Your health IS your greatest wealth!

My Friend's Nutritional Supplement Story

WARNING!! This is a lengthy post, but I feel it is important.....

Here she is in December 2001, Holding her 6 month old (who is 11 1/2 now!) & on the right is her again (summer 2011) after getting her lab results at the hematologist.

Clearly you all can tell that she is much healthier & happier.

Back in 2001, she was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, which since has been up graded (or down graded depending on your view) to hoshimoto's disease. Basically her immune system is destroying and killing her thyroid gland. The thyroid gland is what produces hormones that greatly affect metabolism (hence the extreme weight?), fatigue, mood and other various symptoms. She knew something was not right, however she was told it was all normal postpartum issues. She knew briefly about thyroid disorders from some of the women in her family including her own mother. She had an aunt who had her thyroid removed due to suspected cancer, her grandmother suffered in the past and had been on meds for most of her life. Her mother actually had radiation therapy when she was about the age of 2. I guess at 26, it was her turn? She went to many endocrinologists who kept telling her that her labs were normal and the weight was because of what she was consuming and that she needed to be more active. OK, so what does a FAT girl do? join weight watchers and exercise 2 hrs a day, 1 hr cardio and 1 hr weight training (with trainers too). She did loose a little weight...however she did not see or feel the results like she hoped. She did notice that through the exercising she felt mentally stronger and kept that up. She did her best with the diet regime.

After many years of struggling with her weight, she decided to go under the knife. Was she scared you ask? Of course but not for the reasons you would expect. She had done her research and trusted the surgeon completely. Her fear was that it would not work and that she would have put her family and herself through this stress for nothing. She had the gastric banding that would restrict the amount of food she ate, which would help with controlling hunger. Again, she was lead to believe it was because she was eating too much, even though she was eating healthy food. It was just too much.

She lost over 90 lbs! For those of you that do not know much about the LAP band, the patient must visit the surgeon often to adjust the amount of saline that is in the band. The port is just under the skin in the abdominal area. Because this is her we are discussing, that port flipped and she required surgery to fix it later on. She had to sleep sitting up because she suffered (and still does) from esophageal dysmotility. This is when the esophagus does not help with swallowing nor does it help to keep the food/liquid down. She would drink water and lay down to sleep hours after drinking and would end up choking and gagging because the water would travel up her throat and she would aspirate it (breathe into her lungs).

Then in 2006, along came her youngest child (who is now 6!). During the pregnancy she had gained back all the weight because she had to completely unfill the band due to reflux, causing her to eat normal amounts of food.

It wasn't until they figured out her body was rejecting the surgical silicone the band was made out of that she decided to convert the band to the more invasive bypass, which restricts and adds in the malabsorption of nutrition (her youngest was about 3 then).

Again she lost weight.

However her blood work which had always been so/so was now really bad. She was severely anemic, deficient in vitamins; D, C, A, K, B's and so on. Not to mention that no matter how much her thyroid meds increased her thyroid was always wicky-wacky. She also required multiple abdominal surgeries such as hernias (results of being over weight), hysterectomy (due to endometriosis) and she was requiring iron IV infusions weekly.

She had known that it would be required to consume vitamins/supplements for the rest of her life, that no matter how much she ate, it would not be enough due to the malabsorption, she would never ingest enough nutrients for optimal health. She was taking the dr recommended chewable or sub-lingual supplements, injecting herself with B12 weekly. Her regiment of vitamins was CRAZY. She started at 5am, took something every hr and ended at about 10pm everyday. She had to sort out when she would take what. She learned a lot about which vitamins to take together for proper absorption and which ones to never ingest together because they would block each other from being absorbed. She did this religiously, and her labs were still crap.

About 3 years ago, after a shocking visit to the Hemotologist, she was determined to be healthy. The Dr explained to her that iron is what helps carry oxygen and nutrients to her vital organs. He told her that if she did not do something, her organs would begin to fail as a result. He estimated 5-10 years. She cried. She sobbed. She thought long and hard of what to do. Then she wiped her tears and began research into a company she had been invested in as just a consumer of the non-toxic cleaners: SHAKLEE.

It dawned on her that just as she cleaned up her house of toxins, she needed to do the same to herself. She threw out all my bariatric supplements (which did not help and cost about $175 per month).

During her vitamin/supplement research she learned that many vitamins on the market are laced with toxic chemicals and ingredients that offset the potency of the vitamin. Also shocking is that after calling the companies of those expensive bariatric vitamins, they could not guarantee the results of the vitamins, nor could they guarantee they were safe. When she explained to them that her labs where not moving in the right direction, they tried telling her that the vitamins may be expired! Ummm, she can read the expiration date! Basically they did not stand behind the products they were pushing on people desperate to be healthy that had just had major surgery and were only listening to the advice of the surgeon.

She switched to the Shaklee Vitalizer as a test run (cost $76 per month). Within 30 days her labs increased tremendously. The Endocrinologist could not understand why it seemed that suddenly it appeared as though her thyroid meds where being absorbed better. Her Dr's where shocked. She went back after 6 months of consuming the vitalizer and for the first time in almost 10 years, she felt better, looked better and the best thing of all her labs were AWESOME!

Since then she has added other supplements to offset the fact that she does and will always suffer from malabsorption. Some of the other supplements she added are B Complex, Vitamin D, Vitamin C, Nutriferon, Omegaguard, and of course the CINCH products.

Her husband was so impressed with the increase in her overall health he also consumes shaklee vitamins and is sick less often than his co-workers! He complains less about feeling run down, joints hurting and his energy level is higher than it has been since he was in his 20's.

To make this long story a little shorter, she does not regret the weight loss surgery (regret the lap band tho). She is glad that it motivated her to continue to search for her optimal health by showing herself what feeling healthier was like and made her stronger, mentally :)