When Bubby was five months old, I bought a copy of... drumroll... Nourishing Traditions. After a few late nights reading it, I really started cleaning up our diet and looking for locally grown vegetables, grassfed meats, and wild seafood. We went to a farm and bought our first gallon of grassfed, raw milk and first dozen pastured eggs. And I started taking cod liver oil.
Cod liver oil is hard to begin to classify. Cod liver oil is the fat from the liver of a cod, for goodness' sake. How could it not contain vitamins that we need? It has Omega-3 fat, it contains vitamins A and D in a perfect proportion. In a pregnant mother, it gives the fetus ample bone density. It prevents mommy's "pregnant brain." In a growing child, it gives the jaw room for the child's teeth. And for me, it helped me finally overcome my problems with focusing.
Fish oils are nice. But they tend to be rancid by the time they're in a bottle, and most sources aren't tested for impurities. Cod liver oil is easier to check the source, and you get vitamins A and D as part of the packaged deal. I know there is the skate liver oil camp (never tried it), the krill oil camp, and the fermented cod liver oil camp (tried it), but I've found that basic cod liver oil with A:D ratio of 10:1 is the stuff that works best for me.
After Bubby was born, my hair started falling out in clumps. I started googling furiously to figure out what was going on. Iodine, it seemed, was the problem. And with iodine, I filled in the last piece of the ADHD puzzle. One reading of Dr. Jarvis' Vermont Folk Medicine, and I realized that this was the element that had been on a faraway cloud during my childhood. As soon as I started taking 5% potassium iodide, "Lugol's solution," my patience increased to super-human levels. I was finally a calm person, my heart stopped having racing episodes, my brain cleared up, and my hair went back to staying on my head.
By the time I became pregnant with Cutie, I had been taking cod liver oil, iodine and drinking raw milk for three years. I also was on a diet of grassfed and pastured meat and organ meats, local organic vegetables, bone broths incorporated in meals, properly prepared (sprouted, soaked) grains, and fermented vegetables. This is the Weston A. Price diet. All of my pregnancies have been very healthy and uneventful, but I felt more like my non-pregnant self during Cutie's pregnancy. I was able to think clearly, and hormones seemed more in check than before.
And then I gave birth to the calmest child I had ever seen. All she needed was to feel and smell me to stay calm. I was amazed. Precious had squalled a lot. Bubby squalled a little less, thanks to infant pottying. But Cutie was entirely different. She was content pretty much all the time.
I had gradually learned over time that I felt better with protein-based meals. Last year, Dr. Joseph Mercola offered his online Nutritional Typing Test for free, and I took it and asked New Daddy to take it. We discovered that I am a "protein" and he is a "mixed." Now, I eat meat (or drink a big glass of raw milk) at the beginning of all of my meals. Then, I get my dripping-in-fat veggies and sometimes a bite of bread at the end. New Daddy approaches his plate differently, but I try to provide enough variety to keep us both happy. We are both healthy, happy and trim on our full-fat diet, and so are our children. As an added plus, we don't catch every virus that comes our way.
These days, when I find myself staring at a "spot," I realize that I haven't had my cod liver oil for the day, or that I just had too much sugar or improperly prepared grains for my system to handle. But I have no chronic symptoms of ADHD. The cod liver oil and iodine generally compensate for even the worst dietary lapses. They don't prevent "carb crashes" that I get from a carbohydrate overload, but they do keep my brain functioning, regardless of what I eat.
And... this is now "to be continued." Summary with references and links coming soon!
Part 3
back to Part 1
Cod liver oil is hard to begin to classify. Cod liver oil is the fat from the liver of a cod, for goodness' sake. How could it not contain vitamins that we need? It has Omega-3 fat, it contains vitamins A and D in a perfect proportion. In a pregnant mother, it gives the fetus ample bone density. It prevents mommy's "pregnant brain." In a growing child, it gives the jaw room for the child's teeth. And for me, it helped me finally overcome my problems with focusing.
Fish oils are nice. But they tend to be rancid by the time they're in a bottle, and most sources aren't tested for impurities. Cod liver oil is easier to check the source, and you get vitamins A and D as part of the packaged deal. I know there is the skate liver oil camp (never tried it), the krill oil camp, and the fermented cod liver oil camp (tried it), but I've found that basic cod liver oil with A:D ratio of 10:1 is the stuff that works best for me.
After Bubby was born, my hair started falling out in clumps. I started googling furiously to figure out what was going on. Iodine, it seemed, was the problem. And with iodine, I filled in the last piece of the ADHD puzzle. One reading of Dr. Jarvis' Vermont Folk Medicine, and I realized that this was the element that had been on a faraway cloud during my childhood. As soon as I started taking 5% potassium iodide, "Lugol's solution," my patience increased to super-human levels. I was finally a calm person, my heart stopped having racing episodes, my brain cleared up, and my hair went back to staying on my head.
By the time I became pregnant with Cutie, I had been taking cod liver oil, iodine and drinking raw milk for three years. I also was on a diet of grassfed and pastured meat and organ meats, local organic vegetables, bone broths incorporated in meals, properly prepared (sprouted, soaked) grains, and fermented vegetables. This is the Weston A. Price diet. All of my pregnancies have been very healthy and uneventful, but I felt more like my non-pregnant self during Cutie's pregnancy. I was able to think clearly, and hormones seemed more in check than before.
And then I gave birth to the calmest child I had ever seen. All she needed was to feel and smell me to stay calm. I was amazed. Precious had squalled a lot. Bubby squalled a little less, thanks to infant pottying. But Cutie was entirely different. She was content pretty much all the time.
I had gradually learned over time that I felt better with protein-based meals. Last year, Dr. Joseph Mercola offered his online Nutritional Typing Test for free, and I took it and asked New Daddy to take it. We discovered that I am a "protein" and he is a "mixed." Now, I eat meat (or drink a big glass of raw milk) at the beginning of all of my meals. Then, I get my dripping-in-fat veggies and sometimes a bite of bread at the end. New Daddy approaches his plate differently, but I try to provide enough variety to keep us both happy. We are both healthy, happy and trim on our full-fat diet, and so are our children. As an added plus, we don't catch every virus that comes our way.
These days, when I find myself staring at a "spot," I realize that I haven't had my cod liver oil for the day, or that I just had too much sugar or improperly prepared grains for my system to handle. But I have no chronic symptoms of ADHD. The cod liver oil and iodine generally compensate for even the worst dietary lapses. They don't prevent "carb crashes" that I get from a carbohydrate overload, but they do keep my brain functioning, regardless of what I eat.
And... this is now "to be continued." Summary with references and links coming soon!
Part 3
back to Part 1
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