Take Your Vitamins! 5 Tips to Getting Healthier With Supplements

Vitamins on a Plate Recently, FoodMatters.tv published an article about the benefits of B complex vitamins and I emailed it around to some friends and family members. One person wrote back and said, “Gee I was just thinking about throwing out all these bottles of old vitamins because I never take them” and thanked me for the timely message.  She decided not to throw out her vitamins, and I decided to write this post.

Here are some tips I’ve learned from taking vitamins on and off pretty regularly for many many years.  I take about 2 dozen vitamins a day, which sounds pretty crazy I know.  But at my age I can’t just take a multi and call it a day any more.  I have gotten specific recommendations from my doctor, and I also take a bunch of additional supplements I heard about from other sources (which I made sure to tell him about in case of any interactions).

So here’s what I’ve learned…

1. Start Slowly

If you’re going from 1-2 (or none) to a handful, start slowly and introduce one or two additional supplements every 3-4 days to let your body get accustomed.  (I made this mistake and ended up with stomach cramps and diarrhea.)

2. Morning, Noon, and Night

A general rule is vitamins in the morning, minerals at night.  Break up your multi into two doses, one in the morning and one at lunch time.  You will have a better chance at avoiding the afternoon slump, as the lunch vitamin will help you stay “UP” in the afternoon.  You can also take your B’s at lunch time for the same reason.  People are generally more energetic in the morning, so this helps balance your energy level all day.

3.  Take certain vitamins together.

Some vitamins should be taken together (like calcium and magnesum, or selenium and iodoral for example) and so you should ask your doctor (or look online) to find out what you’ll be missing if you don’t take one with another.  I’ve learned that if you take Calcium without Magnesium you’re throwing your money away because your body needs both in order to absorb any of it.

4.  Always take high quality vitamins.

Calcium has been in the news recently as being potentially one of those vitamins that can hurt you if you take too much.  The real message behind this though is that poor quality calcium can hurt you.  So make sure you get your vitamins from a reliable source, and not the generic brand at your grocery store.

5. Food first, then supplements

Some vitamins are better taken only when you need them as you can get normal amounts with the fresh foods you eat.  For example people who eat fresh citrus or green leafy veggies regularly get sufficient Vitamin C.  However if you start to feel sluggish or are having other maladies that make you tired or icky-feeling you can take 2500 mg of Vitamin C every 3 to 4 hours until you feel better.  Then you can stop taking it.  By the way, Vitamin C cures dozens of ailments and you can’t overdose on it.  Here’s some recommended reading about this.

On a related note, Vitamin D is much more important in the Winter than in the Summer when we get a lot more sun.  I had a Vitamin D deficiency in January of 2012 and my doctor put me on 10,000 IU’s a day.  Now, however, I don’t need any more than I get in my multi, because it’s summer and I spend a lot more time outside. (In case you didn’t know, the sun makes your body produce Vitamin D).

Bonus Tip!  Ask your doctor for a blood panel.

At your next annual check up, ask your doctor to do a comprehensive blood panel and tell you what you’re deficient in.  S/he can also tell you what supplements you need and when to take them, based on your age, health conditions, etc.  Also make sure to tell your doctor what other supplements you’re taking.

Smoothie Power Mix

Add 1/2 Cup of this power mix into your smoothie for an extra boost of nutrition and energy.

This recipe makes 8 servings, which is enough for 4 of my smoothies. Most of the smoothie recipes on this site make 2 servings, so if you only make 1 smoothie serving at a time this will be enough for 8.

1/2 C organic instant oats
4 scoops of protein powder (about 1/2 C total)
1/4 C chia seeds
4 servings of Super protein

Store in air-tight container, shake well before each use.

Healthy Tip: Scrubbing Carrots

I grew up thinking potatoes and carrots needed to be peeled before eating. Somewhere along the way we woke up and realized that potato peel was good for us and we started eating potatoes with the skin on.

So how many of you still peel your carrots? Did you know that peeling carrots is not only unnecessary, but it strips MOST of the nutrition from the carrot!

I use an old Dobie which I’ve retired from dish cleaning duty after it gets too many tears. I usually cycle through them about once a month. You could use any plastic scrubber that fits comfortably in your hand.

Wrap the wetted scrubber around the carrot and simply rub up and down a few times. Then flip it over and do the other end. 10 seconds per carrot, and voila! If you do the whole thing in the sink it goes very fast.

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When you’re done, leave the scrubber out to dry and then store it in a plastic baggy under your sink. I use the same scrubber for potatoes, carrots, and parsnips.

Scrubbing carrots is so easy, you’ll never go back to peeling. Making a beef stew the other day I had to clean a pound of carrots. They were pretty thin carrots, and peeling them would have taken me about 10-15 minutes and also would have left me a mess of peels to clean up. Scrubbing them took about 2 minutes and left zero mess.

Low Gluten Multi-Grain Bread – version 1

Low Gluten Bread
Fresh out of the bread maker

I made this bread for Easter dinner. I should not experiment on a holiday I know, but Trader Joe’s was closed and I wanted a nice bread that wasn’t white and processed, and ideally gluten-free. Gluten-free bread takes too long because it’s not bread machine friendly, so I concocted this mash-up of 1/2 regular whole wheat and 1/2 gluten-free bread recipe for the bread machine. It’s not perfect, but it was good enough for Easter dinner.

1-1/2 C water, warmed in microwave
2 T oil
2 T honey
1 egg
1 t salt
1/8 C ground flax
2/3 C almond flour
1 C brown rice flour
1 C masa de harina
2/3 C Whole wheat flour
2/3 C white bread flour
1/2 C potato starch
1/4 C fat free milk powder
1 t xanthan gum
1 T yeast

Put in bread machine in this order, or in the order recommended by your particular machine. It’s a 2lb loaf however it comes out small and dense so a smaller machine could probably do it. Just make sure to put it on Dark crust so it will get a longer cooking time than a 1-1/2 lb loaf.

Eating notes:
– Tasty but not very sweet.
– Dense but makes good thin slices that toast well
– It freezes also freezes well.

Things to try next time…
– try 3 T ea oil and honey
– more flax meal
– lighter starch?
– replace almond flour with something else… spelt?

Pink Slime in Your Ground Beef Called “Safe” — Really?

Pink Slime is Safe but Not NutritiousI recently saw this blog post, linked from a friend’s Facebook page.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/03/is-pink-slime-in-the-beef-at-your-grocery-store/

It reminded me of the movie, “Food, Inc.“, where I learned of that disgusting pink goopy chicken filler that’s used to make fast food chicken nuggets. It’s probably also used in those cheap frozen “Cordon Bleu” two-packs I used to eat before I knew better. I won’t say the brand in case I’m wrong (but I’m probably not), but I’m sure you’ve seen them in the freezer section of your grocery store.

Anyway, the point of this post is that this is exactly why we need to 1) cook for ourselves as much as possible, and 2) buy organic ingredients. Continue reading “Pink Slime in Your Ground Beef Called “Safe” — Really?”