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Nutritionally Speaking: Help for Short Tempers / Morning Fatigue
Published in the Ojai Valley News, October 19, 1977.
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Dear Dr. Meinig: I have, during the last year or so, easily become very angry. The smallest things at times make me fly off the handle.
This is most embarrassing when I’m short with friends but I’m really disturbed at how I treat my children and my husband.
I don’t think I can blame change of life as I am only 36 and still menstruating. My husband has suggested that I write to you. He thinks maybe I need vitamins or something. – G.H.
Dear G.H.: How fortunate you are to have an understanding husband. Equally important is your own recognition of the problem. Too often people with your symptoms blame the world instead of facing up to the causes.
These symptoms of yours can be the result of any number of nutritional deficiencies or imbalances. Most of the B vitamins, low blood sugar (hypoglycemia), high intake of refined grains and cereals, alcohol, low calcium intake, poor digestive assimilation, any or all can be involved. I believe I have written about most of these but one common cause is a magnesium deficiency.
Now, the textbooks say there’s no chance for one to have a magnesium deficiency as this element appears so abundantly in green plants, nuts, seafood and bran. However, high refining of food depletes magnesium. Chemical fertilizers, high in potassium, along with high lime use also reduces magnesium in produce. The loss of this metal and its deficiency results in so many nervous, irritable people that it is greatly responsible for the billion dollar tranquilizer business.
High amounts of calcium and zinc can also deplete magnesium. Those who drink large amounts of milk actually deplete calcium value in the saliva 200% or more because of its high magnesium.
Not only are nerves involved but bones, teeth, arteries, heart and muscles are influenced by low levels of this element, Hair analysis is one of the key methods of determining amounts of minerals in the body today. Magnesium amounts in the hair prove body reserves to be low in 80% of the people we test.
You are encouraged to adopt a good diet. Supplements of minerals, because of their interaction with one another, can be easily overdone, and cause more problems than they are meant to correct. When used with some discretion, you may expect reasonable success in your quest to be calm and collected. If not, professional help is called for.
Dear Dr. Meinig: What can I do to get going in the morning? I need two alarm clocks to wake me up and I drag around half asleep for a couple of hours. After that I’m fine but l can’t understand this extreme morning fatigue. – L.G.
Dear L.G.: There are day people and night people and technically there are people we call slow oxidizers and others who are fast oxidizers. Slow oxidizers do not utilize as much of their food intake as their speedy counterparts.
These foods are NOT intended to make you accept your discouraging state of affairs. You can change and improve your sluggish AM pattern. One of the common problems for slow starters is low blood sugar. The clue to success is to reverse the process. Start out, upon awakening, by feeding your stomach. Put a piece of whole wheat bread and butter or a banana by your bedside and eat this before getting up or directly upon arising. By the time you get down to breakfast this food will have started to pick up your blood sugar.
It is most important to get up so that enough time is available to have a good substantial breakfast. Too many slow starters never gas the engine until much later in the day and then it is done with coffee and high carbohydrate foods having few vitamins, minerals and proteins.
A snack before bedtime helps many to sustain a better blood sugar through the night. Another help is to take a good multiple vitamin, mineral supplement right after that pre-breakfast trigger snack. Then take another of the same supplement after breakfast. Slow starters are better having a bigger vitamin mineral jolt in the AM when they need it than in the PM when they are going strong. The reverse is true of the fast starter because they need the late-in-the-day pick me up when they are beginning to drag. The fast starter then should have a smaller supplement dose in the morning and a larger one after dinner.
Another little trick that helps to open one’s eyes is ¼ teaspoon of sea salt (the Erewhon company’s product is suggested) stirred in a glass of water. Adrenal gland function appears to need support in most of these people. Sodium and potassium usually prove low and could stand supplementing but don’t use regular salt. It has sugar added (read the label) and its high heat processing jeopardizes its utilization.
Delayed get up and go is often psychological. If your job or day’s work bores you or is beset with difficulties you may just be trying your darndest to avoid facing the issues. Almost everyone has occasionally had such problems and have lingered in bed until the last minute. Just facing up to the fact of one’s reluctance to become entangled with the knotty problems of the day, is enough to shrug off its hold upon a good number of people. However, if it isn’t you but the job itself that makes you a stay-in-bedder, then consideration of all aspects and other alternatives of another kind of work should carefully be weighed.