Treating Narcolepsy With Supplements
When my husband left his job, he also left his health insurance behind. Because our family’s health care coverage was provided through my husband’s employer, we joined the ranks of millions of American families who have a chronically ill family member and no health insurance. Without the health insurance providing prescription drug coverage, we were suddenly faced with a scary prospect - not being able to afford his medications.
Not too long ago, we asked for help paying for my hubby’s Nuvigil, but were told that we didn’t qualify for help. Yes, we were “poor” enough to qualify, but no, we couldn’t have help while we had any type of insurance. Even if said insurance didn’t cover the cost of the medication we needed. We were the typical family that falls between the not-enough-income, too-much-health-insurance cracks of the US health care system.
At least without any insurance, we now qualified to receive free medication from the company who manufactured it. Qualifying for the help and receiving the medication would take time, of course. In the interim, my husband’s Nuvigil was quickly running out. He skipped taking it on days that he didn’t have job interviews, but even so, we knew there would be at least a few weeks, maybe even months without medication for him to rely on.
What were we to do?
After doing extensive research, we decided to try several supplements. It took some juggling, but we eventually came up with a vitamin regimen that seemed to help. It didn’t work as well as Nuvigil, but it helped, which is all we had hoped for. I will go into more detail (brand names, cost comparison, etc.) in
From wisegeek.com
another post, but this is basically what we tried:
a daily men’s multivitamin
Calcium
Magnesium
Vitamin B-12
Vitamin A
Vitamin D
Inositol & Choline
6 mile daily walk (broken up into two 3-mile walks)
The results? My husband said (and I quote), “This is the best I’ve ever felt without medication.” He emphasized that consistent exercise and the supplements truly made all the difference. We now have a goal of getting him off of the medication altogether and back on the daily supplements/exercise to treat his narcolepsy.