Vitamin L

Vitamin L

I think most people know about vitamins like; A, B’s, C, D, E, and K, and that we need to acquire enough of them, from the foods we eat, to maintain a healthy body. But how many people have heard of vitamin L and know just how vital it is for optimal health?

In the book “Staying Healthy with Nutrition”, The complete guide to diet and nutritional medicine, the author Elson M. Haas, MD says that this vitamin is so important that we need to make sure we get enough every day in order to have optimal health. In fact it is so vital for life that baby’s will die if they don’t get enough, even when they get their other physical needs met. Even adults are more susceptable to illness more often if they don’t get enough.

So what are the sources of this vitamin? Basically, you and me. We are both the source and the user from other suppliers. If you haven’t guessed already vitamin L is “The Love Vitamin”. It is the only vitamin that is not obtained by ingestion. I like to think of it as energy that we obsorb by using our senses; sight, touch, smell, hearing and taste. It is transfered into the body by energy osmosis to the heart. We know it’s there because often it causes our heart beat to increase, our breathing to momentarily stop, and we feel warm all over. We also may know we are getting enough because we have positive feelings about the world around us. But I wonder if we do get as much as we really need? It seems that even though I am getting some love from my grandchildren I may feel a loss of love from my spouse, or need more time with my friends.

Is it all the same love? I began to wonder if maybe there is more than one like the B vitamins that work together or maybe a bit like complimentary proteins. Sometimes if we are short in one we don’t absorb the others as well and don’t need all of them in one day in order to have sufficient.

Let’s say there are four vitamin Ls and they come from varying sources:

• Vitamin L 1- (Maternal love) The source is our parents, grandparents and older siblings. It’s our first feeding of vitamin L and helps us to feel secure and wanted. It’s also stored in the brain should the source be not available.
• Vitamin L2- (Self Love) Believing in self and loving who you are. Maternal love maybe a precursor for self love though sometimes we are able to manufacture it on our own by using other substitute sources.
• Vitamin L3- (Friendship) This source is from other people who except the person I am and like being around and doing things together. Having enough self love may help me absorb more of this L source.
• Vitamin L4- (Romantic) This source supplies companionship, security, acceptance and gives you a sense of purpose. It may be absorbed best when the other 3 are present so that this vitamin can be better absorbed. Other wise for some reason our bodies reject some of this vitamin and we become dissatisfied with our life.

I know this is a little silly but it also helps us to see that we need love from different sources in order to be balanced and healthy. Often we depend on one source way too much, to the point that the source becomes depleted. Or we think we don’t need a certain kind of love and so we become depleted ourselves.

All of us need megadoses of vitamin L and the best sources are from other human beings. There are no synthetic sources. So embrace, talk, kiss, do special things for and with each other and fill the world with love.