You Take the Wheel

Here it is Monday again.  Hard to believe it’s May 17 already!  Weren’t we just getting through the winter holidays trying our hardest to NOT put on those 7-10 pounds?  Now there is a good chance that where you are sitting, bathing suit weather IS HERE.  I know  I wore one both Saturday and Sunday.  It’s great to be back in the pool and even though I am not swimming laps yet, I am getting there.  Mitch brought home 2 of the greatest floats we have ever had in that pool and as an FYI they were only 5 dollars each at Wal-Mart.

Yes, I do lay in the sun.  Not obsessively, but enough to get my daily dose of Vitamin D.  It’s true that I never go outside without sunscreen on my face, but I do let the rest of my body soak in a little of that great big star in the sky, I just don’t worship it (anymore).  Perhaps it helps my body to absorb calcium, as well.

In a comment this morning, a reader asked me if I am worried about my calcium now that I am not consuming dairy.  To answer simply, NO.  For one, I am not one to worry.  But secondly, I do try hard to get calcium from other foods like dark leafy vegetables.  As a matter of fact, last night I sauteed up some garlic, olive oil and kale.  Kale is a plant source of calcium.  Better than spinach which, for some reason, is harder for our bodies to absorb the calcium from.  Kale is tougher than spinach, so I added some water and let it sit for about 15 minutes.

There are many studies to support that calcium absorption is sabotaged by diets that are too high in animal protein.  This means that even if you are eating ample amounts of it, but eating too much animal protein, you may still come up calcium deficient.  This leads to osteoporosis and sometimes supplementation is just not enough.  In countries where people don’t eat much animal protein,  OR dairy, there is still less incidences of osteoporosis than in America.  Sometimes we don’t need to add foods to our already overloaded daily diets, we need to delete some to achieve optimal health.

There are also some really interesting studies about dairy consumption and arthritis.  In one such study in the British Medical Journal, a 38-year old woman who suffered from steadily worsening rheumatoid arthritis, was taken off all dairy products.  Within 3 weeks she began to feel improvements in her body and after 4 months she was free of all her arthritic symptoms.  In the interest of research, she agreed to try eating cheese and drinking milk again.  The very next day her joints were swollen, stiff and painful.  Thankfully, she was then able to return to a dairy free diet where she returned to her pain free state.

Just the other day a student informed me that removing wheat from her diet helped her kidney function.  She is a type-1 diabetic and a kidney transplant patient.  This story just reinforced, to me, how we need to continue “tweaking” OUR OWN diets in order to achieve optimal wellness.  What works for one may or may not work for the next, but we need to keep opening our eyes, ears and most importantly minds, to changes that may make enormous differences in how we look and feel.

As always, I encourage you to be the one who controls your own destiny.  There is a great line from an Incubus song that impacted me positively in many ways.  It simply says “but lately I am beginning to find that when I drive MYSELF my light is found.”  Get out there and grab the wheel…maybe you, too, will find your light!