the Great Vitamin Experiment

is underway.

So, I'm taking St. John's Wort for the anxiety and sadness. It seems to help. It seems to make me tired and I've been falling asleep sooner, rather than having my mind race for 2 hours and listening to Sean snore. So that is good. The anxiety is not over tho. I have to avoid the news and anything mildly scary on TV.

I added selenium because it is supposed to help in the conversion of T4 (the thyroid hormone I get in my synthroid) into T3. T3 is what the body uses for energy and other signals. I have noticed a slight upturn in energy. And one odd side effect if it is indeed correlated is I'm down 2 pounds since I started it. All told, I'm down 6 pounds from my high in August just taking vitamins. Weird.

I just started a Calcium, Magnesium, Zinc supplement. I only needed the magnesium, but the only one in the right dose came in a superpill. The magnesium is a bowel mover so that foods get absorbed more quickly and thus are available for energy. Too early to tell if anything is different.

I also have chromium. I haven't started it yet, as I'm giving each new thing a few days to see if I am tolerating it or if there are any bad side effects. I think the chromium is supposed to help cell receptor sites which can get damaged in Hashimotos. It theoretically helps the synthroid actually get INTO the cells for use.

So, for the moment, I am feeling a tad better. This is a rough time of year to evaluate stress and anxiety levels because it is holiday and birthday time. Thanksgiving to New Years is a rapid-fire few weeks of planning and buying and general STUFF to do and get done.

Speaking of birthdays, I now have the venue booked and invitations are going out tomorrow. Abby has been throwing out different ideas for quite awhile. At halloween, when she went as a vet, she wanted to have a "careers" party. Not sure what that would be other than a dress up kind of thing. Then she wanted a Monkey Joe's party. Monkey Joe is an indoor inflatable jump/slide world. It's OK. Rather loud. And Nathan doesn't like it. SO then, we were going to do some sort of craft party at Michaels. Looking over the craft options was a bit disappointing, tho. And now, we have finally settled on something kind of crafty, involves inflation as well as dress up, and could include a monkey. Drumroll please:

Build-A-Bear!!! Abby's seventh birthday will be a Bearthday. I can't believe she is seven. Where does the time go?