Herbal support

[StartingHealing]

Hello to all the brave, strong and loving souls here.

This may not be the place for this, if it is then could the post be moved to the proper location?

I'm interested in what members have found to be beneficial in herbs or supplements that help the physical symptoms while working on healing. 

My thanks in advance.

[Ghost]

Hi StartingHealing,

I am all about herbal support.
I recently met with my meds doctor and we talked about some herbal options. I take some really heavy meds and can't really take anything more.
She talked about green tea for anxiety, but a high-quality green tea. I didn't know what that meant so I asked my nutritionist and I'll post her email below.

Gyokuro is the highest class of green tea in Japan, and the umami is greater than any other type of green tea you can find.

Generally speaking, the more specific the category of the tea, the better the quality. For example, a tea called 'Green Tea' at the grocery store is likely to be among the worst quality. A tea called 'Japanese Green Tea' may be slightly better and a tea called 'Gyokuro' will most likely be even better than that.

Leaf Aroma should be apparent, if there is almost no aroma then the green tea may be old. The higher quality Japanese green teas such as sencha (especially shincha), gyokuro and matcha have an aroma of seaweed with a sweetness to it. It should also evoke freshness.

I'm also taking valerian to help me sleep.

My meds doctor also suggested l-theanine for me for stress and anxiety.

I hope some of this is helpful and you can get a little relief.

[StartingHealing]

Thank you.

I'm using B3 for mood support, passion flower for anxiety, and ashwagandha for general stress.

[StartingHealing]

@Ghost

I got some of the amino acid you suggested and it's been very helpful.  I've also ran across documentation that shows that proper gut health the biome, directly impacts the mood, stress resilience, depression, etc.  I'm going to give that a go. Why not? If I can not only help the emotional side but also skin, energy, muscle tone, sleep, etc?  I'm down.  There is a book called super gut, and if you search for that and add pdf there are resources that will allow you to read it offline. Supposedly it contains a lot of info on the various prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics that we need for all the above.  Will be chewing through that very shortly.

Wishing you all the best

[Ghost]

Hi StartingHealing,
I love B3s! Great find!

I'm so glad they're helping! Woohoo!    

[dollyvee]

Hi both,

I've had health concerns go parallel with my work in therapy. It took a long time to sort out what was going on, but it ended up having to do with mold, mycotoxins, and CIRS (chronic inflammatory response syndrome). For me, my functional medicine practitioner made the connection to mold because of weight gain (really one of my only symptoms along with acquired/new food allergies, acquired sensitivity to alcohol and CFS at times). Apparently, mold issues can be the source of gut dysbiosis and things like SIBO (I also have/had hydrogen and hydrogen sulfide SIBO), but there is a long list of mold symptoms and everyone varies. Anxiety and depression can also be a symptom of mold illness (along with OCD and suicidal thoughts).

Also, to add on the gut health idea what I found is that if you have bad gut health, you're likely not going to be absorbing what you need. So, all the vitamins and minerals that would normally just come from food won't be there. I had a vitamin and mineral panel done when I was first going through this stuff, and everything was low. Like really low and not just functional range low (with functional medicine there's a difference between what functional lab results are and what are "acceptable" lab results). The one that stands out right now is zinc, and that's really important in the body on a number of levels to help you feel good. There can also be a root cause of gut dysbiosis, which was mold in my case, and came from moving between apartments where there was some mold present. Not a huge amount either, often very small area on the surface, or hidden in another case.

I'm big on B vitamins after reading up on methylation and the C667 mutuation though apparently it can have varying effects with people. I think it might depend on what other issues are going on. I take a B complex with extra B12 and either folinic acid or 5-MTHF. I think the 5-MTHF works better for me. I had a lot of symptoms at first like I was overmethylated, but I think what was happening was that I was undermethylated and had symptoms coming back to a functional level. I don't react anymore.

I think 3g of glycine at night is also helpful keeping the methylation cycle going, as is NAC as I detox mycotoxins, vitamin D, and lots of magnesium.

Anyways, I just wanted to share as it took a long time for me to start working out what was going on and hopefully it's helpful to someone else.

Hope you guys find what works for you,
dolly