Saturday, July 11, 2009

Supplements

I ordered a bunch of supplements from the US. As far as I can determine, the industry is more regulated here in Australia than in the US, so the trade off is lower prices, but less assurances that I'm getting what I expect.

Basically I am trying to ensure a good dietary basis for my health, as well as target some particular CFS-related areas.

Magnesium
As I've mentioned previously, magnesium is a common deficiency in CFS sufferers, and indeed, more generally. I'm aiming for up to 750mg/day. An initial analysis of my diet indicates that I get about 400mg/day from my diet, so I'll take 300mg/day via supplement.

I've got a magnesium chelate, which has calcium in it as well. 83 days worth, at $0.15/day.


Vitamin D
I've touched on Vitamin D before as well. It turns out that at 88nmol/L my Vitamin D levels are just fine. But since I've already got the supplements, I will take 2000IU per day until the end of winter or so. 150 days worth, at $0.08/day.

Omega-3
It's very important to get your intake of Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats in balance (I intend to write a post on this in the near future). I'll take 3600mg/day of Omega-3 EPA & DHA from fish oil, which gets me about a 1:4 ratio with my dietary Omega-6. 40 days worth, at $0.85/day.

Probiotics
Yay for gut flora! This is probably worth a post too - they've done some amazing experiments with gut flora. I've got a probiotic with 35 billion units of 15 different strains. Maybe when I'm done with those, I will try more specific strains that have been implicated in the recent H2S CFS discovery. 60 days worth, at $0.71/day.

Iodine
I bought this on a bit of a whim. I came across a post that got me thinking, and realised that I have virtually no source of iodine in my diet. And at $4 for a little bottle, it's not a big expense! 240 days worth, at $0.02/day.

All up, it's costing me $1.80/day. Not cheap, but worth experimenting with for a few months. Combined with a shift to a paleo diet, and the Gupta Programme, perhaps I will see some improvements.

2 comments:

  1. I take 4g of MEG-3 Omega-3 tablets and a women's multivitamin each day. The probiotics study looks interesting, I may have to look into that. Hope you're feeling okay today.

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  2. Hey Lyds!

    Thanks for coming by to my brain dump! :)

    If you're interested in the H2S hypothesis, start here to read what it's all about: http://aboutmecfs.org/blog/?p=539

    I've been feeling relatively good for the past couple of weeks, which is nice. Hopefully it will plateau here for a while!

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