I have always been a bit of a health fanatic. I spend many hours wandering the aisles in health food stores and no matter where am in the world will always figure out how to visit every one within 100 miles of me. I love learning about herbs and whole foods with healing powers. Nothing wrong with any of this...But I have noticed that I have an odd quirk. I will follow fanatical and very restrictive diets that promise to ward off terrible diseases that I don"t have, but when I actually have a real health problem or deficiency I tend to only haphazardly follow the treatments.
Once I realized this I decided that to keep myself in check I have a list called "My real diet, health and nutritional issues:" On it I am only allowed to put things that I actually have scientific proof that I have deficiencies in or things that really need to be healed. I am not allowed to start new diets and regimens until I sincerely address my real problems. On that list there has always been iron deficiency and mild anemia. I have tried every natural form of iron (organic iron supplements, eating iron rich foods, not eating food that inhibit iron absorption, eating other minerals and hoping that they would transmutate into iron...) to get my iron levels up but that number never budges. I even used it as an excuse to get back on a meat eating diet for awhile. It did not help.
When we moved to Panama, my anemic symptoms worsened and I decided that it was time to fix the problem once and for all. I got a blood test and it confirmed that my numbers were beyond low and since there are no health food stores within 100 miles of me I decided to take the best iron supplement I could find at the local pharmacy...as you can guess it was the inorganic kind that medical doctors generally prescribe when they diagnose you with an iron defeciency. I was a little worried about taking inorganic iron because they can be harmful. Back int the states there is no way I would settle for anything but the most "natural and therefore best" organic form of iron. But I also know that even with all the best choices I would never faithfully finish a a bottle of supplements. So since this is the year I am doing things differently, I decided that these pills were good enough and I would take them until they ran out. I vowed not to do any more internet "research"to look for a better alternative until I finished this bottle.
That was two months ago. For two months I took the iron with vitamin C twice a day and finally finished a full bottle of supplements. I got my blood retested and found out today that for the first time in my life I finally got my iron numbers up. I feel a different sort of accomplishment that is very new to me. I have blood with normal iron stores. I
Through this experiment, I feel that I have new insight into myself. My real health, diet and nutritional issue is that I over research but do not follow through on proven treatments. Part of me feels like I cheated by taking medicine instead of taking the wholefood route. But I knew from experience that the side of me that likes to do things naturally isn't disciplined. Healing yourself naturally through wholefoods takes serious discipline. Before I throw more time and money into health and food research, what I really need to do is put that energy into learning how to have discipline with food. What makes me think I can prevent major diseases through my diet if I can't even fix a simple iron deficiency.
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