Dear Mom

Dear Mom,

It probably won’t surprise you that when I created teraswhey®, I wasn’t thinking of you specifically.  You were my mother at a distance, a person suffering from the isolation, economic deprivation, and health effects of decades of alcoholism and mental illness.  Now you are a functional, old, poor, beautiful, smart, and diabetic Mom, and one of a huge number of older people who are working hard to live out your years independently and with dignity in a country with a broken healthcare system, frayed social safety net, and a food system that’s making us all sick.

You and thousands of older women like you are struggling to live on social security checks that are $750 per month.  You qualify for $17/month in food stamps. After you pay your rent, you don’t have a lot of money left for food.  So you buy things that are cheap, most of which contain sugar and starches and carbohydrates and high fructose corn syrup that exacerbate your blood sugar problems.  You feel full until your blood sugar level collapses, and then you feel faint.  Your health care covers insulin testing supplies, but you can’t get in to see a doctor to help you figure out how much insulin you should be taking because physicians in the area cannot afford to take on new Medicare patients.  So you guess.

Many of the women who live in your building drink Ensure or Boost for a meal.  Its cheap, even recommended as a meal replacement by doctors and pharmacists.  The only problem is it contains several variations of sugar and high fructose corn syrup:  high carbs and low protein, exactly the opposite of what a diabetic should be eating.  I’ve always suspected that you drank alcohol because it was a way to self medicate your manic depressive mental states.  Now that your liver function has been damaged over the years, your body suffers from even more oxidative damage than most because it can’t efficiently detoxify.  So you suffer from a poor diet, diabetes, mental illness, and the inability to get adequate medical care.

You started using teraswhey® because I am your daughter and I gave it to you and told you it was good for you.  You like to look at my cans in your kitchen.  What you still don’t fully grasp is that my products have the power to not just feed you but also transform your life.  We talk about how the high protein, low carb, low glycemic index whey protein I give you has no fillers, additives, hormones, melamine, whatsoever.  Your eyes glaze over when I tell you that whey protein is one of the best dietary sources of cysteine and other precursors that your body converts to glutathione. Low levels of glutathione and high levels of oxidative stress have been associated with bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, liver disorders.  Sound familiar? As a diabetic, eating a high quality, high protein whey protein shake with low carbs and low glycemic index in the morning helps you regulate your blood sugar. With more work on your diet to take out sugar, I bet you would have a shot at getting off your insulin shots entirely, or at least maintain the low dosage you are currently taking. Your shakes are also feeding your body’s muscles and helping maintain and even build bone density.  All of these things are working to improve your underlying physical and mental health, which is now your only line of defense in the absence of access to adequate medical care. 

I wish there was a way for all of the women who face similar struggles in their later years to make teraswhey® part of their lives.  It says on my can that I created teraswhey® to cause extraordinary change.  That change happens one person, one shake at a time, and it starts with the people we love.

With love from your daughter,

Tera