Cross purpose supplements

My latest set of pill-popping dilemmas involves supplements. 

Until I started taking the antibiotic, I was taking a mineral (calcium/magnesium/zine) supplement at bedtime.  The magnesium was supposed to be helping with some of my muscle pain issues and with some sleep issues.   However, I'm supposed to avoid taking in any calcium for at least two hours after I take my antibiotic.  I have to take one dose of my antibiotic with dinner.  I often go to bed less than two hours after eating dinner, since I get home after 6 most days AND the Adderall makes me unhurried about eating any way.

I had been taking St Johns Wort in the morning, since it doesn't like calcium (which I had been taking at night).  So, the first change I made was to switch those around.  I now take the St Johns Wort at bed and the calcium in the morning, at least an hour before breakfast so that it doesn't interfere with the antibiotic.

I am taking two different probiotics to help make up for the good flora that is being killed off by the antibiotic.  I need to take these on an empty stomach so that they hang around in my system and don't just happily eat the food in my stomach.

I just started taking a supplement (serrapeptase) that helps the antibiotics work by attacking the biofilms that the Lyme spirochettes surround themselves with.  It is yet another pill that I need to take on an empty stomach.  Since I am not sure how it will impact the efficacy of the probiotics I am taking, I'm trying to take them an hour apart from each other.

Also, I try to take my Adderall as soon as I get up in the morning to help wake me up and make sure that it is mostly out of my system by the end of the day.

Basically, this means that I'm taking five pills when I get up and then two pills an hour later.  Which also means that I cannot eat breakfast until at least two hours after I get up.  At that point the Adderall has kicked in, so I may not be all THAT interested in breakfast.  However, I have to have a good sized breakfast to take the antibiotic.  (See previous post on the cross purpose drugs.)

Sometimes I think about the amount of pills I take and remember Joan Cusack's character from the movie "Toys".  Turned out that she was a robot of some sort, but at every meal she would take a bunch of pills and put them between two slices of bread and eat her "sandwich".  Not a very popular movie, so I couldn't find a YouTube clip to share unfortunately.

Cross purpose pharmaceuticals

In order to combat my Lyme disease, I am taking two hefty doses of an antibiotic that must be taken with food.  If you don't have a good amount of food in your stomach it is highly likely that you will vomit.  In addition, I have a powerful NSAID that I should take several times a day that has the same warnings.  That one I have actually experienced twice.  The first time because I assumed that the warning was on the same level as taking Ibuprofen, which I can gobble up on an empty stomach most of the time without any ill effects.  The resulting nausea and vomiting from my mistake taught be a lesson about heading warnings on prescription pharmaceuticals.  The second time it happened it wasn't because I had taken the pill on an empty stomach.  I learned that "with food" meant a SIGNIFICANT amount of food. 

Part of the disease symptoms that I have to deal with is my constant sleepiness, regardless of how much sleep I get.  I went through a sleep study in July that showed that there is nothing abnormal, or 'non restful', with my sleep patterns.  I was labeled with Idiopathic Hypersomnolence (meaning:  no known cause sleepiness).  To fight the sleepiness I started taking Adderall.  It's an amphetamine.  Amphetamines sap your appetite.  Part of me was looking forward to taking this in hopes that it would help me shed some pounds.  Unfortunately, I'm taking several drugs that are at cross purposes.

The Adderall diminishes my appetite.  I can easily skip breakfast when I'm taking it.  On the other hand, I need to eat a reasonably solid breakfast and then dinner to take two of my other drugs.  I have cut down on my snacking quite a bit since starting the Adderall, so I have dropped a couple of pounds.  However, it does kind of stink that I can't take full advantage of one of it's side effects to REALLY drop some weight.

By the way, when I get ready for bed, one of the drugs I take is a muscle relaxant to minimize the stiffness and potential for muscle spasms that can happen when I sleep.  I have actually injured myself, causing inflammation that takes days to weeks to recover from (see yesterday's post about injury recovery).  Usually the Adderall is out of my system by bed time, but the muscle relaxant is at cross purposes to it as well.

"Better living through chemistry" right?