Firstly I want to make it clear that this is not an endorsed post: I am simply sharing my experience with this product in my long search to find something to help me with symptoms related to peri-menopause.
I have been dealing with menopause symptoms for several months now. It might be longer due to the potential for them to be covered up amongst all my hospital stays and many pre amputation medications. They have really only become very obvious to me more recently and when I started googling, I began putting 2+2 together. Due to my age my GP did not want to put me on HRT just yet. So I needed to find another solution.
Some of the symptoms that have been giving me issues:
- night sweats
- trouble sleeping
- hot flashes
- fatigue (which might also be attributed to other things too, who knows)
- palpitations (a less frequent symptom)
If you google menopause symptoms there are many more psychological ones, but I have not listed them here as I cannot be sure that they are solely menopause related. The above listed symptoms were noticeable on a daily basis, sometimes even more frequent than once daily.
I have tried various over the counter and complimentary medicines including camomile tea and I have also tried mindfulness and various sleep apps. I have not had any consistent obvious measurable success with any of these.
I was introduced to Protandim by a friend / work colleague who had discovered it and her preliminary research suggested it might actually help.
I have to be honest. When I saw that it was a supplement that was mainly focused on oxidative stress, I did instantly dismiss it many many times. She kept sending me research articles that supported the fact that it really could help me, but I honestly thought it was more likely to be one of those things that simply worked because in your mind you would believe it, (placebo) rather than because of concrete science, despite Google Scholar seemingly supporting it.
But.. I was willing to try anything.
The 1 month trial
I decided that I would take it for a month, then not take it for a month and compare the symptoms during each period.
The first week or so was not much different. but then I noticed some dramatic changes. The night sweats disappeared completely. The hot flashes were significantly less frequent, but not only that, when I did get them they were much less ‘extreme’ and significantly shorter in duration.
The one I was most excited about was the lack of sleep. Ordinarily I would only be able to sleep for a few hours at a time, before I would be wide awake again for a while. Subsequently I was waking up tired, then fatigue throughout the day became an increasing problem. This symptom took the longest to be affected by the protandim, really only showing any change in the last week of the trial. However I noticed I was only waking briefly once a night, meaning I had stayed asleep for 5 hours rather than 2.
The month after the trial
When the months supply was finished I intended to continue to monitor my symptoms fir a further month to see if they increased again.
Almost instantly I began waking up multiple times a night, then gradually over the next week to ten days after I stopped taking them, I noticed the frequency and severity of the hot flashes had also increased. So much so that I did not make it to one full month. I instantly ordered some more and intend to continue to take them in the longer term.
When I contacted my friend to tell her what I had experienced she then began to tell me she had had similar results too, but to prevent influencing me in any way had chosen not to tell me anything till after I had tried them for myself!
To read research on NFR2 (on Google Scholar, not the general media!) go here.
If you would like to try protandim for yourself, you can purchase some here.
Melanie Magowan 