FAQ5
WHAT QUALIFIES AS GOOD NUTRITION?
A Summary of information gathered at the OIF National Conference 2026.
If you attended OIF NC 2026 or have read reviews or watched videos about the conference you have probably been overwhelmed by the amount of information that was available. As great as that is, I believe that sometimes you need a really good deep dive into specific parts of the information presented to really get the point,
Nutrition and giving your body what it needs to do its job seemed to be a biog theme this year, so here is some deeper information on what was on offer at some of those sessions.
Caffeine is a constant conversational point with my physicians, because I have a major case of sleep apnea a good old 900oz of CAFF-POW with each meal, sometimes seems appropriate. Unfortunately with the accompanying high BP that OI creates, its never a really good idea. BUT is that all there is?
Actually no its not. I was first introduced to this in the late 1980s when my wife was told to stop drinking so much Iced Tea, because it had been known to leech calcium and other nutrients from the bones, mostly due to the caffeine content. I never had that issue, as I don't care for the taste of Tea, or coffee for that matter (I know blasphemer). But what IS considered , OK?
CAFFIENE AND BONE HEALTH
May decrease and/or interfere with calcium absorption, leading to bone loss
Daily recommendation is no more than 2 – 3 8oz cups per day
Sources are typically coffee, tea, energy drinks, soda
I was unaware of the following, until I started working with my primary Physician, but even though Tea all grows basically the same way, the way the leaves are prepared, can often cause the human body to process that caffeine differently. For example, he teaches that most caffeinated beverages, coffee, Iced Tea, etc, have a pretty sharp saw tooth wave effect of energy on the body. However if you need something that will stretch out a little more and last “longer” “English Breakfast Tea” has a different energy curve, its a slower ramp up, so no palpitations or shakes, a long burn time, and then a gradual taper off. So when some of my Apnea medicines weren't really lasting he suggested that instead of grabbing a 5 hour shot (which most physicians REALLY don't like) he suggested brewing up a cup of EBT first thing in the morning and see how that worked.
Personally it worked GREAT. Except for one thing. I got the clear headedness I needed by the time I sat down to work, and typically it would last until my apnea medicine took hoild, just before lunch. The one problem, taste. In my life there has been one cup of tea that I have consumed completely and not wanted to wash my throat out with rock salt, afterwards. Unfortunately it was a home-brew in the 70s so who knows what was actually in it.
That being said, I have tried just about EVERYTHING, trying to be civilized I've added, lemon, and sugar. I've tried the wealthy way of adding condensed milk. No go. I even tried adding Caramel Syrup from ice cream, it could NOT make the tea taste any better , to me. However, while grocery shopping one week I noticed these little bottle of flavoring that apparently some folks add to water. Not sure why, as I was always taught that IF you water had a taste, you should NOT drink it, but that's me, I don't like coffee remember?
The major brands have names like MIO and STUR, and say things like HYDRATE LIQUID WATER on the label. Anyone REALLY understand that? Isn't water by its nature a liquid? But most of the stores have a generic brand. Their usually under $2 and for me do a really good job of covering that metallic tang that tea carries.
Among the different sessions addressing nutrition/exercise/diet and supplements, two areas seemed to get a lot of attention, so that's what were going to address here. I'm going to present the information pretty quickly so if its going to fast or I'm speaking to fast, everything will be posted on the OIGuy.com for your review. Additionally we will probably be adding this to our downloadable handout section of tools.
Some of the simple ideas presented that should be pretty obvious, but absolutely were not, to me anyway were::
Focus on FOOD rather than supplements, but if you are working with supplements you need to keep track of them just like you do any of your other medications. By that I mean that if your Doctor said that YOU really need to boost your levels of Vitamin X and although you can get it by eating fresh, uncooked broccoli, Dr s know thatch kind of extreme and chances are your going to look for a vitamin or supplement or something that has been “fortified “ with Vitamin X. The obvious question of course, for your Dr. is “How much Vitamin X do I need each day? He pokes at his computer for a minute and comes back and says, your best bet is to shoot for 40mg of Vit X each day.
When he is suggesting this, he is getting that figure from EVERYTHING. If you take a multi vitamin that has 20mg of X, great your halfway home. Then you find a dipping sauce for the raw broccoli that makes it really good, so now your having your greens at almost every meal. Well somewhere along the treatment, hes probably going to ask you to weigh the average amount of broccoli you have in each serving that he will poke at his computer, and come back with something like, OK that's 10mg per serving so believing your probably not eating as much at breakfast your probably right on target. But if you decided that you needed to change to a soda that's fortified with Vitamin X, you may have just overshot the line by a whole lot. But you're going to have to disclose to your Dr. everything your consuming that may have vitamin X because although it sounds like your 10 over, depending on HOW the body processes that particular vitamin you may be 10mg over, or still 30mg short.
That's why they opened the subject with the idea that you should be trying your best to get your vitamins etc from FOOD and not supplements. One of the Doctors at the conference flat out stated, “You can NOT eat crap all day, and take a handful of vitamins and think your going to even it out.” I know I used to do that in college, get up, don't drink coffee , head for the student union , grab a chocolate eclair, and wash it down with a can of unsweetened grapefruit juice. Surely something THAT sour must cancel out all that sugar right? Yeah, not so much....
Also, and I'm sure many folks understand this already, but all the “calculations” ideas, estimates etc that your Doctor prescribes is based almost entirely on what you consume, in the realm of food, most of them aren't even aware that there are Protein Augmented Soda's. Man I can not even imagine what THAT tastes like. Anyway, then when you compound that fact with the idea that some vitamins, minerals etc. are NOT absorbed by the body if taken orally in a pill... Unfortunately that 10,000 units of C you took this morning is going to result in an interesting special effect when you stop at the bathroom come lunch. The pill sits in your stomach and gets broken down by the acid, and the Vitamin C never makes it to the bloodstream Check with your Dr, I would wager that more than a few of the things he is suggesting you monitor are things that either don't absorb the way common sense says they should, OR we are consuming them with something else that triggers a response in the body that doesn't WANT to absorb whats in your Super Jumbo Hostess Suzy Q, so it blocks everything in and around that for 5 minutes. Kind of ,like hiding a pill for your pup. He eats it, but does it work?
If you've seen me speak before the chances are you may have heard me talk about the fact that after almost 20 years under pain management, I had a Doctor ask me TWO questions that no doctor had ever broached with me before. This is not to say that I was not “aware” of these issues, but if the Doctors not asking it must not be that important right?
See, when I started with pain management it was primarily because my wife was expecting our first child. I knew it would be a boy, and I knew he would have OI. In the end, God and the Doctors both had thoughts that maybe that wasn't true, but that's what I was going with. Also, when I started with Pain management I was 40yo, had an OI infant on the way, that I could NOT afford to drop, and 165lbs. When I was getting started with my new Dr I was now 55 and over 200lbs, and there was more a chance of my son dropping ME. Two questions may seem obvious, but again no Dr. had asked either question:
Now that your son is mobile on his own, what are your pain goals going forwards?
A. To add on to that she suggested that being “numb” wasn't really sustainable but I probably wasn't as active as I was when I started so:
B, How much pain can you carry and still get done what you need to do during the day?
In reference to staying active, there is NO question that losing some weight would take a load off your bones and naturally decrease your pain, thus decreasing the need for medications.
Again, seems obvious, but no one had addressed either question. Point in fact the physicians at the previous, hospital run clinic had all said that I would have to be on the regimen I was , for the rest of my life. So what was my previous regimen? Just to sum it up and put it in plain terms so as not to confuse things, I took medication for pain 4 times a day, at days end my body had processed:
445mg of opioids and weighed 225lbs, I worked 50 hours a week and carried a 24/7 on call schedule 26 weeks a year. The 445 number was not all one type of pill, but broken up between several long and short acting pills. Again, these were medical Physicians employed by the hospital and they were all top anesthesiologists in their field. So they said it I believed it, AND I never experienced any of the side effects that they continuously scanned for each month. To be honest I did have one bout of long range regurgitation, but that was where I learned IMMEDIATELY how serious the “take with food” label was on the bottle.
Slow forward a year (that was such a painful, long drawn out year) and I was now at 198lbs and my total opioid intake, again spread out through the day was now “up to” 275mg a day, “working 8 hours a day (in different capacities), acting as a chauffeur for my college aged son, and trying my best to enjoy this part of marriage and family. Additionally, I'm not numb, point in fact I just replaced a knee and have even more pain (systemically) than I used to. However I can honestly say, other than working out, which I invest 2 – 5 hours a week at an outside gym, I cant say that my pain prohibits or interferes with anything I want to do at this point.
As for the weight, 25lbs in a year sounds pretty big to some folks, but the way I gauge it, is a little different. For example, I wont say “I'm down 10lbs” until that 10lbs is day in and day out for a month. Additionally, my biggest foe, sugar, can muck that up far faster than it has any right to, and when it does, it takes far longer to get rid of it than to add it.