Food Supplements de Jour

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The daily tasks I set for myself includes writing an entry to this blog and playing the scales on my digital piano. Neither are that difficult for me to do. I've never experienced writer's block, and the scales have long been memorized. It's just a matter of sitting down to one or the other of the keyboards and going clickety clack with my arthritic old fingers.

Earlier tonight I thought of a topic I thought I could get into easily and maybe write something I didn't know I knew. When that happens I have a little Aha! moment, which is always a little thrilling, but it usually doesn't last long, and I move on. I was only distracted for a moment, but that's all it took for the idea I had to evaporate. Occasionally an idea that gets gone comes back when I begin writing, but not very often.

The mild days and cool nights continue. It's very comfortable especially at night. It won't be long before I'm sitting here with a fan on and sweating profusely, and it'll stay that way until early the next morning. I had an air conditioner that I used during the hottest part of the day, and then when i went to bed to at least cool the room down until I can go to sleep.

Getting up several times during the night to relieve myself seems to be part of the way things are in my dotage. It used to irritate me, but then I realized that my irritation was basically a habit I formed back when I had to get up and go to work. Back then, getting up frequently during the night would mess with my sleep schedule and I'd be tired the next day. Mostly from worrying about not getting back to sleep right away.

It doesn't make any difference whether I go back to sleep right away these days. I have no reason at all to get up at any particular time of the day or night. My next appointment for when I'm supposed to keep a defined appointment is sometime in August. I even encourage getting up frequently during the night by drinking some water to make sure my gun is loaded.

I'm taking these dietary supplements like capsules of milk thistle that's supposed to help detox my liver. Most of the other supplements I take are also supposed to help cleanse the toxicity from my liver to some degree, and chelate the heavy metals out of my body. I think drinking a lot of water and urinating frequently helps with that.

There is a real good chance I'm carrying a number of heavy metals in my body from when worked in construction as a welder. I literally breathed the smoke that arose from my deliberately fusing various metals together. One of the most dangerous was welding galvanized steel. It has a lot of zinc that went up in smoke when it gets welded.

Welders got sick from welding galvanized metal as a matter of course. The old hands would advise the new guys to drink some milk when that happened or take some Tums. Doing that did help some, but the Tums and Rolaids both have a lotta magnesium in them, which is a metal itself. I don't weld anymore, and I don't take Tums or Rolaids very often, but I do take a couple of magnesium oxide supplement pills every day.

These supplements I'm taking are also supposed to actually supplement my regular intake of vitamins and minerals. According to the documentation I've been reading for the last year or so there are only about four supplements older people need more so than the younger crowd. My friend Rainey sent me a link to this doctor's blog who seems favorable to using food supplements on a regular basis for older people.

The vitamins and minerals he recommends are about the same as the ones I find on the research hospital sites like the Pauling Institute at the University of Oregon. I read a lot at the Mayo Clinic site and the Menninger clinic to see what they have to say about using any one supplement. I'm especially curious about the dosages they recommend if any.

All these sources have gone nuts over people taking a lot more vitamin D than has been recommended by the Health Department in the last year or so. Some long-term studies that were concluded about three years ago are just now being compiled and studied, and the results show that instead of taking the RDA of 400 mg, that adults should be taking 3000 mg, and get out in the sun regularly in order for the sunlight to produce it in the skin.

The most recent supplement I've been taking has convinced me to stop taking the prescription drugs for rheumatoid arthritis until I know what's going on. That supplement is alpha lipoic acid. I started with that, but as I read more the information revealed that it worked even better when combined with Acetyl L-Carnitine, and now I'm taking these combination horse pills that have both.

Oddly, they're supposed to be taken on an empty stomach, and if you've eaten in the last couple of hours they don't work as advertised. I'm having to think about this. This stuff ain't real expensive, but it ain't cheap either. It would be silly, and offensive to my miserly nature to waste my money not taking them on an empty stomach.

I've started taking this stuff called NAC (N-Acetyl-L-Cysteine) that both the legitimate and quacks are avid about people taking. The aspect of using it that many people like is how it helps to cure hangovers. It's used intravenously to treat overdoses of Tylenol3 and other hero-wine alternatives I don't remember the street names of. It also helps people with diabetes, and reinvigorates antioxidants like vitamin C and E that have lost their antioxidant affect. It tastes horrible, but it's real medicine.
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