I love Women's Ultra Mega Vitamins at GNC..

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If you don't already take one, you might just try a good multivitamin rather than a B complex. I hated the B complex. Stinky is right. Plus it looked like I had eaten a canary when I peed. Okay, that was TMI. Sorry.

Definitely get the thyroid checked out. Low thyroid can give you lots of symptoms that can mimic menopause and depression is one of them. If your hair is thinning a little bit and your skin feels like it's drier than it used to be, those can all be symptoms of a low thyroid.

I was on Effexor for a while and hated it. I didn't feel any less depressed, but I didn't care because I was asleep all the time. I basically slept through December. Which actually worked well in the grand scheme of things, but was not very productive.

Back to the thyroid, though. That may very well be an underlying cause for your depression. Probably not the only one, but it could be contributing. Some things to think about - What are your eating habits like and have they changed drastically in the last year with all the stress? If you eat lots of prepared foods, that definitely is affecting things. Try getting rid of anything white in your diet - white bread, flour, potatoes, etc. It's hard, but you'll be AMAZED at how different you feel. I actually went one step further and try to eat a raw diet as much as possible. This is new for me, but it's astonishing at how much better I feel.

Exercise is also a very important key in helping to combat depression. Sunlight is another very important key. Even if it's only to walk down to the end of the street, try to do that once a day. You need to get the Vitamin D from the sunlight and the fresh air will help.

If you think a low thyroid may be a factor, here are a couple of things I discovered. Iodine is a very important nutrient in thyroid health. The only way you can get iodine is if you eat fish or use iodized salt. I don't do either. I started taking a kelp supplement for the iodine. If you use artificial sweeteners at all, they can lodge in the thyroid and hamper its effectiveness. Fluoride in water is another biggie. Fluoride mimics estrogen and also inhibits thyroid function. A Brita water filter, or any similar one DOES NOT remove fluoride. You have to get a separate fluoride filter for that. I take kelp, stay away from diet sodas (I used to drink diet Pepsi by the gallon, practically) and have the fluoride filter on the sink. I then put that water through the Brita filter. I also take another herbal supplement called Ashwaganda that helps promote thyroid health.

I have been taking the vitamins and supplements really consistently for the past couple of weeks, and I feel better now than when I was on levothyroxine and Effexor combined.

i had been bying vitamins from wal-mart. then i went to GNC and talk the gal that works there and she recommended GNC brand ultra gold which i do take when i think about it. but their vitamins are so big, they almost gag me, even the smell gags me. supposed to take two a day. they are loaded with stuff. just wondered what ya'll take.

I'm looking for a good multivitamin. I'm in my late 40's and I also take extra calcium with D but I'm wondering if the generic vitamins are just as good as the expensive ones?

but I guess I should start taking them and see if that is helpful. I'll just hold my nose. Yuck!

I agree with the OP concerning professionalism. I believe it comes from anything that jobs that (primarily) women perform having the perception of not being serious work. If she is working at home, that perception is doubled. I also agree with having a schedule and sticking to it; plus if you have help to do your primary work, do it and don't feel guilty. Generally doing many things at once means you cannot do anything well in my opinion. But I do have to admit what works for one person doesn't work for others.

We know we have historically multi-tasked. I remember my daddy telling about my grandmother helping my grandfather with plowing at times, guiding the mule's head and leaving her baby under a shade tree, with a brick holding down the child's gown and the family dog keeping watch. She wasn't thought of as neglectful--just doing what had to be done. Unfortunately, women have to work harder and be smarter than men to be competitive and we just have to know in our hearts we contribute significantly to society. What's that old joke--luckily that's not too hard!

If things were so good with the OP with her current marriage, do ya think she'd be online reconnecting with anybody?!?!?!?!

So many women appear desperate to me in their 50s...and I don't know why because I'm in my late 50s and am never desperate sounding, appearing, etc......I just don't get it. And no, I have chosen not to be married any longer for the past 16 years......

you know that old sayin? want a man in my life, not in my house full time?!?!??!!

It's a beautiful day today, and a co-worker was saying she'd love to go home and take her dog for a walk. But her husband is home sick and he won't let her go without him.

She does stuff like that all the time. I think the only place she's allowed to go by herself is work. She can't go to the grocery or get gas or to the drugstore without him. She has no friends other than their joint friends.

Drives me nuts. What kind of a life is that? I guess it's OK for her, but I would hate to always have to be chaperoned by my husband.

Women will never run Africa (who is Oprah kidding?!) as long as Arab terrorists known as Janjaweed are still controlling at least 80% of Africa.........

Women running Africa - Don't I wish!!! But it's more backwards there than here - and we know how most feel about having a woman run THIS country.............

and for Africa it certainly isn't going to happen in our time or Oprah's time either........unfortunately.

We started to "bud" in our blouses at 9 or 10 years old only to find that anything that came in contact with those tender, blooming buds hurt so bad it brought us to tears. So came the ridiculously uncomfortable training bra contraption that the boys in school would snap until we had calluses on our backs.
Next, we get our periods in our early to mid-teens (or sooner). Along with those budding boobs, we bloated, we cramped, we got the hormone crankies, had to wear little mattresses between our legs or insert tubular, packed cotton rods in places we didn't even know we had.
Our next little rite of passage was having sex for the first time which was about as much fun as having a ramrod push your uterus through your nostrils (IF he did it right and didn't end up with his little cart before his horse), leaving us to wonder what all the fuss was about.
Then it was off to Motherhood where we learned to live on dry crackers and water for a few months so we didn't spend the entire day leaning over Brother John . Of course, amazing creatures that we are (and we are), we learned to live with the growing little angels inside us steadily kicking our innards night and day making us wonder if we were preparing to have Rosemary's Baby.
Our once flat bellies looked like we swallowed a whole watermelon and we pee'd our pants every time we sneezed. When the big moment arrived, the dam in our blessed Nether Regions invariably burst right in the middle of the mall and we had to waddle, with our big cartoon feet, moaning in pain all the way to the ER.
Then it was huff and puff and beg to die while theOB says, "Please stop screaming, Mrs. Hearmeroar . Calm down and push. "Just one more good push" (more like 10), warranting a strong, well-deserved impulse to punch the %$#*@*#!* hubby and doctor square in the nose for making us cram a wiggling, mushroom-headed 10 pound bowling ball through a keyhole.
After that, it was time to raise those angels only to find that when all that "cute" wears off, the beautiful little darlings morphed into walking, jabbering, wet, gooey, snot-blowing, life-sucking little poop machines.
Then come their "Teen Years." Need I say more?
When the kids are almost grown, we women hit our voracious sexual prime in our early 40's - while hubby had his somewhere around his 18th birthday.
So we progress into the grand finale: "The Menopause," the Grandmother of all womanhood. It's either take HRT and chance cancer in those now seasoned "buds" or the aforementioned Nether Regions, or, sweat like a hog in July, wash your sheets and pillowcases daily and bite the head off anything that moves.
Now, you ask WHY women seem to be more spiteful than men, when men get off so easy, INCLUDING the icing on life's cake: Being able to pee in the woods without soaking their socks...

I think this pretty much covers the issue.
So, while I love being a woman, "Womanhood" would make the Great Gandhi a tad crabby. You think women are the "weaker sex?" Yeah right. Bite me.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Scientists think they have figured out why pregnant women don't lose their balance and topple over despite ever-growing weight up front.

Slight differences in the spine allow women to carry the growing load of pregnancy without toppling over.

Evolution provided slight differences from men in women's lower backs and hip joints, allowing them to adjust their center of gravity, new research shows.

This elegant engineering is seen only in female humans and our immediate ancestors who walked on two feet, but not in chimps and apes, according to a study published in Thursday's journal Nature.

"That's a big load that's pulling you forward," said Liza Shapiro, an anthropology professor at the University of Texas and the only one of the study's three authors who has actually been pregnant. "You experience discomfort. Maybe it would be a lot worse if (the design changes) were not there."

Harvard anthropology researcher Katherine Whitcomb found two physical differences in male and female backs that until now had gone unnoticed: One lower lumbar vertebra is wedged-shaped in women and more square in men; and a key hip joint is 14 percent larger in women than men when body size is taken into account.

The researchers did engineering tests that show how those slight changes allow women to carry the additional and growing load without toppling over -- and typically without disabling back pain.

"When you think about it, women make it look so very easy," Whitcomb said. "They are experiencing a pretty impressive challenge. Evolution has tinkered ... to the point where they can deal with the challenge.
"It's absolutely beautiful," she said. "A little bit of tinkering can have a profound effect."

Walking on two feet separates humans from most other animals. And while anthropologists still debate the evolutionary benefit of walking on two feet, there are notable costs, such as pain for pregnant females. Animals on all fours can better handle the extra belly weight.

The back changes appear to have evolved to overcome the cost of walking on two feet, said Harvard anthropology professor Daniel Lieberman.

When the researchers looked back at fossil records of human ancestors, including the oldest spines that go back 2 million years to our predecessor, Australopithecus, they found a male without the lower-back changes and a female with them.

But what about men with stomachs the size of babies or bigger? What keeps them from toppling over?

Their back muscles are used to compensate, but that probably means more back pain, theorized Shapiro, who added: "It would be a fun study to do to look at men with beer bellies to see if they shift their loads."