Nutrition is generally a foremost issue with elderly parents. It seems that after they gain in years and or lose their partners, they gravitate to toward adolescent eating behaviors. For my mother it was fruit and tasty carbohydrates in the form of cookies and ice cream. She never was a fan of vegetables and her idea of salad is something you feed rabbits. Eventually it resulted in Candida Albicans, memory loss and fatigue.
The challenge was to locate a doctor that acknowledged the existence of Candidia Albicans. Then she contracted Lyme disease and her physical symptoms accelerated. It seemed that every time we found a nutritionist or a doctor who knew his stuff, something would happen and he’d move away; get in an auto accident or… Fortunately she has always taken a good multivitamin otherwise the symptoms of memory loss and fatigue may have come much earlier in her life.
Once we found a doctor who didn’t know his stuff who diagnosed her with depression-well who wouldn’t get depressed with a doctor who didn’t know his stuff?
On to a doctor who was nutritionally oriented and with a whole host of nutritional supplements-too many to remember to take so we had to make up a list with times and amounts. Along with some dietary adjustments within months she was back to her relative normal self. I was wishing there there was a cap for the supplements with an audio chip which upon touch would provide dosage and times of the day.
What I observed is that (at age 82) as her fatigue increased, she also experienced brain fog and experienced significant memory loss. The more carbohydrates she ate, the greater the memory loss became. She had difficulty remembering anything for more than two minutes. I began fearing senility as the next stop and I’d be looking for was a nursing home.
No matter how I prodded her to eat more protein and vegetables, she was hooked on her cookies, tasty crackers, and ice cream. She would not budge and what was more frustrating is that she forgot everything I had said about adjusting her diet within minutes. As we shopped in the grocery store, she actually wobbled and I thanked God she was holding onto the grocery cart. She constantly complained of feeling drunk although she has never had a drink of alcohol in her life.
Her doctor was at wits end. Tests after tests was negative except for a stool analysis that indicated candida albicans. Reluctantly she began a shift in her diet, but it was too little and too late. He added supplements and she forgot to take them.
Every two or three days she called me begging me to make an appointment with the doctor. Evidently she forgot she had just seen him or she was hoping for that magic pill and wouldn’t accept the possibility it was all diet connected. In desperation I took matters into my hands, ordered a Vita Mix and began adding Xooma coral calcium to her bottled 5 gal drinking water.
The Xooma Coral Calcium is a blend of over seventy balanced minerals in ionic form that is added to daily drinking water.
Each day I used the Vita Mix to process a clove of garlic, a carrot, stalk of celery and a small red beet along with Pro Biotics, Intestinal Support with L-Glutamine (nutrients for the intestinal track), and Fruitein (a blend of protein, fruits, vegetables, and green foods) with a cup of water. Fortunately she found the drink tasty and somehow remembered to drink it throughout the day.
For three weeks there was no improvement and then she began showing gradual improvement. It was so good to have her memory return. She stopped wobbling, had a surge of energy, and I was able to convince her to accept a reward system, i.e. she could only reward herself with cookies after she ate meat or some from of protein. She even stopped bugging me about making appointments with the doctor, in fact she doesn’t want to see him anymore because at her last appointment he asked her how she was feeling and she responded that she’s always tired-her main complaint.
And he responded by saying, “You’re always tired.”
I guess it was his way of saying, “I really don’t believe you’re that tired.” So if you don’t feel that you’re elderly parents aren’t doing as well as they might, may I suggest investing in:1. A vita mix for the juice drink–no need to remove the pulp.2. Xooma coral calcium to their drinking water–see my website.3. A multivitamin such as the Complete Nutritional System by Rainbow Light. And you may be amazed at the result.
