Last Updated on November 20, 2016 by Dave Farquhar
In church this morning, the woman sitting behind me told me she was having a nerve issue that was affecting her hearing. She was the second person this month to come to me with a nerve issue, so I wanted to relate how I treated my own nerve issues in the past (which saved me a surgery and saved my career).
First, a disclaimer: I am not a doctor. If any of this makes you nervous, talk this over with your doctor. At least in my town, there are a ton of people peddling snake-oil remedies at inflated prices and, essentially, practicing medicine without a license. Doctors go to school for seven years for a reason, so if you have an issue, talk to your doctor about it. Let the doctor know you want to try this out with vitamins too. Talk to your doctor and your pharmacist about any possible interactions between this and whatever other treatments you are doing. Interactions are unlikely, but they went to school for this stuff, so take their word for it over mine.
Are we good? Good. Let’s talk vitamins.
There are three that you need that give your body what it needs to fix itself. And generally speaking, when you give your body what it needs, it does a pretty good job of it.
Don’t let someone talk you into overpaying for vitamins, either. I treated myself with vitamins from Kmart, and everything was OK. They’re cheaper at Target now, though, so I recommend you go there. This regimen will change the color of your urine. I apologize for being crude, but if you pee a weird shade of yellow, it’s working, so you don’t need to pay $3 per capsule or anything. I provided links to Target in the hopes that they get their buy-online, pick-up-in-store going soon. My software may substitute the link for another store. No guarantees about either, but at the very least this will give you an idea of the price.
Vitamin B6, 200 mg. Very important.
Vitamin B complex, one tablet. Vitamin B6 works better in the presence of the other B vitamins. Don’t sweat the extra B6 you get from taking one of these and don’t sweat the exact dosage of the rest. The important thing is getting some of the rest of the B family going in your system as well.
Fish oil or Flaxseed Oil, 1000 mg. Buy whichever is cheaper. The goal is to get Omega-3 fatty acids, which, along with the B vitamins, help your body to fix nerve damage. There are some professional athletes who shall remain nameless who implicated flaxseed oil as an excuse for why they flunked a steroids test. Ignore that. I’ve been on flaxseed oil for about 13 years, I’m a gargantuan 5’9″, 150 pounds, and I’ve never failed a drug test, so unless you spike that flaxseed oil with something else, neither will you. You can buy these in many forms; I prefer the caplets because I don’t gag on the caplets. I’d rather not drink the stuff.
Cost. At the time of this writing, it’s possible to get a supply that will last about two months for under $30. If you have a Costco nearby, you can probably get monster-sized bottles there for not a lot more than last twice as long.
What about nutrition? No problem. If you want to put flax seeds in your smoothies and eat lots of salmon and free-range eggs to get omega 3s and eat lots of nuts and yogurt to get B vitamins, by all means do so. Living on that, plus fresh fruits and vegetables sounds like a relatively healthy diet.
Taking supplements ensures you get a reasonable baseline. Is it better to get the nutrients through food? Probably. But it’s hard to know whether you’re getting enough from nutrition alone, since it depends on how much the plant was able to get from the soil. So I still recommend taking the supplements.
Side effects. Take them with lunch and dinner, not breakfast. Otherwise it won’t stay down. Once it kicks in and starts working, expect some extra pain for a day or two. At least I experienced some, but then things started getting better.
Frequency. Initially, taking them with lunch and dinner is fine. Once it’s working, you can cut back to once a day, and eventually, you can even halve that dosage or just take it as you experience symptoms of regression. I only need the supplements a few times a year at this point.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.