The Cliffs of Moher, County Clare, Ireland
Ever since I first encountered functional/orthomolecular medicine in 2002, supplements have supported the medication withdrawal process in my holistic psychiatry practice. I've relied on them so much and for so long that I sometimes forget how bad things can get if the supplements fail to do their job.
I want to share a true story involving a confluence of mistakes that taught me many important lessons about being more careful with these powerful tools that I tend to take for granted.
Note: The patient's personal information has been withheld to help preserve anonymity
Supplement Mistakes that Worsen Medication Withdrawal
Common blunders with supplements
The patient did very well with his medication withdrawal, until he didn't. For about a month, his perplexing deterioration gradually worsened and became critically urgent despite efforts to improve his orthomolecular/functional regimen and intervene with energy medicine techniques. His symptoms perplexed me because they weren't supposed to be there. His withdrawal had somehow switched from a predictable to an unpredictable process.
Finally, I told him to "bring everything" to my office for energy testing and closer scrutiny. And so he did—every supplement and medication bottle he had been taking—laying them all out on my office coffee table.
"What's this?" I asked, picking up a supplement not listed on his supplement regimen.
"Oh, that's something the chiropractor recommended," he replied.
"How long have you been taking it?"
"A little over a month," he answered.
"What's the dosage he recommended?"
"Three tablets in the morning."
I got a bad feeling as I held the bottle in my hand—a desiccated adrenal gland supplement—but I didn't say anything. As usual, I needed to check it using the energy testing method I'd honed over the years to determine whether it's appropriate for his regimen. As it turned out, testing showed that it was not appropriate for his regimen.
Desiccated adrenal gland supplements are touted as great adrenal supports, but they rarely energy test well, and when patients use them, they often become very anxious. That's why I no longer recommend them. The patient had become increasingly anxious over the past month—a typical response I've encountered before with these types of supplements. I had little doubt that it had worsened my patient's mental health.
Next, I reached for a huge bottle of Magnesium Taurate and said, "This is not the right supplement. The regimen has Magnesium-Potassium-Taurate. No wonder your Lamictal dosages went back up. We need potassium to help with Lamictal withdrawal."
"I'll buy it right now," he responded, ordering the right supplement online during the session.
He purchased this second bottle after finishing the first several weeks ago and had mistakenly ordered the wrong supplement. This meant that he had been missing critical support for Lamictal withdrawal for weeks. Although magnesium and taurate are both calming, they do not correct Lamictal's decreasing sodium ion channel blockage during withdrawal. To offset that effect, potassium is needed. In the past, I have also used potassium chloride 99 mg/capsule.
This error explains his increasing irritability and mood lability. He also had to restart Lamictal 50 mg over this time period. Luckily, the energy testing approach can tell when a withdrawal is no longer feasible and recommended restarting the patient on Lamictal. Now that he will be taking the right supplement, I hope that his Lamictal withdrawal will become more predictable and smooth.
I picked up a third bottle—his "fiber" supplement "for parasites" that another holistic clinician had prescribed to him in the past for acne. He had chosen to increase the dosage from one capsule per day to six. After he informed me of this, I let him "do his thing" even though his regimen did not recommend that particular dosage.
Examining the bottle's label, I counted a list of seventeen herbs. Herbs are different from nutritional supplements. Like medications, they require metabolic conversion and detoxification. With high levels of adrenal hormones needing metabolism and detoxification, herbals will further burden the total workload.
"Let's find something a little simpler, and let's separate the fiber from the herbals so we can control the amount of herbals you take for parasites," I suggested.
One more thing. He shared that he had stopped taking an immune support supplement on his own—a supplement he had taken in the past that was still on his regimen. Again, I let that slide when he finally told me. I didn't really know how helpful it was. The result on retesting: increased functional infection levels by 50/200 across the board, which meant more inflammation and oxidative stress for the patient.
Four mistakes. Each one endangering his medication withdrawal—a delicate process that required the perfect balance of supplements, herbals, medications, and dosage adjustments that are meant to treat both underlying causes and medication withdrawal.
Clinically, the patient reported "not feeling as well" since taking the adrenal gland supplement. His symptoms included increased anxiety, irritability, stress at work, distractibility, emotional dysregulation with hunger, insomnia, and decreased appetite.
Over the next few days, I used energy testing to monitor his condition. Checking his function more frequently and methodically helped me to assess the effects of these mistakes and his recovery.
Initially, testing showed excessively high levels of adrenal hormones (adrenaline/epinephrine and noradrenaline/norepinephrine function), ATP function, and free radicals (oxidative stress). His thyroid function was also slightly elevated. Physical stress levels had increased to a functional level of 200/200 (Not good. It's the maximum level of stress on my scale).
I stopped lowering his medications and waited for his adrenal functions to return to more favorable levels. Over a seven day period, his functional adrenal levels went from 190/200 to 150/200, where 100/200 would be optimal for him. Functional numbers for his infections came back down. His symptoms began to reflect a clearer pattern of being overmedicated without other confusing effects from the adrenal supplement. Eventually, I lowered his Lamictal and Risperdal slightly to relieve the patient of unpleasant medication side effects.
It's human to make mistakes. In this particular patient's case, however, too many of one, too little of another, the wrong supplement, and a harmful supplement made medication withdrawal very precarious indeed!
Of course, to what extent a supplement is necessary, helpful, or harmful is never obvious at first. These clinical experiences illuminate the cause and effect relationship between supplements and the withdrawal process; they also teach me to be a better guardian of my patients' healing journey.
I hope that sharing this experience will help you learn vicariously to be more careful with the use and dosing of supplements.
Old stone wall at the Cliffs of Moher
County Clare, Ireland
It's human to make mistakes. In this particular patient's case, however, too many of one, too little of another, the wrong supplement, and a harmful supplement made medication withdrawal very precarious indeed!
Of course, to what extent a supplement is necessary, helpful, or harmful is never obvious at first. These clinical experiences illuminate the cause and effect relationship between supplements and the withdrawal process; they also teach me to be a better guardian of my patients' healing journey.
I hope that sharing this experience will help you learn vicariously to be more careful with the use and dosing of supplements.