Okay, I take supplements and lots of supplements. The day before my competition I had to take a polygraph test, in most natural shows you have to take a polygraph test to ensure that you are not using a banned substance (steroids, diuretics, some fat burners etc). I had to tell the polygraph tester the supplements I taken in the past 5 years. Wow, there were so many supplements I take and had taken, it took a while for me to remember all of them. Some of them included: a multi-vitamin, plus additional vitamin C and E, MSM, glutamine, Omega 3, flax seed oil, apple-cider vinegar, creatine (cycle on and off) and vitamins for my hair.
I have taken supplements for as along as I remember. As a child, my grandmother gave me cod liver oil (yuck) and my mother also gave us vitamins she purchased from the health food store (I think my mother knew of every health food store in the Toronto area, and the owners all knew her). When I was in university, I stopped taking vitamins for a while because I was trying to cut back on expenses, I thought it might be something I may not really need and maybe those doctors who felt that we didn't need supplements were correct. After a few months I started to take my vitamins again because my skin looked better and my energy level was higher when I took them. I should have known better! I was pretty versed on the topic of herbal remedies since I had read several of my mom's herbal remedy books. I guess I believed in supplementation and herbal remedies because I grew up seeing its benefits. I remember as a child that my grandmother had a herbal cure for so many things and that they seemed to work. For example, if I had stomach pain she would make me spearmint tea using fresh spearmint from her backyard. Also, she would make us drink senna tea when she felt we needed a cleansing. BTW, senna tea tastes really, really nasty! I always read and do my research about supplements, and herbal remedies before taking them. 1. I don't want to waste my money (on snake oil supplements). 2. It can be dangerous to take too much supplements. For example, there are some vitamins that are water soluble therefore you can't really have a serious overdose but others are not water soluble and can build up in your system and cause other problems.
Personally, my preference is to take supplements that I believe are good for me particularly if I've witnessed its positive results. I prefer this option than the other option of getting ill than to take prescription drugs that may get rid of my illness (temporarily, since I read somewhere, that the last medicine invented that was a cure was penicillin) but may cause several other side effects.
Live healthy and train hard!
1 comment:
OOh! Sounds like how I grew up. My Mom was an herbal expert too. If we had any ailment her 'cure' for it was Goldenseal. She would mix it in water and we either had to drink it or swish it, depending on the ailment. It tasted AWFUL. But, it usually did the trick! I would much rather use something herbal, if possible, than something chemically made. But, like you said, you still have to be careful too.
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