Metabolism and Better Health - Part 1

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Much of my post high school education has been in cellular biology and biochemistry, human as well as plant and animal, so I had great interest in reading the writings of numerous people who have explored the world of micro nutrition, cellular biology and the modern human diet.

As a chef, I have studied for many years, written about, and read volumes of interesting books about cooking, nutrition and food habits from around the world. The one thing I was able to piece together over the years was that we human beings believe ourselves to be divorced from nature, that somehow we have a free pass to do as we please in the sphere of biology, and we will get away with it. Just the same, I also had a nagging belief that somehow this kind of arrogant logic is basically and inherently flawed.

Also as a chef I have been taught the ways of modern cooking, which I knew but never dared say, often ruined the nutritional value of the foods we eat. Over-cooking, processed food, store-bought canned goods, etc., often have little or no real nutritional value left in them.  White, pasty bread has to have vitamins put back into it in order to make up for what was lost in the processing of the grains!

And of course we have hundreds of products that claim to help you stay healthy, but we have a skewed picture of what health really is.  We think it is just to maintain things as they are right now, without even daring to imagine that our view of how life is lived is completely wrong.

A healthy human being should remain vital and active well into their nineties, and perhaps even beyond. Scientists are discovering that our genes provide for such longevity, but something holds us back from realizing long, healthy, vital lives.  That thing, they discovered, is our nutrition, or better said, our lack of nutrition.

Yet, we are the creatures of a long and complicated evolutionary process, beings who have lived for millions of years doing certain things to survive. And make no mistake about it, all of what we are today was built to make sure that we, as a species, survive and prosper.

But as an individual, I know that nature does not care about my individual survival, only the survival of the human species. So, for those who could not fight or run away, the only other option was to become lunch for some other creature that hunted us. That remains true even today, as people who mess around, for example, with the salt water crocs in Australia soon find out, to their personal detriment. Given the opportunity, wild animals will kill us even if we have 5 Ph.D's from Harvard and Oxford. try explaining to the lion chewing on your toes that she can't kill and eat you because you are the CEO of some multi-national corporation. The things we humans find important pale when confronted with the reality of the difference between personal and species survival.

So, if we are indeed nothing at all to nature as individuals, then what is our purpose in life? Well, speaking at the most basic level, we are to procreate, rear young and then die. Cruelly put, I know, but then nature is cruel.

Nature gives us the time to mature to an adult age, birth babies and then raise them, after which our metabolism changes and we grown physically older.  It is the way we have come to view our lives - a few years of happy childhood, then the stress of being parents, after which we get weaker, wrinkly and die of some disease or just "old age".

But is that really the way it has to be?

Well, we are supposed to survive as a species, and since we are by all accounts a very weak creature, our ancestors found it better to live in communities. Living in groups eventually lead to the growth of agriculture as whole tribes settled down, created a workable language, and shared out work in specialties such as ploughing, planting, harvesting, storing,basket weaving, pottery and so forth.

Basically we went from hunter-gatherers to settled, agricultural beings, and the idea pretty much caught on. Think back to your history lessons - when did the history we know first get recorded?  It was only when people learned to write, long after they had settled into villages, towns and eventually cities.

Today most of the people in the world live in cities and towns. And because we no longer grow our own food, we, like our ancestors, but only more so, depend upon the food grown by others to feed us.  If the world were to suddenly be tossed into total chaos, how many of us could survive by hunting and gathering, or by ploughing and harvesting our own crops?

Indeed, how many of the crops we grow today even be grown from one year to the next, when so many of them are hybridized and almost completely incapable, biologically speaking, of surviving without the massive amounts of fertilizers, insecticides and other chemicals we spray and pour on them?

We think ourselves divorced from biology, but we're only one major crisis away from annihilationas a species.  Add to this the added stress of modern living, and our poor, hunter-gatherer-evolved bodies may just give out on us at any moment!  Somehow, that doesn't seem fair!

Worse yet, we eat fewer varieties of food than did our distant ancestors. Amongst tribal people that still exist in the world today, the base of staple foods available and eaten by them may cover more than 75 kinds of vegetable/plant foods, and about a dozen or more kinds of animal foods. Do you like ants or termites?  in some places these are a rich source of protein. How about fertile eggs from the nest of birds?  You know, the kind that occasionally you might get in your dozen - with the little birds half-formed inside?  YEUCH!, you might say, but YUMMY! says the "primitive" being who finds this treasure of food.

How often do you go hunting for wild mushrooms, or asparagus, or anything else that grows out there? Would you know any edible mushrooms if you found them? Did you know the many benefits of wild mushrooms? How they help your body maintain health on a cellular level, right down to the very DNA and RNA that helps you stay healthy?

Also, what kind of soil do most farms have these days, bathed as they are in chemicals that cause all sorts of interesting cellular effects within your body? I hate to imagine that chemical make up of most soil when I pass by and watch the corn grow tall. I'm not against corn - indeed, I love it! But just the same, the soil in any typical corn or wheat or soybean field is awash in things that can make you ill at best, or kill you at worst.

OK, this is just a quick survey of things that are different today than they were as our species evolved to fit a different kind of life biologically than we now experience socially.  And, like it or not, we have not evolved to eat the way we do today.  We still digest as our ancestors did a few hundred thousands of years ago, when they ate almost constantly, in small amounts, and were seldom to enjoy a gorging session such as we do at, say Thanksgiving, when we eat way too much, unbuckle the belt and groan in agony because we ate far too much for our ancient system to properly digest.

Yes, we eat like every day is a banquet, but our system, our digestive system to be exact, did not evolve to that kind of abundance and gorging.  So, what is a poor human being to do?

Glad you asked!

You can indeed grow your own vegetables, and add to the variety of foods you eat, but there are some things you need to know first. What kind of soil do you have? If your home is built over what was once a large farming operation, chances are you have residual chemicals in the soil. Some of these may inhibit the growth of certain kinds of plants. Others may be pesticides or fertilizers based on petroleum products - like little leaking oil wells in your backyard. Sorry, no Texas Tea, just poisonous chemicals.

If, however, your soil has had no history of years of chemicals sprayed on it, there still may be a few other danger signals, especially if it's an old industrial area, or if you like downwind of a factory, mill or steel plant, even if it went out of business years ago.

So, if you are fortunate to have good soil, clean water and other healthy soil conditions, you can dig your garden and grow as much as you can. If you know how to can food, that can save it for the colder months of winter, or when you can't expect a harvest from your garden. You will be better off than most people. That only thing now to consider is - do you have the time to do this kind of work? If so, then have fun! Gardening is a great thing to do!

But if not, how can you get the nutrients you need to survive as a healthy human being? Well, you can take advantage of local organic food clubs, and you can buy from local truck farms, being sure always to check if they use chemicals or not. (Many do, but not all!)

Well, the sad truth is that most of us do not have the time or space to grow enough food to tide our families over the coming year. And most of us do not want to bother with canning and bottling foods for the pantry. So, most of us will be left to wonder, how do we get the nutrients necessary to keep our bodies in excellent health?

Again, glad you asked!  Today we have many products which claim to assist a busy lifestyle, to give us all the nutrition we need to get through the day.  I'll be discussing one specific product that I use and how it has helped me so far.  But until I start hub 2 on this subject, i won't mention it by name.

What I like about this product is that it works on a cellular level, getting right down to the DNA that is the blueprint of life.  Many people do not know that DNA needs many things to keep it healthy so that each copy made from it remains true to the original.  But our bodies will often make do if the right nutrients are not there. 

However, because of that make-do factor, the copies eventually get poorer and poorer, much like if you photocopy a photocopy of a photocopy, and so on.  Each copy gets paler and less distinct.  It's much the same with your DNA, and once it gets to a certain level or indistinctness, you die.  Either by cancer, heart disease, illness, ageing, or some other "natural" cause.  No a great thing to have happen, especially if you can avoid this degeneration of your DNA for a much longer time than you might have imagined.

Without shamelessly plugging the product I use, i will give you some basic info. First of all, as complex beings, our bodies create about 300 billion new cells daily. These cells are built using the food we eat, the minerals, nutrients and other things we put into our digestive system.

Now as I said earlier, our guts were meant to be fed in small amounts, throughout the day, so that stuffing our bellies full leads to some nasty problems, the least of which is discomfort, the worst of which is that we have a gut full of food that will not be properly digested.

Now I don't care if you believe in evolution or not, but look at our closest cousins on this planet, the Great Apes, Chimps and other larger primates. They eat mostly plant material, constantly, all day long. Gorillas will stuff themselves until they bloat, and then they lay around like uncle Joe on the couch after a holiday meal, dozing off, burping and farting, basically trying to digest too much food in too little time. Chimps seldom do this, though. their basic diet is that of fruits, nuts, insects, smaller primates, all of which they eat in a grazing-like manner, eating it on the spot, but seldom stuffing themselves. They eat all day but never get fat. When they eventually die, they are in their 60's or 70's. Most of the time they die because they can no longer escape their enemies and get hunted by - you guessed it - other primates, mostly Human beings. Centuries and centuries ago, other predators got them. One has to wonder just how long could a chimp survive without predators? Our circus chimps live into their 70's, and many of them eat human-style diets, some were taught to smoke, all of them love sweets.

But I digress in my pondering!

Back to us stuffing ourselves! Eventually the food gets through our digestive systems, and then we all know what trouble we have trying to expel the fecal remains of that dinner out when it's too hard and we groan and strain (a dangerous, stroke-causing action!). We, like the gorillas, do not learn the lesson, or maybe we just simply think that's the way it is! Biologically, it is not. And we are still, deny it or not, biological creatures.

OK, so if we eat foods that are not rich in the nutrients, minerals and other things we need, and then we tend to stuff ourselves at mealtimes, how does our body get all that it needs to build those healthy 300 billion new cells each day?

The truth is, it rarely does!

Starting more than 40 years ago, scientists began to discover what we need on a cellular basis to maintain youth, health and vigor as our chronological age advances. What they discovered after millions of dollars worth of research is that we modern human beings are actually in a starvation mode when it comes to feeding our bodies all the things we need to repair damages, build new cells and do the things we need to get done in order to survive. Remember that survival thing I spoke of earlier? Well, just because we might have computers and automobiles doesn't remove us from the need to feed our bodies with everything its needs to survive! we are still biological creatures and thus still need all the same nutrients our ancestors needed, only more so because of the greater stresses in our lives, now that we are "civilized".

The scientists worked on cellular nutrition until they discovered what our bodies need to be in the best of health all through our lives. Because our DNA needs to remain healthy in order to create 300 billion new cells each day, and each of those 300 billion cells need to be perfect copies of the cells being replaced, believe me, we really need excellent nutrition! Imagine building 300 million of anything - say cars - and then slowly running out of parts. What could you use in place of the missing parts? Made-up, inferior parts? Quite honestly, yes, that is what you would use.

Your boss, in our case our bodies, wishing as they do to remain alive, keeps demanding 300 billion new cells each day, no matter if all the parts are there or not! So we improvise, just as our DNA will as it creates new cells. But each improvisation leaves us just that much worse off, because the cells will not be perfect copies - they will be improvised copies!

And that is where I will leave you in part one. Watch for Part 2 of this where I'll describe the Anabolic and Catabolic metabolisms and how they affect you as you grow chronologically older.

OK, take the poll below and then check out the links I have provided.

Thanks for reading this rather long hub and I hope it helps you understand a little more about who you are, on a cell-by-cell basis!