Fibromyalgia: Meds and Supplements
take. There are no good guidelines and that is one of the dangers. St. John's Wort may turn out to be the best anti-depressant once they isolate the right dosages and are able to uniformly produce them (the herb is notorious for variations in potency).
We need to have stricter regulation of supplements and herbs. In England, they passed a law that required prescriptions for them and much tighter controls on ingredients. Before too many get up in arms, the scripts can be written by Naturopaths and Homeopaths.
Saw my Endo yesterday and he pointed out how changing certain meds changes the way others work. It is the hidden drug interaction that nobody thinks about. It means that sometimes you may have to adjust one med when you change another. For example, my going back on Cymbalta and Topamax lead to my needing a bump up in my Syntroid for my thyroid.
Peter:
I tried the MSM for about a year ... and it helped my "fibro pain" better than anything the docs & I had tried previously. It did not help my arthritic pain though.
I took 2000mg MSM and 500mg Vitamin C each morning (plus some other stuff) but at the time it was widely encouraged to take 1/4 Vitamin C dosage of whatever dosage of MSM needed to give you relief. The Vit C apprarently helps the MSM work better or something. Some people found relief at 1000mg MSM or less ... others were needing more than 2000mg MSM ... but everyone I talked to that tried it agreed the Vit C was a needed component to maximize the effect of the MSM.
The only reason I stopped taking it was because my docs changed my prescription meds and they really did not want to work together with the MSM. I felt like crap until I stopped the MSM & all the other "health food supplements" I was taking. Then the prescription meds were able to do their thing and I started feeling better.
The MSM/Vit C combo did not eliminate my pain ... but like the Oxycontin I was on before and the Tegretol I am on now ... the MSM reduced the pain to a more copeable level.
When I tried the MSM ... I settled on a well known brand and started at a minimal dosage and every 3 weeks or so, if no improvement, I would increase the dosage. It took me a few months to find the dosage that worked best for me. It was
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