When you say “I can not afford organic food or gym membership” this is the picture to keep in mind:
Every year in the doctor’s office I fill out the application with updates on my health, and routinely check “No” against the question regarding currently taken medications.
“Not a single one?” the nurse once asked me in disbelief and added “You are one lucky lady. We see here people of your age popping 12 pills at once!”
I felt sorry for those apparently very ill individuals and in my heart wished them speedy recovery.
I am not an anti-drug extremist. I do take pills when sick, but when I am not, I don’t. For many years I thought that was exactly what drugs were for – to help your body recover.
Eventually I realized it had been very naïve and old-fashioned of me. Nowadays medications play entirely different roles.
The day had come when my doctor said to me:
“Well Svetlana, you are in your fifties now, it is time for you to be taking calcium supplement.”
I thanked him, but explained that I preferred food sources.
“What food sources you are talking about, borsch with sour cream?” he laughed. “This is not enough!”
And he gave me the name of the popular over the counter pill. I felt instinctive hesitation to a life-long daily consumption of chemically-derived substance simply because I was of a certain age. However, caught by surprise I was unable to verbalize my concerns.
Still I had questions and doubts:
Does a human body absorb chemicals the same way as food nutrients? As Boutenko mentioned it makes a difference to plants. So, could it be possible that our bodies are as complicated as plants in their relations with nutritional base?
I am well aware of the fact that the majority of current medical studies are skeptical about these differences, emphasizing that individual absorption ability plays a stronger role here than the nature of the source. But over these years, haven’t I personally witnessed the change of scientific views on many simplistic concepts?
What about long-term effects of taking in a certain substance? Does body adopt it, like painkillers or antibiotics, so that in time you need to switch to something else?
When eventually I will need a prescribed medication, how will they interfere with each other?
And do I, an individual not exactly identical to a statistically average person, truly need to supplement myself?
The following information came across, making my doubts even stronger:
Dietary supplements such as vitamins, minerals, and herbal products can cause liver damage. I learned this the hard way… When I was diagnosed with breast cancer and scheduled for a mastectomy, my pre-opt tests revealed my liver enzymes were higher than normal. So high, that my cancer surgery was put on hold to run additional tests to try to determine the cause. The tests were inconclusive.…
I stopped all vitamin and mineral supplements. After 6 months, I returned to my doctor for blood tests. The results: my liver enzymes were normal, my overall cholesterol dropped 40 points, my “good” cholesterol rose 40 points, even my “bad” cholesterol dropped a few points.
Dietary Supplements Can Cause Liver Damage, by Sandy Powers
http://www.articlesbase.com/wellness-articles/dietary-supplements-can-cause-liver-damage-480866.html
So I did not buy calcium supplement and carelessly forgot its name.
The next year my doctor was unhappy with me on this point. Therefore, a year later I recovered the name of the pill and lied to the doctor that I was taking it.
“How many a day?” he asked. For this question I was not prepared.
“Two” - I blurted in panic.
“Too much” he said, “one is enough for you.”
This is how I became a compulsive liar.
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