In September, I stopped taking the supplements that I had started taking the previous year to deal with the stress response caused by my inner ear damage. I’m not sure what changed to cause me to feel worse taking them, but I suspect it had to do with things I changed to deal with my inadequate vision correction. So far, my body has not missed them.
Probably in late August or early September, I was just getting really fed up with falling asleep at my desk at work. This sleepiness is different in that it is really hard for me to fight. I have an overwhelming urge to close my eyes. I hope I can do it just to rest my eyes, but inevitably I drift off to sleep, and I may not wake up until my head starts to fall to the side. Sometimes, my head will just fall forward. Fortunately, I’ve never fallen out of my seat! Still, it makes it hard to work, and it’s embarrassing when someone catches me. I’ve tried to convey to my boss and coworkers that I believe it’s my inner ear issues causing the sleepiness and falling asleep. I know I need to be better about moving around or doing something else to keep me from closing my eyes, but I just haven’t found a way to make myself do that whenever the sleepiness hits instead of just closing my eyes. Maybe I’m just tired in other ways as well so that I don’t feel like doing the other things. I just don’t know.
One day, I decided to try enlarging the display on my computer to see if I could keep the sleepiness from hitting. I took time to change font settings in my e-mail program. I increased the zoom in my browsers. I also tried to think of other ways to make things on my computer screen bigger to reduce the strain on my eyes. I could actually tell a difference in how I felt with making these changes. Not long after this, I found that I was feeling worse during the day. One day, it was very pronounced. A friend of mine was in the hospital, and that day, he was released. He needed someone to take him home, so he called me and asked if I could get off early. I was actually grateful for the call since I already didn’t feel like working, so I arranged with my boss to take off the rest of the day. We ended up sitting around in his hospital room for a while waiting for everything that needed to be taken care of for his discharge, and I was thankful just to sit and do nothing for a while. I honestly can’t remember what caused me to suspect my stress response supplements. I guess I couldn’t think of anything else that could have possibly caused this change. I’m not sure if at that time I linked it to changing things with my vision and those changes reducing the stress response, which over time rendered the supplements unnecessary. At any rate, I decided the next day to stop what I was taking for stress, the l-cysteine plus vitamin C, the ashwagandha, and the rhodiola rosea. While I think I may have noticed a dip from a possible withdrawal, overall I felt better after stopping them. It’s been two months, and I still feel fine without them. My body doesn’t seem to miss them at all. While the steps I took to deal with my eyestrain, including getting stronger eyeglasses, have helped in that area, they unfortunately have not stopped the sleepiness. It could be that as long as I have the inner ear damage, that issue will persist.
It was definitely wonderful to knock down the number of supplements I’m taking. While I’m not sure if taking steps to decrease my eyestrain caused my body not to need the stress supplements any longer, it was the one big change that occurred before I started feeling worse on the supplements. I’m glad that things are going well not taking those supplements so far and that I have not felt a need to start taking them again.
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