Life Span Nutrition An Introduction

Life span nutrition is a philosophy of food
and its relationship to the human condition.

Life span nutrition means respecting food so it can respect us.

Life span nutrition is not a "diet". It is knowing what we eat. It is knowing how food affects us after we eat it — after some minutes, after some hours, after some days, after some months and after some years. It is knowing how the food we eat affects our life span.

Life span nutrition is neither euphoria of eating nor denial of dieting. Life span nutrition is not about martyrdom before we eat or guilt after it. It is not about calorie counting. It is not about dieting. It is not about   starving - gorging - starving cycles. Life span nutrition is not about "low sugar," "high protein," "low fat" or "mega vitamin" regimens. Life span nutrition is not about losing weight, though loss of excess weight occurs as a natural consequence of knowing the relationship between food and life.

Life span nutrition is a lifelong interest. It is about feeling better, looking better, and living better. It is about a slow and sustained change in the way we think about food, feel about it, and are nourished by it.

My philosophy of life span nutrition evolved over several years of clinical work with persons with severe immune and degenerative disorders. It represents a blending of the enormous intuitive wisdom of the ancients in matters of food and my concept that spontaneity of oxidation in nature is the essential cause of the aging process, and by natural extension of pre-mature aging, dis-ease, disease and death.

Foods, like people, have their life spans. Foods, like people, can either live out their normal life spans or they can be subjected to premature aging. Just as we humans suffer from degenerative diseases when we abuse our bodies (or when viruses and bacteria abuse us), our foods suffer from degenerations when they are abused by toxic fumigants, pesticides and chemical preservatives. It is one of the great ironies of our time that we abuse our foods by using preservatives. Foods may be eaten while they are young and healthful or when they have grown old and degenerated.

The subject of human life span cannot be separated from the subject of life span of our foods.

Each living thing must one day die. If it had not been so for one single life form, that life form would have lived for ever and would have crowded out all other forms of life from the planet Earth.

If one species of fish had lived for ever, it would have filled up all the oceans, seas, rivers and lakes on our planet. There would have been no room for any other species of fish. Or for any other form of life in the water, any mollusk, any crab, any algae. If one single species of plant or animal on earth were to be exempt from nature's "law of death", that plant or animal would have packed every inch of the land.

Life must be preceded by death. Life, it seems to me, can be understood only through death.

How did nature design this death-life-death cycle? Nature is master planner. It is an ingenious designer. It has its own economy. It rarely errs. It is self-correcting.

 Recycling life is one of nature's master stroke.

Oxidation is nature's grand design for assuring that no life form lives for ever. Nature made oxidation a spontaneous process. It requires no expenditure of energy. It needs no external cues or outside programming. In scientific jargon, oxidation is defined as loss of electron by atoms and molecules. A molecule is a group of atoms bonded together. Electrons are the tiniest packets of energy. When atoms and molecules lose electrons, they lose energy. In oxidation, high-energy atoms and molecules are changed into lower-energy level atoms and molecules. This is the essence of the phenomenon of aging.

In the mid-sixties, Bjorksten and Harmon put forth their theories of protein cross-linking and free radical injury respectively as the basic mechanisms of the aging process. Healthy threadlike protein molecules normally occur in different sizes. Individual molecules are bent and turned and twisted into many different shapes. Yet, they fight hard to preserve their individuality. The term cross-linking means these molecules are torn apart and when the ends unite, they get tangled with each other and form crooked protein molecules. Cross-linked molecules are two molecules wrapped around each other in such a way that neither can function normally. What molecular events cause protein cross-linking? Oxidative injury. It is the oxidant molecules that tear apart the health protein molecules and lead to tangling and cross-linking of these molecules.

How does free radical injury begin? With oxidative injury. Free radicals are highly unstable, extremely reactive atoms or molecules that form when oxidant molecules injure other molecules. Aging of human tissues and molecules cannot take place by free radical injury unless these radicals are first produced as a result of oxidation. It follows that spontaneity of oxidation in human tissues, and oxidative molecular injury that results, may be regarded as the true nature of the aging process in man. Tissue capacity for anti-oxidant generation (production of life span molecules to control the aging-oxidant molecules and related molecules called oxyradicals) is determined by certain genetic and acquired factors. Life span molecules so produced provide the essential molecular counterbalance to spontaneous oxidation. I draw the evidence for this viewpoint from a large body of clinical and experimental data.

THE AGING-OXIDANT MOLECULES

During the early period of the development of my theory of life span and aging-oxidant foods, I often wondered if these terms were suitable for communicating my ideas of health and fitness to my patients. I started using these terms tentatively in my seminars on nutrition for the life span. I soon discovered that patients without any biology background at all could understand these terms, and the essential ideas behind their use, easily and effortlessly. Indeed, people found the simplified concept of molecular aging, disease and death described with these two terms a useful framework for understanding nutrition. Below is a brief explanation of these terms.

The AOMs exist to assure that no life forms lives forever. These molecules are present in each flower, each plant, each animal and each person. These are powerful molecules, fully capable of instantaneously burning all tissues. The AOMs can be divided into two broad categories: the internal metabolic AOMs and the external synthetic and natural toxic AOMS. The examples of the first category include aging-oxidant metabolic enzymes, minerals, proteins, fats and stress molecules. The external AOMs include industrial pollutants, petrochemicals, synthetic household chemicals, antibiotics, pesticides and herbicides. Radioactivity, ultraviolet waves and other forms of radiation do not come under the strict definition of AOMs, but readily generate AOMs by acting upon various atoms and molecules.

THE LIFE SPAN MOLECULES

Life span molecules are molecules that provide a counterbalance to aging-oxidant molecules. These molecules exist to assure that the aging-oxidant molecules do not cause instant combustion of all living forms. As each flower, each plant, each animal and each person is made up of AOMs, so it is made up of LSMs. LSMs exist to provide a counterbalance to AOMs. These molecules "neutralize" AOMs and prevent unwanted tissue damage. It is their responsibility is to assure that each life form gets the opportunity to live out its normal life span in health, and with vigor and vitality. Examples of such molecules are vitamins, essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, essential minerals, and other antioxidants.

 ENZYMES: LIFE FORCE OF FOODS IN NATURE.

Enzymes are molecules that separate living organisms from nonliving objects. Enzymes are catalysts in biologic reactions; these molecules facilitate reactions between other molecules but in general are not used up in those reactions. They "make things happen" between other molecules. Indeed, enzymes are life.

Foods in nature are living things. Enzymes are what gives foods in Nature their life. Indeed, enzymes are the life in foods. If this is true, why is the subject of enzymes in human nutrition almost completely neglected by our nutrition experts? The answer to this question has something to do with the limitations of the available methods of scientific inquiry. The prevailing research models do not allow us to fully understand the quality of life in enzymes.

Man has not been able to fully understand what life is. His science has not been able to define what life is. Since the time modern man walked out of the Rift Valley in central Africa (or so paleohistorians want us to believe), he has searched for the true meaning of what life is and has failed consistently. In frustration, he has expressed the essential nature of life as vital force, life force, energy force, or simply vitality. Indeed, the poet and the philosopher have always been closer to describing the quality of life than the scientist.

Returning to the subject of enzymes in foods, it is essential to recognize that what brings proteins, fats, carbohydrates and minerals to life is enzymes. Without enzymes, these substances would be nothing but lifeless masses of molecules. Casimer Funk recognized the vital importance of some substances to health, and his "substances" were called vitamins. Most vitamins are enzymes. Those that do not meet the biochemical characteristics to be considered enzymes, primarily act to facilitate enzymes.

To understand what enzymes are and how they function, let us consider the example of automobile wheels moving on a road surface. When the road surface is dry, the wheels "hug" the road and the driver is in easy command of his vehicle. When it rains and the road surface is wet, the wheels do not hug the road as well. The driver senses this change and slows down to improve his control over his vehicle. During a freezing rain, ice prevents the wheels from hugging the road surface, and the vehicle slides uncontrollably. If the driver does not slow down his vehicle to a crawl or a stop, he may find himself in a ditch by the roadside. How does this happen? The answer: The water reduces the friction between the tire and the road (facilitates the "reaction" between the two). The play of the tire on the road surface is looser and freer, and it loses its grip on the road surface. The driver senses some difficulty of control. When water freezes, the smooth surface of the ice almost completely eliminates friction between the tire and the road surface. The driver cannot cope with such rapid play of the tire on the road and unless he slows down.

In the above analogy, water acts as an enzyme. It is not used up but simply facilitates the movement ("reaction") between the surfaces of the tire and the road (reduces friction between the two in common language). So enzymes are life molecules that make things happen in living organisms.

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