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Life Span Nutrition Part 3
The Basic Equation of Life
The balance between the AOMs and LSMs is the
basic equation of life. In scientific jargon, it is called redox reaction. The redox
equilibrium (or potential as it is sometimes called) determines the health and life of
foods as it determines the health and life of people, animals and plants.
Human biology is an ever-changing kaleidoscope of
molecular mosaics. AOMs and LSMs are in dynamic equilibrium at all times. Health and
disease — at energy, electron and molecular levels — can be defined as the
states created by the impact of AOMs and LSMs on an individual's genetic makeup. Health,
in this light, may be seen as a dynamic state in which the LSMs have the upper hand, and
preserve the structural and functional integrity of cells and tissues. Disease, by
contrast, is a state in which AOMs overwhelm the LSMs and cause dis-ease and disease.
I call the clinical practice of medicine founded
on this basic equation of life molecular medicine, a medicine of future that seeks to
reverse the basic cause of disease rather than simply suppress the symptoms with drugs. In
acute illness, we need drugs or surgical scalpels. In chronic disease, nondrug treatment
protocols of nutritional medicine, environmental medicine, medicine of self-regulation and
fitness offer clearly superior long-term results.
How Do We Age?
Human frames age when their body organ age.
Human body organs age when their tissues age.
Human tissues age when their cells age.
Human cells age when their molecules age.
Human molecules age when they lose their plasticity.
How do molecules lose their plasticity? By oxidative injury.
Oxidative molecular damage, then, is the true nature of molecular aging.
Molecular Duality of Oxygen
Oxygen builds molecules.
Oxygen lacerates, mutilates and destroys molecules.
Oxygen sustains life.
Oxygen terminates life.
How does a log of wood burn to give us fire for
cooking our meals? It requires oxygen to burn. It burns with oxygen. In the process of
burning, the log yields its energy and turns into ashes. Oxygen serves our body tissues in
exactly the same way. Food materials yield their chemical bond energy as they are burned
by oxygen. We use this energy both for the processes of life and for building up our body
stores of energy for periods when foods may not be available to us.
How do our enzymes build the molecules for the
structure and function of the various tissues in our body? With oxygen. Oxygen and enzymes
do not seem to care about our notions of eating or dieting. I am convinced our metabolic
enzymes still do not know about our refrigerators, our food stamp programs, and about our
grain silos. The enzymes maintain a high level of preparedness for a famine even when we
indulge in heavy eating. They do not know where our next meal might come from or whether
or not there will be a next meal.
Oxygen is a molecular Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde.
Human nutrition cannot be understood
without understanding the duality of oxygen. This is the master stroke of nature. What
brings forth life also terminates life.
Threat of extinction by accelerated
oxidative injury — an insight from nature.
Mankind faces a clear threat of extinction today.
We have enormously increased the aging-oxidant stress on our tissues. The molecules of
stress of modern life (adrenaline and its cousin molecules) are powerful oxyradicals.
Toxic metals leached from the soil by acid rain and poured into our cells with drinking
water are powerful oxyradicals. Pesticides and fungicides are designer killer molecules
because they are oxyradicals. Antibiotics kill bad germs as well as good germs. They act
as powerful oxyradicals. Industrial pollutants are powerful oxyradicals. Indeed, we live
beneath an avalanche of synthetic chemicals that act as oxyradicals, directly or
indirectly.
Proto-eukaryotes were tiny single-cell ancestors
of our cells. Early proto-eukaryotes of planet Earth were sustained by a largely
oxygen-free atmosphere. Their survival was threatened as blue algae acquired
photosynthetic activity (ability to convert solar energy into chemical bond energy) and
began to release large quantities of oxygen into the atmosphere. Pro-karyotes are another
type of single-cell organisms that can utilize oxygen. In the late 1960s, Lynn Margulis,
Ph.D., of Massachusetts, proposed that mitochondria and certain other cellular organelles
evolved from certain oxygen-utilizing prokaryotes that migrated into the bodies of
proto-eukaryotes. Mitochondria, I described earlier in the chapter On the Nature of
Obesity, are tiny sausage-shaped structures within the cells that contain energy
generating oxidative enzymes of cells.
In this symbiotic relationship between the
proto-karyotes and pro-karyotes, the former provided prokaryotes a safe environment. The
prokaryotes, in turn, saved proto-karyotes from oxygen toxicity. The Margulis theory was
validated by subsequent studies. Can man evolve new molecular defenses rapidly enough to
protect him from extinction by oxyradicals? The answer: Molecular evolution occurs over a
period of millions of years. Molecular evolution cannot be served up as a take-out meal.
We need a new and a different view of our molecules, of our tissues, of the life around
us, of our planet Earth.
What are the clinical implications of this
viewpoint of aging in man? Oxygen is a molecular Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Life-sustaining
aspects of oxygen are well understood in clinical medicine. Life-terminating capability of
oxygen is generally ignored. Man today faces extinction by accelerated oxidative molecular
damage much like proto-eukaryotes did during an earlier era. This accelerated oxidative
stress is caused by the impact upon his genetic makeup of an enormous overload of
aging-oxidant molecules on his internal and external environment. What are the best
strategies for health promotion and reversal of chronic immunologic and degenerative
disorders? These are the strategies that address all aspects of accelerated oxidative
molecular injury. These are the clinical management protocols of nutritional medicine,
environmental medicine, medicine of self-regulation and medicine of fitness. Integrated
applications of such management protocols is the clinical practice of molecular medicine.
What is the language of molecular injury?
Oxidation.
What is the language of molecular
recovery?
Reduction.
What is the language of molecular aging?
Oxidative molecular injury.
What is the true nature of the aging process?
Spontaneity of oxidation in nature.
Life Spans of Foods
Foods, like people and plants, have their life
spans. The life span of food items is determined by the balance between their AOMs and
LSMs, just as it occurs in people and plants. Food items contain sugars, proteins and fats
for their own metabolism. We consume foods as components of our food chain. Foods also
contain enzymes, vitamins and minerals, again to preserve their own life span and health.
Food molecules get injured and get sick the same way people do.
Electron transfer, free radical production and
destruction, enzymatic detoxification, and metabolic breakdown occur in food molecules in
ways that are very similar to those in the human body. Furthermore, the life span of food
items is preserved by mechanisms that are almost identical to ours.
Is the concept of life span of foods relevant to
life span nutrition? Are the life span mechanisms of foods of concern to us?
FOODS SPOIL BY OXIDATIVE DAMAGE
Foods spoil due to molecular oxidative stress.
Let us consider some examples.
An apple falls on the kitchen floor and is
bruised. Hours later, the pulp under the bruised area of skin becomes softened and turns
color. How does it happen? Apple skin contains bioflavinoids that serve as apple
antioxidants and prevent oxygen in the air from causing oxidative injury to the skin and
the pulp beneath it. When the skin of the apple is bruised with a fall, it develops tiny
microscopic cracks. Oxygen in the air gains entry into the substance of the apple skin and
apple pulp and activates the aging-oxidative enzymes contained in the cells there. Unlike
human tissues, the apple "tissues" do not have much capacity for generating life
span molecules. The expected result: The apple skin and pulp are oxidatively damaged, turn
brown and spoil.
Lettuce is rich in vitamin C, a strong life span
molecule. Vitamin C, along with other plant LSMs contained in lettuce, prevents oxidative
browning and spoiling of lettuce. When lettuce is finely chopped and exposed to oxygen in
the air, it suffers the same oxidative damage as that of a bruised apple. Within several
minutes, sixty to eighty percent of vitamin C and other LSMs contained in lettuce get
oxidized. Within some hours, lettuce is oxidatively damaged, turns brown and spoils.
Fresh flaxseed oil is pale gold and has a
pleasant flavor. Linseed seeds are rich in omega-6 oils that serve the seed as its LSMs.
The seeds of the flaxseed plant carry omega-6 oils to preserve their own health and to use
them as a source of energy. Omega-6 oils are high-energy molecules. Animals and people eat
plant foods like flaxseed seeds and draw their supply of these essential fatty acids.
Omega-6 oils stabilize cell plasma membranes and keep these membranes fluid and
functional. In nature, high-energy molecules show a natural tendency to lose their
electrons and "decay" into lower-level energy molecules. Fortunately, this is a
slow process. The seeds of the flaxseed and other plants use their LSMs to keep their
omega-6 oils in their native high-energy state for long periods of time. But the seed LSMs
are helpless against the mutilation of their molecules by our food processing
technologies.
The primary commitment of the food industry is to
its bottom line. It sees profits in longer shelf lives of its foods. So what does it do?
It processes the flaxseed oil to increase its shelf-life, and in doing so changes
high-energy state oils into low-energy state molecules. The "clear" oils so
produced do not spoil for long periods because there is not much left in them to spoil.
And that's not all. During processing, the food oils get oxidized, partially denatured,
and contaminated with variable quantities of toxic cyclic products of fat breakdown.
Flaxseed oil is oxidatively damaged and spoils. The food technology starts with a life
span oil and turns it into an aging-oxidant oil.
Flaxseed oil should be purchased only if packaged
in dark brown or black bottles (to reduce the rate of oxidation by light energy), 1000 to
3000 units of vitamin E should be added to slow down the natural rate of oxidation, and
the bottle should be refrigerated. Needless to say, flaxseed oil should be taken cold, as
a salad dressing ingredient or simply as food supplement.
In the above three examples, the life span of
foods is shortened and the nutritive value of food markedly diminished by premature
oxidative damage of foods.
Injured foods injure healthy tissues.
This is self-evident but seldom fully
appreciated. The four whites (white flour, white sugar, white rice and white oil) are
prime examples of how we injure our foods. These are also prime examples of how injured
foods injure our tissues. Our tissues can be expected to prematurely age, and they do,
when we sustain them with prematurely aged foods.
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