odd anxiety discovery

Long-time readers may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned my anxiety issues too much on my blog lately.  There’s a reason for that.

I haven’t had much anxiety issues.

Except for an attack over Labor Day weekend when the girls and I took a trip to our old house (I’m still not sure what caused it), I really haven’t had any big anxiety problems.

I still notice a little something when I go too long without eating, and those little somethings are a more of a little something when I’m tired and/or stressed.  But overall, my anxiety is much, much less than it was before.

What changed?  What is different about my new house than my old house?  What is different about my life now?

I’ve been pondering this over the past few months.  We moved in mid-June, and it’s now the end of November.  We’ve lived here over five months, and I’ve felt so much better here.  What has changed?

Well, there’s a few things that are different.  I’m being more conscious to go walking and get some exercise on a regular basis.  That helps.  I’ve been getting a little more sleep overall.  That helps, too.

But I think the biggest difference comes from an unexpected reason: I’m not taking my multi-vitamin regularly anymore.  In fact, I’m taking hardly any supplements at all on a regular basis.

This wasn’t really planned.  Things were crazy with the move, and then three weeks after we moved, we spent three weeks back in the Midwest, including almost a week at WELStock in Minnesota.  I got off my normal routine of taking vitamins, and when I got home, I thought I would just see what happened if I stayed off my vitamins for a while.  Sometimes I thought that I should take them, but more often I just … forgot.

So, this fall, when I noticed that I seemed to feel better when I was not taking my multivitamin, I decided to experiment a bit.  I started making more of an effort to take my vitamins again, just to see if I noticed a change.  And, I did notice a change!  My anxiety level went up a bit the more I took my vitamins.  Hmm.  So, I stopped taking them again, and it went back down.  Hmm!

What’s wrong with my multi-vitamin?  I never thought anything was wrong with it.  I’d been recommended to take that multi by a variety of different natural and alternative health practitioners.  All of them recommended it.  My OB-GYN when I had Jujubee said it was fine.  It’s called Nutrient 950, and it’s produced by a well-known and well-respected company called Pure Encapsulations.  Every health practitioner has said it’s fine.

But.  Apparently it’s a bit much too much vitamin for me.

The directions on the bottle say to take six capsules a day.  At my old house, I was usually taking four a day.  Lately, I’ve been taking one a day, and that seems to work okay with me.  I hate to get rid of the vitamins, because they’re expensive, and I know they ARE good vitamins!  So, I’m going to try this lower dose, and see how that goes.

I also bought a bottle of B-complex vitamins, because those are good for people prone to anxiety problems.  I’ll experiment with those, too, to make sure I don’t have any adverse effects from those.

But, it’s interesting (and a bit frustrating) to discover that perhaps a good chunk of my anxiety problems were due to my multi-vitamin!  But, it’s better to know than to not know.