Never Be Sick Again (11 page)

You have just toured the human cell. Each cell has a wall— the membrane—whose purpose is to keep out toxins, bacteria, viruses and other harmful substances, while still allowing nutrients to reach inside where they are needed. The membrane also prevents healthy and necessary substances from leaking out of the cell, while still allowing waste products to be excreted. Powerhouses in the cell create energy and manufacturing plants make the finished products your body needs, such as neurotransmitters, hormones and antibodies. Your cells also have electrical and communication systems that help to keep everything working in balance. Cells have many important jobs to perform during every second of every day; anything that interferes with these tasks is a threat to health.

Every day hundreds of billions of cells need to be replaced. Building a new cell requires a long list of raw materials, similar to building a new car or a computer. If even one part is missing, the product will be defective, and if many parts are missing, malfunction is guaranteed. As each new cell is created, you are choosing either health or disease, depending on whether the new cells you are building are healthy or not.

You make this choice when you order at a fast-food drive-up window, when you stay up too late, when you spray cleaning products around your house, when you take your daily vitamin supplement or when you choose to take no supplements. Making a single bad choice here and there is generally not a problem, but when you consistently make bad choices, daily living can wear down your tissues faster than they can be repaired or replaced.

Building and Operating Healthy Cells

To be healthy, each day old cells must be replaced with new ones and each must perform all of its intended functions. Do you know what raw materials you need to build healthy cells? Are you eating the right foods—foods whose calories are packed with the building blocks required to make healthy new cells? Does anyone really believe it is possible to build healthy cells from coffee, donuts, white bread, pasta, potato chips, french fries and ice cream? How many of the raw materials necessary to build and operate healthy cells do these foods contain? The answer is not many, which is one reason that we have so much disease.

A chronic shortage of vitamins, minerals, water, oxygen or other nutrients causes your cells to malfunction. You may be unaware this malfunction is happening, particularly at the early stages, but a chronic shortage of even one nutrient eventually makes you sick. When shortages are chronic, the body stops repairing and self-regulating; cells then deteriorate into a diseased state or die.

Building healthy cells starts in a mother's womb. If an embryo suffers from a shortage of building materials or the presence of toxins, a child born with birth defects may be the result. During pregnancy, certain parts of the fetus are being constructed during specific weeks—such as the brain and nervous system, the circulatory system and the digestive system. If essential raw materials are unavailable at that crucial time or toxins are present, any of these systems can be affected, perhaps manifested as heart defects, digestive problems, lower I.Q., attention deficit disorders and so on. We're not talking about genetic defects here, but defects that result from building a baby in an unhealthy environment. In extreme situations, the construction process simply shuts down and the fetus is naturally aborted—an ever-increasing occurrence in our society.

A newborn baby's health is the product of the genetic material from the parents
and
the supply of building materials and presence of toxins (from the mother) during gestation. People wrongly assume that genetics by itself explains the health or disease of their child. Congenital defects (those present at birth) are not necessarily the result of genetics. For example, the December 2001 issue of
Lancet
reported a study regarding supplemental vitamins taken during pregnancy. Mothers who had taken both folic acid and iron supplements during pregnancy gave birth to children who were 60 percent less likely to develop the most common form of childhood leukemia. Eating right is especially important for expecting moms. Like any disease, leukemia doesn't “just happen.” The quality of the cells, tissues and systems a baby is born with has a lifelong effect.

Whether caused by nutritional deficiency or toxic exposure, trouble can begin when your cell factories are supposed to be making something but are not making enough or have shut down. If cell factories are unable to make sufficient antibodies, we become susceptible to infections. When cell factories cannot make sufficient neurotransmitters, mental function suffers. (Neurotransmitters are chemicals generated by nerve cells that send information throughout the nervous system, allowing us to think, learn and remember.) When unable to make sufficient hormones, communications and self-regulation are disrupted.

Hormones are chemicals produced by specialized cells that travel through the blood and lymph systems to bring messages to other parts of the body. Blood sugar level, for instance, is balanced primarily by two hormones, both produced by specialized cells in the pancreas.

Although each cell is a living entity unto itself, bodily systems can only be regulated and controlled when cells are able to communicate effectively with each other.
Impaired cellular
communications is one of the most basic common denominators
of disease, no matter how the disease happened or what
it is called.
Cellular communication and feedback systems regulate everything from body temperature to immunity to movement. When these systems break down gradually, as they often do in disease, we may not notice. We are more familiar with sudden and severe breakdowns in bodily communication, such as spinal injuries that cause paralysis. We fail to recognize how subtle communication breakdowns precipitate chronic and terminal health problems.

Each time you order at a restaurant, each time you reach into your cabinet for cooking oils, each time you plan your day's meals, you are basically deciding whether you will build strong cells or weak ones. It really is that simple. The choice is yours to make. Are you going to maintain your body or let it fall apart?

Toxins Shut Systems Down

A variety of toxic chemicals and metals can damage cells. Like grains of sand, toxins can jam cellular machinery and even cause entire cell factories or powerhouses to shut down.

Many toxins disable enzymes, which are necessary for the chemical reactions that make our lives possible. The number of chemical reactions required to make life possible is astonishing; in a cell, an estimated 6 trillion such reactions take place every second. Enzymes make these reactions possible. About two thousand kinds of enzymes have been identified, and they are manufactured by our cells to accomplish a variety of tasks. Enzymes act as little machines, putting things together or taking them apart at amazingly high speed. Without functioning enzymes, cell factories and assembly lines shut down.

The kind of enzymes a particular cell manufactures distinguishes and determines what kind of cell it is (for example, a nerve cell or a muscle cell). Enzymes serve a variety of purposes and must be constructed with many different nutrients. Enzymes contain essential mineral atoms, such as zinc, magnesium, iron and chromium. If these building materials are not present in sufficient quantity, enzyme function (and therefore cell function) is impaired. Take zinc, for example. The retina contains enzymes constructed with zinc and is a zinc-rich tissue. If you do not have enough zinc in your diet, your retina and other zinc-rich tissues, such as the prostate, will be impaired before obvious effects are noticed elsewhere in the body. Night blindness and malfunctioning prostates are common symptoms of zinc deficiency.

However, even if dietary zinc is adequate, but this nutrient is replaced in the enzyme by a toxic metal—such as mercury, arsenic, cadmium or lead—the presence of this toxin disables the enzyme and causes disease. Toxic heavy metals are a prime example of how toxins can cause cellular malfunction, and our bodies contain hundreds of times more toxic metals than they did in our ancestors a century ago. Mercury is a toxic heavy metal that we are commonly exposed to from dental work—amalgam fillings contain mercury. Municipal water supplies contain toxins such as aluminum, fluoride and arsenic. Even in trace amounts, these toxins can deactivate enzymes and impair vital bodily systems. They can cause our systems to shut down. They must be avoided.

Building and using enzymes properly is an essential part of good health, as enzyme dysfunction is a common denominator of disease. Maintaining proper enzyme balance is one reason to eat fresh organic foods. Organic produce is richer in the vitamins and minerals that enable us to build enzymes and coenzymes, and it is less toxic, too. Enzyme function can also be enhanced with high-quality dietary supplements.

The First Line of Defense

A cell's first line of defense against disease is the cell membrane, the security wall that surrounds the cell and carries out many important functions. Healthy membranes, built from appropriate materials, protect cells from harmful invaders— including viruses. Malfunctioning membranes allow bacteria, viruses, toxins and other harmful substances to damage cells. The presence of poorly constructed cell membranes formed from poor diets is one of the biggest reasons that almost all Americans get sick.

The cell membrane controls everything that goes into and out of a cell. Making certain that only the right things go in and out of the cell is a critical and complex task that only can be accomplished when the cell membrane is constructed correctly. The membranes that surround each of the trillions of cells in your body are made mostly of fats and oils. Membranes constructed out of the wrong fats and oils do not function properly, which is a problem for most Americans. For example, diets with excessive amounts of saturated fats, which are rigid molecules, create rigid cell membranes that lack necessary elasticity. Catastrophic failures, such as ruptured blood vessels and torn muscles and tendons, can occur in tissues made from these rigid cells.

Cell membranes are made primarily of fatty molecules called phospholipids. Special kinds of oils called essential fatty acids (EFAs)—omega-3s and omega-6s—are used to create the phospholipids in cell membranes. These oils are essential because your body is unable to produce them; these oils must be obtained through diet. An overwhelming majority —some estimate as much as 90 percent—of the U.S. population may be deficient in the correct assortment of essential fatty acids. When the correct raw materials are lacking, the body makes cell membranes out of whatever raw materials are available. These materials include the hydrogenated oils found in margarine, vegetable shortening, baked goods and breakfast cereals; the saturated fats from meat and dairy products; and the trans-fatty acids found in processed salad and cooking oils. Cell membranes built from these inappropriate fats and oils cause the membrane and the entire cell to malfunction.

For example, building a cell membrane from hydrogenated oils impairs the passage of oxygen into the cell, and oxygen-deficient cells become cancerous. None of us would build a house with cardboard walls. Why, then, do we build our cell membranes—our first line of defense against disease—out of junk materials like margarine, vegetable shortening and supermarket oils? Modern diets fail to supply adequate amounts of the correct essential fatty acids. I recommend supplementation with high-quality essential fatty acids and fish oils (see appendix C).

Weak and Rusty

To be healthy, cells must be supplied with adequate amounts of antioxidants. Cell membranes and the factories and powerhouses inside of cells can be damaged from oxidation via free radicals. Picture how oxidative damage (rust) would cause the Golden Gate Bridge to disintegrate were it not painted with a protective coating each year. Currently, our bodies are immersed in a sea of highly reactive chemicals— such as ozone in urban air and chlorine in tap water—that create oxidative damage to our bodies. You likely have heard reports about antioxidants (such as vitamins A, C and E) and how they protect us against free radical damage.

Free radicals damage our cells just like rust corrodes metal. Free radicals have unpaired electrons. Electrons, which travel in pairs, are charged particles orbiting around the nucleus of atoms. An unpaired electron aggressively seeks a mate, trying to “grab” an electron from something else, perhaps a molecule that is performing an important job in one of your cell membranes. Once the electron is grabbed, that molecule can no longer perform its job properly; furthermore, the molecule now becomes a free radical itself, aggressively seeking its own electron mate. The subsequent chain reaction can result in serious cellular damage commonly associated with aging and disease, unless the body's tissues are rich with antioxidants that can stop hazardous chain reactions as soon as they begin.

Free radicals are naturally produced as we metabolize oxygen. Free-radical chain reactions are constantly being produced and stopped inside your body. Cells were designed to cope with these reactions, but not of the magnitude that is present today. For example, chlorine, a highly oxidizing gas put in municipal tap water, can easily damage our skin and lungs. Taking a shower in chlorinated water is like stepping into a chlorine gas chamber—a health hazard of which most people are totally unaware. We can make choices to protect our cells, but first we need to know the source of the damage.

Today, we expose ourselves to free-radical damage from chemicals to which our biological ancestors were never exposed. Our modern environment is filled with substances that cause free radicals to form, such as ozone, chlorine, pesticides, tobacco smoke, petroleum byproducts, synthetic perfume and many others. We need more antioxidant protection than ever, because we are exposed to so many more free radicals. The problem is that the need for antioxidant nutrients is up while the supply in our diet is down.