Cellular Nutrition
To date it has been established that human cells require 59 different substances in order to operate effectively. The only way the body can acquire these substances is by breathing them (in the case of gases) or by ingesting them as food or drinks. The question arises as to what range of different foods in what quantities are needed to provide all these substances in sufficient amounts to keep the body operating at peak efficiency. When research was conducted on the eating habits of 21,500 people in the USA it was found that only 3% were eating balanced nutritious diets and not one person was consuming the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of the ten most essential nutrients.

During the 1990's a lot of medical research has been carried out in an effort to determine what quantities of these various nutrients are required for the human body to operate at its peak level of performance. One thing that has been established is that the RDA's which were developed fifty years ago are sufficient to prevent the onset of diseases like scurvy, but are insufficient to prevent the onset of the chronic degenerative diseases that we are examining.

A whole new set of standards is currently being established to achieve this aim. The way that these nutrients get into our bodies is via the foods that we eat, so the question is which foods in which combinations provide the optimum fuel mixture, and whether or not nutritional supplementation is required.

This becomes complicated because recent research has shown that even the natural foods that we eat don't contain the levels of nutrients that they did 100 years ago. Farmers nowadays routinely use only NPK fertilisers (nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium), as that is all that plants need to flourish, but all the other essential minerals that have been removed from the soil with previous crops are not replaced.

However, Paul Bragg, Dr George Malkmus and Dr Lorraine Day are three examples of well known people who have established that if you follow a strict dietary regime, you can prevent and cure chronic degenerative diseases using nutritional and stress reduction techniques without supplementation. It would not be appropriate for me to try and precis their writings, but I recommend that everyone take advantage of their experiences and learn from them.

The problem that arises however is that of actually getting people in the western world to comply with their strict dietary regimes. Unfortunately it normally only happens after people are struck down by a serious illness. They then decide all of a sudden to take the whole health issue a lot more seriously. Unfortunately for many it is either too late or they never discover that their bodies are quite capable of healing themselves given the right environment.

Another approach to the problem is to look at your ancestral diet. If people ate what their great grandparents did 100 years ago they would find that their bodies' biochemistries would be much more in line with the ideal situation (remember the five isolated communities), and they would retain their health much longer. To do this we need to maximise some foods and minimise others:

• We should maximise natural foods, especially vegetables (preferably uncooked), fruits, nuts, fish, eggs and butter. Organic white meat is fine. Eat unprocessed honey if you need something sweet.
  
  
• We should minimise, or preferably eliminate, sugar (which includes sweets, lollies, jams, cakes, biscuits, tarts and softdrinks), caffeine, fatty foods, white flour products and processed foods including margarine. We should limit the consumption of red meat but don't eliminate it. Many people in the population are allergic or sensitive to dairy products without realising it. These are not necessary for good health, and should be minimised or eliminated.
  
  
• We should all know the glycemic index of the carbohydrates. This is a measure of the rate at which they break down into glucose and release into the bloodstream, eg, sucrose (from cane sugar) is higher than lactose (from milk) which is higher than fructose (from fruit). A rapid rise in blood sugar levels causes insulin to be released and this signals the body to remove excess glucose from the blood and store it in muscle cells and as fat. It is important to eat low glycemic index meals. Charts of glycemic index are readily available.

Although the average lifespan has increased in the last 100 years, this has been principally due to the significant reductions in infant and child death rates and the much lower incidence of infectious diseases (all of which have been brought about by the improvements in hygiene and the advances in western medicine). However the rate at which we are contracting chronic degenerative diseases is increasing, so the increase in average life span has not been as great as it could have been if we were able to slow down the rate at which these diseases were being contracted.

A lot of interesting new discoveries have been made by medical researchers in the 90's. It has been found for example that having too low a cholesterol is as bad as having one that is too high. Death rates increase as cholesterol drops, due not to heart disease but to cancer and suicide. Cholesterol is manufactured by the body and is essential for a healthy immune system. Remember the Pritikin diet which correctly removed all the above things but also removed all fats and oils and resulted in very low cholesterol readings? Pritikin himself is reported to have contracted cancer and committed suicide.

Another recent discovery concerning cholesterol is that the LDL - the so-called bad cholesterol which forms plaque in the arteries - will only do so after it has become oxidised. If high strength antioxidant supplements are being used the chances of plaque forming in the arteries are greatly reduced. It has been found that homocysteine levels are a much more relevant indicator of the chances of plaque forming in the arteries than cholesterol is.

Consequently a mid range cholesterol reading combined with the use of strong antioxidants gives us the best chance of avoiding both heart disease and cancer.

Our foods do not generally contain the nutrients that they did 100 years ago, as the soils do not contain the minerals that they did prior to the days of modern high intensity farming methods, but our foods also lose a lot of nutrients during transport and processing. Part of the solution is to ensure that only natural organic foods are consumed, but it is often difficult to obtain these foods.

Another option is nutritional supplementation, which puts the missing nutrients back into the foods. Dr Michael Colgan has shown that the performance of athletes can be markedly improved with supplementation. Other researchers have shown that nutritional supplementation can reduce the incidence of chronic degenerative diseases.

Read on to see how nutritional supplementation can reduce the incidence of chronic degenerative diseases.