“
I’m going out, remember?” I prodded. “And I’m going to drink too much, which makes me horny. Don’t forget to take your vitamins, ace.
”
”
Sylvia Day (Entwined with You (Crossfire, #3))
“
If I were you is something I’ve never really understood. Why say, “If I were you”? Why say, “If I were you,” when the problem is you’re not me? I wish people would say, “Since I am me,” followed by whatever advice it is they have.
”
”
Rachel Khong (Goodbye, Vitamin)
“
How did you make it out of there alive?” “My parents loved me a lot when I was little.” We’re saved by the amount of love we get, it’s our safety net. Yes…only love can save us. Love is a vitamin that humans can’t live without—the blood curdles, the heart stops. I
”
”
Svetlana Alexievich (Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets)
“
For me, family means the silent treatment. At any given moment, someone is always not speaking to someone else.'
Really,' I said.
We're passive-aggressive people,' she explained, taking a sip of her coffee. 'Silence is our weapon of choice. Right now, for instance, I'm not speaking to two of my sisters and one brother... At mine [my house], silence is golden. And common.'
To me,' Reggie said, picking up a bottle of Vitamin A and moving it thoughtfully from one hand to the other, 'family is, like, the wellspring of human energy. The place where all life begins.'...
Harriet considered this as she took a sip of coffee. 'Huh,' she said. 'I guess when someone else does something worse. Then you need people on your side, so you make up with one person, jsut as you're getting pissed off at another.'
So it's an endless cycle,' I said.
I guess.' She took another sip. 'Coming together, falling apart. Isn't that what families are all about?
”
”
Sarah Dessen (Lock and Key)
“
A long time ago I stopped wondering why there are so many crazy people. What surprises me now is that there are so many sane ones.
”
”
Rachel Khong (Goodbye, Vitamin)
“
Try to roll with the punches. Keep your chin up. Don’t take any wooden nickels. Vote Democrat in every election. Ride your bike in the park. Dream about my perfect, golden body. Take your vitamins. Drink eight glasses of water a day. Pull for the Mets. Watch a lot of movies. Don’t work too hard at your job. Take a trip to Paris with me. Come to the hospital when Rachel has her baby and hold my grandchild in your arms. Brush your teeth after every meal. Don’t cross the street on a red light. Defend the little guy. Stick up for yourself. Remember how beautiful you are. Remember how much I love you. Drink one Scotch on the rocks every day. Breathe deeply. Keep your eyes open. Stay away from fatty foods. Sleep the sleep of the just. Remember how much I love you.
”
”
Paul Auster (The Brooklyn Follies)
“
The phytochemicals, antioxidants, and fiber- all of the healthful components of plant foods- originate in plants, not animals. If they are present, it is because the animal ate plants. And why should we go through an animal to get the benefits of the plants themselves? To consume unnecessary, unseemly, and unhealthy substances, such as saturated fat, animal protein, lactose, and dietary cholesterol, is to negate the benefits of the fiber, phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that are prevalent and inherent in plants.
”
”
Colleen Patrick-Goudreau (Color Me Vegan: Maximize Your Nutrient Intake and Optimize Your Health by Eating Antioxidant-Rich, Fiber-Packed, Color-Intense Meals That Taste Great)
“
the man i went on a date with did more than try to "cure me" of my asexuality
it's funny because i never thought someone's penis would be considered an antidote of any kind
and i don't think that's what my doctor meant when he told me i needed more Vitamin D in my diet
but apparently my sexuality was enough of a diagnosis for him to decide to play doctor with me
maybe he should’ve put his stethoscope up to my mouth instead of between my breasts
maybe then he would’ve heard me when i told him to stop it
”
”
Courtney Carola (Have Some Pride: A Collection of LGBTQ+ Inspired Poetry)
“
Mantra to Overcome Depression
Vitamin D. Sunlight. Go
outside. Get a good night
of sleep. Not too good.
Not shades drawn forever
good. Not like you used to.
Open the windows.
Buy more houseplants.
Breathe. Meditate. One day,
you will no longer be
afraid of being alone
with your thoughts.
Exercise. Actually exercise
instead of just Googling it.
Eat well. Cook for yourself.
Organize your closet, the
garage. Drink plenty of
water and repeat after me:
I am not a problem
to be solved. Repeat after me:
I am worthy I am worthy
I am neither the mistake nor
the punishment. Forget to take
vitamins. Let the houseplant die.
Eat spoonfuls of peanut butter.
Shave your head. Forget
this poem. It doesn't matter.
There is no wrong way
to remember the grace of your
own body; no choice
that can unmake itself.
There is only now, here
look: you are already
forgiven.
”
”
Sierra DeMulder (Today Means Amen)
“
Some enterprising rabbit had dug its way under the stakes of my garden again. One voracious rabbit could eat a cabbage down to the roots, and from the looks of things, he'd brought friends. I sighed and squatted to repair the damage, packing rocks and earth back into the hole. The loss of Ian was a constant ache; at such moments as this, I missed his horrible dog as well.
I had brought a large collection of cuttings and seeds from River Run, most of which had survived the journey. It was mid-June, still time--barely--to put in a fresh crop of carrots. The small patch of potato vines was all right, so were the peanut bushes; rabbits wouldn't touch those, and didn't care for the aromatic herbs either, except the fennel, which they gobbled like licorice.
I wanted cabbages, though, to preserve a sauerkraut; come winter, we would want food with some taste to it, as well as some vitamin C. I had enough seed left, and could raise a couple of decent crops before the weather turned cold, if I could keep the bloody rabbits off. I drummed my fingers on the handle of my basket, thinking. The Indians scattered clippings of their hair around the edges of the fields, but that was more protection against deer than rabbits.
Jamie was the best repellent, I decided. Nayawenne had told me that the scent of carnivore urine would keep rabbits away--and a man who ate meat was nearly as good as a mountain lion, to say nothing of being more biddable. Yes, that would do; he'd shot a deer only two days ago; it was still hanging. I should brew a fresh bucket of spruce beer to go with the roast venison, though . . . (Page 844)
”
”
Diana Gabaldon (Drums of Autumn (Outlander, #4))
“
It’s funny, you learn a lot about people when you’re on the road like that. Every morning, for example, Bill would have a cup of coffee, a glass of orange juice, a glass of milk, and a beer. Always in the same order. I asked him why he did it once.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘the coffee’s to wake me up, the orange juice is to give me some vitamins to stop me getting sick, the milk’s to coat my stomach for the rest of the day, and the beer’s to put me back to sleep again.’
”
”
Ozzy Osbourne (I Am Ozzy)
“
In your name I will take my vitamins
and go to bed before dawn.
I will respond to my emails in a timely manner.
I will grab myself by the throat
but I will never let a man do it again.
”
”
Trista Mateer (Aphrodite Made Me Do It)
“
There was no Disney World then, just rows of orange trees. Millions of them. Stretching for miles And somewhere near the middle was the Citrus Tower, which the tourists climbed to see even more orange trees. Every month an eighty-year-old couple became lost in the groves, driving up and down identical rows for days until they were spotted by helicopter or another tourist on top of the Citrus Tower. They had lived on nothing but oranges and come out of the trees drilled on vitamin C and checked into the honeymoon suite at the nearest bed-and-breakfast.
"The Miami Seaquarium put in a monorail and rockets started going off at Cape Canaveral, making us feel like we were on the frontier of the future. Disney bought up everything north of Lake Okeechobee, preparing to shove the future down our throats sideways.
"Things evolved rapidly! Missile silos in Cuba. Bales on the beach. Alligators are almost extinct and then they aren't. Juntas hanging shingles in Boca Raton. Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo skinny-dipping off Key Biscayne. We atone for atrocities against the INdians by playing Bingo. Shark fetuses in formaldehyde jars, roadside gecko farms, tourists waddling around waffle houses like flocks of flightless birds. And before we know it, we have The New Florida, underplanned, overbuilt and ripe for a killer hurricane that'll knock that giant geodesic dome at Epcot down the trunpike like a golf ball, a solid one-wood by Buckminster Fuller.
"I am the native and this is my home. Faded pastels, and Spanish tiles constantly slipping off roofs, shattering on the sidewalk. Dogs with mange and skateboard punks with mange roaming through yards, knocking over garbage cans. Lunatics wandering the streets at night, talking about spaceships. Bail bondsmen wake me up at three A.M. looking for the last tenant. Next door, a mail-order bride is clubbed by a smelly ma in a mechanic's shirt. Cats violently mate under my windows and rats break-dance in the drop ceiling. And I'm lying in bed with a broken air conditioner, sweating and sipping lemonade through a straw. And I'm thinking, geez, this used to be a great state.
"You wanna come to Florida? You get a discount on theme-park tickets and find out you just bough a time share. Or maybe you end up at Cape Canaveral, sitting in a field for a week as a space shuttle launch is canceled six times. And suddenly vacation is over, you have to catch a plane, and you see the shuttle take off on TV at the airport. But you keep coming back, year after year, and one day you find you're eighty years old driving through an orange grove.
”
”
Tim Dorsey (Florida Roadkill (Serge Storms, #1))
“
I think this is an awfully immoral job of ours. I do, really. Think how we spoil the digestions of the public.”
“Ah, yes—but think how earnestly we strive to put them right again. We undermine ’em with one hand and build ’em with the other. The vitamins we destroy in the canning, we restore in Revito, the roughage we remove from Peabody’s Piper Parritch we make up into a package and market as Bunbury’s Breakfast Bran; the stomachs we ruin with Pompayne, we re-line with Peplets to aid digestion. And by forcing the damn-fool public to pay twice over—once to have its food emasculated and once to have the vitality put back again, we keep the wheels of commerce turning and give employment to thousands—including you and me.
”
”
Dorothy L. Sayers (Murder Must Advertise (Lord Peter Wimsey, #10))
“
I once met a traveler who told me he would live to see the end of time. He laid out all his vitamins before me and told me he slept seven hours every night, no more or less. All the life you want, he said. It's all within the palm of your hand now. He said he would outlast all the wars and all the diseases, long enough to remember everything, and long enough to forget everything. He'd be the last man still standing when the sun decides to collapse upon itself and history ends. He said he had found the safest place on earth, where he could stay until the gateway to the beyond opened before him. A thousand generations from today. I pictured him there, atop a remote and snowy mountain. The heavens opening and God congratulating him for his perseverance. Asking him to join Him and watch as the sun burns down to a dull orange cinder and everything around it breaks is orbit and goes tumbling tumbling away, everything that once seemed permanent pulled apart so effortlessly, like a ball of yarn. A life into divinity.
But I knew it was a lie. I've always known it was a lie. You can not hide from the world. It will find you. It always does. And now it has found me. My split second of immortality is over. All that's left now is the end, which is all any of us ever has.
”
”
Drew Magary (The Postmortal)
“
Violet is living, and fuck, does it look good on her. It makes me want to live too. To stop being such a hermit. To take risks, make friends, maybe even leave a vitamin bottle on the counter now and then—because who the fuck cares if everything is in perfect order all the time? Life is messy, something I know well. But when did I decide that the solution to that was to stop living?
”
”
Elsie Silver (A Photo Finish (Gold Rush Ranch, #2))
“
I always feel sad for the girl that I was, because it never occurred to me that my mother might comfort me. She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did. She tended to me. She administrated me. Oh, yes, and one time she bought me lotion with vitamin E.
”
”
Gillian Flynn (Sharp Objects)
“
Be careful. Be extra careful.”
“I will. You do the same,” she added with a chuckle.
“I’m a tough old bird,” he told her. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t still be alive in the first place,” he assured her. “You eat properly and take your prenatal vitamins.”
“Stop mothering me,” she muttered.
He grinned. “Somebody has to. See you, kid.
”
”
Diana Palmer (Paper Rose (Hutton & Co. #2))
“
Today you asked me what "Dick" meant, and while I was deciding what direction I should take, you said, "Mom said you were one.
”
”
Rachel Khong (Goodbye, Vitamin)
“
Excuse me, madam, but may I rub my erection up against your buttocks, because I mistakenly took Viagra thinking it was Vitamin C?
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This Book Has No Title)
“
Eating these foods makes me… Healthy.
Vegetables and fruit are packed with vitamins and minerals which protect our bodies from getting sick.
”
”
Kalifa Rodriguez (Eating These Foods Makes Me...)
“
Twenty paces away, he shimmered and vanished, leaving me alone with a thermos, a bottle of chewable vitamins, and five minutes to make an impossible decision.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2))
“
The Geranium
When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,
She looked so limp and bedraggled,
So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,
Or a wizened aster in late September,
I brought her back in again
For a new routine -
Vitamins, water, and whatever
Sustenance seemed sensible
At the time: she'd lived
So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,
Her shriveled petals falling
On the faded carpet, the stale
Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.
(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)
The things she endured!-
The dumb dames shrieking half the night
Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,
Me breathing booze at her,
She leaning out of her pot toward the window.
Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me-
And that was scary-
So when that snuffling cretin of a maid
Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can,
I said nothing.
But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,
I was that lonely.
”
”
Theodore Roethke (Selected Poems)
“
Hell, I’m practically an escort for my rich doctor clients. They call and I come running whispering sweet nothings in their ears and whipping out some of the best drugs money can buy. Matter of fact, we just got some meds in that makes Viagra look like chewable kiddie vitamins. One of my doctors told me when he came it was so good, he blacked out temporarily. Me and my boy toy are trying that one out tonight.
”
”
A.T. Hicks (Peaches and the Gambler (A Peaches Donnelly Mystery, #1))
“
God is the good in people, she would say, from time to time.
Like vitamins in milk? I’d ask. So if everyone died that would be the end of God?
No, she would say. I don’t know. I need a cigarette. Don’t make me dizzy.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (Good Bones and Simple Murders)
“
As a child I don't remember ever telling Adora my favorite colour or what I'd like to name my daughter when I grew up. I don't think she ever knew my favorite dish and I certainly never padded down to her room in the early morning hours teary from nightmares. I always feel sad for the girl that I was because it never occurred to me that my mother might comfort me. She has never told me she loved me and I never assumed she did she tended to me she administrated me, oh yes, and one time she bought me lotion with vitamin E.
”
”
Gillian Flynn (Sharp Objects)
“
Fattening!” said Troy, looking at Tabitha’s round face and plump arms.
“If I don’t mind being fat, I don’t see why other people should feel they’ve got to mind for me,” Tabitha replied cheerfully. “And pies have got some food value – they’ve got vitamins or something, haven’t they, Claire?
”
”
Margaret Mahy (The Haunting)
“
Finn stood by the counter, having just finished making his thirteenth cup of coffee of the day. As always, the chicory fumes warmed me from the inside out and made me think of his father. I wished that the old man were here tonight. Fletcher would have known exactly what to do about the mess we were in—the mess I’d dragged us all into by declaring war on Mab in the first place. Finn stared at me with his green eyes. “Any chance of getting something sweet to go with my coffee?” he asked in a hopeful voice. I arched an eyebrow at him. “You mean all those pieces of strawberry pie that you ate for lunch weren’t enough?” “I’m a growing boy,” Finn said in a sincere tone. “I need my vitamins.” Bria snorted. “The only thing that’s growing on you, Lane, is your ego.” Finn sidled up to my sister and gave her a dazzling smile. “Well, other things of mine also tend to swell up in your presence, detective.” I rolled my eyes at Finn’s attempt at witty banter. Jo-Jo just chuckled, amused by his antics. Bria returned Finn’s smile with a syrupy sweet one of her own. “Oh, really? So it’s gone from what, pencil eraser to cocktail sausage by now?” Finn sputtered and almost spit out a mouthful of coffee. His face flushed, and he glared at Bria.
”
”
Jennifer Estep (Spider's Revenge (Elemental Assassin, #5))
“
He scratches his mustache. “Thirty is when you stop producing human growth hormone, you know. And your DNA telomeres start degrading. It’s when the body starts dying.”
“Exactly!” Livia says from behind me.
“I’m not dying!” I protest for the millionth time in the last two months. “And neither are you, Liv.”
“We’re kind of dying, though,” she says.
In front of me, Bud nods in agreement.
“Take your vitamins,” he adds, with a touch of sternness, “and then you won’t die so fast.”
I have something like a Vietnam flashback to all the vitamins Bud’s fed me over the years. And they weren’t the fun Flintstones ones either. “I’ll be sure to do that
”
”
Laurelin Paige (Hot Cop)
“
You repeated about how nice the day was, either because you really wanted me to know it or because you'd forgotten you already mentioned it, but all of a sudden, it didn't matter what you remembered or didn't, and the remembering--it occurred to me--was irrelevant. All that mattered was that the day was nice--was what it was.
”
”
Rachel Khong (Goodbye, Vitamin)
“
I must admit that when I chose the name, 'vitamine,' I was well aware that these substances might later prove not to be of an amine nature. However, it was necessary for me to choose a name that would sound well and serve as a catchword, since I had already at that time no doubt about the importance and the future popularity of the new field.
”
”
Casimir Funk (Die Vitamine: Ihre Bedeutung für die Physiologie und Pathologie (German Edition))
“
I wish people would say, “Since I am me,” followed by whatever advice it is they have.
”
”
Rachel Khong (Goodbye, Vitamin)
“
When I wasn’t in the barn garden, helping out, sorting seeds or checking hoses I’d spend time alone, usually in the bathroom adjacent to Joel’s room, staring into the shattered mirror as my hand gently caressed my baby bump.
More often than not I would cry. Not because my pregnancy upset me, or that my hormones were getting the better of me, but because I missed Joel, my baby’s father. That the baby would grow up without a dad made me anxious. Then again, if he had survived, what irreparable damage would he have suffered and how would his pain translate to his child? Jesus, I was studying myself in the very mirror he’d smashed the night he chose to take his own life.
The bump had grown slowly in the last couple of months. With these limited resources, I didn’t have the privilege of eating whatever I craved. Had that been the case, I was sure I would have been bigger by now. Still, I tried to eat as well and as often as I could and the size of my belly had proven that my attempts at proper nutrition were at least growing something in there.
Nothing made me happier than feeling my baby move. It was a constant source of relief for me. In our present circumstances, with no vitamins and barely any meat products save the recent stash of jerky Earl had found in an abandoned trailer, my diet consisted of berries, lettuce, and canned beans for the most part. Feeling the baby move inside me was an experience I often enjoyed alone. I would think of Joel then as well. Imagining his hand on my belly, with mine guiding his to the kicks and punches.
”
”
Michael Poeltl (Rebirth (The Judas Syndrome, #2))
“
Sit down," she said. She pushed the plate across the table towards him. The smell of the lemon was very alluring. Fred sat down, stirred his coffee, and looked at the cake with a kind of distant admiration.
"Can't quite manage the cake yet," he said. "Too terrified to eat."
"Terrified?" said Jess. "Of what?"
"Well, of you, of course. As you know cowardice is the bedrock of my character. It's taken me hours to summon up the courage to come here. I even had to have a vitamin C tablet.
”
”
Sue Limb (Girl, Going on 17: Pants on Fire (Jess Jordan, #3))
“
Because of the constant stress, my adrenal glands began to fail. My hair and nails stopped growing. I barely had the energy to get out of bed in the morning to do my job, but I took more vitamins and dug my heels in, determined to persevere. I learned later that the techniques that were being used on me are utilized in what's called a “soft kill” in the intelligence community. I was being tortured slowly, in plain sight, and there was little I could do to stop it, except move again.
”
”
E.J. Wyatt (The Devil Beside Me: Gang Stalking, The Secret War and How to Win)
“
We never shared those wishes. We were scared that by sharing them, they wouldn't come true. But now it occurs to me that if we'd divulged them to each other then, we'd be better able to remember them now: we'd have some else to help with half the work of remembering.
”
”
Rachel Khong (Goodbye, Vitamin)
“
Eventually there comes a beefy knock on the door. “Dudes! I have vitamin C!” Wes actually opens the door to Blake, damn him. And the room is now filled with Blake-chatter. Vitamin C is coffee, though, and the scent of it begins to stir me into consciousness. “Aw, who’s a sleepyhead?” Blake crows, flopping onto Wes’s empty side of the bed. “Caffeine, J-Bomb! I brought you a cappuccino.” “You make it difficult to hate you,” I mumble into the pillow. “That’s what everyone says.” He grabs my bare shoulder with one of his big mitts and shakes me.
”
”
Sarina Bowen (Us (Him, #2))
“
Well,Anna.It's Matt or the minivan. I'm not making the choice for you."
I choose my ex.We used to be good friends,so I'm sort of looking forward to seeing him again. And maybe Cherrie isn't as bad as I remember.Except she is. She totally is. After only five minutes in her company,I cannot fathom how Bridge stands sitting with her at lunch every day.She turns to look at me in the backseat,and her hair swishes in a vitamin-enriched, shampoo-commercial curtain. "So.How are the guys in Paris?"
I shrug. "Parisian."
"Ha ha.You're funny."
Her lifeless laugh is one of her lesser attributes.What does Matt see in her?
"No one special?" Matt smiles and glances at me through the rearview mirror. I'm not sure why,but I forgot that he has brown eyes.Why do they make some people look amazing and others completely average? It's the same with brown hair. Statistically speaking, St. Clair and Matt are quite similar. Eyes: Brown. Hair: Brown. Race: Caucasian. There's a significant difference in height,but still. It's like comparing a gourmet truffle to a Mr. Goodbar.
I think about the gourmet truffle. And his girlfriend. "Not exactly.
”
”
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
“
I used to be very quick to judge the old men who don’t know that when you walk past them on the sidewalk where they’re sweeping leaves, they should stop sweeping. But not it occurs to me that maybe these old men have maladies – diseases that affect their manners – and should be pardoned.
”
”
Rachel Khong (Goodbye, Vitamin)
“
I think you gave me the wrong prescription, Dr. McNamara. This says pre-natal vitamins. I need one for birth control pills.” My hand is shaking as I reach my arm out to give it back to her. She looks back over her paperwork and then shuffles her chair closer to the bed. “I’m afraid not, Ms. Becker. As part of the normal blood work-up, we do a pregnancy test, and yours came back positive. Since your numbers are still relatively low, I would assume that you aren’t very far along at all — a few weeks at the most. And considering your reaction, I’ll also assume that you didn’t already know.” “But
”
”
Melissa Collins (Let Love In (Love, #1))
“
Thankfully, most supplements are usually not harmful, at least not in the short term. As Tod Cooperman, the president of a supplement testing company called ConsumerLab.com, put it to me, “In the vast majority of cases, people are just throwing their money out the window or hurting themselves over a long period of time.” But as the last part of his comment suggests, there are still reasons for concern over what’s in some of these products—especially given that in the most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 50 percent of American adults reported using some sort of dietary supplement.
”
”
Catherine Price (Vitamania: How Vitamins Revolutionized the Way We Think About Food)
“
I take 1 gram (1,000 mg) of NMN every morning, along with 1 gram of resveratrol (shaken into my homemade yogurt) and 1 gram of metformin.7 • I take a daily dose of vitamin D, vitamin K2, and 83 mg of aspirin. • I strive to keep my sugar, bread, and pasta intake as low as possible. I gave up desserts at age 40, though I do steal tastes. • I try to skip one meal a day or at least make it really small. My busy schedule almost always means that I miss lunch most days of the week. • Every few months, a phlebotomist comes to my home to draw my blood, which I have analyzed for dozens of biomarkers. When my levels of various markers are not optimal, I moderate them with food or exercise. • I try to take a lot of steps each day and walk upstairs, and I go to the gym most weekends with my son, Ben; we lift weights, jog a bit, and hang out in the sauna before dunking in an ice-cold pool. • I eat a lot of plants and try to avoid eating other mammals, even though they do taste good. If I work out, I will eat meat. • I don’t smoke. I try to avoid microwaved plastic, excessive UV exposure, X-rays, and CT scans. • I try to stay on the cool side during the day and when I sleep at night. • I aim to keep my body weight or BMI in the optimal range for healthspan, which for me is 23 to 25.
”
”
David A. Sinclair (Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To)
“
You repeated about how nice the day was, either because you really wanted me to know it or because you’d forgotten you already mentioned it, but all of a sudden, it didn’t matter what you remembered or didn’t, and the remembering—it occurred to me—was irrelevant. All that mattered was that the day was nice—was what it was.
”
”
Rachel Khong (Goodbye, Vitamin)
“
If you mean how come I lived so long, it’s because I never had no dratted fool of a husband to aggravate me into kickin’ the bucket. Clean livin’ an’ high thinkin’ an’ a slug o’ my own homemade damson gin at suppertime’s as good an answer as any if you got to write somethin’. It’s them vitamins in the gin, see? Blasts open the arteries an’ keeps the blood circulatin’. Wouldn’t hurt you to try some, sonny. You look kind o’ peaked to me. Trouble with you young’uns nowadays, settin’ around on your backsides pesterin’ folks that’s got work to do so’s you can dish out tripe for the papers ’stead o’ doin’ a decent hand’s turn yourselves now and then.
”
”
Charlotte MacLeod (The Luck Runs Out (Peter Shandy #2))
“
While on the staff of a large magazine a few years ago, I wanted to print the fact that four grams of niacinamide (Vitamin B-3) will abort most bad LSD trips. The editors rejected this because “it might encourage kids to think they can take acid without risks.” Now, that argument may be valid, but it reminds me of the old assertion that automobiles should not have safety belts because such protection would just encourage drivers to be more careless. People who are going to be damn fools probably can’t be stopped no matter what restrictions are placed on them, but those who want to minimize risks should have safety information available to them.
”
”
Robert Anton Wilson (Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits)
“
I have lost some fundamental part of my knowing, some elemental human feeling. Without it, the world feels like tap water left overnight, flat and chemical, devoid of life. I am like lightning seeking earth. Uneasy, I carry the prickle of potential energy in my limbs, ever deferred from the point of contact, the moment of release. Instead, it gathers in me, massing like a storm that never comes. I lack the language to even describe it, this vast unsettled sense that I am slipping over the glassy surface of things, afraid of what lurks beneath. I need a better way to walk through this life. I want to be enchanted again.
Enchantment is small wonder magnified through meaning, fascination caught in the web of fable and memory. It relies on small doses of awe, almost homeopathic: those quiet traces of fascination that are found only when we look for them. It is the sense that we are joined together in one continuous thread of existence with the elements constituting this earth, and that there is a potency trapped in this interconnection, a tingle on the border of our perception. It is the forgotten seam of our geology, the elusive particle that binds our unstable matter: the ability to sense magic in the everyday, to channel it through our minds and bodies, to be sustained by it.
Without it, I feel I am lacking some essential nutrient, some vitamin found only when you go digging in your own soil.
”
”
Katherine May (Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age)
“
Though I thought Red (Auerbach) wasn't mean enough to (Tommy) Heinsohn it seemed he was too mean to Satch (Sanders) and (Don) Nelson. He'd yell at them for no reason at all, as a pair, and he was cruel. He used to embarrass the whole team as he jumped up and down and yell at them as though they were referees. This offended my sense of justice, and so when of my first reforms when I succeeded Red as coach was to being giving Satch and Nelson the respect they deserved. That season, unfortunately, Satch and Nelson played like ghosts at first. ... It wasn't that they were goofing up, but neither of them seemed to be there, and I couldn't put my finger on exactly what they were doing wrong, but finally I'd boil over and yell at them. Then, of course, they'd play better. For weeks I tried yelling at them only when they were guilty of something, but I didn't work. Then I tried yelling at them when they were clearly innocent; some players, like Heinsohn, could become productively engaged when wrongly accused. But that didn't help either. Then it dawned on me that it didn't matter so much why I yelled at Satch and Nelson; I just had to do it regularly, at certain intervals, the way you take vitamin pills. After only a few months as player -coach I found myself thinking, "Okay, it's 7:20. Time to yell at Satch and Nelson." Needless to say, Red became less of an ogre to me and I became more of one to the players.
”
”
Bill Russell (Second Wind)
“
You know, those single-use masks everyone is wearing in the pandemic are made of plastic too,” my friend Imani Barbarin said to me. Imani is a talented disability advocate who often speaks about the intersection of disability and environmentalism. She pointed out that the acceptable use of plastic is always set according to what a healthy person needs to be healthy (think masks, gloves, plastic prescription bottles, kinesiology tape… even home delivery supplements that individually package your daily vitamins), but when it comes to someone with a disability using plastic, everyone wants to shame them for killing the planet. “You need what you need,” she said to me in a gentle but firm voice. She was right.
”
”
K.C. Davis (How to Keep House While Drowning)
“
Apple and apricot seeds contain a vitamin called B12, which I found to be illegal to sell in pharmacies. Now, this is very interesting. You can buy all kind of vitamins in pharmacies, but not B12. Why in the hell would the pharmaceutical industry make a vitamin that we can eat on our own, through seeds, illegal? I asked this question to employees in the pharmacies and many doctors, and they couldn't answer. They just kept looking at me as if I was trying to get ingredients to make my own synthetic drugs. For most people, what is illegal is really illegal. Most people are too stupid to think for themselves, even when my question is so obvious that they seem to have brain damage not to realize the relevance of such question.
”
”
Robin Sacredfire
“
Bredon shuddered.
“I think this is an awfully immoral job of ours. I do, really. Think how we spoil the digestions of the public.”
“Ah, yes—but think how earnestly we strive to put them right again. We undermine ’em with one hand and build ’em with the other. The vitamins we destroy in the canning, we restore in Revito, the roughage we remove from Peabody’s Piper Parritch we make up into a package and market as Bunbury’s Breakfast Bran; the stomachs we ruin with Pompayne, we re-line with Peplets to aid digestion. And by forcing the damn-fool public to pay twice over—once to have its food emasculated and once to have the vitality put back again, we keep the wheels of commerce turning and give employment to thousands—including you and me.
”
”
Dorothy L. Sayers (Murder Must Advertise (Lord Peter Wimsey, #10))
“
So, did you get sick or something?” Marlboro Man asked. “You okay?” He touched his hand to my knee.
“No,” I answered. “I got…I got hot.”
He looked at me. “Hot?”
“Yeah. Hot.” I had zero pride left.
“So…what were you doing in the bathroom?” he asked.
“I had to take off all my clothes and fan myself,” I answered honestly. The vitamin C and vodka had become a truth serum. “Oh, and wipe the sweat off my neck and back.” This was sure to reel him in for life.
Marlboro Man looked at me to make sure I wasn’t kidding, then burst into laughter, covering his mouth to keep from spitting out his Scotch. Then, unexpectedly, he leaned over and planted a sweet, reassuring kiss on my cheek. “You’re funny,” he said, as he rubbed his hand on my tragically damp back.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
“
All about them the golden girls, shopping for dainties in Lairville. Even in the midst of the wild-maned winter's chill, skipping about in sneakers and sweatsocks, cream-colored raincoats. A generation in the mold, the Great White Pattern Maker lying in his prosperous bed, grinning while the liquid cools. But he does not know my bellows. Someone there is who will huff and will puff. The sophmores in their new junior blazers, like Saturday's magazines out on Thursday. Freshly covered textbooks from the campus store, slide rules dangling in leather, sheathed broadswords, chinos scrubbed to the virgin fiber, starch pressed into straight-razor creases, Oxford shirts buttoned down under crewneck sweaters, blue eyes bobbing everywhere, stunned by the android synthesis of one-a-day vitamins, Tropicana orange juice, fresh country eggs, Kraft homogenized cheese, tetra-packs of fortified milk, Cheerios with sun-ripened bananas, corn-flake-breaded chicken, hot fudge sundaes, Dairy Queen root beer floats, cheeseburgers, hybrid creamed corn, riboflavin extract, brewer's yeast, crunchy peanut butter, tuna fish casseroles, pancakes and imitation maple syrup, chuck steaks, occasional Maine lobster, Social Tea biscuits, defatted wheat germ, Kellogg's Concentrate, chopped string beans, Wonderbread, Birds Eye frozen peas, shredded spinach, French-fried onion rings, escarole salads, lentil stews, sundry fowl innards, Pecan Sandies, Almond Joys, aureomycin, penicillin, antitetanus toxoid, smallpox vaccine, Alka-Seltzer, Empirin, Vicks VapoRub, Arrid with chlorophyll, Super Anahist nose spray, Dristan decongestant, billions of cubic feet of wholesome, reconditioned breathing air, and the more wholesome breeds of fraternal exercise available to Western man. Ah, the regimented good will and force-fed confidence of those who are not meek but will inherit the earth all the same.
”
”
Richard Fariña (Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me)
“
In the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey
Butane in my veins and I'm out to cut the junkie
With the plastic eyeballs, spray paint the vegetables
Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose
Kill the headlights and put it in neutral
Stock car flamin' with a loser in the cruise control
Baby's in Reno with the Vitamin D
Got a couple of couches, sleep on the love seat
Someone came in sayin' I'm insane to complain
About a shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt
Don't believe everything that you breathe
You get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve
So shave your face with some mace in the dark
Savin' all your food stamps and burnin' down the trailer park
Yo, cut it
Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me?
(Double barrel buckshot)
Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?
Forces of evil on a bozo nightmare
Ban all the music with a phony gas chamber
'Cause one's got a weasel and the other's got a flag
One's on the pole, shove the other in a bag
With the rerun shows and the cocaine nose-job
The daytime crap of the folksinger slob
He hung himself with a guitar string
A slab of turkey neck and it's hangin' from a pigeon wing
You can't write if you can't relate
Trade the cash for the beef, for the body, for the hate
And my time is a piece of wax fallin' on a termite
That's chokin' on the splinters
Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?
(Get crazy with the cheese whiz)
Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?
(Drive-by body pierce)
Yo, bring it on down
I'm a driver, I'm a winner
Things are gonna change, I can feel it
Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?
(I can't believe you)
Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?
Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?
(Sprechen sie Deutsche, baby)
Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me?
(Know what I'm sayin'?)
”
”
Beck
“
There are people in this country who will argue that because of the demise of morals in general, and Sunday school in particular, kids today are losing their innocence before they should, that because of cartoons and Ken Starr and curricula about their classmates who have two mommies, youth learn too soon about sex and death. Well, like practically everyone else in the Western world who came of age since Gutenberg, I lost my innocence the old-time-religion way, by reading the nursery rhyme of fornication that is the Old Testament and the fairy tale bloodbath that is the New. Job taught me Hey! Life's not fair! Lot's wife taught me that I'm probably going to come across a few weird sleazy things I won't be able to resist looking into. And the book of Revelation taught me to live in the moment, if only because the future's so grim.
Being a fundamentalist means going straight to the source. I was asked to not only read the Bible, but to memorize Bible verses. If it wasn't for the easy access to the sordid Word of God I might have had an innocent childhood. Instead, I was a worrywart before my time, shivering in constant fear of a god who, from what I could tell, huffed and puffed around the cosmos looking like my dad did when my sister refused to take her vitamins that one time.
God wasn't exactly a children's rights advocate. The first thing a child reading the Bible notices is that you're supposed to honor your mother and father but they're not necessarily required to reciprocate. This was a god who told Abraham to knife his boy Isaac and then at the last minute, when the dagger's poised above Isaac's heart, God tells Abraham that He's just kidding. This was a god who let a child lose his birthright because of some screwball mix-up involving fake fur hands and a bowl of soup. This was a god who saw to it that his own son had his hands and feet nailed onto pieces of wood.
God, for me, was not in the details. I still set store by the big Judeo-Christian messages. Who can argue with the Ten Commandments? Don't kill anybody: don't mess around with other people's spouses: be nice to your mom and dad. Fine advice. It was the minutiae that nagged me.
”
”
Sarah Vowell (Take the Cannoli)
“
Depletion of Vitamin D Sunscreens prevent the absorption of vitamin D. But all the compounds discussed above, whether in sunscreens or other products, also lower your liver’s ability to convert this critical vitamin to its active form. This prevents the regeneration of new cells in your protective intestinal wall barrier, allowing more lectins and LPSs through, along with other foreign bodies. Men with prostate cancer have very low levels of vitamin D. Despite the fact that my practice is in Southern California, I have found that almost 80 percent of my patients have low levels of vitamin D in their blood. In fact, anyone in my practice with leaky gut or autoimmune diseases has low levels. Lacking sufficient vitamin D, and in the face of repeated assaults on the walls of the intestine and the lack of ongoing repair to keep out lectins and LPSs, the body constantly senses that it is at war. It’s not surprising, then, that most of my overweight and obese patients are also very deficient in vitamin D.20 Such a deficiency also impedes the generation of new bone, setting the stage for the development of osteoporosis. My thin female patients with osteopenia and osteoporosis also have low levels of this critical vitamin when they first come to see me.
”
”
Steven R. Gundry (The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in "Healthy" Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain)
“
How is it that a mountain goat can find such steady footing on these vertiginous slopes? What map does it read that shows it the way home? Maybe the wilderness seems as forbidding as it does just because we don't have the muscle memory to navigate or the skills to climb and sense.
What does a western hemlock, the grand conifer that can live more than half a millennium, think when a youngster like me comes along? Chanterelle mushrooms got to know this tree, finding ample places to grow at its feet. Native Americans got to know this tree too. They understood that its bark was edible and a good base for cakes, and that its young needles could be brewed into a tea rich in vitamin C. The Coastal Salish peoples of what is now Canada built shelters for menstruating women using western hemlock branches, and this species was said to have particularly feminine energy.
What if the "problem" with the wilderness isn't a problem with the wilderness at all but rather with us, with our lack of knowledge, and with our truncated imagination? The wilderness reminds us that things aren't usually as simple or one-dimensional as they seem. Our stereotypes of such spaces imagine them as places of exile, spaces of lifelessness. That would be a surprise to the creatures that call it home.
Perhaps the real struggle is ours. We don't like knowing. Indeed, we fear it.
”
”
Rachel Held Evans (Wholehearted Faith)
“
I feel very sorry for the professionals whenever they find another confusing skull, something that belonged to the wrong sort of people, or whenever they find statues or artifacts that confuse them—for they’ll talk about the odd, but they won’t talk about the impossible, which is where I feel sorry for them, for as soon as something becomes impossible it slipslides out of belief entirely, whether it’s true or not. I mean, here’s a skull that shows the Ainu, the Japanese aboriginal race, were in America nine thousand years ago. Here’s another that shows there were Polynesians in California nearly two thousand years later. And all the scientists mutter and puzzle over who’s descended from whom, missing the point entirely. Heaven knows what’ll happen if they ever actually find the Hopi emergence tunnels. That’ll shake a few things up, you just wait. “Did the Irish come to America in the dark ages, you ask me? Of course they did, and the Welsh, and the Vikings, while the Africans from the west coast—what in later days they called the slave coast or the ivory coast—they were trading with South America, and the Chinese visited Oregon a couple of times: they called it Fu Sang. The Basque established their secret sacred fishing grounds off the coast of Newfoundland twelve hundred years back. Now, I suppose you’re going to say, but, Mister Ibis, these people were primitives, they didn’t have radio controls and vitamin pills and jet airplanes.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (American Gods)
“
Dear PrettyKitty29,
Hi, my name is Liam Brody. From the looks of your charming website, you've heard of me.
Believe it or not, I've heard of you too. I was recently tipped off about your little gossip community. I probably shouldn't call it little. You are one of the busiest gossip communities on the Internet.
Congratulations. I'm always impressed with people who manage to stay indoors so much. You must have a sufficient amount of Vitamin D.
I noticed that you seem to have an odd and probably unwarranted agenda against me. Almost every bitter post about me is put up by lovely you. I also noticed that your hatred has spread successfully among your users.
Wow. What an influence you have on gossip hungry teens and housewives. Again, congratulations.
I apologize for dating models, PrettyKitty29. I just think they're more attractive than other people. Some people steal, some people do drugs, some people sell them. I date models. It could probably be worse. I could be someone who makes bribes.
Speaking of those, I was emailing you to let you know that despite the sarcasm throughout this email, I find your strangely influential website interesting and am willing to make a substantial payment to you if you stop posting negative stories and put a few nice ones instead.
I don't know what a gossip community moderator gets paid, but I'm sure that regardless, you could use a few extra bucks. It would pay for food delivery, movies On Demand, and other indoor pleasures that I'm sure you partake in.
Please let me know.
Best,
Liam Brody.
”
”
India Lee (HDU (HDU, #1))
“
When the pandemic started, most of the other medical practices in the Detroit area shut down, Dr. David Brownstein told me. “I had a meeting with my staff and my six partners. I told them, ‘We are going to stay open and treat COVID.’ They wanted to know how. I said, ‘We’ve been treating viral diseases here for twenty-five years. COVID can’t be any different.’ In all that time, our office had never lost a single patient to flu or flu-like illness. We treated people in their cars with oral vitamins A, C, and D, and iodine. We administered IV solution outside all winter with IV hydrogen peroxide and vitamin C. We’d have them put their butts out the car window and shot them up with intramuscular ozone. We nebulized them with hydrogen peroxide and Lugol’s iodine. We only rarely used ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. We treated 715 patients and had ten hospitalizations and no deaths. Early treatment was the key. We weren’t allowed to talk about it. The whole medical establishment was trying to shut down early treatment and silence all the doctors who talked about successes. A whole generation of doctors just stopped practicing medicine. When we talked about it, the whole cartel came for us. I’ve been in litigation with the Medical Board for a year. When we posted videos from some of our recovered patients, they went viral. One of the videos had a million views. FTC filed a motion against us, and we had to take everything down.” In July 2020, Brownstein and his seven colleagues published a peer-reviewed article describing their stellar success with early treatment. FTC sent him a letter warning him to take it down. “No one wanted Americans to know that you didn’t have to die from COVID. It’s 100 percent treatable,” says Dr. Brownstein. “We proved it. No one had to die.
”
”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
“
Graduation (Friends Forever)"
And so we talked all night about the rest of our lives
Where we're gonna be when we turn 25
I keep thinking times will never change
Keep on thinking things will always be the same
But when we leave this year we won't be coming back
No more hanging out cause we're on a different track
And if you got something that you need to say
You better say it right now cause you don't have another day
Cause we're moving on and we can't slow down
These memories are playing like a film without sound
And I keep thinking of that night in June
I didn't know much of love
But it came too soon
And there was me and you
And then we got real blue
Stay at home talking on the telephone
And we would get so excited and we'd get so scared
Laughing at ourselves thinking life's not fair
And this is how it feels
As we go on
We remember
All the times we
Had together
And as our lives change
Come whatever
We will still be
Friends Forever
So if we get the big jobs
And we make the big money
When we look back now
Will our jokes still be funny?
Will we still remember everything we learned in school?
Still be trying to break every single rule
Will little brainy Bobby be the stockbroker man?
Can Heather find a job that won't interfere with her tan?
I keep, keep thinking that it's not goodbye
Keep on thinking it's a time to fly
And this is how it feels
La, la, la, la:
Yeah, yeah, yeah
La, la, la, la:
We will still be friends forever
Will we think about tomorrow like we think about now?
Can we survive it out there?
Can we make it somehow?
I guess I thought that this would never end
And suddenly it's like we're women and men
Will the past be a shadow that will follow us around?
Will these memories fade when I leave this town
I keep, keep thinking that it's not goodbye
Keep on thinking it's a time to fly
”
”
Vitamin C
“
what I knew that morning in March 1977 as we settled around the conference table. I wasn’t even sure how these guys reached us, or how they’d arranged this meeting. “Okay, fellas,” I said, “what’ve you got?” It was a beautiful day, I remember. The light outside the room was a buttery pale yellow, and the sky was blue for the first time in months, so I was distracted, a little spring feverish, as Rudy leaned his weight on the edge of the conference table and smiled. “Mr. Knight, we’ve come up with a way to inject . . . air . . . into a running shoe.” I frowned and dropped my pencil. “Why?” I said. “For greater cushioning,” he said. “For greater support. For the ride of a lifetime.” I stared. “You’re kidding me, right?” I’d heard a lot of silliness from a lot of different people in the shoe business, but this. Oh. Brother. Rudy handed me a pair of soles that looked as if they’d been teleported from the twenty-second century. Big, clunky, they were clear thick plastic and inside were—bubbles? I turned them over. “Bubbles?” I said. “Pressurized air bags,” he said. I set down the soles and gave Rudy a closer look, a full head-to-toe. Six-three, lanky, with unruly dark hair, bottle-bottom glasses, a lopsided grin, and a severe vitamin D deficiency, I thought. Not enough sunshine. Or else a long-lost member of the Addams Family. He saw me appraising him, saw my skepticism, and wasn’t the least fazed. He walked to the blackboard, picked up a piece of chalk, and began writing numbers, symbols, equations. He explained at some length why an air shoe would work, why it would never go flat, why it was the Next Big Thing. When he finished I stared at the blackboard. As a trained accountant I’d spent a good part of my life looking at blackboards, but this Rudy fella’s scribbles were something else. Indecipherable.
”
”
Phil Knight (Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE)
“
By collecting data from the vast network of doctors across the globe, they added dozens of new compounds to the arsenal—all proven effective against COVID-19. Dr. Kory told me that he was deeply troubled that the extremely successful efforts by scores of front-line doctors to develop repurposed medicines to treat COVID received no support from any government in the entire world—only hostility—much of it orchestrated by Dr. Fauci and the US health agencies. The large universities that rely on hundreds of millions in annual funding from NIH were also antagonistic. “We didn’t have a single academic institution come up with a single protocol,” said Dr. McCullough. “They didn’t even try. Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Duke, you name it. Not a single medical center set up even a tent to try to treat patients and prevent hospitalization and death. There wasn’t an ounce of original research coming out of America available to fight COVID—other than vaccines.” All of these universities are deeply dependent on billions of dollars that they receive from NIH. As we shall see, these institutions live in terror of offending Anthony Fauci, and that fear paralyzed them in the midst of the pandemic. “Dr. Fauci refused to promote any of these interventions,” says Kory. “It’s not just that he made no effort to find effective off-the-shelf cures—he aggressively suppressed them.” Instead of supporting McCullough’s work, NIH and the other federal regulators began actively censoring information on this range of effective remedies. Doctors who attempted merely to open discussion about the potential benefits of early treatments for COVID found themselves heavily and inexplicably censored. Dr. Fauci worked with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and other social media sites to muzzle discussion of any remedies. FDA sent a letter of warning that N-acetyle-L-cysteine (NAC) cannot be lawfully marketed as a dietary supplement, after decades of free access on health food shelves, and suppressed IV vitamin C, which the Chinese were using with extreme effectiveness.
”
”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
“
Marlboro Man and Tim were standing in the hall, not seven steps from the bathroom door. “There she is,” Tim remarked as I walked up to them and stood. I smiled nervously.
Marlboro Man put his hand on my lower back, caressing it gently with his thumb. “You all right?” he asked. A valid question, considering I’d been in the bathroom for over twenty minutes.
“Oh yeah…I’m fine,” I answered, looking away. I wanted Tim to disappear.
Instead, the three of us made small talk before Marlboro Man asked, “Do you want something to drink?” He started toward the stairs.
Gatorade. I wanted Gatorade. Ice-cold, electrolyte-replacing Gatorade. That, and vodka. “I’ll go with you,” I said.
Marlboro Man and I grabbed ourselves a drink and wound up in the backyard, sitting on an ornate concrete bench by ourselves. Miraculously, my nervous system had suddenly grown tired of sending signals to my sweat glands, and the dreadful perspiration spell seemed to have reached its end. And the sun had set outside, which helped my appearance a little. I felt like a circus act.
I finished my screwdriver in four seconds, and both the vitamin C and the vodka went to work almost instantly. Normally, I’d know better than to replace bodily fluids with alcohol, but this was a special case. At that point, I needed nothing more than to self-medicate.
“So, did you get sick or something?” Marlboro Man asked. “You okay?” He touched his hand to my knee.
“No,” I answered. “I got…I got hot.”
He looked at me. “Hot?”
“Yeah. Hot.” I had zero pride left.
“So…what were you doing in the bathroom?” he asked.
“I had to take off all my clothes and fan myself,” I answered honestly. The vitamin C and vodka had become a truth serum. “Oh, and wipe the sweat off my neck and back.” This was sure to reel him in for life.
Marlboro Man looked at me to make sure I wasn’t kidding, then burst into laughter, covering his mouth to keep from spitting out his Scotch. Then, unexpectedly, he leaned over and planted a sweet, reassuring kiss on my cheek. “You’re funny,” he said, as he rubbed his hand on my tragically damp back.
And just like that, all the horrors of the evening disappeared entirely from my mind. It didn’t matter how stupid I was--how dumb, or awkward, or sweaty. It became clearer to me than ever, sitting on that ornate concrete bench, that Marlboro Man loved me. Really, really loved me. He loved me with a kind of love different from any I’d felt before, a kind of love I never knew existed. Other boys--at least, the boys I’d always bothered with--would have been embarrassed that I’d disappeared into the bathroom for half the night. Others would have been grossed out by my tale of sweaty woe or made jokes at my expense. Others might have looked at me blankly, unsure of what to say. But not Marlboro Man; none of it fazed him one bit. He simply laughed, kissed me, and went on. And my heart welled up in my soul as I realized that without question, I’d found the one perfect person for me.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
“
It is pretty clear to me that a good level of vitamin D can help you prevent serious bacterial infections. Even if you develop a bacterial infection/sepsis, vitamin D can help you recover from it. Unfortunately, when you are in the hospital, no one pays attention to your vitamin D needs. Often, you end up not taking any vitamin D during your hospital stay, the time when you need it the most. How ironic!
”
”
Sarfraz Zaidi (Power of Vitamin D: A Vitamin D Book That Contains The Most Scientific, Useful And Practical Information About Vitamin D - Hormone D)
“
The present: me laughing uncontrollably.
The present: me remembering, 'Don't get me wrong.' It was what Joel had said. But I did! I got it all wrong.
And: 'be present,' and the words falling behind me, quickly, into the past too.
”
”
Rachel Khong (Goodbye, Vitamin)
“
But Tokyo offers cat cafes, a commercial solution to the problem of wanting to commune with cats but being unwilling or unable to have one at home.
Iris's favorite cat cafe is Nekorobi, in the Ikebukuro neighborhood. When I first heard about cat cafes, I imagined something like Starbucks with a cat on your lap. Wrong. Nekorobi is what you'd get if you asked a cat-obsessed kid to draw a floorplan of her dream apartment: a bathroom, a drink vending machine(free with admission), a snack table, video games, and about ten cats and their attendant toys, scratching posts, beds, and climbing structures. Oh, and the furniture is in the beanbag chic style.
Considering all the attention they get, the cats were amazingly friendly, and I'd never seen such a variety of cat breeds up close. (Nor have I ever spent more than ten seconds thinking about cat breeds.) My favorite was a light gray cat with soft fur, which curled up and slept near me while I sat on a beanbag and read a book. Iris made the rounds, drinking a bottomless cup of the vitamin-fortified soda C.C. Lemon and making sure to give equal time to each cat, including the flat-faced feline that looked like it had beaned with a skillet in old-timey cartoon fashion.
”
”
Matthew Amster-Burton (Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo)
“
You don’t need as much iron as you think. According to the CDC, a man like me (between 19 and 50 years old) needs 8 milligrams (mg) of iron per day. However, since I don’t eat meat, and I will be absorbing less of the non-heme iron entering my body, that number rises slightly to 14 mg. Seem like a lot? Nope. A cup of soybeans contains 8.8 mg, a cup of lentils 6.6 mg, and a tablespoon of blackstrap molasses 3.5 mg. (Remember, you can also boost the amount you absorb of these numbers by 30 percent if you are consuming some form of vitamin C with your meal.)
”
”
Rip Esselstyn (My Beef with Meat: The Healthiest Argument for Eating a Plant-Strong Diet--Plus 140 New Engine 2 Recipes)
“
When life gives you happiness deficiency try adding Vitamin SEA to your travels, believe me it always works !
”
”
Aakash Nand
“
A long time ago I stopped wondering why there were so many crazy people. What surprises me now is that there are so many sane ones. *
”
”
Rachel Khong (Goodbye, Vitamin)
“
Also a good B complex vitamin taken with food can help support neurotransmitters in the brain that are responsible for stress management, and have worked well along with the new changes in my day to day life. Herbs are also a good way to fight mild to moderate Anxiety levels. Unfortunately my anxiety levels were so high that herbs didn’t do much for me, but they are definitely worth experimenting with. Kava Kava is a fast acting de-stressor that also acts as a joint pain reliever. Valerian Root is a good remedy for moderate anxiety and can be used to treat nervousness, insomnia, and high blood pressure. Finally, Chamomile, which is best used in tea form and is great for its calming influence on the mind, especially for people who have trouble sleeping.
”
”
Dennis Simsek (Me VS Myself: The Anxiety Guy Tells All)
“
I pulled the rubbery chunk from Nirlungayuk’s knife. It was cold from the air outside and disconcertingly narwhal-colored. The taste of muktuk is hard to pin down. Mushrooms? Walnut? There was plenty of time to think about it, as it takes approximately as long to chew narwhal as it does to hunt them. I know you won’t believe me, because I didn’t believe Nartok, but muktuk is exquisite (and, again, healthy: as much vitamin A as in a carrot, plus a respectable amount of vitamin C). I like chicken skin and pork rinds.
”
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Mary Roach (Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal)
“
We undermine ’em with one hand and build ’em up with the other. The vitamins we destroy in the canning, we restore in Revito, the roughage we remove from Peabody’s Piper Parritch we make up into a package and market as Bunbury’s Breakfast Bran; the stomachs we ruin with Pompagne, we re-line with Peplets to aid digestion. And by forcing the damn-fool public to pay twice over – once to have its food emasculated and once to have the vitality put back again, we keep the wheels of commerce turning and give employment to thousands – including you and me.
”
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Dorothy L. Sayers (Murder Must Advertise (Lord Peter Wimsey, #10))
“
Vitamin B vitamins have long been seen as a great supplement to lower anxiety levels. Vitamins B6 (pyridoxine), B1 (thiamine) and B12 (cobalamin) have been seen as particularly effective. I personally take a B-Complex vitamin each night which I feel has given me extra energy. You can also get Vitamin B from a number of food sources, from turkey and tuna, to lentils and beans.
”
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Darren Sims (Conquering Health Anxiety: How To Break Free From The Hypochondria Trap)
“
Anxious to let my features show': Asian American woman shares fear of harassment - CNN - YouTube channel - Comment for this video with broader perspective, Part 2 - India was once perfect culture, our food habits were perfect, whatever we need vitamins, nutrients, carbs, fats everything we tend to obtain from plants and only plants, some yogi(No one) can even live with sun light and water or even neem air, but this 100% traditionality in India or siddha become almost obsolete because of pollution and over population and also spiritual reasons because many people are already trapped in Karmic cycle, which is why They can not even think of escaping it, if they try to escape they will die, and whomever has the solutions for this are mostly disregarded (Like , ok myself, Saddguru, Sarnam Singh, Somnath Bandyopadyay, Prabhakar Sharma, Ritika Rajput, Shalini Chouhan, they are disregarded because they are north Indians or yogis that speaks lie - this is what most people think, that is why I also being modern and eat evrything and talk everything and do everything so that you will not hate me, If I choose to be 100% traditional which I can, then whomever surrounding me will not survive, If I choose 100 % traditionality, rain will engulf the earth and sun will disappear for years, that is why I choose mixed mode of life with all ideas are considered,
Try to respect traditionality at least a little, there is a Tamil proverb, மாதம் மும்மாரி பொழிந்து செழித்த பூமி, which means 3 times rain per month and natural agriculture prospered and people life prospered - This proverb is from ancient Tamil Land, As Kali or Kaali yuga started everyone chose modernity, but try to respect traditionality at least a little to protect this land, you no need to go to temple, you no need to pray god, just protect soil, agriculture and traditional science like planting trees and all, then slowly nature will dominate the earth and even in this Kali or Kaali yuga there will be prosperity for next 5000 years,
Because in Kali or Kaali yuga first 10000 (Only 5000 years in Kali or Kaali yuga has passed so far) years are golden period, do not rush this golden period in to hell within 100 years.,
”
”
Ganapathy K Siddharth Vijayaraghavan
“
In 1983, I moved to San Francisco for my pediatric endocrine fellowship. I had no idea what awaited me in the pediatric ICU: three toddlers, eighteen months old, all on ventilators in congestive heart failure because their parents had placed them on a macrobiotic diet. These ostensibly well-meaning parents were trying to prevent their children from succumbing to the “toxins” associated with meats, oils, and dairy products, so instead they fed their tots grains, cereals, vegetables, and, of course, tater tots. As a result, their hearts ballooned and couldn’t pump from the lack of iron, vitamin D, and calcium.
”
”
Robert H. Lustig (Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine)
“
When I was little my mother used to say that I had “a nervous stomach.” That was what we called “severe untreated anxiety disorder” back in the seventies, when everything was cured with Flintstone vitamins and threats to send me to live with my grandmother if I didn’t stop hiding from people in my toy box.
”
”
Jenny Lawson (Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir)
“
How about nuts? I love ’em. We’ve already seen that they’re useful in terms of omega-3 content. At the top of my list are raw organic almonds, which lower cholesterol and improve heart health due to their high content of L-arginine and vitamin E. Then there’s my all-time favorite, the avocado. Rarely does a day go by that I don’t eat one or more. Once maligned for their high fat content (the average avocado has about thirty grams of mostly monounsaturated fat), they’re now embraced for their high antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-arthritic, and cholesterol-lowering properties. My perfect food. Not only do they promote heart health and aid in the absorption of other important nutrients, like carotenoids, their anti-inflammatory and antioxidant high-glutathione properties help me recover between workouts.
”
”
Rich Roll (Finding Ultra: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World's Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself)
“
This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don't think it's a marvelous moral, I simply happen to know what it is: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
My personal experience with Nazi monkey business was limited. There were some vile and lively native American Fascists in my home town of Indianapolis during the thirties, and somebody slipped me a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, I remember, which was supposed to be the Jews' secret plan for taking over the world. And I remember some laughs about my aunt, too, who married a German German, and who had to write to Indianapolis for proofs that she had no Jewish blood. The Indianapolis mayor knew her from high school and dancing school, so he had fun putting ribbons and official seals all over the documents the Germans required, which made them look like eighteenth-century peace treaties.
After a while the war came, and I was in it, and I was captured, so I got to see a little of Germany from the inside while the war was still going on. I was a private, a battalion scout, and, under the terms of the Geneva Convention, I had to work for my keep, which was good, not bad. I didn't have to stay in prison all the time, somewhere out in the countryside. I got to go to a city, which was Dresden, and to see the people and the things they did.
There were about a hundred of us in our particular work group, and we were put out as contract labor to a factory that was making a vitamin-enriched malt syrup for pregnant women. It tasted like thin honey laced with hickory smoke. It was good. I wish I had some right now. And the city was lovely, highly ornamented, like Paris, and untouched by war. It was supposedly an 'open' city, not to be attacked since there were no troop concentrations or war industries there.
But high explosives were dropped on Dresden by American and British planes on the night of February 13, 1945, just about twenty-one years ago, as I now write. There were no particular targets for the bombs. The hope was that they would create a lot of kindling and drive firemen underground.
And then hundreds of thousands of tiny incendiaries were scattered over the kindling, like seeds on freshly turned loam. More bombs were dropped to keep firemen in their holes, and all the little fires grew, joined one another, and became one apocalyptic flame. Hey presto: fire storm. It was the largest massacre in European history, by the way. And so what?
We didn't get to see the fire storm. We were in a cool meat-locker under a slaughterhouse with our six guards and ranks and ranks of dressed cadavers of cattle, pigs, horses, and sheep. We heard the bombs walking around up there. Now and then there would be a gentle shower of calcimine. If we had gone above to take a look, we would have been turned into artefacts characteristic of fire storms: seeming pieces of charred firewood two or three feet long - ridiculously small human beings, or jumbo fried grasshoppers, if you will.
The malt syrup factory was gone. Everything was gone but the cellars where 135,000 Hansels and Gretels had been baked like gingerbread men. So we were put to work as corpse miners, breaking into shelters, bringing bodies out. And I got to see many German types of all ages as death had found them, usually with valuables in their laps. Sometimes relatives would come to watch us dig. They were interesting, too.
So much for Nazis and me.
If I'd been born in Germany, I suppose I would have been a Nazi, bopping Jews and gypsies and Poles around, leaving boots sticking out of snowbanks, warming myself with my secretly virtuous insides. So it goes.
There's another clear moral to this tale, now that I think about it: When you're dead you're dead.
And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It's good for you.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Mother Night)
“
No one has said anything to me about the chocolate.’ “They disagreed, saying that they had all thanked me for it. “‘I did not mean that,’ I said. ‘I mean no one questioned me about it. No one asked whether it had been manufactured in Holland or Germany, what quantities it contained of cocoa, sugar, milk, or vitamins. Instead of analyzing it, you just ate it.’ “Then I picked up my Bible and said, ‘It is the same with this Book. If you try to analyze it as a book of science or even a book of theology, you cannot be nourished by it. Like chocolate, it is to be eaten and enjoyed, not picked apart bit by bit.
”
”
Corrie ten Boom (Tramp for the Lord: Sequel to "The Hiding Place")
“
Magnesium’s role in bone health is multifaceted. • Adequate levels of magnesium are essential for the absorption and metabolism of calcium. • Magnesium stimulates a particular hormone, calcitonin, that helps to preserve bone structure and draws calcium out of the blood and soft tissues back into the bones, preventing some forms of arthritis and kidney stones. • Magnesium suppresses another bone hormone called parathyroid, preventing it from breaking down bone. • Magnesium converts vitamin D into its active form so that it can help calcium absorption. • Magnesium is required to activate an enzyme that is necessary to form new bone. • Magnesium regulates active calcium transport. With all these roles for magnesium to play, it is no wonder that even a mild deficiency can be a risk factor for osteoporosis. Further, if there is too much calcium in the body, especially from calcium supplementation, as in Muriel’s case, magnesium absorption can be greatly impaired, resulting in worsening osteoporosis and the likelihood of kidney stones, arthritis, and heart disease. A chance meeting in a hotel with a woman whose lymphoma worsened immediately after being prescribed 2,500 mg of calcium, but no magnesium, for her osteoporosis made me consider that excess calcium can also deposit in cancerous tumors. Other factors that are important in the development of osteoporosis include diet, drugs, endocrine imbalance, allergies, vitamin D deficiency, and lack of exercise. A detailed review of the osteoporosis literature shows that chronically low intake of magnesium, vitamin D, boron, and vitamins K, B12, B6, and folic acid leads to osteoporosis.
”
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Carolyn Dean (The Magnesium Miracle (Revised and Updated))
“
WAHLS WARRIORS SPEAK In August 2012, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The symptoms came on suddenly: tingling and numbness in my right arm and right and left hands, bladder urgency, cognitive issues and brain fog, lower back pain, and right-foot drop. One Saturday, I was playing golf, and by the next Friday, I was using a cane to walk. I was scared and I did not know what was happening. I was started on a five-day treatment of IV steroids. I began physical and occupational therapy, and speech therapy to assist with my word-finding issues. Desperate, I searched the Internet and read as much as I could about multiple sclerosis. I tried to discuss diet with my neurologist because I read that people with autoimmune diseases may benefit from going gluten-free. My neurologist recommended that I stick with my “balanced” diet because gluten-free may be a fad and it was difficult to do. In October 2012, I went to a holistic practitioner who recommended that I eliminate gluten, dairy, and eggs from my diet and then take an allergy test. About that time, I discovered Dr. Wahls, whose story provided me hope. I began to incorporate the 9 cups of produce and to eat organic lean meat, lots of wild fish, seaweed, and some organ meat (though I still struggle with that). My allergy tests came back and, sure enough, I was highly sensitive to gluten, dairy, eggs, soy, and almonds. This test further validated Dr. Wahls’s work. By eliminating highly inflammatory foods and replacing them with vegetables, lean meat, and seaweed, your body can heal. It’s been four months since I started the Wahls Diet, and I’ve increased my vitamin D levels from 17 to 52, my medicine has been reduced, and I have lost 14 pounds. I now exercise and run two miles several times per week, walk three miles a day, bike, swim, strength train, meditate, and stretch daily. I prepare smoothies and real meals in my kitchen. Gone are the days of eating out or ordering takeout three to four times a week. By eating this way, my energy levels have increased, my brain fog and stumbling over words has been eliminated, my skin looks great, and I am more alert and present. It is not easy eating this way, and my family has also had to make some adjustments, but, in the end, I choose health. I am more in tune with my body and I feed it the fuel it needs to thrive. —Michelle M., Baltimore, Maryland
”
”
Terry Wahls (The Wahls Protocol : How I Beat Progressive MS Using Paleo Principles and Functional Medicine)
“
We should get some vitamin E on that,” I said, eyeing the raised, red lines that looked recently sutured. He grumbled something about real men not needing vitamin E.
“That’s right,” I said. “They just grab their nut sacks and will themselves back to health. Let me know how that turns out for you.
”
”
Kate Canterbary (The Cornerstone (The Walshes, #4))
“
Stacks of vitamins in a soapy sink. Shh, don’t talk to me while I think. Don’t look while I stuff your yummy dinner down the drain. It was so good I couldn’t bear to eat it. Shh don’t talk, let me hold this thoughtlessness in my empty mind.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
“
Steve and I watched the dingo family play out its drama for a long time. Then we edged our way down to the dam and hopped in. The water was cold, but it felt good.
“This is great,” I said, as we swam together.
“I’ve been coming here since I was just a little tacker,” Steve said. Bob had brought his young son with him on his research trips, studying the snakes of the region.
As I walked in and out of the water, washing up, shampooing my hair, and relishing the chance to clean off some of the desert dust, I noticed something hard underfoot.
“Steve, I stepped on something here,” I said.
He immediately started clearing the bottom of the pond, tugging on what I had felt beneath the murky water.
“Tree limb,” I guessed.
“Look around,” Steve said, yanking at the mired object. “No trees here at all.”
He couldn’t budge whatever it was, but he didn’t give up. He went back to camp, drove to the dam in his Ute, and tied a chain to the obstacle. As he backed up the truck, the chain tightened. Slowly a cow’s pelvis emerged from the muck.
I watched with horror as Steve dislodged an entire cow carcass that had been decomposing right where I had been enjoying my refreshing dip. I must have been poking among its rib cage while I brushed my teeth and washed my hair.
Steve dragged the carcass a good distance off.
“Do you think we should tell the crew?” he asked me when he came back.
“Maybe what they don’t know won’t hurt them,” I said.
Steve nodded. “They probably won’t brush their teeth in there, anyway.”
“Probably not,” I said, pondering the possibility of future romantic dips with Steve, and what might lurk under the water at the next dam.
When we returned to camp, Steve insisted I sit down and not lift a finger while he cooked me a real Aussie breakfast: bacon and sausage with eggs, and toast with Vegemite. This last treat was a paste-like spread that’s an Australian tradition. For an Oregon girl, it was a hard sell. I always thought Vegemite tasted like a salty B vitamin. I chowed down, though, determined to learn to love it.
As the sun rose in full, Steve began to get bored. He was antsy. He wanted to go wrangle something, discover something, film anything. Finally, at midmorning, the crew showed up.
“Let’s go,” Steve said. “There’s an eagle’s nest my dad showed me when I was just a billy lid. I want to see if it might still be there.”
Right, I thought, a nest you saw with Bob years ago. What are the chances we’re going to find that?
John looked longingly at the dam. “Thought we might have a tub first,” he said. The grime of the desert covered all of them.
“Oh, I think we should go,” I said hastily, the cow carcass fresh in my mind. “You don’t need a bath, do you, guys?”
“Come on,” Steve urged. “Wedge-tailed eagles!”
No rest for the weary.
”
”
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
“
When we returned to camp, Steve insisted I sit down and not lift a finger while he cooked me a real Aussie breakfast: bacon and sausage with eggs, and toast with Vegemite. This last treat was a paste-like spread that’s an Australian tradition. For an Oregon girl, it was a hard sell. I always thought Vegemite tasted like a salty B vitamin. I chowed down, though, determined to learn to love it.
As the sun rose in full, Steve began to get bored. He was antsy. He wanted to go wrangle something, discover something, film anything. Finally, at midmorning, the crew showed up.
“Let’s go,” Steve said. “There’s an eagle’s nest my dad showed me when I was just a billy lid. I want to see if it might still be there.”
Right, I thought, a nest you saw with Bob years ago. What are the chances we’re going to find that?
John looked longingly at the dam. “Thought we might have a tub first,” he said. The grime of the desert covered all of them.
“Oh, I think we should go,” I said hastily, the cow carcass fresh in my mind. “You don’t need a bath, do you, guys?”
“Come on,” Steve urged. “Wedge-tailed eagles!”
No rest for the weary.
“So, Steve,” I said as gently as I could, not wanting to dissuade him as we headed out. “How old were you when Bob took you to see this nest?”
“Must’ve been six,” he said. More than two decades ago. I stared around at the limitless horizon. I had my doubts. I watched Steve’s eyes dart across the landscape. He struck out in a particular direction and led us over a series of jump-ups. Then he’d get his bearings and head off again.
One hour. Two hours. If someone had put a gun to my head I could not have led them back to the dam.
“I think I know where it is,” Steve said abruptly. We continued on a little farther. Sure enough, in the distance I saw an unusually large eucalypt. In its main fork was what appeared to be a thick pile of debris and sticks, carefully laid together, that must have been eight feet thick.
There it was, an eagle’s nest, twenty feet off the ground.
”
”
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
“
Sure. Of course. And, Mel? This is awkward, but there being no drugstore in Virgin River… Would you happen to have condoms on hand?” She frowned and tilted her head. “Condoms?” His face took on a red stain. “You pulled Vanni’s IUD, right? She told me if I get her pregnant on top of all this, she can’t be responsible for her actions.” “Oh!” Mel laughed. “Sure, I’ll fix you up. But for future reference, Connie keeps some under the counter at the Corner Store.” Mel went to the cabinet where she kept supplies like prenatal vitamins and brought out a box of a dozen. She handed them to Paul. “May the force be with you.” “The odds are pretty good, I’m not going to be invited to use these for a while.
”
”
Robyn Carr (Forbidden Falls)
“
Eventually, at 7:22 A.M. on the morning of May 26, 1998, with tears still pouring down my frozen cheeks, the summit of Mount Everest opened her arms and welcomed me in.
As if she now considered me somehow worthy of this place. My pulse raced, and in a haze I found myself suddenly standing on top of the world.
Alan embraced me, mumbling excitedly into his mask. Neil was still staggering toward us.
As he approached, the wind began to die away.
The sun was now rising over the hidden land of Tibet, and the mountains beneath us were bathed in a crimson red.
Neil knelt and crossed himself on the summit. Then, together, with our masks of, we hugged as brothers.
I got to my feet and began to look around. I swore that I could see halfway around the world.
The horizon seemed to bend at the edges. It was the curvature of our earth. Technology can put a man on the moon but not up here.
There truly was some magic to this place.
The radio suddenly crackled to my left. Neil spoke into it excitedly.
“Base camp. We’ve run out of earth.”
The voice on the other end exploded with jubilation. Neil passed the radio to me. For weeks I had planned what I would say if I reached the top, but all that just fell apart.
I strained into the radio and spoke without thinking.
“I just want to get home.”
The memory of what went on then begins to fade. We took several photos with both the SAS and the DLE flags flying on the summit, as promised, and I scooped some snow into an empty Juice Plus vitamin bottle I had with me.*
It was all I would take with me from the summit.
I remember having some vague conversation on the radio--patched through from base camp via a satellite phone--with my family some three thousand miles away: the people who had given me the inspiration to climb.
But up there, the time flew by, and like all moments of magic, nothing can last forever.
We had to get down. It was already 7:48 A.M.
Neil checked my oxygen.
“Bear, you’re right down. You better get going, buddy, and fast.”
I had just under a fifth of a tank to get me back to the Balcony.
I heaved the pack and tank onto my shoulders, fitted my mask, and turned around. The summit was gone. I knew that I would never see it again.
*Years later, Shara and I christened our three boys with this snow water from Everest’s summit. Life moments.
”
”
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
“
For years I painted a beautiful picture of my homeland. I smudged the bigotry, ostracism, and narrow-mindedness of the Bible Belt and brightened it with colorful glasses of sweet tea, fresh, country hillsides, and southern hospitality. I erased the whiskey, the vitamin force-feeding, and the screaming fights that sent me crying and fleeing. I replaced them with sketches of a loving daddy who charitably tolerated me. I plastered tough love atop emotional indifference and neglect. I painted Mom with the unconditional nurturing that would wash away with the first light rainfall.
”
”
Maggie Georgiana Young (Just Another Number)
“
The jury is still out on which is optimal or whether there’s a marked difference, but the history of evolution makes me suspect that the animal forms are what we evolved to eat. Humans are very poor at converting the plant form of vitamin K (K1) to the more active form (K2). But ruminant animals convert it very efficiently, so they eat the greens, produce K2, and we eat them.
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Richard Nikoley (Free The Animal: Lose Weight & Fat With The Paleo Diet (aka The Caveman Diet) V2 - NEWLY EXPANDED & UPDATED)
“
They say there’s nothing inside but emptiness,’ Maureen told me later. I made no comment, but filled in by kissing her hair or something of the kind. Maureen had at that time rather droopy hair, possibly owing to lack of vitamins during the war, which she kept off her brow with a big tortoiseshell slide. Her brow was really beautiful, and so were her eyes. They had that gentle look of being unequal to life, which, as I later realised, always attracts me in a woman.
”
”
Robert Aickman (Cold Hand in Mine)
“
This is illustrated in the following case. A minister in an industrial section of our city, during the period of severe depression, telephoned me stating that he had just been called to baptize a dying child. The child was not dead although almost constantly in convulsions. He thought the condition was probably nutritional and asked if he could bring the boy to the office immediately. The boy was badly emaciated, had rampant tooth decay, one leg in a cast, a very bad bronchial cough and was in and out of convulsions in rapid succession. His convulsions had been getting worse progressively during the past eight months. His leg had been fractured two or three months previously while walking across the room when he fell in one of his convulsions. No healing had occurred. His diet consisted of white bread and skimmed milk. For mending the fracture the boy needed minerals, calcium, phosphorus and magnesium. His convulsions were due to a low calcium content of the blood. All of these were in the skimmed milk for the butter-fat removed in the cream contains no calcium nor phosphorus, except traces. The program provided was a change from the white flour bread to wheat gruel made from freshly ground wheat and the substitution of whole milk for skimmed milk, with the addition of about a teaspoonful of a very high vitamin butter with each feeding. He was given this meal that evening when he returned to his home. He slept all night without a convulsion. He was fed the same food five times the next day and did not have a convulsion. He proceeded rapidly to regain his health without recurrence of his convulsions.
”
”
Anonymous
“
Even the excellent dessert didn’t improve her mood. I had something called Decadent Lava Cake, which was very good, although the decadence escaped me. Jackie had ordered a kind of crème brûlée, but once again she didn’t really eat it. She picked a small piece of caramelized crust off the top and crunched on it, but that was all. I began to wonder whether perhaps she took vitamin shots in secret; she certainly didn’t eat enough to sustain human life.
”
”
Jeff Lindsay (Dexter's Final Cut (Dexter, #7))
“
how each relates to all the others and to our health. I was reading Dancing Skeletons, a book by nutritional anthropologist Katherine Dettwyler about her time working in Africa, when I found a section about kwashiorkor. Kwashiorkor is a severe form of malnutrition common in young children throughout the tropics. The hallmark diet of this disease is high in calories (from sweet potatoes or other starches) but low in protein. In this case, the low protein is not the problem—other children who eat equally low amounts of protein but fewer total calories are not likely to develop the disease. It’s the ratio of the nutrients that contributes to the development of kwashiorkor. KEGEL EXERCISE A contraction of the pelvic floor often prescribed to prevent the leakage of urine when coughing or running. This section of Dettwyler’s book resonated with me because I recognize that the outcomes of an exercise program depend largely on the ratio of all the movements to each other. Exercise (a repetitive intake of an isolated muscle contraction to fill a hole of missing strength) is often prescribed like vitamins (a capsule ingested to decrease a nutritional void). One of the arguments I am most known for professionally is that the way the Kegel exercise is prescribed can actually be harmful and not helpful at all. A Kegel is like a starch in the case of kwashiorkor: when done excessively and in the absence of other movement vitamins, it can create a negative outcome—too much pelvic-floor tension. The Kegel (as I’ll expand upon in Chapter 10) is not inherently more “bad” than a sweet potato, but neither is a sweet potato (or Kegel) health-making when consumed in isolation.
”
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Katy Bowman (Move Your DNA: Restore Your Health Through Natural Movement)
“
Sometimes I cannot say much about why I go to church other than what people who go to the gym say: I always feel better once I'm there; I feel better after; it is always good for me, not good in a take-your-vitamins way, in a chidingly moralistic way, but in a palpable way.
”
”
Lauren F. Winner (Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis)
“
It was summer in the Midwest and thus idyllic.
Long days rolled out like the land before us, expansive and
dotted with wild flowers and fireflies. It’s a potent season that can enchant away all thoughts of our protracted northern winters, which seem not only far off but altogether improbable. I blamed it on the heady billow of chlorophyll and vitamin D. In this unfiltered sunshine even a non-agrarian like me could see that this swelling farmland was beautiful and precious, a ripe expanse of great potential.
I just wasn’t convinced it was our potential.
But we were about to find out. With a transition as subtle as an ax, today would come to have a story, a moniker, and forever more be The Day the Chickens Came.
”
”
Lucie Amundsen
“
I don’t kill humans any longer.”
Relief crept over my body like a drug. I hadn’t realized how tightly I’d been holding myself, like a wind-up toy that had been tightened to the point of the spring snapping. “Oh,” I managed faintly. He waited while I absorbed his explanation, allowing me to think in silence.
“So,” I remarked slowly, “do you get all the, uh, vitamins you need that way?” It was the first thought to cross my mind.
”
”
D.S. Williams (Knowledge Revealed (The Nememiah Chronicles #1))
“
I started to see a serious decline in health in high altitude professional astronomy. Most noticeable was the onset of constant fatigue, memory issues and confusion. The condition progressed during my time in the commercial and utility solar industry where I started falling asleep at work and developed hot skin. The doctors tested me and said I had shift work disorder in 2008 and vitamin D and Vitamin B12 deficiencies in 2011. In 2015 I had a COVID-19 like sickness that made everyone in the family really sick. I never recovered and this started regular visits to the doctors. They diagnosed severe sleep apnea and mental illness and prescribed a CPAP machine. Under the care of the doctors I became much sicker on their prescription drugs and treatments. I eventually got smart and figured out I was not going to recover under their care and they may actually kill me! In 2021, moving to Hawaii island revealed that I had ‘Altitude Hypersensitivity’ and a high altitude commuting disease called ‘Magee’s Disease’. By the end of 2023 I had developed the treatments for these conditions and made a reasonable recovery. There is no cure for either condition. They are life-long illnesses. I now have to live well below 1,000 feet near sea level and take the treatments for the rest of my life. I documented the conditions in the books ‘Toxic Altitude’ and ‘Magee’s Disease’. The treatments for the hypoxic high altitude damage appeared transferable into COVID-19 and Long COVID and these are documented in the books “COVID Supplements” and ‘Long COVID Supplements’.
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Steven Magee
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Solidarity has its roots in love, Peter. We can say that solidarity is empathy, affection or good feelings. The solidarity, the affection, the good feelings, the empathy or the love that the beings radiate and receive, is an energy of a certain class, a very fine energy, the finest that exists, and it can be measured by instruments like the ones we have.” “Seriously?” “Of course, because it’s a force, a vibration, an energy, which penetrates the entire Universe, which made the Universe possible. So, it could be said that love is a ‘vitamin’ that all life forms need, and the more they need, the greater their evolution.” “How is that?” “A dog or a dolphin, they need more affection than a worm or a bacteria, right?” “Oh, sure.” “And a human being, even more.” “It’s true!” When I saw that so clearly, I didn't feel as bad as before because of my fear that ... I’m almost ashamed to confess it ... Well, this is a secret, shhh ... (my fear that nobody loves me) ... But now I understood that needing greater affection is not a sign of weakness, but of greater distance from a bacteria, a worm and a fly. Good!
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Enrique Barrios (Omi of the Stars)
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The best vitamin for a Christian is B1.
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Debbie Macomber (A Christmas Message: Christmas Letters / Call Me Mrs. Miracle)
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Look, your mind doesn’t need constant improving. It needs a balance – part improvement and part R and R – rest & relaxation. Essayist Tim Kreider wrote in The New York Times. "Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets.
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Laura Tong (The Life-Changing Power of NO!: How To Stop Trying To Please Everyone, Start Standing Up For Yourself, And Say No Without Guilt Or Conflict (Even To Difficult People) (Positively Happy Me Book 1))