#medication interactions

A masterlist of all of the resources I've collected so far on how to make cooking and feeding yourself easier as well as any resources related to food, drink, and nutrition...

🍜 Making cooking/baking easy:

'The Tray' by nutmegan17 on tiktok (viewable within Tumblr)

11 Essential Items for a Disability-Friendly Kitchen

11 Tips For Making Meal Prep Easier to Save Spoons

14 Energy-Saving Cooking Tips When You Are Chronically III

Tips for baking with hand pain

Tips for baking with brain fog

🥦 Nutrition and vitamins:

Protein is Trending But What Are Dietitians Saying?

How Much Vitamin C Is Too Much?

What is fibermaxxing? And what do experts say about it?

🥗 For specific conditions:

The 14 Best Foods to Eat When You’re Nauseous

The low histamine diet resource from Johns Hopkins' ME/CFS Clinic

Food and ME/CFS fact sheet

Homemade oral rehydration solutions for people with POTS

Salty snacks for dysautonomia

The Vital Role of Nutrition in Arthritis Management

Foods that can help with obstructive sleep apnea

Medications and foods/drinks:

Which foods and drinks interact with medications?

Medications and teas you shouldn't mix

🍛 Recipes:

Easy instant pot and air fryer recipes by Jules Sherred, Disabled Kitchen and Garden

The Sad Bastards Cookbook by Rachel A. Rosen and Zilla Novikov

Epicurious Expeditions – Instagram and YouTube creator

📚 Book recommendations:

Cooking is Terrible: Sadly, You Still Have To Feed Yourself

Good Enough by Leanne Brown

Crip Up the Kitchen: Tools,Tips, and Recipes for the Disabled Cook by Jules Sherred

☕ Other:

App recommendation: Fig Food Scanner (for people with dietary restrictions)

Eight Responses to Use When Someone Comments on Your Food or Body

A warning about medication and Marshmallow root.

I started drinking Olipop, a healthy soda pop alternative, and wow it's tasty! and good for you!

The problem is it contains marshmallow root. It supports digestive health and is apparently a natural remedy for gastrointestinal symptoms, but it coats your stomach and *prevents medications and supplements from being absorbed properly*. It's recommended to not take marshmallow root unless it's at least a few hours before or after taking meds.

I experienced this because I take magnesium with dinner to help me sleep. But after drinking Olipop around the same time I take those pills, I couldn't sleep at all.

It was just coincidence that I looked at the label saw marshmallow root and just got curious (looked it up because that's weird I've never heard of it). Then I realized what happened.

Fortunately I didn't drink it at night or early in the morning (when I take my prescription meds) so it didn't mess with any of my more important meds

(I started having bad vertigo about a week and a half ago, so my doctor put me on Antivert. Except it hasn't been helping, so I looked on a database of drug interactions myself, and guess what? If you take Antivert with gabapentin (which I take 900mg of daily), there is a moderate drug interaction where it "may increase side effects such as dizziness, drowsiness, confusion, and difficulty concentrating." If you notice, a vertigo medication that causes an increase in dizziness due to a drug reaction... defeats the entire point of vertigo medication? I even looked on the version for prescribers, and the list now includes respiratory depression, and I've struggled to breathe literally since the moment I was born)

Oh FFS... 💙🥄🙄

I know I know "blah blah Darwin awards" listen okay people shouldn't have to suffer just because they *don't know something*. This isn't one of those "stupid common sense" things. Warnings are useful, especially when it’s so common these days to push super trendy diet advice full of misinformation.

Server: Haha, no silly, it's a little mango, some kiwi, but honestly it's like 60% grapefruit juice! 😄

Me, having already chugged the glass, as I realize what was just said: oh no. im not supposed to have grapefruit juice. it interacts poorly with my medications.

Mae: *immediately panicking*

Me: Calm down, baby. I'm not gonna die from one 16oz glass of juice.

Mae: Then why do you look like your life flashed before your eyes?

Me: because i can't order another glass 😢

So the latest is that through cluster-fucking by doc and pharmacy to not get me my gabapentin refill (I take 3 different doses), my level got messed up so I decided fuck it, I’m going to just go off it. But I think I went down too fast...maybe? at the same time I ran out of a BP med, stopped taking a couple other meds, and stopped the pot experiment. Some combo of those and probably menopause too led to a disaster of edgy/hyper/nervous/sobbing days last week, along with hot and cold flashes cycling sometimes as fast as every 2 minutes, constant nausea, and some other symptoms.

This was to the point where 2 Zofram (anti-nausea pills) and an ativan had almost no effect. That should have knocked me the fuck out.

I went back up a little bit on the gabapentin last night but still had a very edgy day. Unfortunately, 1 ativan did this time knock me the fuck out for 4 hours, so my little dream of using all this energy to do something fun for once was quashed.

I feel weird and unstable but at the same time, having some energy compared to being in a daze for months is...nicer? It’s just that now it’s too far the other way.

Bipolar shit? WHO THE FUCK KNOWS? NO ONE KNOWS. If there is a God, maybe she knows. But humans simply cannot know what is going on with my many conditions and many meds. No one knows the interactions or can even guess at them. (though my psychiatrist insists that knowing what any 2 meds do to interact is sufficient. no. it’s not.)

Meanwhile I’m supposed to be doing this stupid Freespira breathing shit which pisses me off but is supposed to completely eliminate panic attacks from my life if I do these exercises twice a day for 17 minutes each for a month. And my incredible partner paid $1200 for it (because of course insurance won’t pay) so I have to try it. Don’t think it will change my agoraphobia tho. I’m actually hoping that the agoraphobia is just magically gone now, but I didn’t get a chance to try that out today. cuz of the ativan.