To wrap topics of this thread up a bit more and direct it back more generally to the title:
Alternatives to medications take up most of my treatment list here Fibromyalgia References: Triggers, Symptoms, Treatments - & Hunting & Tracking them, mentioning all things for the mind, physio, diets, environmental changes, (meds,) supps & herbs I’ve seen mentioned for fibro.
Boswellia was mentioned early on in the thread: This is a lot of research I’ve just done (hidden in the details), plus a short summary up front: Boswellia / Frankincense
Zinc mentioned positively above, but as also mentioned as perhaps overdosed by my acupressurist: She has however after a month or so gone back to it without any problems, this time however with the normal recommended dose. She is still suffering from high inflammation after the erysipelas, so trying everything she can get, incl. now Boswellia (which is why I had a look at that and saw this thread again…)
Doses, Overdoses, Micro-doses (specks/fairy dust): Most of us have heard of LDN = low-dose naltrexone (opioid antagonist), and praps low-dose fentanyl, working for pain for some, incl. FM, without all the disadvantages. Some people also only need specks / fairy dust amounts of amino acids to get the complete fx without the sfx, or less, as Trudy Scott reports. We’re not talking about less fx here, we’re talking about full fx. My sleep lab psychiatrist also recommended trying lowering and splitting up my doses of the amino acid GABA. However this resulted in a return of the symptoms, for which I was unprepared at first. Then I started increasing bit by bit - like Trudy Scott recommends - which got me severe overdoses of serotonin (due to taking too much GABA) and later on dopamine (taking too much glutamine) and so showed me where my doses are. Researching more, I’ve realized that amino acids are about balancing out serotonin and dopamine as well as looking for interactions like with everything. Then I went back a 3rd time to melatonin, of which a normal dose had zombified me in April, altho so many people get fx without sfx from it. After a few weeks of trials I realized that even 5% (1mcg, hard to measure: about a pin head of the tablets I’d got) was zombifying me to an extent that I was not feeling at all well at night, despite still being up a few times. OTOH - before trying this - increasing passiflora a little higher than the recommended dose (4x289mg) is the only thing up to now that gives me pretty good sleep, whilst adding a bit of theanine (2x100mg) every now makes it shorter and more effective. Then again I started off last year with high doses of vitamin B12 (5mg jabs) after normal amounts didn’t help, which made my B12 rocket, but didn’t help my FM one bit.
So I’ve been realizing about dosage that
“recommended doses” may be a good start (e.g. don’t overdose zinc!) but things with no fx may have to be dosed a little higher and things with fx but too many sfx may have to be dosed a lot lower, and
if something is working fairly well it might help to play around with the times you are taking it (granted you know how it works, e.g. with meals or not, like serrapeptase (30’ before, 2h after), with other meds or not, like mumijo)
overdosing and underdosing some supps & herbs is part of the “game” and taking them always needs close watching by yourself and people in the know. As I only have bad experiences with most meds, I don’t aside from LDN know how often it’ll happen that a low dose will help. But the pain killers I tried didn’t change my pain (and I’ve heard that quite a bit), and caused severe sfx on skin, gut and seizures, so I’d assume: not often.