How does your nutrition affect your overall health?

Answer 1

Good question. Some people have more of an ability to deny themselves certain nutrients than others. Vitamin C was first discovered when a ship made a voyage, and certain products which were normally taken containing Vit. C were left out. One by one the people succumbed to Scurvy and then died. The last remaining sailor kept a detailed record of the strange symptoms and was the only Survivor to make it back to land. His chronicle read like a A,B,C of who could survive without that particular nutrient, with him obviously having a superior ability to abstain. Now; the effects of general poor diet are well known: Fatigue, listlessness, depression, anxiety, mood swings etc. are all very common symptoms.

The water soluble vitamins (of which Vitamin C is one) will be the first to be missed as, them dissolving in water; a daily supply is needed. The fat soluble are able to be stored in fat and so can be "topped up" periodically. Similarly; minerals (metals) are stored throughout the body and are less time dependent. However, minerals are dependent on each other for metabolisation. To see how this works you need a Mineral Co-dependency chart which has them all in a circle, with lines drawn from each one to the two, three and in some cases four other minerals upon which they depend. As we start to deny ourselves more and more different types of nutrients over time, so the list of symptoms and potential illnesses grows and can also become mitigating factors in other conditions and maladies. People have questioned the efficacy of Vitmins, but they are cheaper than their concomitant food sources, and there is a healthy list of people with a financial vested interest in claiming they do not work. Meat, fish, egg and other protein sources are important building blocks for your health also. Of the 21 amino acids, 12 are produced by your body from pretty much any old food, and the other 8 (yes, I know there's a bogus one...) are required to be got from your diet. Meat and fish are complete sources of protein, and there are many known combination vegetarian alternatives. Milk and egg, soya, rice and pulse all make complete protein. The problem is, it's easy getting your 50g. a day from steak or fish (a 7 oz. steak would do it), but there are no comprehensive charts breaking down what is in vegetables, save WHOLE FOOD GROUPS. So; you might know that so much PULSE yielded so much of a particular amino acid, but you couldn't narrow it down any better than that for a particular pulse; and so on... Furthermore, it is now known that most people produce less than one or more of the self synthesized proteins than they should, with less than perfect results in one or more others. A solution would be to take a 1g. complete amino acid tablet a day, and this should provide all 21 acids. Do not confuse this with what is called "complete" protein. It's only complete with what is normally required extra. A blood work out should identify any problems. Similarly; there are known symptoms to illnesses known to be caused by particular shortages and supplementation with individual amino acids will produce startling results if indeed that is a problem.

Iron is a problematic substance in diet. It is required to produce healthy blood, and red blood cells in particular. The phallicy that red meat is a good source of iron does not tell you that you'd need to consume a couple of kilos of steak a day to get enough. Check the top ten list of iron producing foods if in doubt. The problem is that that which is needed to produce blood is most often found in that which originally HAD blood, to wit: animals (inc. muscles, cockles and whelks which are top of the list) and so vegetarians need to be especially careful, lest they become anemic. For vegans B12 is another worry, and most people choose to eat yeast extract for this particular malady.

Getting back to Vit. C; every animal other than the human produces it's own supply. It is estimated it would be (scaling up to human size) about 2g. a day. That's 40 times the RDA (Recommended Daily Amount). Which could mean the RDA is seriously wrong. Being water soluble means you (effectively) can't overdose on it, but nutritionists recently dropped the maximum recommended dose from 5g. to 3g. although there have been people on many times more than this. Over three may cause diarrhea. Another scientist claimed that the "machine" which ought to produce our own Vit.C is present but of the hundreds of enzymes ONE is missing. Perhaps science will find a simple way to switch this back on. Certainly I've seen amazing results with cancer and megadose Vitamin C. The body simply doesn't like being block up. It leads to chemical depression. Toxins are produced as part of every day processes, and Vit.C is a powerful anti-oxidant which greatly helps the body to purge itself of unwanted poisons. It's great for "Microwave Sleeping" too, as sleep is merely to clear minerals deposited as part of the normal operation of the brain. The body can "sleep" at any time of the day, just merely by being at rest on a surface...

Despite people saying there is no difference to acid/alkaline balances in the blood by varying diet, yet this does not take into account the benefits of this approach to conditions such as IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) whereby the food is in contact with all of the intestinal tract/stomach and has not had time to be corrected by the body prior to making it's way (broken down) into the blood stream. People with very fine vein networks should consider using a water filter, especially if they have experienced repeated headaches (I'm counting water as a nutrient now also for the sake of completion). And; that's about it...