Hey Terri – the price for those things are completely outrageous in my opinion. To be quite honest it sounds like a huge ripoff to me. TCM would be a good one to address most of the herbs you mentioned. I think I can address a couple of the other things.
The first one is zeolite. Zeolite can be purchased in capsule or liquid form and it is basically volcanic ash. It has been pushed as an alternative health “therapy” during the last few years however there is no scientific evidence of any kind that it does anything useful in the human body (asbestos is a zeolite and you are probably aware of the dangers of asbestos already). There is a lot of hype created by the people selling it (multi-level-marketing or MLM companies mostly) and by the Croatians that started selling it as a health therapy a few years ago when they figured out that they could make a lot of money selling something that has historically been very cheap (and as the originators of this idea of selling it as a "health product", they had NO valid scientific research to rely on - just an easy way to make money in a bad Eastern European economy from what I can tell). Zeolite has a lot of industrial uses including aquarium filters and filters for producing medical grade oxygen when it has been treated properly.
Zeolite has a natural “cage-like” molecular structure which is what makes it useful for some industrial processes. The companies that sell it claim that this property allows zeolite to capture and “trap” heavy metals in the human body.
There is no scientific evidence of any kind that zeolite actually has this capability in the human body and some of the products being marketed that were independently tested were found to already contain mercury, lead and cadmium (among other heavy metals) – which naturally can make heavy metal problems worse in your body (if you already have a problem with them). My own personal take on zeolite for internal use after a good deal of research is that it is basically a scam. Here’s a thread on the forum that has a detailed discussion of it (there are several links in that thread for more information on it as well):
Zeolite - Does it help with Morgellons?
And here’s a link to a wikipedia article that is informative on how zeolites are used:
Zeolite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The trace mineral drops are basically a very expensive way to sell something that is very inexpensive from what I can tell. The human body needs many minerals in “trace” amounts or relatively small amounts. For instance, the body actually requires trace amounts of things like boron, tin, manganese, chromium, copper, molybdenum, silica and many others in order for our DNA to produce all the proteins and other substances it should (these trace minerals are relatively easy to get from diet as many foods contain trace amounts of these minerals and compounds).
Other minerals are needed in larger amounts (still relatively small amounts though) – things such as calcium, potassium, magnesium, zinc and a few others. Zinc and magnesium are required to produce more than 300 enzymes each in the human body (over 600 total) so they are very important minerals.
You probably want to avoid supplemental potassium (taken as an individual tablet supplement) if you are on blood pressure medications because many of these medications make the body retain potassium (potassium is an electrolyte that helps the body regulate blood pressure but an extreme excess of potassium can be fatal – and if you take supplemental potassium along with what is obtained in food and the body retains more of it than normal, the potassium can potentially build up to dangerous levels). The good news is that an average sized banana has about 3,700 mg of potassium which is a little more than the RDA of 3,300 mg and other foods also have a fair amount of potassium as well. Here’s a link to what should be page three in this thread on nutrition and post #23 has a good bit of information about calcium and magnesium as well as other nutrients the body needs. (I’m a bit biased but I think there is some excellent information on nutrition throughout that thread).
How Nutrition Can Effect Morgellons
The magnesium malate you mentioned is the mineral magnesium combined with malic acid (which is a natural acid in many fruits). It is believed by some that malic acid (along with magnesium) can help the body rid itself of aluminum (sometimes used in chelation therapies for this). I personally think a good magnesium supplement of any kind would be just as good for you unless you know you have some problem with aluminum in your body (and the malic acid may or may not help you even if you did). Here’s a link that gives some info on it:
Diagnose-Me: Treatment: Magnesium Malate I think you can get the trace minerals and the “major” minerals (along with ALL the vitamins needed as cofactors to react with the minerals in order to produce all the enzymes and other substances the body needs) much more economically and effectively from vitamin supplements – particularly a good quality multivitamin (compared to taking trace mineral drops). Here’s a link to what I consider a good quality women’s multivitamin from Puritan’s Pride (I have no affiliation of any kind with them other than I buy vitamins from them and think they have good quality products at good prices – they have a “buy 1 get 2 free sale going right now with $1 shipping anywhere in the continental US). You’ll notice that it has good amounts of many of these trace minerals as well as other minerals, vitamins and other healthy substances including some herbs.
MEGA VITA MIN for WOMEN Time Release Tablets | Multivitamins Supplements | PURITAN'S PRIDE
If you compare the ingredients in multivitamin brands like Centrum to this one, you’ll see just how inferior the major brand vitamins are. There are other good multivitamins out there, but I haven’t seen one of comparable quality for less anywhere else myself (and I really haven’t seen many if any that are actually better than this one for any price). If you’ll notice, this vitamin basically has a B-80 complex contained in it (no need for a separate B-complex vitamin – they are usually sold in individual supplements as B-50 (50 mg of some B vitamins and 50 mcg of other ones) or as B-100 (100 mg or mcg)). The only thing I think this particular multivitamin is short in is biotin, which seems to be a common thing for all women’s formulations – however, you can buy a bottle of individual biotin tablets from Puritans pretty cheaply too. A YEAR’s supply of this multivitamin and the biotin would be roughly $60 (a lot less than $300 a month no matter how you look at it) and you would get a whole lot more for your money (plenty of minerals AND vitamins).
I also did a post in the nutrition thread on what I think is a very good vitamin / mineral regimen for anyone and several people have told me that the vitamins have helped them a lot with Morgellons. It lists the variety of things that I think are important based on thousands of hours of research and my own experience (post # 123).
How Nutrition Can Effect Morgellons
You could get a year’s supply of all the things listed there for less than $300 I would guess (which is why I think $300 a month for the things you listed is a huge ripoff). Here’s a link to what I think is a good calcium / magnesium supplement (that includes vitamin D which is required for the body to absorb calcium) – calcium and magnesium work “hand-in-hand” in the body so I personally like the combined supplements for them. The ratio for a good supplement should be about 2 to 1, calcium to magnesium. This supplement has different forms of calcium and magnesium (citrates and others) that are supposed to be well absorbed by the body.
Save On Calcium Magnesium Citrate | Save On Cal Mag Citrate
As I said earlier, TCM would be much better to address the herbs, but I certainly would think that most of the herbs you listed could be purchased much more economically than the price you mentioned. Some people will tell you that drops are much more effective than taking supplements in tablet form, but there is a lot of independent testing that shows that this isn’t really the case. Many times liquids are absorbed more quickly than tablets because the tablets have to dissolve. However, a good quality tablet should be completely dissolved in about a half hour at most so liquids are really not absorbed any better – just a bit quicker. This makes no difference at all in my mind because most nutrients are absorbed through the small intestine anyway and they are passed through the blood stream to the kidneys, liver, pancreas etc. where the enzymes are made. Thus, I personally see little if any advantage of liquids over tablets (liquids are always more expensive, and you have to make sure to shake the bottle each time you take it or the nutrients aren’t dispersed evenly in the liquid). Hope this helps ya.