Vegan D didnt Work for Me

A couple of years ago I got tested for  D.  To my surprise it was super low, well below the 30 to 100 range the test form said I should be in.

Being vegetarian/vegan/plant based  (yes, I go back and forth in that range). I went looking for a  vegan or vegetarian  supplement, to start taking while I waited to see my main doctor again to get prescribed the D.

In the mean time conversations with my daughter  informed me that my grand daughter  also had low D levels and that her doctor had prescribed 10,000 iu per day and even 50,000 iu per week  doses to take.

Armed with that information I got a vegan D supplement at wholefoods.  the price was close to $1 per capsule.   My Dr, for what ever reason, chose to not believe that the test accurately reflected my D levels, and refused to prescribe the D!  Well I was upset but then it turns out there are no vegan or vegetarian D’s that he could have prescribed.

A year later I got retested, and low and behold, after a year of truly expensive Vegan D, my levels had moved up, just a tiny bit, and I was still below the 30-100 range !    I poured into more research and discovered that the Vegan D I was taking was D2 (Ergocalciferol), and that the non-vegan D was D3  .   The supposed vegan D3 from Lichen was really D2 with only trace amounts, if any ,of D3.

Well I needed D3 not D2.

I settled on the Solgar D3  made from the oil on wool (yes, sheep) in a vegetable capsule. I have been using supplements, many times in extremely  high doses, following the work done by  Durke Pearson and Sandy Shaw from their book “Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach”.  Going back to the 1990’s, Solgar has been one of the few companies that offered vegetarian formulations that I have relied on for supplementation.  I should have taken a hint hint when Solgar did not offer a Vegetarian form of D.

Not long  after I started taking the Solgar D3 I was in an accident. During the hospital stay my D levels where tested. To my surprise I was now at the low end of the 30-100 range that I had been trying to get to for over a year!

I continue to take the Solgar D3 ( 5000iu capsules 2x a day ) as I want to reach the high end of the acceptable range.

It also seems that I am getting some extra benefits  because at this particular point in history, taking D3 can help my body with the Coronavirus.

Yes, getting outdoors into some sunlight is great, but I am home bound these days in chronic pain.  Getting around is just not as easy, but sunny or not, I am giving my body the D3 it needs.

 

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Bread and Milk

I read somewhere that you can make glue from wheat flour. It was a craft project. Sure enough its a simple water and flour paste.  But if I eat it, does it do the same thing?Milk was something I loved as a child. It was rich and creamy and yummy. This of course was in the 60′ and 70’s before homogenization and ultra pasteurization became the norm.

I was fine with milk till about the early 90’s. At that time I started to have the very embarrassing problem of gas, really smelly gas. I worked in an office. I took the train to work. I rode on elevators. None of these are good places to release smelly gas farts. Back then I had not made the connection.  I had already been a vegetarian for almost 10 years at that point but my diet included pasta, cheese, milk  and bread in large amounts just about every single day. I was also taking super high doses of vitamins and supplements.

It was not until 2007 that I stopped eating milk products and found to my complete surprise that the smelly gas went away!

At first I thought I was lactose intolerant. So, yes, I tried those lactaid pills.  They didn’t really work.

I found that I could tolerate organic milk, so then I thought it was the rBst and rbGH.

Then I started to hear about A2 and A1 milk proteins. A2 and A1 are types of casein protein . A1 is most common in north American cows while  A2 is more common among Indian cows (the ones with the big hump on the back).  This explained why during the 7 weeks in India I had no gas, bloating, or smelly exhaust problems.

Now I love cake, chocolate cake to be more specific, and I have no plans to stop eating it.  So that is going to be a source of both milk and wheat in my diet.  So I had to reduce all the other sources so the impact of the cake would be negligible.

I do believe in moderation, just not where chocolate in concerned. Making and buying vegan cake and brownies is another option. I do have my own recipes for these and I prefer to eat the vegan version when possible.  I feel so much better after eating them.

My initial goal had been to try to keep my bread intake down to 1 slice of bread per day or one serving of wheat per day. At this point I have switched to rice noodles which are incredibly cheap in China town and I only have pasta once or twice a month. I used to have pasta almost every day and bread almost everyday. Now I’ll have toast or a sandwich maybe once a week.

I keep the bread and bagels in the freezer. Just one loaf and a few bagels can last more than a month for the 2 of us.

As a general rule I read the ingredients on almost every thing I eat. I found that most of the bread now also has milk in it. It’s really hard to find bread that does not have milk.  Really, bread should be grain, yeast, sugar. Everything else is extra.

I’ll be 53  in a couple of weeks.

I’ve been vegetarian since 1987,

so thats, 29 years of no meat, poultry, or fish.
Staying healthy is so much more important to me now.
yes I feel better.
every bit helps