I don’t take supplements or vitamins.
I did when I was pregnant. Those marvelous pre-natal vitamins appeared to do wonders for my hair and nails the three years I was expecting. However my hair and nails are still strong and healthy making me question whether it was the vitamins working their magic or my incredible inner workings?
Which further affirms my belief that I can provide my body with everything it needs with the foods I eat, when I remember to eat healthily.
After all, my grandparents and their parents did all right in those deep, dark, pre-supplement days. They all lived well into their 80’s and 90’s.
Then I had a blood test that showed quite clearly on paper that what I was injesting may be begging for supplements to keep my body functioning the way God designed.
My cholesterol and blood sugar levels were high and my Nurse Practitioner, who is a supplement and vitamin devotee, gave me a short list of what she thought I should be taking to balance things out,
“I know you eat really well,” she said (having just met me) “but we can’t get everything we need from food alone.”
I disagreed.
She prescribed a statin to be taken once a week and five supplements, Niacin, Vitamin C, Kyolic Garlic, Omega 3 and CoQ10.
She saw the look on my face,
“You’ve never heard of any of these have you?”
I shook my head.
Thus began my analysis of food and whether or not I could curb my sweet tooth and love of all things bread, inherited from both my grandmother and mother, and change my eating habits to avoid popping pills every day.
I’ve never consulted a nutritionist and apart from taking human biology in high school (way too long ago to recall) I had completely forgotten how my body processes carbohydrates, fats, sugars and proteins, makes vitamins and energy boosting enzymes and keeps everything in balance just as God created.
I turned to my friend and sister in Christ, Terri Fites, The Homeschooling Doctor, for her professional expertise,
“I’m not a supplement-taker-girl either,” she confided.
Alleluia! We were starting on the same page.
Over the next couple of posts I’ll distill our email conversations, liberally sprinkled with common sense and do-ability, and share what I settled for as far as the use of supplements go, starting with the first two on my list:
No statin. At least not until I’d tried other ways to lower my cholesterol.
No niacin either, it may be an awesome B vitamin conveniently isolated to lower cholesterol but it is only one of a host of awesome B vitamins. I needed the full chorus to work in concert and sing together along my body’s biochemical pathways.
How to get the whole shebang?
Eat meat and more meat, a variety, not just chicken breasts and pork chops but lamb shoulder, chicken with a heart, turkey legs, a little beef sirloin, bone in, bone out, white meat, dark meat, goose cutlets, jugged hare and awful offal… My grandparents used to enjoy liver and onions, steak and kidney pudding, tripe, eel, brains on toast… yep!
Eat fish, lots of it, tuna, salmon, trout, herring, swordfish, sardines (limit the mercury fish to a couple of times a month). Fresh, frozen, canned however I can find it.
Eat veggies, not just the meat and 2 veg. model but 6 cups of greens every day!
Leafy greens, broccoli, asparagus, cabbage, kale, turnip greens, collards, spinach, Brussels and avocado.
Limit the carbs, beans, corn, whole sweet potatoes, golden potatoes (simply drizzled with olive oil) brown or black rice, millet, these power foods are incredibly healthy but should be used to round out a meal NOT as a main player as I had been happily doing for years!
And absolutely no French loaves of garlic bread…Evah! This is not a whole carb just because I eat a whole loaf! It is impossible for me to have just ONE slice so easier to ban it completely from the table.
As an aside:
I used to eat marmite every day when I ate bread.
Now I drink it in hot water, mmmm. In fact in England growing up the government provided all young families with a jar of marmite every week because it contained all the vitamin B’s. Who’d have thought something that yummy could be so good for you? Check out this YouTube! Marmite, the Growing Up Spread.
“Six cups of vegetables every day!” groaned Hubs when I outlined our new plan.
“We can eat it cooked, roasted, raw, whatever, with plenty of meat.”
“Can we still have crackers and kisses for snacks?” he asked hopefully.
“Plenty of kisses,” I said planting one on his cheek, “and lots of sunflower seeds and almonds.”