And the Big Purple Pill Does This...

Before anyone reads this, goes and takes a bunch of stuff, has some unfortunate reaction, and sues me, let me disclaim: This is MY daily regimen, not a recommendation. I came to this routine through doctors' recommendations and reading too much, and I am in no way advocating it for someone else, nor will I be held responsible if anyone is doopid enough to think that just because I'm doing something means it's a good idea for them. Use your own brain people! Don't be outsourcing to my sleep deprived mass of grey cells.

But I thought it might be entertaining to read the list of pills a very healthy 36-year-old will swallow in a day in a quest to stay healthy, make her kid healthy, and stave off various genetic threats. So, here is my daily regimen of supplements:

Wake up. Pump milk. Take one capsule of macrobiotics (15 billion organisms per pill, half lactobacillus, half bifidus or something to that effect) on empty stomach.

With breakfast: one pre-natal vitamin with Omega-3s. (No, I'm not pregnant. Pediatrician said keep taking 'em as long as I'm breastfeeding. Besides, they're good vitamins.) Two fiber capsules. One iron (37 mg?), one vitamin C, 500 mg (mostly to help absorb the iron). Four fenugreek supplements.

With lunch: Two calcium (250 mg each) with Vitamin D, one magnesium (250 mg). Unless I have a bunch of dairy at lunch, in which case I try to take these later with a snack, because you can only absorb 500 mg of calcium at once, and I don't want to waste it. Four fenugreek. Adding today: Two grapefruit seed extract, 125 mg each.

Get home, take another macrobiotic on empty stomach (supposedly - realistically, I forget and take these after dinner with other pills, hoping that the empty stomach thing is an optimizing step, not a fundamentally necessary condition.) Nurse baby (such a lovely contrast from work and commuting!) Throw some food down my gullet. Take last pair of calcium with another magnesium, and four more fenugreek.

So, if you lost count, that's 27 pills a day. Did I mention that I'm perfectly healthy? Well, okay, except the thrush I keep threatening to write about. But I'm pretty sure my dad was taking fewer pills when he was fighting terminal colon cancer. It just seems a little silly.

The fenugreek is a galactagogue (SUCH a fun word to say! Like a cheap comic book bad guy.... Oh no, it's Galactagogue! DUN dun DUN dun DUN dun... aaaaaaah! but it means something that helps you make more milk) and frankly I noticed more of an improvement after adding the magnesium this week. So I'll probably get to the weekend when I can afford to experiment a little better and start phasing out the fenugreek to see what happens. I don't stink as much anymore so I'm wondering if my body is adjusting to it - one is told that it only works if one is fenugREEKing. Hee hee.

The fiber is a long-standing habit - when you lose your dad to colon cancer, if you so much as get diarrhea after some bad sushi, the GI docs want to turn you inside out looking for polyps and put you on fiber for life. Which is fine, harmless enough. And frankly, I'm pretty anti-colon cancer and pro-preventative medicine and cautionary behavior. So fiber it is. And any of you who are due for a colonoscopy better get one or so help me I will find something worse and subject you to it. Really, the test isn't so bad, it's the prep that's unpleasant, and that's not even as bad as the aforementioned sushi mishap.

But I digress. My point is, what did women do before we could just pop down to the corner hippie freak grocery store (I say this with love and full acknowledgement that I, in many ways, am also a hippie freak) and buy crazy numbers of supplements? And what are women with less money doing? I mean, we're on a tight budget these days, but if the doctor tells me to spend $30 per month on macrobiotics, I can do it. Many of us can't.

Some of these are just a way of restoring ourselves to a more natural diet - the omega-3s are replacing fish, for example. I like fish but it's too expensive and full of mercury to eat as often as I would have to in order to get enough of these fabulous fats, which our ancestors got by just eating fish out of the nearby river or ocean. But really, did, for example, Navaho Indian women have access to mass quantities of fenugreek around 1350? I'm thinking not. I could be wrong. Of course there are a lot of galactagogues, and plenty native to this continent, I'm sure. But I wonder if I am lucky to live in this time of ease and plenty or if what I don't realize is that I wouldn't have needed these things long ago? Eh, doesn't matter, I am when I am.

Robert stirreth, off I go.