Vitamin B12 Deficiency - Dehydrated Liver Capsules

Several weeks ago I was told that I am low in vitamin B12.  Not terribly low, but lower than I should be.  I guess even a minor deficiency can cause problems.  So like any good woman who is quite against taking synthetic drugs I began to look for a more natural approach to restoring my B12. 

First of all - where do you get B12? 

1.  Clams, oysters, mussels
2. Liver
3. Fish eggs
4. Octopus
5. Fish
6. Crab and lobster
7. Beef
8. Lamb
9. Cheese
10.  Eggs (raw yellow)

(The best place is #1 with eggs being the least.  Source)

So what could I do with  my diet to increase my B12?  The options for seafood are enough to make me sick.  I absolutely gag over liver.  I already eat beef and cheese.  I eat my eggs over easy with the yoke still mostly raw.  Pregnant women are advised against eating raw eggs, but I do anyway as my eggs come from a very good source that I feel safe about.  

So where did that leave me? 

Back to pills. 

I turned to the company that I have consumed in the past.  Garden of Life.  They have a raw B12 vitamin that looked good.  Until I read a little more and saw that it was "vegan".   B12 only comes from animals - so how can they make it "vegan"?  Every pill I looked at I doubted and questioned.  Why am I so against taking pills?  Mostly because they come from unnatural sources that can cause harm to the body instead of healing.  I like to take my vitamins as a whole food.  I look for pills that come in gel capsules that actually come from food.   It's very similar to how the garden works.  You can put synthetic fertilizers on the garden and it will seem to do very well.  You'll see great improvements over a very short time.   But those fertilizers do damage in the long run and end up causing problems in the soil.  You're much better off to add compost, manure, leaves, grass - natural things.  It will take a little longer, but you'll build up the soil and be rewarded for decades to come.  Over time your soil will be rich and full of life.  I feel that it is the same with humans.

So what was I going to do?

I must admit that I immediately had a plan.  But I was fighting against it.  You see I have perfectly good liver from a grass raised cow sitting in my freezer.  There's nothing wrong with it but for the fact that when I tried to eat it I was very nearly vomiting.  No matter how much "mind over matter" I just couldn't seem to get it down.  But I recalled reading a blog post about dehydrating liver and grinding it to a powder and then stuffing it in gel capsules.  I could do that!  

I wish I could say that it was easy and I did it right away.  But it was a work in progress and I had to overcome my aversion to it.  First I had to thaw the liver.  Cut it up.  Place it in my dehydrator.  Check on it from time to time (thus smelling it again!).  Once it was done I put it in a bowl and covered it and left it for about 2 weeks.  I did it right before our vacation - but there was still a lot of procrastinating going on.

In the meantime I continued to check out pills, hoping that I might find one that I could take with a clear conscience.  I almost bought one.  But I'm frugal and it was expensive and I had perfectly good, cheap liver just waiting to be ground up and swallowed.

So yesterday I did it.  I finally was able to do it.  The smell was awful.  It took about 10 minutes to grind it in my food processor.  And then I took some alfafa capsules, emptied them (saved the powder for TR) and filled them with liver.  Then I carefully wiped them with a dry cloth so I wouldn't taste any powder.  I added a few other pills (raspberry leaf and nettle and alfalfa) to my hand and swallowed, followed by a large glass of juice.  And you know what?  I didn't taste liver.  I didn't even burp up liver.  Thank goodness!                                           

I'm not sure how often I should take them.  I've read that you should eat liver twice a week.  So I think maybe I'll take the pills every day for a week to catch my body up and then just take it every 3 days or so. 

Maybe I'm a little crazy - after all it would have been so much simpler to just go and buy a bottle of B12 from the drug store.  But how could I when I had a perfectly good liver in my freezer . . .