One of the downsides of getting older is that some of your bad habits from your younger days begin to manifest themselves. In my case it has been my diet, or lack there of, which was made even worse during my college days when I had to eat what I could when I could, convenience over quality.
At my last doctor's appointment this past November he noted that my bad cholesterol was kind of high. Of course he recommended watching my diet (don't they all) and to start taking fish oil caplets for the Omega-3 compound that helps bring cholesterol and triglyceride levels down. The news worked out well, as I had braces put on my teeth just a few weeks before and my whole diet changed to accommodate them. In the time since the braces went on my teeth my weight is down about 10-15 pounds. On the down side of my doctor's recommendation were the caplets.
I've never been really good at taking pills, which bodes poorly for me if I ever become a celebrity. Fish oil caplets are horse pills, in my opinion. They're about three-quarters of an inch long, so the only way I'm going to be able to take a horse pill is by having one fired down my throat using a bolus gun. Compounding my problem swallowing pills is the brace-related wire that's on the roof of my mouth. Not being able to get my tongue to reach the roof of my mouth affects how I swallow not just pills, but food as well (pizza is an especially risky food for me).
An alternative to the fish oil caplets has been flaxseed oil, but I hadn't been able to find it in a form I could ingest. Until today, that is. The family and I traveled north to Commerce, Georgia, to get a gift certificate as a Mother's Day present for my mom at a store she loves to shop at. As we walked along the storefronts at an outlet mall, we passed one for a place called Vitamin World. On a whim I decided to go in and see what they had in the fish oil category. Once again, they had the caplets the size of horse pills. Damn! But wait...near the top shelf were bottles of flaxseed oil. At first glance all I saw were bottles of pills, but moving down one shelf there were bottles containing flaxseed oil in liquid and in ground form. Huzzah! Finally, flaxseed oil in a form I can take.
I grabbed a bottle of liquid off the shelf and made my way to the register. The Asian couple ahead of me in line seemed to be buying everything that caught their eye. Their final total was over $500. I can imagine that their breakfast each morning consists of a plate of pills and a cup of coffee; if they're hungry enough they'll chase the pills with perhaps some eggs or pancakes. Eventually I was able to shell out $13 for the bottle of flaxseed oil and leave the store.
I started reading the label once we got home and opened the bottle to see what the oil smelled like. No discernible smell, a positive sign as I was worried that it would smell awful. The label called for a teaspoon twice a day, preferable with a meal. I've already eaten, I rationalized, so I opened the bottle and grabbed a teaspoon from a kitchen drawer. No better time than the present, I thought. With some trepidation I poured the yellowish liquid into the spoon, put the spoon in my mouth, and....
Holy crap! For the record flaxseed oil really doesn't have much of a taste but the texture leaves much to be desired. It was like doing a shooter full of Wesson cooking oil. Blah! I grabbed for my water bottle to wash the residue out of my mouth. When they said flaxseed "oil" they weren't kidding. So now I'll be taking the stuff twice a day for a while. But why is it that everything that's good for you tastes like crap?
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