Wellness Wednesday: good green stuff

Like just about anyone who’s interested in looking and feeling good, I’ve tried a few nutritional supplements in my time. A few years ago I drank liquid chlorophyll for a while but didn’t notice any change – probably because, as my sister pointed out, my diet contains a fair amount of vegies and green things anyway. So I decided my money could be better spent elsewhere (ie opshops) and gave it up. But at the end of last year, I developed a flaky, slightly red and itchy patch of skin under my right eyebrow. Just my right eyebrow, nowhere else. In the grand scheme of things, nothing to worry about, except that it wouldn’t go away and nothing seemed to help it.

After a few weeks of worrying that my perioral dermatitis (ie dermatitis around the mouth) had spread to become periocular dermatitis (ie dermatitis around the eyes) as that often happens apparently, I decided I was probably just stuck with it, but then – seemingly miraculously – it disappeared. What made it go away? I think it was chlorophyll – in this case, in the form of powdered chlorella.

Apart from trying to use only rosehip oil over the area (which had only slightly improved but not cured it), I hadn’t changed anything except for adding powdered chlorella (which contains the most chlorophyll of any known plant apparently) to my diet, so I’m attributing it to that, although of course it may be just coincidence. But like apple cider vinegar, it won’t harm you to take chlorophyll, so it’s worth trying – even though it’s more expensive than apple cider vinegar.*

The serving suggestion for most of these powdery green things is to add them to smoothies to disguise the taste. I’m not organised enough to make smoothies and as soon as I hear that most people don’t like the taste of something then of course I have to try it so I can brag about being able to stomach it, haha. I’ve found spirulina and chlorophyll something close to repellent before, but this time I tried drinking it with some powdered green tea.

(Of course green tea is pretty darn good for you all by itself, too!)

I use about half a teaspoon of green tea and a heaped teaspoon of chlorella and mix them together in warm water (see, this is why I needed these gold spoons!). I drink at least a cup every day and don’t mind the taste at all. *Brag!*

I’m not sure that this would be everyone’s cup of tea because being an algae, chlorella has a salty, oceanic taste and it doesn’t smell so fantastic either, but maybe if you thought of it as a kind of savoury soup it would make it more palatable (it might be barely detectable in a cup of miso soup, for instance). A friend mentioned that spirulina powder is great mixed with pineapple juice, which I would never have thought of, so if you want to give anything chlorophyll-y a go, you might need to do a bit of experimenting until you find the right combination for you. I’m certainly glad that I did, as my skin is back to normal – I was obviously lacking enough good green stuff in my diet!

 

*Unless you buy it online, which is what I did. I rarely buy anything online but I was a little bit dazzled by the sales this year and ordered some sunglasses from a site where the shipping cost $10. Being the tightarse sensibly thrifty person that I am, I thought I may as well order other stuff to make it worth my $10, and the powdered chlorophyll was among those things that I threw in my virtual cart. Looks like sometimes it’s worth stepping out of my comfort zone and actually buying new stuff!