You are what you eat

Last week, Linda and I both had our physicals, the routine kind where they check your cholesterol and such. You'll be glad to know that we are both generally healthy folks, brain injuries aside. Linda was a bit short of B vitamins, and the doc suggested looking at vitamins (since there are some foods she just isn't supposed to eat).

This is not so easy. We were cautioned way back when about vitamins by Linda's stroke doctor. For one thing, she isn't supposed to get too much vitamin K, so a generic multivitamin is out. I'm the diligent sort, though, so I went to the store and read the backs of all the bottles. I'm pretty much disinclined to get her anything that has 32,000% of anything, but eventually I found a nice B-complex vitamin that only had 100% of the stuff I was looking for.

It made her feel bad almost right away. Oops, it had iron in it. I'm sure we've been told, but the doctors tell you lots and lots of things and it is hard to remember everything. A little Googling reminded us that iron interferes with the absorption of one of Linda's medications. Boy did she notice. So that vitamin is a no go.

I did find something that works. In fact, I feel very proud for having solved the dilemma by buying her vitamins for little kids. Little kids' vitamins often don't contain iron because it can poison them. But the vitamins I found contain 100%, for kids, of the B vitamins Linda needs which is about 70% of the RDA for adults. So they are perfect for what I want. We can add a little fish to meals and eat a few more peanuts and we'll be set. It's not like she isn't eating food also.

Our little misadventure with vitamins has had an unexpected benefit. It isn't just vitamins that trouble her. The next day, she realized that she had the same feeling after eating a highly-fortified breakfast cereal, one that had 45% of your RDA of iron. It's amazing that in 4 years we hadn't identified that eating some foods was associated with the "bad days" where she feels dizzy and generally yucky. Now that we know, I expect we can look forward to more "good days."