethelight]

Please delete this.

Edited by iseethelight, 02 January 2017 - 06:49 AM.

[iseethelight]

So  I wrote a big post, was unsure whether I was in my right mind or not and deleted it.. But now that it's morning, I still feel the same way about supplements since yesterday.

 

I have all my supplements in 3 large garbage bags ready to be thrown out today... Over 200 bottles.. 2016 was my least productive year both professionally and personally. And it's the year I took the most supplements.

 

The MOST DANGEROUS thing about using supplements is that you become an addict chasing the next great effect and cure once you've tasted it. You're no better than a coke fiend and alcoholic.  The big issue is supps only work for a short time before you build tolerance or induce another deficiency..

 

My conclusion after spending over 10,000 dollars on all kinds of supplements in the last 2 years trying to fix my depression and cognitive issues is this: Supplements are a waste of time and money. Their good effects NEVER LAST long and they usually create new deficiencies and symptoms..

 

Think I'm talking out of my ass, look on this very site for threads of people who thought they cured their disorder with a particular supplement or stack, then go to the last few pages of the thread and you will find that their miracle stack stopped working  or in many cases created new issues.  Find me a thread with a permanent cure to any disorders using supplements and I will shut up. The thread has to show the OP still being symptom free a year since starting the stack

 

Taking isolated supplements in big  doses create many imbalances, and deplete other competing nutrients. A good example is tyrosine depleting glutathione and other sulfur amino acids, niacin depleting SAME and B6 etc..

 

My suggestion to cure your health issues is to do an elimination and addition diet and find out what food you can and cannot tolerate. If you have high Ach, avoid eggs and high choline meat. If you have sulfur intolerance, avoid high sulfur foods...

 

Eating the wrong foods is like taking the wrong supplements on a smaller scale..

 

[Turnbuckle]

Very few supplements should be taken every day.

[hdl_1]

Rule of the thumb, don't take big decisions on emotions.
If you want to go that way, I suggest you put them in storage and give yourself a few days to properly assess next steps.
An alternative is to do a reset on your supplements. Start taking them one at a time to see how you feel after each one. I cut my stack to about 3/4 after having done that.
My current stack is:
Day: NAC, B6 (P5P), B12 (methylcobalamin), Vit C, Vit D, MSM, Trimethylglycine, Myo-Inositol, Curcumin/Piperine, Alpha GPC, Noopept, Mildronate, Mexidol (as needed only/cycling)

Night: NAC, B6 (P5P), B12 (methylcobalamin), Vit C, Vit D, MSM, Trimethylglycine, Myo-Inositol, Curcumin/Piperine, Melatonin, Magnesium Bisglycinate, L-Theanine, Bacopa Monierri, Ashwagandha, Lion's Mane, Valerian root, Mildronate

I have this stack for a few months now and it works quite well to keep me productive and reduce anxiety from what I expect to be DP/DR.

Sent from my SM-G850W using Tapatalk

[Oakman]

I have all my supplements in 3 large garbage bags ready to be thrown out today... Over 200 bottles.. 2016 was my least productive year both professionally and personally. And it's the year I took the most supplements.

 

That is way, way to many supplements. Perhaps your obvious obsession with supplements is a symptom of your problem, not a cause of your professional and personal life difficulties? Just a thought.

 

The MOST DANGEROUS thing about using supplements is that you become an addict chasing the next great effect and cure once you've tasted it. You're no better than a coke fiend and alcoholic.  The big issue is supps only work for a short time before you build tolerance or induce another deficiency..

 

Sounds like you may be swayed more by marketing than science and perhaps have an addictive prone personality? So a question would be - Have you researched extensively the 200 supplements you purchased, their interactions, side effects, and scientific clinical study efficacy? I would speculate that if you do so, you might restart some taking a go-slow approach to to see the real effect on yourself.

 

My conclusion after spending over 10,000 dollars on all kinds of supplements in the last 2 years trying to fix my depression and cognitive issues is this: Supplements are a waste of time and money. Their good effects NEVER LAST long and they usually create new deficiencies and symptoms..

 

Neither over the counter supplements, nor spending $10,000 on "all kinds of supplements" are cures for mental health problems. Have you considered professional advice?

 

Think I'm talking out of my ass, look on this very site for threads of people who thought they cured their disorder with a particular supplement or stack, then go to the last few pages of the thread and you will find that their miracle stack stopped working  or in many cases created new issues.  Find me a thread with a permanent cure to any disorders using supplements and I will shut up. The thread has to show the OP still being symptom free a year since starting the stack

 

People come looking for answers here, less certain is that they come back and tell results, if any, either positive or negative.

 

Taking isolated supplements in big  doses create many imbalances, and deplete other competing nutrients. A good example is tyrosine depleting glutathione and other sulfur amino acids, niacin depleting SAME and B6 etc..

 

You are correct, "Taking isolated supplements in big does" is no way to solve anything or take supplements in general. There is the correct dose, then there is an ineffective dose and every other dose. Any of those can cause problems. Scientific research can give guidelines, but everyone's tolerance to supplements is different as is their efficacy for any particular purpose. Plus the cumulative effects of such a large number of supplements are almost guaranteed to cause major side effect problems.

 

My suggestion to cure your health issues is to do an elimination and addition diet and find out what food you can and cannot tolerate. If you have high Ach, avoid eggs and high choline meat. If you have sulfur intolerance, avoid high sulfur foods...

 

Eating the wrong foods is like taking the wrong supplements on a smaller scale..

 

Food choices likely can ameliorate some health issues, both physical and perhaps mental. My experience - food choices should be the first study, and the basis for your long term healthy lifestyle. What's left of your symptoms after that, possibly try (limited) supplements, prescription drugs, or counseling. Garbage bags full of supps in big doses - not so much.

 

Perhaps after a bit of considered thought at this juncture, you can come up with a workable plan to solve your difficulties. Good luck! 

 

[iseethelight]

I'm not taking all these supplements. These are supplements accumullated over the tow years, If i buy something that doesn't work, I don't throw it out I store it in case it works with another stack.. I only take about 2 to 4 supplements a day.

[gamesguru]

i definitely went thru a phase of stupidly excessive supplement use, and the scary thing is i dont know how it affected my brain.  these days i "only" take about 10 supplements, but i forget to take a few most days.. so effectively 6.  all in all, fair's square in a healthy hobby

Edited by gamesguru, 03 January 2017 - 03:08 AM.

[pamojja]

The MOST DANGEROUS thing about using supplements is that you become an addict chasing the next great effect and cure once you've tasted it. You're no better than a coke fiend and alcoholic.  The big issue is supps only work for a short time before you build tolerance or induce another deficiency..

 

My conclusion after spending over 10,000 dollars on all kinds of supplements in the last 2 years trying to fix my depression and cognitive issues is this: Supplements are a waste of time and money. Their good effects NEVER LAST long and they usually create new deficiencies and symptoms..

 

Think I'm talking out of my ass, look on this very site for threads of people who thought they cured their disorder with a particular supplement or stack, then go to the last few pages of the thread and you will find that their miracle stack stopped working  or in many cases created new issues.  Find me a thread with a permanent cure to any disorders using supplements and I will shut up. The thread has to show the OP still being symptom free a year since starting the stack

 

Taking isolated supplements in big doses create many imbalances, and deplete other competing nutrients. A good example is tyrosine depleting glutathione and other sulfur amino acids, niacin depleting SAME and B6 etc..

 

My suggestion to cure your health issues is to do an elimination and addition diet and find out what food you can and cannot tolerate. If you have high Ach, avoid eggs and high choline meat. If you have sulfur intolerance, avoid high sulfur foods...

 

Eating the wrong foods is like taking the wrong supplements on a smaller scale..

 

I understand all your sediments, and agree with all posters.

 

However, myself I'm utterly glad there is an alternative to conventional medicine. And despite all the negative consequences - like high costs, being ridiculed (at least where I live), and never being certain of all the possible interactions of that many supplements, not even having access to an health care provider who could guide me during this process - I didn't regretted having it started 8 years ago with a chronic disease earning me a 60% disability. On the contrary, the only thing I regret is my utter nutritional ignorance all the years before, where there would have still ample opportunity for disease prevention.

 

My path went from being diagnosed and being offered no viable treatment with a sufficient benefit/risk ratio. On the contrary, was predicted unavoidable deterioration by all MDs. That's why I started with Linus Pauling therapy, with the cautionary attitude of starting everything lower than the recommended therapeutic dose and increasing gradually over the years to true mega-dosing. Thereby I observed that only once I reached therapeutic dosage ranges about 1 year later my disabling condition indeed did improve, double that improvement the second year. A chronic bronchitis caused an regression, but opened up the whole world of Ayurvedic remedies after the 3rd year. Doubling my already huge daily regimen again. Being utterly consistent in my supplementation and dietary changes brought my main disabling symptom finally to an end 2 years ago, and just had my disability revoked by a government agency.

 

However, in retrospect I must stress that there where many more factors involved than simply going in overdrive-mode with supplementation. Nicely summarized what all could be involved as example here:

 

 

Radical Remission, by Kelly A. Turner, PhD

 

During the course of the study, Kelly identified more than seventy-five factors that cancer survivors said they used as a part of their healing journey. Nine of these factors were used by almost every one of them. They are as follows:

 

1. Radically change the diet
Let your food be your medicine, and medicine your food (Hippocrates)
- avoid sugar, meat, dairy products and processed foods
- eat lots of fruits and vegetables
- limit to organic food
- drink only filtered water
 
2. Take control of health
Action is the basic key to success (Pablo Picasso)
- actively participate
- be prepared for change
- resolve resistance
 
3. Follow your own intuition
In vital matters, the decision should come from the unconscious, somewhere from within (Sigmund Freud)
- listen to body signals
- activate the intuition
- find the right change
 
4. Take herbs and food supplements
The art of healing comes from nature and not from the physician (Paracelsus)
- help digestion: digestive enzymes, prebiotics and probiotics
- boost the immune system: e.g. Vitamin C, other vitamins (B12, D3, K2), fish oil, trace elements, certain edible fungi, aloe vera; and hormones (melatonin)
- detoxify the body:
   - antimycotics (eg olive leaf extract, celery, nettle)
   - antiparasitic substances (eg wormwood, yellow root, black nut husks)
   - antibacterial and antiviral (eg garlic, oregano oil, Pau d'Arco)
   - liver detoxification (eg milk spotted dwarf, dandelion root, sweet tooth root)
- supplements alone is not enough
 
5. Release oppressed emotions
Anger is an acid which can cause much greater damage to the vessel in which it is stored than to what it pours (Mark Twain)
- disease is blockage
- what are suppressed emotions?
- stress and cancer
- anxiety and cancer
- the waterfall solution
 
6. Enhance positive emotions
The meaning of life is to be happy (Dalai Lama)
- what are positive emotions?
- what are the positive emotions in the body?
- happiness must be practiced daily
- but one does not have to be permanently happy
 
7. Allow social support
In poverty and misery, friends are the only refuge (Aristotle)
- experience love
- do not feel alone
- physical contact
 
8. Deepen the spiritual connection
This is the greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases: that there are doctors for the body and physicians for the soul, where both can not be separated (Plato)
- experience spirituality
- a third kind of love
- the relationship between the physical and the spiritual
- it is important to exercise regularly
- it is important to calm the mind
 
9. Have strong reasons for life
People say that it is the meaning of life that we all seek. I do not believe that this is what we are really looking for. I believe what we are looking for is an experience of being alive ... (Joseph Campbell)
- place deep trust in one's inner being
- the mind directs the body
- finding one's calling
 
http://www.radicalremission.com/

 

So, as the saying goes: don't trow the baby out with the bathwater. Start slowly and cautiously with each nutrient, give yourself ample time to increase the doses for monitoring progress/regress in symptoms and lab markers. Don't expect miraculous healing over-night, it can take as much as 6 years like it did in my case - with consistency and learning everything pertinent. And by giving all this priority muster all its synergies. The price is high - me too, spent about EUR 5000,- each year, with less than that left for organic food. It's been worth it every cent for me. Your mileage may vary due to so many factors involved.

 

Good luck.

[Oakman]

I'm not taking all these supplements. These are supplements accumullated over the tow years, If i buy something that doesn't work, I don't throw it out I store it in case it works with another stack.. I only take about 2 to 4 supplements a day.

 

In that case, I would suggest that you are not giving (whatever few supps you are taking at any point in time) sufficient time to show effect. Obviously supps that are mind altering generally may show more quickly (but not always), but body oriented supps take time, sometimes a long time - weeks to months depending. Organic mind/body changes can be frustratingly slow to become evident, if at all, as some changes never show at the conscious level, but are affecting deeper and hard to perceive levels in your body. Or so we hope!

 

Point being, trying 200 supps in 2 yrs would hardly give enough time for any of them to prove their worth to you (or not), and any signals you would get would be a jumbled mix and hard to decipher. I think of taking supps a like little little investments - put away a bit each day, revisit how you feel every few months, make adjustments then, and continue. At best, may get you through 20-25 supps/yr. that way. One simple way to pace yourself is make sure to use all 30 or 60 or more caps in a bottle of any given supp before deciding whether to continue. That way you use each product for at least a month, often more.

[PeaceAndProsperity]

Vitamins have ruined my life. I went from taking niacin once a week to daily vitamin C. Now I am snorting fish oil every hour to keep me going. Don't do what I did, say no to supplements!

[gamesguru]

the only vitamins I take are the ones in food. but unfortunately when I'm on the road, that includes enriched flour/rice stuffs

supplements are supposed to be things you can't get from diet. whether you have a problem absorbing a specific amino acid, or have inattention, you can't get enough tryptophan from foods alone, nor the attention-promoting effect of ginsenosides or ginkgolides.

I would love someone to come forward and prove me wrong, anybody had their life ruined by ginseng? How about any mineral water casualties?

[airplanepeanuts]

 

In that case, I would suggest that you are not giving (whatever few supps you are taking at any point in time) sufficient time to show effect. Obviously supps that are mind altering generally may show more quickly (but not always), but body oriented supps take time, sometimes a long time - weeks to months depending. Organic mind/body changes can be frustratingly slow to become evident, if at all, as some changes never show at the conscious level, but are affecting deeper and hard to perceive levels in your body. Or so we hope!

 

Point being, trying 200 supps in 2 yrs would hardly give enough time for any of them to prove their worth to you (or not), and any signals you would get would be a jumbled mix and hard to decipher. I think of taking supps a like little little investments - put away a bit each day, revisit how you feel every few months, make adjustments then, and continue. At best, may get you through 20-25 supps/yr. that way. One simple way to pace yourself is make sure to use all 30 or 60 or more caps in a bottle of any given supp before deciding whether to continue. That way you use each product for at least a month, often more.

 

 This is a good point. I would argue that it is next to impossible to exactly sort out which supplement does what if you are testing hundreds. Even if you start them at different times and carefully monitor yourself. One supplement might have longer term effects, which you then might misattribute to some other supplement that you start later. Placebo effect, interactions between different supps. To complicate things further there is always some change in your health and mental status regardless.

 

It's like a puzzle game:)

[Catwoman]

There are many people (including me) who just can't afford to buy (100 or more) supplements...so reading that some one wants to throw them away...wow really what a shame :-(

[Quaker32]

I'm taking iron and collagen everyday.

 

I may go back to taking fish oil at another time later in the year but I'm not sure yet. 

 

I dose up on vitamin D in the winter. 

[normalizing]

i was collecting supplements too. might work or not, i will store re-use another time in another combo. at the height of my supp hoarding, i stored about 100 supplements, mostly pill forms but also herbal powders etc.

at the height of using most, i think there was a time i was taking up to 20 a day.

 

conclusion, i feel pretty bad now, i rather dont bother

[Hip]

iseethelight, do you have a specific health condition you want to address, and if so, are you taking supplements and drugs that are known to help that condition, or are you just randomly trying any supplement, based on its marketing hype?

Edited by Hip, 04 January 2017 - 06:24 AM.

[jaiho]

i pretty much agree.

wasted so much money on supplements.

For Anhedonia, the shit that really works is the psychiatric meds. 

[Catwoman]

i pretty much agree.

wasted so much money on supplements.

For Anhedonia, the shit that really works is the psychiatric meds. 

I had years of Traditional Chinese Medicine (acupuncture, auriculotherapy, acupressure, cupping) combining with Chinese herbal teas...And I tried Emotional Freedom Techniques, hypnotherapy, and regular CBT. I wasn't on any medication back then. When I started my first SSRI after 4 years of going up and down with my struggle against intrusive thoughts and anxiety I was incredibly relieved when this med kicked in. I was so afraid of potential side effects...they didn't occur and then I realized I probably just needed 'the big guns' to get me out of the circle-thinking. TCM might have made me less anxious, but it never worked for depression, obsessions, etc.

So it's not only anhedonia...I know people with OCD (the classic one, afraid of germs and obsessive cleaning) who never want to go off their paroxetine. 
I've tried twice without meds and I just started sertraline.

The reason why is because I took NAC (2000 mg's a day) and it worked nice for a few weeks. Then I ran out, stopped for a week, bought it and it doesn't do much for me now.
I spend €52 on a bottle of magnesium l-threonate because it's supposed to have high bio-availability, but I'm not noticing anything special. And then there's fish oil, zinc, vitamin D, ginko biloba...I could try to get money for 50 other supplements, but it's al guess work. I have better chances with sertraline getting my life together then with inositol probably.
I just hope it won't poop-out on me again...

[Mind_Paralysis]

Vitamins have ruined my life. I went from taking niacin once a week to daily vitamin C. Now I am snorting fish oil every hour to keep me going. Don't do what I did, say no to supplements!

 

For those wondering... this really is a bit of comedy on PeaceAndProsperity's side.

Just makin' sure everybody gets it.
 

[hdl_1]

Vitamins have ruined my life. I went from taking niacin once a week to daily vitamin C. Now I am snorting fish oil every hour to keep me going. Don't do what I did, say no to supplements!

For those wondering... this really is a bit of comedy on PeaceAndProsperity's side.

Just makin' sure everybody gets it.

Lol. Thanks for clarifying! I'm having a little laugh at the moment. [emoji1]

[jack black]

 

 have all my supplements in 3 large garbage bags ready to be thrown out today... Over 200 bottles..

 

so, have you done it already? i sympathize with you as most things i tried didn't work for me, but i did find some things that worked for me in the meantime. and i didn't spend $10,000 either (more like 1/10 of that in 3 years).
 

[iseethelight]

Guys trust me, I've become an expert on most supplements. That's because over the past two years, I spent more time researching supplement online then most on here. So trust me I didn't make this decision out of emotion and I used the supps properly. They never work long term..they work only temporarily. I've tasted success multiple times with supplements only to regress to baseline or a worse state a short time later, happens every time... THEY ARE A FUCKING WASTE OF TIME and a slippery slope...

Edited by iseethelight, 06 January 2017 - 01:38 AM.

[pamojja]

Guys trust me, I've become an expert on most supplements. That's because over the past two years, I spent more time researching supplement online then most on here. So trust me I didn't make this decision out of emotion and I used the supps properly. They never work long term..they work only temporarily. I've tasted success multiple times with supplements only to regress to baseline or a worse state a short time later, happens every time... THEY ARE A FUCKING WASTE OF TIME and a slippery slope...

 

Your choice to think you know already enough to be able to make generalized comments. My choice to think you really overrate your little experience and learning.

 

For example, in the beginning I tracked each food-item put into my mouth for 3 years just to get an understanding of my nutrition, and for being able to correct it to a sustainable healthy diet. How not having even started with this essential basis to every supplementation makes you in any way already an expert? Just studying Internet-hype wont do.

 

I tracked all my nutrients from supplements now already for 8 years, along with all lab-markers published here:

 

https://docs.google....OcN4/edit#gid=5

 

With consistent dieting and supplementing, my condition improved already after 1 year. Substantially only after 2 years, the 3rd year had a serious relapse due to a severe chronic bronchitis, after the 6th year the most debilitating symptom ceased completely. In more detail described in this post:

 

https://selfhacked.c...to-hack-away.3/

 

I have all my supplements in 3 large garbage bags ready to be thrown out today... Over 200 bottles.. 2016 was my least productive year both professionally and personally. And it's the year I took the most supplements.

 

I'm not taking all these supplements. These are supplements accumullated over the tow years, If i buy something that doesn't work, I don't throw it out I store it in case it works with another stack.. I only take about 2 to 4 supplements a day.

 

Excuse me, but somewhere between these lines you seem not to be honest to yourself. You spend 10.000 dollars for over 200 bottles, but take only up to 4 supplements a day?

 

Considering that the average bottle comes with 60 capsules, and if you gave each of them the serious trial you say you did, calculated out, than that would mean you tried 16 different unique supplement in these 2 years at most. With an average of 3 per day each supplement for merely 4.5 months.

 

What this clearly shows is you didn't gave each supplement enough time, and/or you tested only a limited number. And are simply not in the position from these 16 supplements tested for too short a time to come to any conclusion for all supplements taken consistently over many years.

 

Compare your experience to my admittedly extreme intake of over 60 unique vitamins, minerals, amino-acids, fatty acids and photochemicals for 8 years now, and the unbelievable success it brought.

 

You still seem to misunderstand nutrients to work like pharmaceuticals, one agent for one well defined symptom.

 

But nutrient-therapy is better understood by what Hippocartes said already 2400 years ago: Food be thy medicine. One characteristic of food is that it is packed each with hundreds of unique naturally occurring chemicals. Nowadays sold a few of them each as a separate 'supplement' and hype. That should inform you why the 16 you tried where bound to fail.

 

And compared to food, my supplement intake suddenly doesn't appears that extreme anymore. Merely drops in a sea of nutrients.
 

[jack black]

Guys trust me, I've become an expert on most supplements. That's because over the past two years, I spent more time researching supplement online then most on here. So trust me I didn't make this decision out of emotion and I used the supps properly. They never work long term..they work only temporarily. I've tasted success multiple times with supplements only to regress to baseline or a worse state a short time later, happens every time... THEY ARE A FUCKING WASTE OF TIME and a slippery slope...

 

sounds like you're taking mostly about stimulants, yes, they only work short term due to receptors down-regulation.

paradoxically, i'm getting better quality of life results REMOVING most stimulants from my life, i suppose receptor upregulation.

now, if one is truly deficient in some substances, and you figure it out by trial and error, it's likely to work long term.

OP: good luck to you.

 

Edit: for that f***er who don't like my posts (i know who you are), don't read them and f*** off.

Edited by jack black, 06 January 2017 - 04:52 PM.

[PeaceAndProsperity]

Edit: for that f***er who don't like my posts (i know who you are), don't read them and f*** off.

 

For the second or third time, it's not me. 

It really sounds like you might be schizotypal instead of Asperger's, even moreso than myself.

 

Edit: that picture doesn't show much so here's another http://imgur.com/TDuSk6E

Edited by PeaceAndProsperity, 06 January 2017 - 05:08 PM.

[iseethelight]

 

 

 

Your choice to think you know already enough to be able to make generalized comments. My choice to think you really overrate your little experience and learning.

 

For example, in the beginning I tracked each food-item put into my mouth for 3 years just to get an understanding of my nutrition, and for being able to correct it to a sustainable healthy diet. How not having even started with this essential basis to every supplementation makes you in any way already an expert? Just studying Internet-hype wont do.

 

I tracked all my nutrients from supplements now already for 8 years, along with all lab-markers published here:

 

https://docs.google....OcN4/edit#gid=5

 

With consistent dieting and supplementing, my condition improved already after 1 year. Substantially only after 2 years, the 3rd year had a serious relapse due to a severe chronic bronchitis, after the 6th year the most debilitating symptom ceased completely. In more detail described in this post:

blah blah blah

blah blah .

 

 

Are you fucking serious? Dude I've used entire bottles of many of the supplements I've tried and had to rebuy them. I've bought more than 200 bottles, I just happen to have that ballpark amount lying around. I didn't always just take 2-3 supplements. I"ve used all kinds of different stacks, ones that had up to 8-10 daily supps before..

 

The difference between me and you is that I'm super sensitive to both food and supplements so I get results or side effects very quickly. I don't need as much time as most  to get a verdict. And no, I won't stick with supplement that keeps making feel like shit for an entire week. 

 

I'm not saying supps can't work for some but for the majority of us, they're a fcking waste.. Also depending on what you're trying to cure, supplements might be great, but for depression, anxiety, anhedonia, they're all pretty much shit..

[Dichotohmy]

I tend to agree that supplements are a waste of time and money, but that's mostly because people tend to pick new supplements based on flawed methodology.

Do you have a known or highly suspected nutrient deficiency? If so, vitamin and mineral supplements are very useful. The problem with this is that important vitamin and mineral tests are not always included in routine bloodwork, so it can be tough to find the deficiency and thus find the right supplement to correct the various symptoms that follow from the deficiency. Personally, I've never seen zinc tested for in my bloodwork, but zinc supplementation is one of the few I have really benefited from. I've also benefited from B-complex and sulbutamine, but again, have no bloodwork showing the presumed deficiency. Trying to pick new supplements - or allopathic treatments for that matter - based on symptoms is nearly a 100% ensurance of disappointment in my experience.

My experience with zinc and B-complex was really a shot in the dark that worked. I have been very disappointed in scores of supplements to the point I am now resistant to trying new ones. Without hard evidence for personal efficacy, dosing supplements is little more than a shot in the dark and its unsurprising when the supplement is disappointing. If your strategy behind trying new supplements is a shot in the dark, supplements are a waste and you're better off spending your time and money on real diagnostics.

If I could have the money and energy back from trying new supplements based off of anecdotes that totally read like my personal experiene - or from unreplicated rodent studies showing the efficacy of X supplement for Y condition, I would be grateful. Readers of this and other similar health forums need to learn to recognize meaningless anecdotes and realize that much of the cited evidence people tend to post is poor.

Edited by Dichotohmy, 07 January 2017 - 05:21 AM.

[pamojja]

The difference between me and you is that I'm super sensitive to both food and supplements so I get results or side effects very quickly. I don't need as much time as most  to get a verdict. And no, I won't stick with supplement that keeps making feel like shit for an entire week.

 
Thanks for finally acknowledging that everyone has different biochemical individuality. And therefore that one can't really judge supplementation in general by one's own experiences limited to supplementation alone. Not having established a multilevel approach in establishing healthy diet, lifestyle and emotional development too. Which you seem to not have (again, excuse if I'm wrong for not knowing about that part. I don't want to hurt your feelings. I try to get to the bottom of this. I'm serious).
 
The only one with great success with emotional difficulties which comes to my mind at the moment is Dr. Kelly Brogan. True however, she ask of so much abandonment in regards to conventional psychiatry, and determination with diet and lifestyle - where supplements really only make a not that important further tool - where in such a situation the successful patients are again a highly self-selected bunch. As in Kelly A. Turner's work with cancer patients.
 
But one never knows if one could fit in such a self-selected group before really checking their attributes out. Therefore, if you haven't yet, maybe consider to watch some of her 'Vital Mind reset' stories?
 
At least there you'll find ample examples you claimed didn't exist in your 2 year study of the Internet, of real people having overcome sometimes decades of devastating mental-health difficulties with lifestyle changes, diet and supplements, while being enabled to cease pharmaceutical medications.
 

I'm not saying supps can't work for some but for the majority of us, they're a fcking waste.. Also depending on what you're trying to cure, supplements might be great, but for depression, anxiety, anhedonia, they're all pretty much shit..

 

Also agree that attitude is most important. With emotional difficulty that's really a vicious cycle. Though till now still every 2nd dies of CVD, every 3rd of cancer, disabilities due to emotional difficulties are steadily increasing, along with pharmaceutical medication. If it is the majority of us might also be a peculiarity of a depressed and anxious perspective. And with anhedonia, how could there be strong reasons for living?

[birthdaysuit]

Very few supplements should be taken every day.

 

Unless you're fucked up

[Galaxyshock]

Whatever man. For me, just Bacopa is better antidepressant and anxiolytic than SSRI + benzos.