Coming off LYMA …. not!

What happens if you stop taking LYMA? I had become so comfortable on my prescription, hardly ever missing an evening or a daily dose, the thought seemed alien. The mental and physical bump I had acknowledged a year ago when the ten ingredients in the pill had built up in my body in sufficient dosage, was now the top of a wave I had been riding for twelve months. Where I was, felt normal. The LYMA Supplement was now my daily. I didn't question it. But someone else did.

I was on set with a bunch of creatives. We were shooting, and the model was singing the praises of her new found morning meditation habit. The photographer was a cold swimming addict. As often happens on those long shoot days when hours of hair and makeup and lighting checks trigger small talk, we were trading the life hacks that elevated our existence. I shared my LYMA Supplement routine and the stylist, who had been pretty bossy all day, shut me down. She had tried supplements she said, but didn’t find any that worked for any length of time. “The problem is, it’s just like any drug. Your body gets used to it and it doesn’t work anymore.”

She set me thinking. LYMA is expensive. Four pills a day are a lot. Was it still working? Was I just blithely taking it like a comfort blanket? I wondered about the theory that the body adapts to dosages. Take coffee - the first cup after each of my pregnancies - after months of abstinence - super weak and milky, sent me into orbit. Now my coffee is strong, and in times of need, it needs to get stronger. My body is used to it.

And salt. I know the more salt I put in my cooking, the more I like. I got used to the taste; unsalted food now tastes bland, flavorless.

And what about antibiotics - as a race, we take too many, health institutions are concerned they may soon no longer work. So maybe it’s true of LYMA, I thought. This was September. A summer in the sun had left me feeling healthy, happy. The most recent pinch points in my life had passed. Perhaps I just didn’t need it anymore, I thought. So I stopped.

Honestly, I forgot about it. I was a little relieved I no longer needed a ‘crutch’. Within about a week my mood had dropped. Within a few weeks my sleep deteriorated. After about six weeks I noticed my nails had gone and that my hair was falling out again. But what really made me notice, what really pulled me up, was that I began grinding my teeth again.

“Bruxism’ is an increasingly common complaint that is basically a clenched jaw. It’s stress and habit related and a visit to the dentist a few years ago had set alarm bells ringing after a big dressing down. I'd tried everything I could to stop, but would wake up in the night with an aching face, and would catch myself doing it during the day. The dentist wanted me to wear some kind of gum shield at night which I really couldn’t face, but no amount of conscientious mindfulness or relaxation exercises seemed to work.

But it had been a very pleasant LYMA side effect. Something to do with the ashwagandha maybe, a deep relaxation that knocked it on the head. However, after giving up LYMA I noticed I was doing it again. I gave it eight weeks of abstinence to see if it would pass, but it didn’t. I couldn’t endure it any longer, so I went back to taking the lovely little LYMA pills, and the reversal in my symptoms was absolute.

As Lucy Goff, LYMA founder, explained to me: “If something works, you don’t build a resistance to it, it’s not like antibiotics, it’s like food. You don’t stop absorbing nutrients from an apple, because it’s designed to fuel you. If you stop eating apples you won’t get the nutrients, but as soon as you start eating them again you’ll feel the benefits. Same with LYMA as these are plant extracts, designed to work with your body. It’s not like a drug whereby it alters the way the body works.”

That makes sense. LYMA is not a drug, it is a curation of natural herbal extracts or adaptogens, taken from plant sources. “I remember when I was pregnant and I had to stop taking LYMA,” Lucy shared “A week in, I was like ‘I don’t think it did anything for me,’ and by three weeks I was ‘I don’t think I can survive without it!’ As soon as I could start taking it again my nails came back, my sleep and stress felt on a different level.”

So it's not antibiotics, it’s not salt and it's not caffeine. As it turns out, LYMA is just what my body really, really needs.