Dairy anyone?

Sometimes I have interesting posts, other times they are random thoughts that seem to go on for longer than anyone really needs to go know about that subject. Welcome to random thought day my dears.

I started my day with a bowl of cereal and then later a glass of milk. None of you see anything odd in that unless you are my husband. He will probably call me an alien when I get home and ask me what I did with his wife. You see I don't do dairy. Milk, yogurt, cheese, cream, it's just not my thing. I wasn't raised with dairy because my mom wasn't raised with dairy. She grew up in the Phillipines and they don't have refigerators in their there homes there. Third world country, they don't have a lot of things we do here. God bless America, complain all you want about this country I'm not leaving, it's awesome here. All this leads me to though is the fact that I don't like the taste of dairy products. Not even cheese cake, yes that's right, it's too dairy for me even with all the sugar.

There was one point in my pregnancy (4th or 5th month) that I had a craving for milk and it tasted wonderful. I finally understood how people could sit down and enjoy a glass of milk. Really before that moment I had no idea how someone could sit and drink a glass of it. To me it's kinda like how one would drink a glass of heavy cream. Ew yuck, too much, no thanks. I was what, 27 years old before I could appreciate a glass of milk ad that was short lived. Maybe lasted 3 weeks and I'd be drinking a pint at any given sitting.

I don't order or make my sandwiches with cheese. I don't like lasagna at all and I don't put cheese on top of my tacos, burritos, or shepherd's pie. I make all those things with cheese for the family but I'll leave the cheese off of parts so that I don't have to scrape it off of my serving. Everything except the lasagna, I just won't eat that stuff.

Just to let ya'll know, not liking dairy may have some draw backs. I do a specific test at my work, vitamin D. It's a complicated test and runs a bit over $100 a pop but it takes me only 5 minutes to run a sample (about 15 minutes prep time) so if I have the phlebotomists draw my blood I can run a sample on myself no problem. Ya'll know that vitamin D levels show whether or not someone is osteoporotic right? It's not just calcium, it's vitamin D too. I can go on and on about this but I'm going to leave that up to you guys too look into if you're interested. If you have any questions on it though feel free to ask. Anyway I decided to run my levels the other week. The cutoff point for vitamin D is 30 ng/ml (yes, that is nano grams). Lower than that and you're osteoporotic. This is normal in women after menopause and older people but nowadays we even see it in children so the test is becoming more common. Ever hear of rickets? Yup, we still have that. Our children do not get enough sun, using sunscreen over spf 8 restricts the uptake of vitamin D from the sun and no kid likes dark leafy greens to eat. No, iceberg lettuce and celery don't count.

I didn't expect to have a vitamin D deficiency. I eat my greens and I am always out in the sun with out sunscreen. My level? 25 ng/ml. Well into the osteoporotic range. Can you say holy crap what? I'm just not that old, why so low? Of course there's no really figuring out why I am so low, there's only taking supplementation until my levels go up and staying on those supplements. So I am taking no less than 4000 iud of vitamin D daily. That's 100 times the recommended daily dose. After 10 days my levels still had not budged. I'm now experimenting on myself, I will keep taking my levels every week and figure out how long until my levels go up and how much vitamin D I need to be taking.

Now I wouldn't recommend everyone doing a study on themselves but I would recommend that the next time you see your doctor you ask to have your vitamin D levels drawn. Without the vitamin D in your body you don't absorb that calcium, not cool. So I have begun to come to terms with dairy products too. I still can't handle the thick ones like cheese and yogurt in higher volumes but I am drinking milk. Can't say I'm enjoying it per say but I will drink it. With water between like very few sips. Plus did you know orange juice comes with vitamin D added? Convenient huh?