Just wanted to let anyone who is interested about what I found out from the Orthomolecular Psychiatrist I saw last week. She was fabulous!! She is doing an adrenal test on me that measures the natural chemicals your adrenal produces by collecting saliva. Definate symptoms can happen if the adrenals make too much cortisol or not enough. She put me on Trytophan at bedtime along with Kava Kava. I am hoping this will eventually replace the Ambian and Xanax I take. Also Mega Vitamin C and Pure distilled Omega 3's. Her medical reasoning is treating the human body as a whole instead of splitting it up (like if your having heart trouble you need a cardiologist, or if it is your brain go to a neurologist) as if all these parts of your body were seperate. Example one of the first signs of lack of Vitamin C is depression. To me, I have to find out if there is a major deficiency or failure within my body's system and try and treat that rather than the symptoms with drug therapy. Her angle is instead of taking a serotonin reuptake inhibitor, say for depression. She wants to give a patient something natural for the body to produce more serotonin on it's own. Of course I am still quite open to drug therapy if this does not work. But it makes alot of sense to me and I want to try it. Natural herbs and amino acids, etc. can too have side effects like pharmacological drugs. So I am keeping myself reasonable. I am hoping this makes sense. Today I did have another panic attack, out of the blue. Started as a warm sensation, felt like blacking out and my heart fluttered around beating irregularly. I ran for a Xanax first thing for immediate relief. The Kava Kava may have made the attack a little less but I still felt the need to get immediate help because I was at work. I will let anyone know who may be interested how I feel as I go along. I really hope this works. I really have tried so many meds.
Jojuli