Macafem

When I was living in Iceland, the doctor's told me my hormone levels were very low for a woman my age. Which was an upsetting revelation, and I did not appreciate that this news was delivered to me without any sort of recommendation of how it could be reversed or addressed. I blogged about it at the time, because I felt the Icelandic medical system had not done well by me.

So I ended up googling everything I could about hormone levels, and stopped drinking coffee (an estrogen simulator). I also started ordering an herbal ssupplement called Macafem, made from the roots of the maca plant, which only grows in the Andes of South America.

I took it for three or four years, sometimes twice a day, sometimes once, sometimes skipping a few weeks or months, especially when I couldn't afford them. They aren't cheap, and I suspect they made me gain weight. But the worst part is that they do not seem to have worked very well, if at all. Well, my symptoms didn't get worse, and some things seem to have at least evened out, but it was far from any kind of miracle cure. Lots of effort for very little benefit, and I really had no way of knowing if it was a complete waste and a joke or not. But hey, an exotic touch of some rare Andean plant in my lowly medicine cabinet, how perfectly colonial and decedant, that I guess is really what I was paying for. Still, taking those pills is far from the worst thing that I've tried to do for my health.

I now have a new doctor in Washington, who is running a full battery of tests. And although I'm waiting to have an in-depth conversation about it, the emails suggest I will be getting a prescription for something that will definitely help. Nice to know I'm in good hands now.