CHAPTER 2
Nutrition – Cellular Needs
There’s no doubt that diet influences disease
and health in a major way
Once again, the words of Hippocrates can be used as the foundation for a naturopathic view of wellness, this time with a spotlight on nutrition. Hippocrates’ words have been updated in the often quoted phrase “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” When it comes to the foods that should be consumed to keep the doctor away, however, things start to become decidedly foggy. Despite, or is it because of, the outpouring of millions of print and electronic words on the subject, people are more confused than ever about just how to eat for wellness.
Eating for wellness goes beyond providing the fuel to function optimally, boost your immunity and stave off future illness. Eating is, after all, one of the great pleasures of life. A holistic approach to eating for wellness, then, needs to also provide comfort and pleasure. And while it’s important to identify which foods you should consume to achieve these goals, there’s more to it than that. Just as critical is how much of those foods you eat, what time of day you eat it and what you eat it with. In addition, unless you consider how that food has been grown, how it has been stored and how it has been cooked you are not going to have control over how it will affect your body.
Diet is nothing more than a choice. No one forces you to put a certain food in your mouth. You are always in control of that process. So, whatever choices you make, make them with wisdom, common sense, knowledge and intention.
Of course, nutrition is more than just food – it embraces culture, religion, social patterns, economics and emotion. Yet, eating well doesn’t have to be complicated. The basics of sound nutrition haven’t changed. Once we cut through all of the white noise that engulfs the issue, separate ourselves from the emotionalism that is invested in it and concentrate on sound, sensible principles rather than being carried away by fad diets and super-charged promises, we’ll find our way to the foods that heal our body. The key to successfully negotiating the nutritional minefield is knowledge. And nutritional knowledge should start with a basic understanding of the nutrients that we need to function and thrive. So here goes a little bit of knowledge that I learnt many years ago which took me a long way from the confusion.
Macro VS Micro Nutrients
Macronutrients are those nutrients that your body needs in the largest amounts – carbohydrates, proteins and fats. How you divide up your food intake between these 3 macronutrients and which foods you select from each macronutrient category has a profound effect on your body and your health. Severe restrictions of any of the macronutrients can lead to nutrient deficiencies and hormonal imbalance. Balancing your protein, carb and fat intake, then, is a foundational principle of wellness nutrition.
Micronutrients are the nutrients that your body only requires in small amounts. These include vitamins and minerals. The key to optimum micronutrient intake is not to be carried away with the latest wonder nutrient or newly discovered super-food but rather, to ensure that you are consistently providing your body with the right mix of nutrients.
Cellular Nutrition
Cells are the building blocks of all living things. The word cell is derived from the Latin for ‘small house.’ Cells are the tiniest units that can replicate by themselves. Your body is composed of about 75 trillion cells, which make up all of the tissues that make you, you! For our cells to operate optimally they need to be able to absorb the right nutrients from the right foods. However, many of the cells in our bodies are not absorbing the nutrients that are being supplied to them. That’s because they are clogged up with toxins (poisons) which are preventing the vitamins and nutrients from getting into them.
Toxins are all around us. In fact, we take them into our system with every breath we take. Processed foods contain all manner of toxins that contaminate and clog up the cells inside our bodies. So, day after day, year after year, toxins are building up in our bodies, preventing our cells from utilising the nutrients that we are providing it with. When we consider that most people are hardly doing a good job of taking in the essential vitamins and nutrients that their body requires, the fact that most of that pitiful amount isn’t getting through is truly frightening.
The way to address this cellular deprivation is by focusing on what can be termed, cellular nutrition. Cellular nutrition focuses on working with your body’s cells. It cleans them up, allowing them to become activated back to healthy operation. This is a great example of Principle 3 of the basic naturopathy principles that we outlined earlier. By addressing issues at the cellular level, we are able to overcome issues that may have been holding you back for decades. Your body will be able to burn off fat more efficiently, you’ll have more energy and you will feel that you have reclaimed your youthful body.
Cellular nutrition simply involves a nutritional program that, at it’s core, ensures that the cells of the human body are fully nourished. When our cells receive the fuel that they need to function optimally they will be able to grow, repair and efficiently go about their tasks. It is also involved with ensuring that the body is able to maximally absorb the nutrients that we consume. Cell activation takes the process a step further by super-charging the cells and allowing them to work more efficiently than before. This can be achieved by taking in certain herbs and micronutrients. The cell is then able to determine what nutrients it needs and absorbs them in order to work to full capacity. So how do you fully nourish your body’s cells? Simply by eating well and making the right food choices.
Antioxidants and B Vitamins need to be taken at levels that are in excess of the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) in order to fuel the cells optimally. The RDA’s were formulated to avoid acute deficiency diseases such as scurvy, rickets and pellagra. The levels of micronutrients needed to cleanse our cells and allow them to work optimally are a lot greater than the RDA levels. By taking between 7 and 9 servings of fruit and vegetables (particularly greens) into your body each day, you will go a long way to meeting the needs of your cells. You can also achieve higher levels required for cellular nutrition by using supplements at times as well. By combining the necessary nutrients in a balanced and complete nutritional supplement, the effect on the cells is simply amazing. Not only will the cells be enabled to work at optimum efficiency, thus warding off a whole host of ailments, but they also control another major health hazard – oxidative stress.
Oxidative Stress
Oxidative stress is a complicated process. Simply stated, it is what happens when the body’s cells come into contact with oxygen. Oxygen has the effect of burning an electron from our molecules, making them unstable. An unstable molecule tends to act a bit crazy, bouncing around inside our cells and causing damage to them. Unless these unstable molecules are neutralised, the cells will degenerate and the result is that we will feel tired, lethargic and in pain.
So, what causes oxidative stress? The simple acts of breathing and eating will do it. When the air we breathe is pristine and the foods we eat are free of preservatives, the oxidative stress is minimised. Few of us, however, enjoy pristine conditions or are able to consistently eat cleanly. For us, then, oxidative stress is a problem. It leads to cell membrane damage and the accumulation of toxins. This, in turn, causes inflammation. Other factors also contribute to oxidative stress. Smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, taking prescription drugs, taking in pesticides, antibiotics and hormones through animal food sources and exposure to water born pollutants all play their part.
To combat the effects of oxidative stress, we need to focus on some specific antioxidants. Antioxidants can neutralise the unstable molecules caused by oxidative stress. They also provide the raw materials that fuel the body’s inbuilt antioxidant system causing it to spring into operation. The foundation of this system is glutathione. Glutathione is made of the amino acids cysteine, glycine and glutamine. By supplementing with these 3 micronutrients you will be helping to combat the effects of oxidative stress on your cells.
In addition to supplementing your diet, there are certain activities that can help to ward off oxidative stress. Strength training is known to boost the body’s antioxidant system. It’s also a great way to allow your body to rid itself of stress. Meditation, yoga and laughter are also great ways to up your natural supply of glutathione and fight oxidative stress.
SO WHAT DOES A CELL NEED?
Protein
Carbohydrates
Fats
Water
Ideal pH
Vitamins
Minerals
The Power of Protein
Protein is an essential nutrient whose name comes from the Greek word protos, which means first. To visualise a molecule of protein, close your eyes and see a very long chain, rather like a chain of sausage links. The links in the chain are amino acids, commonly known as the building blocks of protein. In addition to carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms, amino acids contain a nitrogen (amino) group. The amino group is essential for synthesising (assembling) specialised proteins in your body.
The human body is loaded with protein. They are present in the outer and inner membranes of every living cell and it’s also in your muscle tissue (in the form of myosin, actin, myoglobin and other proteins), your hair and nails, bones and even your red blood cells (in the form of haemoglobin).
How Your Body Uses Protein
Your body uses proteins to build new cells, maintain tissues and synthesise new proteins that make it possible for you to perform basic bodily functions. About half of the dietary protein that you consume each day goes into making enzymes, the specialised worker proteins that do specific jobs, such as digesting food and assembling or dividing molecules to make new cells and chemical substances. To perform these functions, enzymes often need specific vitamins and minerals.
Your ability to see, think, hear and move – in fact, to do just about everything that you consider part of a healthy life – requires your nerve cells to send messages back and forth to each other and to other specialised kinds of cells, such as muscle cells. Sending these messages requires neuro-transmitters. And to make neurotransmitters you need protein.
Protein also plays an important part in the creation of every new cell and every new individual. Your chromosomes consist of nucleoproteins, which are substances made of amino acids and nucleic acids.
The cells in your digestive tract can absorb only single amino acids or very small chains of 2 or 3 amino acids called peptides. So proteins from foods are broken into their component amino acids by digestive enzymes. Then other enzymes in your body cells build new proteins by reassembling the amino acids into specific compounds that your body needs to function. This process is called protein synthesis.
The carbon, hydrogen and oxygen that are left over after protein synthesis is complete are converted to glucose and used for energy. The nitrogen residue (ammonia) isn’t used for energy. It’s processed by the liver, which converts the ammonia to urea. Most of the urea produced in the liver is excreted through the kidneys in urine.
Every day you re-use more proteins that you get from the foods you eat, so you need a continuous supply to maintain your protein status. If your diet doesn’t contain sufficient amounts of protein, you start digesting the proteins in your body, including the proteins in your muscles and, in extreme cases, your heart muscle.
All proteins are made of building blocks called amino acids but not all proteins contain all the amino acids you require.
Not all Proteins Are Equal
To make all the proteins that your body needs, you require 22 amino acids. 10 are considered essential, which means that you can’t synthesise them in your body and must obtain them from food. The other twelve are non-essential – if you don’t get them in your food, you can manufacture them from fats, carbohydrates and other amino acids.
Essential Amino Acids
Arginine
Histidine
Isoleucine
Leucine
Methionine
Phenylaline
Threonine
Tryptophan
Valine
Non-Essential Amino Acids
Alanine
Asparagnine
Aspartic Acid
Citrulline
Cysteine
Glutamic Acid
Glycine
Hydroxyglutamic Acid
Norleucine
Proline
Serine
Tyrosine
The Best Quality Proteins
Because an animal’s body is similar to yours, its proteins contain similar combinations of amino acids. This similarity is why nutritionists call proteins from foods of animal origin (meat, fish, poultry, and eggs) high quality proteins. Your body absorbs these proteins more efficiently and they can be used without much waste to synthesise other proteins. The proteins from plants (grains, fruit, vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds) often have limited amounts of some amino acids, which means their nutritional content isn’t as high as animal proteins.
The basic standard by which you measure the value of proteins in food is the egg. Nutrition scientists have arbitrarily given the egg a biological value of 100%. This means that, gram for gram, an egg is the food with the best supply of complete proteins. Other foods that have proportionately more protein may not be as useful as the egg because they lack sufficient amounts of 1 or more essential amino acids.
An ideal source of protein is free range, organic, grass fed beef along with free range, organic, hormone free chicken and eggs. Sustainable fish is also a great choice (white fish is believed to have the lowest amounts of mercury). Other good sources of protein are sheep and goat feta, nuts, legumes, beans, seeds and quinoa.
Complete and Incomplete Proteins
A complete protein is one that contains ample amounts of all the essential amino acids. An incomplete protein does not. A protein low in one specific amino acid is called a limiting protein because it can build only as much tissue as the smallest amount of the necessary amino acid. You can improve the protein quality in a food containing incomplete or limiting proteins by eating it along with ones that contain sufficient amounts of the limited amino acids. Matching foods to create complete proteins is called complementarity.
An example of complementarity is combining rice, which is low in the essential amino acid, methionine, with beans. Vegetables contain incomplete proteins however, it is possible to combine proteins in a vegetarian diet to allow for a full complement of amino acids. The following combinations will ensure that this takes place:
* Vitamin B12 Supplementation is required if you are not eating red meat.
Too Much/Too Little
An excess of protein in your system can lead to:
Not enough protein will result in:
Carb Confusion Clarified
Carbohydrates (the word means carbon plus water) are sugar compounds that plants make when they’re exposed to light. This process of making sugar compounds is known as photosynthesis, from the Greek words for ‘light’ and ‘putting together.’
Carbs come in 3 varieties: simple sugars, complex carbohydrates and dietary fibre. All are composed of units of sugar. What makes one carbohydrate different from another is the number of sugar units it contains and how the units are linked together.
Simple Carbohydrates: These carbs contain only 1 or 2 units of sugar.
Complex Carbohydrates: These carbs have more than 2 units of sugar linked together. Your body takes longer to digest complex carbs than it does simple carbs. As a result, digesting complex carbs releases glucose (blood sugar) into your bloodstream more slowly and evenly than when you’re digesting simple carbs.
Dietary Fibre: Dietary fibre is unlike other types of carbohydrate because the bonds that hold its sugars together cannot be broken down by human digestive enzymes. Although the bacteria living naturally in your intestines converts very small amounts of dietary fibre to fatty acids, dietary fibre is not considered a source of energy.
It is important to get a good amount of dietary fibre in your diet because it helps to prevent constipation and improves a number of digestive problems, such as spastic colon and haemorrhoids. Insoluble fibre absorbs water from the gut making stools bulkier and softer and the elimination of waste easier and faster.
Carbs and Energy
Your body runs on glucose, the molecules your cells burn for energy. Your body can also use protein and fat for energy but they are far less efficient. When you eat carbs, your pancreas secretes insulin, the hormone that enables you to absorb starches and sugars. This release of insulin is sometimes called an insulin spike, which means the same thing as insulin secretion.
Eating some carb foods, like mashed potato, provokes higher insulin secretion than other carb foods, like sweet potato. If you have a metabolic disorder, such as diabetes, that keeps you from producing enough insulin, you must be careful not to take in more carbs than you can digest. Unmetabolised sugars, circulating through your blood can make you dizzy and may even cause you to fall into a diabetic coma.
Inside your cells, glucose is burned to produce heat and adenosine triphosphate (ATP). ATP is a molecule that stores and releases energy as required by the cell. The transformation of glucose into energy occurs in two ways - with oxygen and without oxygen. Glucose is converted into energy with oxygen in the mitochondria. These are tiny jelly-like substances inside every cell. This conversion yields energy (ATP and heat) plus water and carbon dioxide – a waste product.
Red blood cells don’t have mitochondria, so they change glucose into energy without requiring oxygen. This yields energy (ATP and heat) plus lactic acid.
Glucose is also converted into energy in muscle cells. When it comes to producing energy from glucose, muscle cells are double-jointed. They have mitochondria, so they can produce glucose with oxygen but if the level of oxygen in the muscle cell falls very low, the cells just go ahead and change glucose into energy without oxygen. This is most likely to happen when you’ve been exercising so strenuously that you are literally out of breath. A by-product of this process however, is lactic acid. Too much lactic acid makes your muscles ache but when you give your muscles a bit of rest, you allow your liver to break down the lactic acid into re-usable constituent units and this gives you the opportunity to resume your exercise pain free.
Your cells budget energy very carefully. They don’t store more than they need right now. Any glucose the cell doesn’t need for its daily work is converted to glycogen (animal starch) and stored as energy in your liver and muscles.
Your muscles can pack about 400 grams of glycogen into 400 liver and muscle cells. A gram of carbohydrate (including glucose) has 16 kilojoules. If you add up all the glucose stored in glycogen to the small amount of glucose in your cells and blood, it equals about 7000 kilojoules of energy.
If your diet provides more carbohydrates than you need to produce this amount of stored kilojoules in the form of glucose and glycogen in your blood, cells, muscle and liver, the excess is converted to fat.
The Best Carbohydrate Sources
The most important sources of carbohydrate are plant foods; fruits, vegetables and grains. Meat, fish and poultry have no carbs in them at all. To get a good mix of simple, complex and dietary fibre based carbs make sure that your daily nutritional plan includes:
Some Problems with Carbs
Some people can’t digest carbs because their bodies lack the specific enzymes needed to break the bonds that hold a carbohydrate’s sugar units together.
Consider taking digestive enzymes.
Fat Fact File
Fats are sources of energy that add flavour to food. Of course, they can also be extremely hazardous to your health. Yet, a healthy body needs fat. Your body uses dietary fat (the fat you get from food) to make tissue and manufacture biochemicals, such as hormones. Some of the body fat made from food fat is visible. Even though it is covered by your skin, you can still see the fat in the adipose tissue in the breasts of women, the hips, thighs, buttocks, belly and shoulders. This visible body fat is generally unwanted, yet it does serve some purpose:
Other body fat is invisible. It’s tucked away from sight in and around your internal organs. This hidden fat is:
Fat has more energy than either carbs or protein but the body has a harder time pulling that energy from fat. When you swallow fat rich foods, the fat floats on top of the watery food and liquid mixture in your stomach, which limits the effect that fat busting digestive enzymes called lipases can have on it and, because fat is digested very slowly, you feel fuller for longer after eating high fat foods.
The fat moves down your digestive tract into the small intestine. Once there an intestinal hormone called cholesstokinin tells your gallbladder to release bile. Bile is an emulsifier, a substance which allows fat to mix with water so that the lipases start breaking the fat down. And what does it break it down into?
Glycerol and fatty acids. These smaller fat fragments are stored in fat cells in the adipose tissue. Alternatively they may be stored in the intestinal wall. In the intestinal wall, one of two things may happen:
Glucose, as you know, is the body’s prime source of energy. Burning glucose is both easier and more efficient than burning fat. Yet, if you use up all of your glucose, then your body will start drawing on your body fat. The first step in this process is for an enzyme in your fat cells to break up stored triglycerides (the form of fat in adipose tissue). The enzyme action releases glycerol and fatty acids, which travel through your blood to body cells, where they combine with oxygen to produce heat plus water and the waste product carbon dioxide.
The Fat in Your Food
Food contains 3 types of fat:
If we don’t get enough fat, we won’t be able to absorb fat soluble vitamins that smooth the skin, protect vision, bolster the immune system and keep our reproductive organs functioning. These are the fat soluble vitamins A,D,E and K.
An essential fatty acid is one that your body needs but can’t assemble from other fats. You have to get it from foods. The 2 main essential fatty acids are:
Omega - 3 (alpha linolenic – LNA)
Omega - 6 (linolenic – LA)
The modern western diet is very high in omega-6 fatty acids but not in omega-3. In fact, the average person takes in 20 times more omega-6 than they do omega-3. One reason for this huge imbalance is our increased consumption of refined grains and our decreased consumption of omega-3 rich fish. Since animals become what they eat, their meat is rich in omega-6. As we consume high omega-6 meats and refined grains we lose the natural balance we once thrived on and begin to suffer from inflammatory and cardiovascular diseases that were once unheard of. By increasing your intake of omega-3 fats, you obtain a long list of health benefits, restoring you to the balance that nature intended.
Here are some benefits of increasing your intake of omega-3 fatty acids:
To achieve the amazing health benefits listed above, you should seriously consider adding a rich source of omega-3 into your meal plan every day. Fatty fish is your best bet. By eating such fatty fish as salmon, sardines, herring or mackerel you will ensure that you are getting all the omega-3 you require. Omega-3 fatty acids are also found in rich amounts in plant sources such as flax seeds and walnuts. Small amounts can also be found in dark, leafy greens such as kale, cabbage and broccoli.
Cholesterol Close Up
Cholesterol is a waxy substance produced by the liver. It is also found in certain foods, especially those derived from animal sources. So, eggs, meat and whole fat dairy products like milk, cheese and ice cream are loaded with cholesterol.
We’ve already established that your body needs fat. It also needs cholesterol. It’s located in and around your cells, in your fatty tissue, your organs and your glands. It serves a number of essential tasks in your body. Doctors measure your cholesterol level by taking a sample of your blood. When you get your results from the doctor they look something like this:
4.5 mmol/L 9 miilimoles per litre
Cholesterol makes its way into your blood vessels, sticks to the walls and forms deposits that eventually block the flow of blood. The more cholesterol you have floating in your blood, the more cholesterol is likely to make its way into your arteries, causing atherosclerosis, a disease that begins in childhood and progresses with age, whereby it may increase your risk of coronary heart disease, heart attack and stroke.
For adults, a cholesterol level greater than 6.5 mmol/L is a high risk factor for heart disease; between 5.2 mmol/L and 6.5 mmol/L is considered a moderate risk factor and below 5.2 mmol/L is considered a low risk factor.
To understand your own risk of heart disease/heart attack, have an annual medical check-up.
Most of the cholesterol that you need is made right in your own liver. The liver, in fact, manufactures about 1 gram a day from the raw materials in the proteins, fats and carbohydrates that you consume but you also get cholesterol from food of animal origin like meat, poultry, fish, eggs and dairy products. Although some plant foods, such as coconuts and cocoa beans, are high in saturated fats, no plants actually have cholesterol.
Fats to Avoid
Oils are, by nature, unstable substances that quickly become rancid with exposure to light and air. Hydrogenation and partial hydrogenation are industrial processes that food companies use to prolong the shelf life of their products and make cheap spreadable products such as margarine. They also make baked goods moist and flaky. However, there’s a bad side – hydrogenation turns natural, healthy fats into unhealthy bad fats. Hydrogenated oil can be considered as a processed fat. Partially hydrogenated oils contain large amounts of chemically altered fats known as trans-fatty acids. These are some of the unhealthiest foods you can eat.
Some trans-fatty acids are found in meat and dairy products but those are the naturally occurring variety. Industrial trans-fats are found in hydrogenated oils, margarines and spreads, baked good and fried goods. Food companies can be sneaky when it comes to trans-fats. Labels may so “no cholesterol” or “low saturated fat” but the product may be loaded with harmful trans-fats. A prime example of this is margarine. Many people switch from butter to margarine, thinking they are doing themselves good by avoiding saturated fat. What they don’t realise is that it’s full of trans-fats.
Here then, are the top ten trans-fatty foods:
Trans-fatty acids cause numerous health problems, including heart disease. Trans-fatty acids in hydrogenated oil also raises bad cholesterol (LDL) and triglyceride levels, while reducing good cholesterol (HDL).
Saturated Fats
Saturated fats, with the exception of the tropical oils, are solid or semi-solid at room temperature. Saturated fats need to be monitored because they can raise blood cholesterol levels. The long standing, traditional advice has been to reduce saturated fat intake. However, without looking at each different type of saturated fatty acid individually and within the context of your genetics, health status, lifestyle, quantity eaten and overall diet, it’s overly simplistic to say that all saturated fats are bad for you or should be completely avoided. Saturated fats do, however, lack the essential fatty acids you need, so you need to balance them with unsaturated fats.
Saturated fats should be limited to 10% of your daily calories, with the rest of your fat (which should total 30% of your daily calories) coming from poly and monounsaturated fats (10% each).
Small amounts of saturated fats tag along when you eat meat and poultry. Picking the leanest cuts possible will keep the saturated fat to a minimum.
Unsaturated Fats
Unsaturated fats are subdivided into polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats and come primarily from vegetable and plants sources. They are mostly liquid at room temperature. They tend to lower the levels of blood cholesterol and have a host of other health benefits. They also contain essential fatty acids. Unrefined extra virgin coconut oil has become very popular. You can cook with it and use it to add flavour to your recipes.
Nuts are little nutrition powerhouses. They give you fibre, vitamins, healthy phytonutrients and good fats but if you eat large amounts of nuts (which is all too easy to do) you could consume hundreds or even thousands of calories over your daily caloric maintenance level.
Fat in a Nutshell
Coconut Oil: The Good Oil - My Other Love - So Popular Right Now
Coconut oil is quickly gaining a reputation as a superior cooking oil. Here are 8 reasons why it should become your preferred cooking oil:
