February's Goal is...

...to learn more patience and loosen my death grip on trying to control so many things in my life!  Specifically, patience with situations more than anything else.  I feel like I'm always in a hurry to get to the next step and when that step gets pulled away from me or when steps are added in-between, I have a difficult time dealing with it.  Guess that's also a control thing too so I think I need to be more patient about getting (or not getting) the things I want or think I need and let go of those things that are out of my true control (yet, be able to recognize those things that I can control and do so).

Last month's goal was to learn Mandarin Chinese with the Rosetta Stone software...I did the lessons up until I got the flu---I haven't had the flu since I was a kid and it knocked me on my butt!!  I was out of sorts for a good week, then completely wiped out for another week!  Suffice it to say that I am not even close to being able to carry on a simple conversation ---- yet... I will be trying it again soon though :-D

Happy February!

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Is your eye twitching??

If it's been going on for a very long time, it could be the beginning of a B12 deficiency...most especially if you're a vegetarian/vegan or have gastrointestinal issues.  If you suspect that you may not be getting enough, please contact your doctor and get some lab work done because this is a very important water-soluble vitamin!

A water-soluble vitamin (versus a fat-soluble vitamin) isn't stored in the body like its counterpart but must be replaced daily.  Vitamin B12 is usually derived from animal products these days because people now wash all their fruits and vegetables constantly...you see, B12 comes from the bacteria in dirt.  Surprised?  Remember eating dirt as a kid?  Who says kids are dumb??

So I realized recently that I've been forgetting to take my B12 supplement on a regular basis.  Well, first of all, I've been really sick with the flu or at least that's what it's felt like.  I believe that my acupuncture session speeded the symptoms along because I went from feeling fine to "oh my lights! I've been hit by a two-trailer truck" sort of sick.  So, lying on the couch, finally getting around to watching the series "How I Met Your Mother", I started thinking about the reason I went to the acupuncturist in the first place and what she said to me.  When she looked at my anatomical drawing and ALL the circles of where I had pain, she said that she wouldn't be surprised if I had fibromyalgia. Oh no, I don't have that syndrome...do I?...No, not me...but then again...crap, I don't want to have that syndrome!  How did I get here to this place of general pain and fatigue??  My lower back hurts but I know that it's because of my iliopsoas (week lower ab muscles)...my neck hurts but that's because of my scalenes and trapezius (studying, playing video games, crocheting, reading)...But the one thing I couldn't explain away was the burning pain I've been getting in my quads from the smallest of efforts - I had to give up weight lifting because the pain was so bad that it was raising my blood pressure to a scary level too damn fast.  Then I came home and got sick.  And I started thinking.  My eye has been having this horrible nervous sort of tick for a couple of months now and I've been trying to ignore it by eating things with more potassium but it never went away.  Then, I thought about my B12 supplements.

B12 is needed by our bodies (essential nutrient) but only has about a 56% absorption rate in a healthy individual.  It's needed for a few metabolic functions but it's extremely important to nerve function.  What regulates pain reception/perception and muscle function??  The nervous system.  Holy carp!  So I hit the B12 bottle and have been taking my supplement (on top of the enriched milk-like products and cereals I have) everyday for the past three days.  And, guess what?  My eye stopped twitching!!  I'm too drained yet to test out the rest of the issues plus I probably need more time of taking it regularly.

There is no upper limit (UL) intake for B12 because it has such a low (super low) risk of toxicity, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). If you take Prilosec, Prevacid or Zantac (or any sort of stomach acid neutralizer) for gastric issues, these drugs might interfere with the absorption of B12 (B12 from animal sources is freed from those sources via a breakdown by gastric acids, FYI).  Also, if you've been taking antibiotics as that will change the flora in the intestines that are needed to interact with the B12 bacteria...again, check with your doctor.  There are also diabetes' drugs that affect the B12 absorption. This isn't something to just ignore - your nervous system controls EVERYTHING, not to mention that B12 is also important to energy metabolism and the metabolism of homocysteine (elevated amounts have been associated with cardiovascular disease and dementia).  If any of these are your situation, I hope that your medical professional is testing your vitamin and mineral levels on a normal basis - just saying.

This is a VERY important vitamin!  I'm not taking chances ever again, either...I'm taking my supplement every single day and I'm going to make my family take theirs as well.  If you want more information, check out the NIH's site http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminB12-HealthProfessional#h7

So, go on - what are you waiting for??  Have you taken your B12 yet??


All information on this blog is my own pursuit of information on the road to getting my BS in Nutrition Science and as a mode of studying. 

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Breakfast is Killing People!

Here's something to think about:

Did you know that an egg, while it has only 1 gram of saturated fat, has over 200mg of cholesterol??? That's almost 2/3 of the recommended daily limit! So, if people have an egg for breakfast every morning, plus 2 slices of bacon, plus 2 pats of butter on their toast that's 200+18+22=240mg of cholesterol - just for breakfast!! The USDA recommends a limit of 300mg of cholesterol a day, FYI. Imagine the end of day cholesterol intake after having meat for lunch, meat for dinner, AND all the dairy products that go with all that food, including dessert! 

Here's an interesting article from the USDA website from back in 2000 that discusses how the different types of fat don't affect LDL cholesterol but dietary cholesterol does:

Dietary Cholesterol Makes LDL Cholesterol More Radical By Judy McBride April 4, 2000A little extra cholesterol in our diets may render the “bad” LDL cholesterol in our bloodstream more susceptible to oxidation. That’s what happened to the LDL from a group of older men and women in a study reported in the March issue of Atherosclerosis. And that’s not good: Evidence suggests that oxidized LDL cholesterol is more apt to provoke the plaques that build up in arteries and increase risk of heart attack and stroke. The researchers concluded that the current recommendation to limit dietary cholesterol is both valid and prudent, noting that their findings support those of an earlier study by others. This study was led by Ursula S. Schwab and Alice H. Lichtenstein at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston. Schwab, who is now back in Finland, Lichtenstein and colleagues designed 30-percent-fat diets that differed only in the type of fat. One was rich in polyunsaturated fat from corn oil; the other was rich in saturated fat from beef tallow. Otherwise, the foods were identical. And by adding extra cholesterol to each diet--ranging from around 220 to 330 milligrams, depending on the volunteer’s total calorie intake--they approximately doubled the cholesterol content. That’s considerably more than the 300-milligrams recommended by the Dietary Guidelines. Thirteen men and women between the ages of 46 and 78 ate each of four diets, the corn oil with and without the extra cholesterol and beef tallow with and without extra cholesterol. The type of fat didn’t significantly affect the susceptibility of the volunteers’ LDL to oxidation in a test-tube assay. But the extra cholesterol increased oxidation susceptibility by 28 percent during the corn oil diet and 15 percent during the beef tallow diet. The volunteers began the study with moderately elevated LDL cholesterol--each having levels greater than 130 milligrams per deciliter. Adding the extra dietary cholesterol prompted a further rise in their total as well as their LDL cholesterol, regardless of the type of fat in the diet. Scientific contact: Alice H. Lichtenstein, Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, Boston, Mass., phone (617) 556-3127, fax (617) 556-3103, lichtenstein@hnrc.tufts.edu.

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