Essential 4: Eat Nutritiously
 
Food has a powerful impact on your body. Everyday, food, in large part, determines how you feel and how your body functions. A balanced diet rich in whole foods, combined with quality nutritional supplements created to meet your specific needs, will give you the energy you require today, and the disease-fighting strength you need to build a healthy future.

Physiology
 
Food contains the body’s energy sources and building blocks for maintenance and repair. Eating nutritiously is essential to short and long-term health. Eating triggers digestion, the process in which the food you eat is converted into fuel. Digestion starts in the mouth, where food is mixed with saliva for easier chewing and swallowing.
 
After food is swallowed, it travels down the esophagus into the stomach. The stomach stretches as it fills, and works as a food mixer and as an acid and enzyme bath. Every few minutes, the stomach contracts and squeezes and churns the food into a semi-liquid. Only a few nutrients are absorbed into the body from the stomach—most digestion occurs in the small intestine.
 
The small intestine is populated with friendly bacteria that make important nutrients like Vitamin K, and help break down nutrients in your food. Chemical digestion continues in the small intestine. The last two-thirds of the small intestine are lined with millions of finger-shaped structures called villi. There are up to 4,000 villi in an area the size of a fingernail. Digested nutrient molecules pass through the villi’s thick outer covering, and are carried away by the blood and lymph fluids.
 
The large intestine forms the waste products from the digestive process into a semi-solid mass that is excreted.
 
 Nutrients are carried by the blood and lymph fluids to your hungry cells, where they are used for energy, cellular reproduction and repair.
 
 Symptoms of Imbalance
 
 • Disease
 o Heart Disease
 o Cancer
 o Diabetes
 o Stroke
 o Deficiency Diseases
 • Lack of energy, stamina
 • Increased pain
 • Irritability and nervousness
 • Weak bones and muscles
 • Poor cognitive function
 • Poor circulation
 • Poor organ function
 • Digestive difficulties
 • DNA mutation
 
 Health Threats
 
 Short-term: The food you eat has a profound and speedy impact on your body. Refined sugars and caffeine lead to edginess and irritability. Too many starches drain you of energy and stamina. Excess food consumption leads to immediate food storage as fat. Highly-processed and fatty foods can cause digestive difficulties like heartburn, gas and bloating.
 
 Long-term: Four of the top five killers in America—Heart Disease, Cancer, Diabetes, and Stroke—are all strongly tied to diet. What you eat, now and in the future, has long-term impact on your health.
Highly-processed foods, saturated fats and refined sugars not only damage your health and leave you vulnerable to disease, they replace the health-giving foods your body needs to produce energy and rebuild and rejuvenate its structures.
 
Points to Consider:
 
• Food is the most powerful drug you consume
• Whole, fresh foods contain a vast array of nutrients—processed foods have most of their nutrients stripped away during processing and packaging, leaving your body lacking in essential nutrients
• The nutritional value of the food you eat is important. Foods that are high in calories, but lacking in nutrition, are often substituted for foods that are high in vitamins, minerals, natural enzymes and fiber—with significant health consequences
• Cooking foods depletes their nutrients. Eat as many raw, unprocessed, fresh foods as possible
• Portions do matter. Your stomach comfortably holds an amount of food approximately the size of your fist—pay attention to your body and stop eating when you are satisfied, not full
• Your body is always hungry for the nutrients it needs. If you eat foods lacking in nutrition, your cells will remain hungry
• Your body produces 19 different digestive enzymes based on your average diet. When you incorporate new foods into your diet, even healthy ones, you may experience gas and heartburn while your body adjusts to producing a new balance of enzymes
• There are different classes of nutrients, and they do different things inside your body
• Vitamins are organic compounds required by the body and in most cases, must be taken in through food and nutritional supplementation. Vitamins help regulate the metabolism, are essential to enzymatic reactions, help convert fats and carbohydrates into energy, assist in bone and tissue formation and work with other nutrients to power vital bodily functions
• Minerals are vital substances that are needed in order for vitamins to be used, and must be ingested. Minerals make up parts of the bones, teeth, soft tissue, muscle, blood and nerve cells. Minerals are vital to overall mental and physical well-being and help prevent Osteoporosis, Anemia, fatigue, depression and mood swings
• Enzymes are the biochemical agents of life and are essential for the body to break down and use the nutrients taken in though food. Enzymes digest proteins, fats and carbohydrates; are essential for stamina, energy and vitality; help absorb and make use of all vitamins, minerals and nutrients; assist in the production of hormones and are necessary for the destruction or foreign invaders within the body
• Amino Acids form the building blocks of the body’s cells and contribute to the release of energy. They are essential for the proper function of every body system and are crucial to the growth process and maintenance of the body’s muscular system
 
 Substantiation
 
Researchers at Dunn Human Nutrition Unit in Cambridge examined 400,000 men and women throughout Europe and found that many cases of cancer are a result of low-fiber diets. Some foods found to be particularly harmful were salami, bacon, ham and hot dogs— these foods reportedly increase the risk of bowel cancer by 50% if eaten in large quantities.
 
According to new research by the American Institute for Cancer Research, about two-thirds of our diets should be plant-based foods, like healthful whole grains, fruits, veggies and beans, and the remaining third should be lean animal proteins, like poultry, fish, meat and dairy products.
 
A study, published in the journal Nutrition and Cancer, compared two groups of people prone to precancerous colorectal polyps. The study found that increasing calcium consumption from sources may reduce the risk of colon cancer by slowing the abnormal growth of cells that may eventually lead to colon cancer. The Journal of the American Medical Association reports two studies that looked at the effect of diet on memory in thousands of people found that antioxidants in food appear to shield the brain from Alzheimer’s disease. One study saw the effect from both Vitamin C and Vitamin E, while the other detected it in Vitamin E alone. In the June 19, 2002 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Drs. Kathleen M. Fairfield and Robert H. Fletcher of Harvard Medical School recommended that everybody—regardless of age or health status—take a daily multi-vitamin. Fletcher and Fairfield reviewed studies published between 1966 and 2002 that investigated the links between vitamin intake and diseases such as cancer and coronary heart disease. Studies have shown that taking the B Vitamin folic acid early in pregnancy can help prevent certain birth defects, while others have suggested the vitamin might cut the risk of certain cancers and heart disease. Other vitamins, such as Vitamin E, have been found to reduce cancer risk when consumed at recommended levels, and Vitamin D plus calcium supplements have been shown to decrease the risks of bone loss and fracture in the elderly.