Victory Lunch!

On the last day of a student's internship at the pharmacy, he or she gets a "victory lunch" on the house to celebrate. I picked a place called "Vegadeli", which serves up some delicious and healthy vegan fare. Most of the staff was open to my pick and expressed excitement when selecting their lunches from the menu. Luckily, the food was great and hopefully broke the stigma that vegan food is from outer space.
Here are the eats:
Creole red bean wrap with a side of herb-roasted potatoes,
Portabello stuffed with herbed brown rice/broccoli/carrots
Raw tostado with raw nut cheese, veggies, and added avocado
Hemp granola salad with cucumbers/carrots/onions/raisins/orange spice dressing
Side of caribbean black eyed peas and brown rice
Chili cheddar vegan burger
Vegan carrot cake, chocolate chip muffin, and walnut muffin

On a side note, I had a chance to use the electronic acupuncture machine at the pharmacy and found out some valuable information. When you use the machine, you hold one electrode in one hand and have someone put the other on different acupuncture points. The machine measures some sort of frequency or conduction and gives you a reading. Well, my test results said that I have food allergies, heavy metals (my boyfriend is a smoker), a subclinical UTI, low stomach acid, low vitamin C, an infection above and below my diaphragm, and liver overload. My preceptor told me that when you eat a vegetarian/vegan diet, you stop producing as much stomach acid because you are eating less protein (protein requires more acid to be metabolized). Therefore, whenever I would eat a higher protein meal, it would sit in my stomach like a rock. She told me to take Betaine HCl during a protein-heavy meal, which I did....and what a difference it made! It actually felt as if everything had been digested and wasn't just sitting in there fermenting/causing bloating. With vitamin C, I always avoided large doses of vitamin C because it pulls estrogen out of the body (not the best thing if you are taking birth control). You should be getting between 2,000-4,000mg per day and I had been aiming quite a bit lower because of the interaction. She told me it wasn't anything I needed to worry about and just to keep an eye on my cycle for any changes, so I now take 2,000mg daily (for prespective, 60mg/d saturates red blood cells, 400mg/d saturates the serum, and >400mg/d actually increases the concentration in tissues; the RDA is 60mg/d) With the infection, she told me that some bug was trying to get me but wasn't having much success, so I'll just thank my immune system for that one. I also started taking sublingual B12 because the low stomach acid minimizes oral absorption. B12 is involved in so many cellular functions that it is probably a good idea for most people to do the sublingual route to insure adequate absorption. My liver was always a concern for me because of the heavy drinking back in the day and because I can't tolerate caffeine at all (suggests Phase I problems). I also take birth control, which goes through the liver, so I avoided taking things like milk thistle and dandelion root for fear that it would make the pill less effective. Well, she started me on a supplement called "Amino-D-tox" which has supportive vitamins/amino acids for both phases of metabolism. Since my phase I may be out of whack, you don't want to just support that and overload phase II. It also contains calcium d-glucarate, which is beneficial for breast cancer prevention in that it prevents the cleavage of the glucuronic acid-estrogen bond by beta-glucuronidase (in non-medical terms, it helps get rid of excess estrogen). Again, I expressed my concern for the pill and she said to just keep an eye out for any changes. Anyways, so I take 2 Amino-D-tox at night and also supplement Filter and Flush (milk thistle, NAC, dandelion root, uva ursi, etc) during the inactive pill week in place of Amino-D-tox. I know that this is a lot to comprehend but I've actually begun to notice a difference. In terms of the testing, the machine is incredibly accurate. One woman's results said that she had parasites....she, of course, denied that she did. However, she did a parasite cleanse and passed a tapeworm a few days later. A previous intern's results said that there was a problem with her heart ventricles. She went to see her doctor and he actually found a problem. It is a pretty cool machine and hopefully I will get to use it again as follow-up to see if I've improved!