I like to listen to my body for cues or inspiration when making health decisions. The other day, with no reason I can pin point, I decided that I wanted (and needed?) to take a break from taking vitamins and supplements all the time.
I’ve been into (way into) supplements and vitamins for about 20 years, always trying new things. In hindsight, I don’t know if that fact should scare me or relieve me.
I’ve gone from my bodybuilding days of taking protein supplements and energy pills to my vegan days of trying to make sure I met nutritional needs with vitamins to attempting to go Ray Kurzweil-style (of “Singularity” and life extension fame) and taking a bunch of supplements for longevity to increasing my fertility (in the past) with a number of things to just trying to mega boost my family’s immune system in case ebola comes around – not really, but you can never be too safe. ;) And, of course, there’s my obsession passion for herbs and herbal medicine.
I might have gotten a bit carried away with herbal medicine. What do you think?
It’s no wonder that my mind told my body, or maybe my body hinted to my mind that I should consider taking a break. In my defense, for most things I don’t take them all every day. I might take (grass-fed) liver pills 2 x a week and CoQ10 daily or I might take 5000mg Non-GMO vitamin C daily for a week and then back off. I like to mix it up, and that’s probably been to my benefit. Heaven knows if I took everything everyday I probably would never eat any food because I’d be too full from vitamins and supplements. I like food, so that would suck.
All that said, I was still taking a lot, in spite of my moderating attempt.
Ya know what? It’s a real to-do, too. Getting all the vitamins out every night for the next day, for both my husband and myself. For a while I tried to make up 1 week’s worth at a time with these containers, but I found it wasn’t great because, again, there’s some days I’m drawn to some things and other days I’m not. If I make it all up at once for a week in advance I might be taking something I’m not really needing. Those containers are handy for travel however.
I don’t know though… last week I decided to take a couple of days a week, full blown off supplements and vitamins. I even put it in my calendar “Vitamin Day Off” which includes both vitamins and supplements and tinctures. I chose Sundays and Thursdays for this. Extra benefit, I’ll save a bit of cash not taking so much, too.
Then, fascinatingly, I was listening to a Tim Ferriss podcast yesterday and he talked about this topic exactly. It was like the universe wanted to make sure I really paid attention. In fact, after listening to the podcast I was actually inspired to maybe take more days off for fear that I might be messing up my natural system with so much stuff.
So there you have it. I’m of the mind these days that a Vitamin (and Supplement) vacation is in order. For now, I’ll start by taking two to three days off a week and see how I feel about it in a month. Thankfully those tinctures have a loooooooong shelf life. :)
The Glutathione Force and Unfair Advantage can be found here.