How food affects our lives
Most of us are used to eating without thinking. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are rituals that have accompanied us since childhood and very often we repeat our parents’ eating habits and eat automatically. The accelerated pace of life in recent decades leaves us less and less time to devote to eating: we often eat on the go, stop for fast food, grab a snack at work, wolf down breakfast while reading the news and watch the Dinner Fern. Nutrition is responsible for more than 50% of our long-term health and the emergence of the worst diseases of the century and has a profound impact on our vitality and everyday performance. And for this reckless inattention to what we eat, we pay the price with our health. And it’s hard not to agree with that.
Food is life
It seems trivial: no organism can exist without the nutrients it needs, and the food chain is the basis of all life on earth. But the keyword here is essential. Food provides energy and building blocks for every cell in our body. When our bodies aren’t getting enough of the right nutrients, our metabolism goes haywire and our health suffers. But not only, and not only in the case of hunger, which is a rarity in industrialized countries today, can there be nutritional deficiencies. You can eat enough or even more than the norm, but not as much as you need, and you’re just as likely to be deficient in certain nutrients. Often, when patients come to see a doctor or nutritionist, when asked how you eat, they respond, “Normal!” or “Good”. Then, after an intensive conversation, it turns out that we are talking about a sufficient amount of traditional food: salads with mayonnaise, dumplings, a lot of dough dishes, sausages and few vegetables.
Food is vital to our health
Food plays a vital role in our health; they can be both poison and medicine. But when the body is supplied with high-calorie foods, one often complains of tiredness and chronic diseases cannot be ruled out with age. The reason for this is simple: a hearty, filling meal is no guarantee that your body is getting the right nutrients. As a rule, the body lacks some substances and there is an oversupply of others, which also has a negative effect on health.
How Food Affects Metabolism
When our diet is deficient in essential nutrients, or when we are regularly under-supplied, metabolic processes slow down or even come to a standstill. That’s why, in recent years, healthy eating experts have recommended focusing more on what foods to include in your diet than what foods to eliminate. Many scientists are inclined to believe that diseases such as metabolic syndrome, obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, and some cancers may be caused in part by diet, or rather by a whole range of disorders in it the functioning of various organs and systems, which in turn are partly due to nutritional deficiencies or imbalances. To prevent these diseases from developing, it is necessary to understand how different nutrients interact with each other, how they affect different functions of our body and how they are involved in the development of chronic diseases. Functional medicine addresses these issues. Specialists in this field of medicine do not focus on a specific organ, but on the functioning of the entire system and its interaction with other systems. Immune problems can be caused by disorders in the gastrointestinal tract, for example, since 80% of the immune system is located there. Focus more on what foods you include in your diet than what foods you exclude. Another example is cardiovascular disease. Oxidative stress, elevated cholesterol or homocysteine levels, high blood pressure, stress, increased glucose tolerance, etc. all contribute to their development. All of these factors can be influenced by diet. It’s not so much the individual foods that matter, but the diet of the individual as a whole. Experts consider the Mediterranean diet to be one of the healthiest food systems in this regard.
Foods and Diseases of the Century
Deficiencies in certain nutrients and excess empty calories from most refined foods contribute to the development of obesity and metabolic syndrome, which in turn lead to insulin resistance and type 2 over time -Diabetes can result. Incidentally, this process is to a certain extent reversible, and proper nutrition in the pre- and early stages of diabetes can completely halt the further development of the disease. The imbalance of the different fractions of cholesterol (an excess of bad cholesterol and a lack of good cholesterol) in the blood is also strongly influenced by diet. Excessive consumption of trans fats and saturated fats found in red meat, poultry skin, butter and fatty dairy products, as well as insufficient consumption of unsaturated fats found in vegetable oils and essential fatty acids, especially fish, lead to imbalances in healthy blood cholesterol fractions. This causes atherosclerotic plaques to form, which attach to the walls of the arteries and narrow them – increasing the risk of heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular diseases. Of course, this connection is not so easy to see. The body needs different fats and they are absorbed differently – the process is individual. Chronic dehydration, which many of us suffer unknowingly, leads to blood clotting and high blood pressure, while chronic high blood pressure and high blood viscosity are important risk factors for blood clots, which can rupture and clog arteries, leading to heart attacks and strokes, and venous disease (thrombophlebitis). . These are just a few examples of how poor nutrition can affect our health. In any case, it’s important to realize that you can’t protect yourself from disease by cutting out a few “bad” foods or consuming an excessive number of “miracle foods.” But when you provide your body with the nutrients it needs through a balanced diet, you can reduce your risk of chronic disease and increase your overall energy levels. The most important thing is that you realize that there is no one-size-fits-all recommendation. You need to listen to your body’s needs and stick to the basics of functional nutrition.
