"Good Health - Under Construction" is a new article series about dealing with unique, often surprising, and sometimes just plain mysterious health issues and supplement interactions.

Your body does not always react to things like everybody else's body...and insight from somebody who has been in your shoes might be exactly what you need.

Sometimes doctors or other medical professionals don't always understand what's going on in your body because they have literally never seen certain effects happen before!

You might get prescribed meds and written off as a hypochondriac or worse.

It's time to change that.

These articles will give you information based on real, "in the trenches" experience from somebody who has gone through the ringer and come out the other side..

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My name is Alexis and I am Nick Nilsson's sister. Like Nick, who uses himself to test all his unique and unconventional training methods, I too have been the test subject in my own life.

In this article series, I'm going to tell you about my health experiences in the hopes it might help you or someone you care about.

You see, unlike Nick, who can try any supplement any company sends him to test with ease, I am the opposite. If there is a side effect to be found, I find it. If there is a type of food that suddenly causes a problem, I experience it.

 

I am sure that you are familiar with the illness called “Long COVID”.

Before COVID, this type of illness was known as “post viral syndrome”; basically describing a person who got sick and didn't recover normally from a virus.

Imagine a neighborhood of homes blown apart by a tornado. When you visit that neighborhood a year later, every house but one has begun the process, to different degrees,  of rebuilding. That one house still wiped out after a year is the person with post viral syndrome – not rebuilding and not recovering.

 

More than 15 years ago, I contracted an enterovirus, meaning a virus that infects you through your stomach, and I developed post viral syndrome.

I didn't get better.

In fact, so many things got so much worse. I have made a lot of progress since then, but I am still not “back to normal”. After that virus, I seemed to react to everything – food, supplements, you name it.

I crowned myself the “Queen of Side Effects”.

Prior to COVID, there was much less awareness and understanding by the medical community of how to treat a person with post viral syndrome. So, taking matters into my own hands like any self-respecting Nilsson would do, I began my journey of research, discovery, experimentation, disappointment and hope.

 

Nick has invited me to be a guest writer so I can share my hard earned experiences with different supplements, diets and treatments.

I don't have a book to sell or a supplement line to promote. It's just me telling you about the sometimes pretty weird things that happened when I tried new supplements or treatments and how I managed them.

I am not a doctor. I am a patient who took control of my journey of healing and now takes full credit for any improvements I've made.

 

My goal is to share that information with others so maybe, just maybe, something that happened to me helps someone else feel less alone and empowered to find a solution.

Maybe you have experienced an adverse reaction to something that everybody else seems to have no problem taking and you wonder why. Maybe I can suggest something else for you to try instead that you didn't know was an option. Or, maybe we can just laugh about it together like an inside joke the rest of the world doesn't understand.

AI can do a lot of things better and faster than us, but it can't experience physically taking a supplement, ending up in the bathroom half an hour later and living to tell about it.

Over the years, I have kept notes on things I tried, what happened when I did, and if I came up with any alternative ideas. I will be writing articles based on my notes and Nick will be sharing them with you. I continue to look for new things to try and research the @#$% out of before daring to make an attempt.

Many a conversation between Nick and I begins with the words “hey, have you heard about this supplement...”

Welcome to the conversation.

 

Welcome to Good Health...Under Construction.

Here's a quick example of what's to come....

 

 

Fish oil capsules... is it the fish oil, the other ingredients or the delivery method?

Fish oil supplements are widely known to be anti-inflammatory, good for your heart and your brain. So, I wanted to include them in my supplement regimen.

I have tried off and on for years to take them. I would start with one, and after a second dose, I would get nauseous and have stomach pain. It's a frustrating experience when you are trying to do something to reduce inflammation.

 

What was causing the side effects? When confronted with side effects, you need to consider all the variables. In this case, was it the fish oil, the other ingredients, the dose or the delivery method?

I was taking Nordic Naturals Ultimate Omega capsules.

Nordic Naturals makes a high quality product, so what was the problem? Was it the dose? Sometimes it's a simple matter of the dose being too high for you.

Was it frequency? Sometimes taking a supplement every other day or twice a week is tolerated whereas a daily dose is not. But, it didn't matter if I took one or two. It didn't matter if it was daily or every other day or even once a week.

 

So, was it the fish oil or the other ingredients or the capsules? Time to experiment!

First thing I did was look for liquid options to take the capsule out of the equation.

I wasn't sure if taste was going to be an issue but I had to try. I tried the Nordic Naturals Ultimate Omega liquid bottle product and another brand called Bernard Jensen Unflavored Liquid Fish Oil that contained only fish oil (no additional ingredients).

I discovered I could tolerate both liquid options without pain or nausea. The taste was mild.

 

Two problems came up...

First, even after taking a daily dose that I was comfortable with of either product, I wasn't using up the contents of the bottles in the recommended time frame of three months before you should discard.

Second, the Bernard Jensen option became unavailable.

I concluded that it wasn't the fish oil or the additional ingredients included in the Nordic Naturals product that helped with stability and taste of the fish oil. It was the capsule!

If you have taken fish capsules before, you know that those capsules are no joke. They are made of gelatin and they feel solid. No wonder I was having problems! The capsules were sitting in my stomach and I was having a heck of a time breaking them down.

Since I wasn't using the liquid fast enough, the bottle wasn't the best option. The only other way was to bust that capsule open. The ingredients in the Nordic Naturals liquid product are the same as the capsule contents so it was a workable solution. Sometimes that isn't the case when comparing a capsule and liquid option.

If you take a knife and poke a hole along the seam of the capsule and turn the capsule over so the hole is facing your spoon, you can easily and GENTLY squeeze the liquid onto your spoon. If you try to poke a hole anywhere else in the capsule, it's a lot harder to do. If you squeeze the capsule too hard, the fish oil goes everywhere. I am still trying to get the smell of fish oil out of a jacket sleeve that I accidentally splattered.

For reference, a teaspoon of the liquid Nordic Naturals product gets you 2840 mg of Omega 3's whereas two capsules gets you 1280 mg. Squeezing one capsule fills about a quarter to a third of a teaspoon.

So, if you find that fish oil capsules aren't sitting well with you, you might want to try a liquid option if you like to take a decent sized dose or try poking open that capsule to see if the capsule is actually the problem or if it's the fish oil and/or other ingredients.

Nordic Naturals Omega 3's can be found online at the Professional Supplement Center.

Stay tuned for the next issue of Good Health.,.. Under Construction where we’ll talk about protein powders I've tried, my experiences with them and the type of protein that actually has an opioid effect on your digestive system (for real).

 

 

 

 

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