SUPPLEMENT PROGRAM
In 2020, I decided to take my health goals seriously. I had suffered from digestive issues for years and it took quarantine in Covid to finally do something about it. I sought help from my naturopath Dr. Sanjay Mohan Ram (out of Crossroads Naturopath Clinic) and without exaggeration, he changed my life.
I was sluggish, depleted and frequently irritable and exhausted. I knew I couldn’t feel much worse. The program started with extensive blood tests that produced a food aversion list as well as a supplement plan.
My “stand out” results showed very low iron levels which wasn’t surprising since women are typically iron deficient. However, my two pregnancies had left my levels so bad it explained my significant hair loss (which I blamed on postpartum) not to mention my energy levels. I was placed on Ferapro and had to incorporate protein into every meal. I was also Vitamin D deficient which I was given a prescription for and later went on to maintain with this Thorne supplement. My results also checked my hormone levels and showed higher than normal cortisol (hello! I have two boys under 5) as well as a parasite in my gut called H Pylori for which I had to go on antibiotics.
The supplements weren’t going to make a difference if my diet wasn’t on track. My food aversion list was extensive but also surprising. I’d been eating certain foods for years thinking because there were considered “superfoods”, I was putting the right nutrients in my body to fuel it. It turned out a lot of what I was eating did the exact opposite. For example: kale, almonds, turmeric, pineapple, corn, eggs and peanuts were just a few of the foods my body didn’t tolerate. Gluten, wheat and dairy also showed up on my list but that was less surprising considering I don’t know a single person who has done a food aversion test where these three things didn’t show up.
I gave up a long list of foods for three months as well as alcohol and sugar. Keep in mind we were in the middle of our Covid 19 quarantine at this point so this wasn’t easy. That was almost a year ago.
Today, I’m on a maintenance program which means I can incorporate some of the “bad” foods back into my diet to see how my gut will react to them but I’m still very careful about what I eat. I love pizza, bread and all the dessert but I’ve now become an expert at the modification and found ways to eat the food I like but replace certain ingredients with ones that fuel, as opposed to, hurt my body.
If I could give one piece of advice it would be to really think about what you’re putting in and on your body.
Read the labels on the packages you buy from the grocery store and if you can’t pronounce half the ingredients, you probably shouldn’t be eating it.