A recent Swedish study showed that breast cancer in women taking multivitamins was nineteen percent higher than in women who did not. Other studies earlier linked single vitamin preparations (vitamin E and A) also to higher cancer rates.
This feeds into my hunch that artificial high-dosed vitamin pills are not the same as vitamins naturally occurring in food. And why should they be?
Imagine: Glucose is a fuel molecule needed in every single cell of your body. But the moment we were able to refine sugar and put it on everybody's table, the downhill course in our health began: Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, syndrome X, depression, and so on.
Think about man-made vitamins in the same way: Too much of a good thing in too short time - your body just does not know what to do with it and is overwhelmed. As Annemarie Colbin once put it: If you pop a vitamin A in the morning, your body might be searching for the rest of the carrot the whole day…
Your vitamins should come from fresh food. There is no substitute for freshness – we are learning it now the hard way. As I see American cuisine in the last half century or so: In the fifties, families started to eat "modern" canned food and “enriched” cereals as an easy way to get meals on the table. Then frozen and take-out foods arrived. And to assuage our guilty feelings (somehow we know this can’t be right), we shove in vitamins.
Medically speaking, vitamin deficiencies do exists. If your physician diagnoses such a state, by all means take the prescribed pill. But not forever and ever. Your doctor should find out why you are deficient in the first place. Often, there is a poor diet, or an inflamed gut is unable to take up vitamins. Common causes for inflamed bowels are gluten intolerance and food sensitivities. Heal your gut with better food, and your vitamin deficiencies might improve.
In the seventies, a new fad took over: astronaut food. These were un-food-like substances (in the form of cubes in beautiful pastel colors) which could be digested without the need of elimination. See, going to the bathroom in space was considered a major obstacle. – What happened? Turns out, defecating is a marvelous thing because it eliminates wastes and toxins from the body. Astronauts got sick from their beautiful cubes, and astronaut food vanished from the market.
But wait – don’t throw out your vitamins yet. Keep them in a drawer, don’t take them every day. But if one day suddenly you feel like taking one of those vitamins; do take it. Because your body might be telling you that you need one. But only one. Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
Spring Fatigue - Undiagnosed
April 19, 2010
A disease exists in Europe that is never diagnosed here: Spring fatigue. Around February, March, April everybody complains about it - and suffers.
Spring fatigue happens when the body is depleted of essential nutrients at the end of the winter, after not enough fresh fruit and vegetables in the cold months.
Do American people not have it? I think they do have spring fatigue - they are just not told about it. Because there is no pill against it. And the rather like to think they have spring fever...
Yet the remedy is easy: Eat about as many fresh greens you can put your hands on: chives (around this time I put handfuls of chives on and in about everything), dandelions, spring onions, stinging nettles, kale, chard, spinach. Many might be weeds in your garden.
Stinging nettles? Yes! It is a weed, but I planted it in my garden on purpose (in a raised bed). Yesterday, I made my first nettle soup of the season. The recipe is easy: Boil one or two cut potatoes (including skin) with a little bit of water and salt. When half soft, add stinging nettle leaves (the stems are tough; you need gloves to handle nettle because they sting), olive oil and pepper. Boil until soft - only a few more minutes. You can puree it - I did. But one can also just eat it like a green vegetable. Never forget the olive oil - without fat, your body cannot assimilate vitamin A from the greens.
Europeans think the stinging nettle is the most valuable herb, period. They use it for a tonic, strengthening the body overall. It is also good against hay fever, but you better buy it as phyto-caps for that purpose. The nettle root is used against prostatitis.
Make sure you know your herbs and harvest your herbs from a clean place - not where dogs pee on them. Go for a local herb walk to learn about herbs. Read More