The first thing we tried is breaking out the juicer and him teaching me how to juice. It's something I can't do at home, but it was worth a try to help me lose weight - nada. Next my son bought a NeutraBullet blender - he'd been wanting one since his old one broke. Still nada on the weight loss, but they both contributed to my decrease in desire for good old fashioned red meat.
Most recently I've been battling heartburn - something I battle most every winter when I get over 200 pounds. It seems like everything I eat gives me heartburn, like I just ate a bowl of oats, and I think I might be ramping up to some heartburn - sucks. I'm drinking water in the hopes of heading it off. Over the last week or so, I've discovered that yogurt and bacon (baked on a rack) doesn't give me heartburn. I need to go get some more bacon. Too bad I can't get yogurt at home, except during the summer. It just doesn't keep very long.
Now that I'm in town, my son and I have been doing some experimenting and some research. We've discovered that niacin helps to clean plaque out of blood vessels, which in itself improves circulation. This might address my swollen feet when I get too heavy. That has not been a miracle cure, but the issue has improved. I'm also taking horse chestnut pills to help with my swollen feet - mind you, they don't hurt, they just look like balloons. Niacin also helps with depression (something I have no trouble with, but I have friends who do so I'm sharing). According to the YouTube thing we watched, these guys (doctors) have been successfully treating cancer and the really bad depression with mega doses of vitamin C and Niacin respectively. Both you cannot overdose on. One of their stories about niacin was this severely depressed woman who had a family with children. She took tons of medicine to address her depression, and the best she could manage was to come out of her room to sit in the corner of the living room, facing the corner. She started taking some niacin as prescribed by her doctor, but it wasn't having much of an affect. She went off the deep end and tried to take her life by overdosing on the niacin. Lo and Behold, the depression just vanished. NO OTHER ADVERSE AFFECTS WHAT SO EVER. She joined her family at the dinner table and everything. Of course she needed high doses of niacin to continue that level of interaction, but I think she went off all her other medication. I'd have to watch the show again to be sure. Look up Food Matters on YouTube and search for Drs. Abram Hoffer, Andrew W. Saul, and Harold D. Foster.
Another thing we discovered is iodine. Iodine is in salt, you say, but we learned that THAT iodine is among the poorest kind. Iodine targets the thyroid which, as we all know, does whatever it does to regulate our weight among other things. I am pretty sure my problem may well be genetic, but that doesn't mean I can't fight it. I ordered Survival Shield iodine from Amazon yesterday and will start taking it next week when it gets here, so wish me luck there. HOWEVER, in doing some of my homework, I discovered that it can also address depression. According to everything I looked up, Iodine deficiency is the fastest growing epidemic in the country, and maybe the world, because of the growing popularity of sea salt and such.
My getting iodine from my salt certainly has not helped me. I have, all my life, been a salt-aholic, frequently licking salt from the palm of my hand as well as dousing everything I eat. I love the taste of salt. Not long ago I heard about the high mineral content of Himalayan salt, so I went to the store and bought a grinder. Suddenly, I find myself actually needing to remember to salt my foods. The craving is just gone. That iodine I mentioned above comes from the same source and is the cleanest in the world. Iodine is found in kelp, but thanks to Fukushima the ocean is becoming increasingly radioactive, not to mention the rate of pollution. Iodine also comes in the form of a tincture, but what they mix it with to make it a tincture is one of the things that inhibit it's affects. I'll have to watch the YouTube things again, but I think I heard there that the fluoride and the chlorine added to our drinking water for very good reasons also messes up our thyroid.
I came across this website - EWG's Tap Water Database - that shined a rather freaky light on what actually is in our water. Just enter your zip code or scroll down and click on your state. You'll get a list of cities where water is provided from, just click on the one closest to you. Of course, this site is there to sell you water filters, but since they suggest all brands, I don't think they're too biased, especially since they refer you to Amazon for the most part. I'm happy to say our water seems to be pretty clear. There's a little runoff affect, and in my opinion, too much chlorine, because I can smell it, but some of the other things I saw were truly shudder-worthy.
That is the sum of my experimenting and research to date. Wish me luck in finding my magic pill, or drop, or whatever. I SO want to permanently get rid of all this extra weight.
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