Vi·ta·min

Growing up my mother fed my sisters and I vitamins like it was her J-O-B.  She thoroughly believed in the powers of vitamins and their ability to keep us out of doctors offices and on the perfect attendance list at school.  I may have embellished a little in that last sentence, however, it is true that we took minimally two pills a day with breakfast.  A little red multivitamin and white vitamin-c supplement.  Prior to our abilities to "swallow" our vitamins we did have chewables and I can vouch that chewable vitamin-c is absolutely puke-worthy.  There was also a time when my mom thought garlic pills were the next best thing to sliced bread.  All I can say is they provided for some nasty burps which made an already self-conscious preteen even more so.  At any rate, upon graduating and venturing off to college I nixed the vitamin habit much like I nixed my weekly dose of church on Sunday.  I guess I just needed a break from all things regimented that were either good for my body or for my soul.

Fast forward now ten or so years and you'll find that I have since picked back up the vitamin habit.  I've been taking a one-a-day and an Omega-3 for a little over a week now.   Knock-on-wood, I had a pretty good immune system while on my vitamin strike, but I'm creeping up on thirty now and figure it can't hurt.  I've even got Justin taking a one-a-day.  The only thing is I cannot seem to take them in the morning without nausea.  I attribute this to the fact that I don't eat a "full" breakfast like I did as a kid (oatmeal, cereal, juice, etc).  I either scarf a yogurt, a banana and/or a granola bar.  Sometimes a coffee makes it into the mix, but most days breakfast (if you could call it that) is pretty light.  So I've started taking my vitamins right before bed and found that this works for me with few side affects.  The nausea is nonexistent but I have had some whacked out dreams which I can only surmise are related to the vitamins.  I've read that the B6 vitamin in particular has been tied to vivid dreaming and dream recall due its conversion of tryptophan to serotonin. Whatever the case may be, I'll take the dreams so long as the continued energy boost I've had during the day remains.  I do feel good.  My mom must have been on to something with the whole vitamin thing.  She probably was with the church thing as well, but I'm just not there yet.  Maybe by the time I have my own kids I'll get back into that Sunday morning routine.  We'll see.  As much as we rebel, I guess we all turn into our mother eventually.