supplements are tricky...

I can understand why a lot of people just don't want to mess with them;  it's far from straightforward, figuring out what might, can, or won't work for YOU.  And even when you think something DOES, as time passes, it may fizzle out on you.

We see this often in people telling their thyroid-supp stories -- they feel low, and their doctor consents to prescribe, and they feel better for awhile, and then they crash....  In this case, i believe we're seeing a body which is limiting its production/conversion for a reason -- the body wants the "rest" that low-thyroid states produce.  The patient, however, intends to go on with life as usual, and the supplemental hormone allows the continuation of overdoing.

Bodies don't like being forced to do something they feel is deleterious to their well-being.  So the patient's body cuts back its own production/conversion even more than before, and the supplemental hormone is pulling the whole weight of the situation.

We need to stop thinking of the body as a locomotive-engine chugging out constant ergs up and down the hills of life, and think of it more as a horse-drawn wagon -- you damn well better take those grades at different paces than the level parts, or the results might be ugly.

But i digress:  i meant to point out how the body goes about adjusting things when we try to push it in a way it doesn't want to go.  Not to mention that you can't manipulate ONE hormone or neurotransmitter, and expect everything else to remain the same.  Or, as in the theme i was actually approaching (though a little too obliquely) -- even when something seems to work, or not work, in the short term, it's what happens further down the road that's significant.

Before we start a new supplement, we should always do our research.  This often turns up few solid FACTS, but intimations as to whether it "might be right for YOU" -- gawd, how i hate that line in commercials!  :-D  But we need to do the background checks!  If you look at an herb, for instance, on webmd, and click on the "reviews" tab, you'll get a skewed-but-potentially-helpful view of WHOM it helps or harms, and how it made them feel.  You can do it on amazon too ... but you can't go by numbers of five-star vs. one-star ratings, because of the infuriating practice of soliciting PROVIDER rather than product reviews (grrrr); you have to read the actual comments.

Considering that some supplements give us almost instant results while others may take three or more MONTHS to truly show their characters, this means that we probably shouldn't introduce more than about three or four new items per year.  ...I don't know anybody who waits that long to judge whether something is worthwhile, do you?  And it's particularly off-putting to have to order a new container of some substance, when the first container-full didn't seem to have much of an impact!

So i've recently changed my starting line-up, if i may use a baseball analogy to describe my morning collection of capsules-to-swallow.  :-)  I just ran out of SAMe, and since the subsequent batches weren't as effective as i perceived the first one to be (and they should have been better, as they were in bubble-packs for freshness), ol' Sammy has been sent down to the minors.  Phosphatidylserine has been brought back from retirement, and the rest has done him good -- he's been hitting 'em out of the park since his return.

Phosphatidylserine is supposed to improve the absorption of glutathione, one of my most valued players, and it seems to be doing just that.  Since i restarted it, my energy has been better.  I take them at the same time, or the P before the G.  I seem to be needing less sleep (not that i'm trying to get away with less).

Did SAMe "stop working" for me, or did i mistake its benefits when i first started it?  Dunno!  Either is possible.  ...Supplements are tricky!