You can get adequate quantities of ADE&K from a diet full of organic vegetables, high-quality meats and fish, and animal fats. The supposedly CF-friendly vitamins are actually made of extremely low-quality vitamins and ingredients that have low rates of absorbability compared to real food, and contain inflammatory and toxic ingredients such as corn oil and sugar. Instead of taking low-quality supplements like AquaDEKs, I now make sure I eat a large amount of those foods that contain the important vitamins and minerals in the form that nature designed them to be absorbed: food.
Vitamin A&D: fermented codliver oil. Can be taken in capsules or poured over food. The codliver oil
must be fermented if it is to contain readily-absorbable, naturally-occurring A&D. Some companies may label their codliver oil as containing A&D, but unless it's fermented and unprocessed, it does not contain the high-quality A&D that the compromised CF digestive system can easily absorb. Beta-carotene is a great antioxidant, but it does not count as vit.A because most people's bodies (especially CFers) cannot make the conversion from beta-carotene to animal-form vitamin A. Vit A must be gotten from animals. Another good source of vit A is grassfed butter (the cows have made the beta-carotene to vit.A conversion for us). Cholesterol is very important in our diets and we need adequate sunlight to convert cholesterol into vit.D. Make sure your child gets enough cholesterol through butter, fish, red meat, and animal fats. Also make sure your child gets outside in the sun A LOT! Also, don't believe the dietary-cholesterol-heart-disease myth, science has been disproving it for decades.
Vitamin E: organic, unrefined,
unfiltered, extra-virgin olive oil. If your olive oil is missing any of the adjectives to the left, then it does not contain vitamin E, which is destroyed in filtering and processing. This can also be poured over food, but do not cook with it, as its high polyunsaturated oil content makes it prone to rancidity when exposed to heat, light, and air.
Vit. K: green leafy vegetables. LOTS AND LOTS OF THEM!!!! Our main source of vit. K-2 is our own gut bacteria. So make sure you are keeping your child's intestines full of healthy beneficial gut bacteria by eating plenty of fermented foods (
real yogurt, saurkraut, etc.) and a probiotic supplement with a wide variety of strains.
If your child's diet is full of vegetables, low-sugar fruits, and high-quality animal products, then the other vitamins and minerals in the AquaDEKs should be covered. If overall digestion is improved through a good diet and maintaining a healthy gut flora, then nutrient absorption will improve. And of course, we always have to take foods high in fat-soluble vitamins (ADEK) with enzymes or else they will not be absorbed. This is true for AquaDEKs and SourceCF too.
For more info, you can check out my website:
www.cfnaturalhealth.weebly.com
Hope this helps.
-Mikayla
