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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