Well, I hardly think one needs to have taken a drug to understand the side effects, but I would doubt that your doctor would prescribe medications to treat just the symptoms cause most of the side effects you mentionned would be pretty hard to treat, like the weight gain (which does not seem to be associated with the SERM), hairloss (which is like menoposal hairloss because of reduced estrogen, which you are experiencing earlier but would probably have happened to some extent, there is Rogain, but that’s a bitch for compliance…the hairloss is supposed to plateau with continued treatment), chronic fatigue (nothing for that) and the low body temp is possibly linked to the lack of energy, (maybe you could be hypothyroid who knows, but E blockage could well cause this).
For the trouble sleeping and the joint pains, he might well take a wait an see approach, to see if they might resolve themselves. ( Menopause-like symptomes induced by the blocked estrogen do include insomnia.) So if these symptoms have a significant impact on you life, he might have to prescribe some NSAIDs for the pain (should that remain) and/or various hypnotics.
When you say you fear that the other meds will only cause more side-effects we have to look at 2 things. 1) It is not certain you would have side-effects with these other meds and 2)These side effects, should they arise would probably be far less troublesome than insomnia and joint/muscle pain.
So, since you can’t stop the medication, each of the side effects becomes a problem in its own right and if you can’t treat the root cause, you’d have to go for the next best thing.
I am trying to figure out what the natural remedies are supposed to help with.
Folic acid is probably for the fatigue but that would only work if you were suffering from megaloblastic anemia, which probably would have been looked into before your surgeries.
The holy basil has been looked into in some animal research to have some anti-inflammatory effects, specifically which ones are not yet known (arachidonic, leukotriene or cyclooxygenase pathways, some say its a potent COX-2 inhibiter, like Vioxx, Celebrex and the likes, which is not something you want to go into for the longterm, with the slight increase in heart disease), nothing clinical yet, so it could not work, we don’t know the dose that would and we don’t know its side effects and the stuff in the store might not even contain the active ingredient in the bottle.
As for the Grapefruit seed extract (Citracidal) , besides having some anti-microbial activity and being and anti-oxydant, like you would get from cinnamon, tea and many, many, many other compounds, I don’t really see its purpose in your symptoms. (at least green tea and cinnamon have proven cholesterol and glycemia lowering habilities).
Always be weary of the naturopaths, I have yet to find one who actually knew something…principally because there is no research behind most of the stuff that is being sold and therefore you can’t know, however our knowledge of ‘‘herbal’’ remedies has been rapidely increasing in the last few years (more and more studies are coming out). Most of the stuff is still crap with no significant active compound in it but some things are starting showing real promise. Just don’t be fooled by cure-all, ‘‘natural’’ remedies with no side-effects.
I wish you the best,
AlexH
Then there’s always HOT-ROX!
