How do you guys do it!?!

[Smeggle]

How do you guys handle taking all these different vitamins and supplements? I can barely remember to take my BCPs let alone six different multi-vitamins. Some of your signatures look a foot long with all the differents herbs and treatments you're taking. I want to go natural to, but how do I start a comfortable regime that isn't time consuming, expensive and is going to send me to some upteen different stores to find the stuff? And you guys on progesterone cream, do you just use the cream or do you also have to take stuff with it? In short, how do you go holistic without becoming a medicinal guru?

[vancouverNicole]

i just go to a naturalpath and get most everything from him, so knowing what i need isnt confuseing, and going all over the place isnt an issue for me. not being expensive is another story though, good luck with that! hehe

[Auntlee]

I feel the same way -- until I think of watching my mom and other older people taking huge amounts of prescription medications and think how much better it'll be if I can avoid that.

As a practical matter, I'm a big fan of the mini-Dixie cup. For example, when I'm going to take vitamins at work, I put the vitamins I'm going to take in my minicup (today's it's Daisy Duck), fold it over, put it in the little carrier with my make-up. Then I can throw it away when I'm done.


It is a fair amount of trouble, but substantially less trouble than spending 45 minutes a day plucking was.

[vancouverNicole]

hey, just wanted to say thats awsome you found somthing that helps with the hair thing! my levels have all 'normalized' but the hair issue is getting worse not better, wierd eh? how did you come up with that combination?

[hobbitcutie]

right now what i'm doing is putting all of my supplements for the week in pillboxes (the little 7-day things you can get cheap at the drugstore). I need 2 of them to fit everything i take, but it's far easier than trying to remember what i need to take every day. I'm taking about 7 pills, a multi, 2 calcium, vitamin C, and the other three are these 3 huge pills of essential fatty acids (fish oil, flaxseed oil, etc)

[Auntlee]

VancouverNicole,

I was actually trying to mimic what the doctor said chlomids would do for me in helping me get pregnant (chlomids didn't work).

I read that mega-folic acid has an estrogen-like effect on the body -- this mega therapy included the mineral boron, PABA (which the body needs to synthesize folic acid) and acidolphilus (which helps the body create its own folic acid).

Wasn't thinking about the hirsutism; just noticed after a couple of weeks that it was better, and now, four months later, it's approximately a thousand times better. Used to spend 30-45 minutes a day plucking, now don't have to pluck every day unless I'm feeling obsessive.

My periods were always regular, so I don't know if this would help, but the book said that this therapy will regulate periods, restore the libido, relieve depression.

Not pregnant yet, but at my age that might not happen -- you've got to think, tho, that the hirsutism going away is a move in the right direction, hormonally.

[Smeggle]

I have one around here where i live and she specifically deals with infertility and obesity, so I'm betting she has some kind of knowledge of PCOS and the symptoms. The problem is that insurance doesn't cover this type of therapy. So how much do you pay your naturopath if I'm not being rude?

I never did think about the dixie cup and pillbox idea. And I suppose if I could take more than one pill at a time, like your vitamins together etc. it might now be so hard. But money is an issue though. Some of the herbs and vitamins and stuff I looked into are expensive! I spend about thirty right now on Yasmin, so I wouldn't object to a little higher, but any more and I'll be broke.

[Auntlee]

Actually, I don't have a naturalpath -- I mainly use the book Dr. Atkins' Vita-Nutrient Solution --Nature's answer to drugs. Atkins talks about treatments on thousands of patients over 30 something years with vitamins & stuff, and every single thing we've tried on his recommendation has brought about good results -- we've bought this book for everybody in our family.

And I hear you about the cost -- I've known a time when affording this stuff would have been difficult. Lots of places a bottle of 250 folic acid pills can cost $6-$9, but I buy the folic acid at Target, where it's $2.79 for 250 pills, which still adds up, as much as I take. That's a 10 day supply, so it's around $10 a month -- with the others, I don't take as many, so I don't worry as much about the price.

The book also has recommendations for IR treatment, which I've just started -- can't say with any certainty about the results yet, though it does seem that I'm not needing a mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack as much nowadays.