Week 16: Looking for a magic pill? Look in the mirror šŖ
And eat a whole plant, preferably a sweet potato š
PRINCIPLE #2: The drugs donāt work š¶ Verve š¶
Vitamin supplements are not a solution for good health.
-T Colin Campbellās 8 Principles of Food and Health
The magic pill weāre all looking for is in the humble potato (any variety) and you. Take the potato, cook it, eat it (while thinking about all the beautiful nutrients coursing through every part of your body), let your natural machinery perfectly transport every needed nutrient (thankfully the potato has them all) directly to the area in your body where it needs it the most. And thatās nutrition.
Seems like magic but itās just you and a whole plant. Nature and nature.
Supplements 101
Supplements take a plant and extract a specific nutrient from it (aka āisolated nutrientā) - like vitamin C, calcium, or iron - and magnify the quantity of that nutrient.
Itās then put into a pill, a powder, or a liquid.
Under certain circumstances, and for a limited period of time, it may do the trick and keep us āwellā but itās not a solution for longterm wellbeing and when taken for too long, it can create serious problems.
Bottom line is itās always best to get nutrients directly from the source: whole plant foods.
Top 2 things that blew my mind about supplements:
Supplements have way too much of a particular nutrient and as we know, too much of a good thing can lead to unsavory places. A typical bottle of vitamin C supplements can offer 1,000 mg in each pill. āTake 1 tablet dailyā is typically the recommendation. But how much vitamin C should we get every day? The Mayo Clinic says: 75 mg daily for women (120 mg / day if pregnant) and 90 mg for men. So in a week of taking the pills, I could ingest 7,000 mg of vitamin C when all I need is 525 mg?! Some of the side effects of getting too much vitamin C according to the Mayo Clinic: āDiarrhea, nausea, vomiting, ā¦ā in other words, the body is telling us itās out of balance. Somethingās not right. And this is on the light side. On the dark side, supplementation can increase rates of cancer, shown in this study. Though that particular study focused on beta carotene and lung cancer, I would think any dose way higher than what we need could muck things up in areas of our bodies where there are cancerous cells. No thanks. Itās easy enough to avoid that - just eat plants.
You really have to do your homework to make sure youāre getting supplements from a credible source. This is an excellent article showing a closer look at this industry and how āmostā supplements on the market arenāt tested for how efficient they are or for their safety. š We know there are very responsible companies out there making supplements but Iād go back to point #1. As responsible as any company could ever be, we should just get the right amount of nutrients, not a hundred or a thousand fold. That excellent article included this: āIt turns out that, when confronted with an overabundance of certain antioxidants, the human body may convert them into prooxidants, which have the potential to activate cancer pathways. āSomething fundamental we didnāt understand in advance was that, in living systems, antioxidants are not antioxidants in all situations,āāā¦ Despite learning a new scary word and concept (prooxidants?! š„“) I love the way this person describes us as āliving systemsā *swoon*. Did you read the article yet? Stop now and read it even if itās just the very last paragraph:
āThere is a desire to go from point A to point B as quickly and easily as possible, and taking pills to do that is very chic right now,ā he says. āI think weāll get to a place where some supplements could have incredible value in disease treatment, but people need to wake up to the fact that if theyāre experimenting on themselves with these products today, they could wake up in a few years and have done real harm.ā
Weekly High
Hands down every moment I hear Elle laughing and see her absolutely loving her time here with her Canadian fam. She loves my brother and parents so much, I never see her happier than she is here.
And Ummaās home cookinā š homemade noodles!!!
Low
Ohhh so many dark moments of resurfaced old feelings while I lived in this town.
Lesson
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can lead to lifelong health issues because these bad experiences can literally change our biology. š¤Æ
I looked at the list of 14 items of ACEs and thought maybe my childhood wasnāt so bad since I only tick 4 of the 14 boxes.
I ran through the test again and decided Elle could tick 5! š
Anytime I think Iām so much better of a parent than mine were during my developmental years, Iām brought back down to reality.
The most beautiful lesson in learning this depressing sh*t about ACEs is that there is a reason for all of our behaviors - especially the bad ones. Weāve all experienced a lot. Letās remember to give ourselves more grace (and then extent it to one another more often).
Week 16 meal plan: Basic & Beautiful
Oh weāre going deep into the world of starch and keeping it so basic, itās sexy!
(I know, I need to get out more.)
Weāre keeping it basic and also Canadian! (Can you spot the Canadiana on the menu?)
Sun power
May all of this delicious glucose - grown with the greatest power in the universe: the sun - nourish you, create immense health and wellbeing throughout your body, and set you off and keep you energized for an amazing week!
xo