I’ve been doing the vitamin/mineral tango for quite a few years now. A whole lot of supplements go swishing down my gullet daily.
While I don’t enjoy taking pills any more than anybody else, I want to do whatever’s necessary to get my body to do right by me. We have an agreement: I try to give my body what it wants, and it returns the favor by giving me what I want–hair, energy, a working brain, enthusiasm and so on.
And sometimes my body surprises me by doing the unexpected, giving me a benefit I didn’t expect. Or even think about.
For one instance, from childhood up, I had a geographic tongue. A what, you ask? A geographic tongue, so-called because your tongue looks kind of like a map with raw spots appearing as little lakes, with grooves and fissures adding to the topography, is not for sissies.
When your tongue decides to get your attention by going geographic, your mouth feels like it’s on fire. And it looks as if you have a dread disease–which is not a good look, especially in the dating stage of your life.
Nobody knows what causes it.
One day, whilst brushing my teeth, I noticed my tongue looked downright attractive, as tongues go. And as I pondered the wonder of it all, I realized the burning and stinging lived only in my memory, not in my mouth.
While building a vitamin/mineral program to put my body on a good onward and upward path, my tongue got healed, too. I can’t tell you which supplement (or supplements) did the job, but hallelujah! anyhow.
And then, there are my knees. At twelve, a slow jog around the bases meant I would be in agony the next day, with grapefruit-size knees to remind me of my folly. Doctors didn’t know why.
In my twenties, my knees grated loudly whenever I bent them, as in going up and down stairs, especially down. People would ask what the noise was, while I tried to change the subject.
An orthopedic surgeon said my knees’ synovial fluid had left the building, and it was downhill from there for my mobility.
Now I’m a grandmother (the youngest, twins who just turned two. WooHoo!) and the proud owner of silent, non-swelling, pain-free knees–for years now. I don’t know exactly which part of what I did made that happen, but I’m grateful.
And so it goes. A corn that had lived on my pinkie toe since the beginning of time went away. And I could go on.
But even good news can bring complications. My hair came back to life, a good thing. But now the left side wants to curl while the right side doesn’t. What’s that about?
It’s about the fact that when you have time to worry about the antics of no-longer-thin-and-dead hair, life is pretty darn good.
I put a lot of effort into healing some major health problems. In appreciation, my body gave me some quite nifty lagniappes–such as a healthy tongue, knees that work as smooth as silk, and bouncing hair.
God is good,
Bette Dowdell
About the author: Bette Dowdell defines determination. In a really deep health ditch, with doctors who didn’t help, she got her Oh-Yeah! attitude in gear and researched her way out. She never intended to be a health expert, but sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. You can subscribe to Bette’s free e-mails on how to solve health problems at http://TooPoopedToParticipate.com
