Regenerate your health

FOOD is fuel for the body and nothing more. That’s how most people think of nutrition. But consider this radical idea: What you eat is more than merely sustaining and it can be generating. And I mean regenerating in ways that most people have not even considered, ways that scientists are just now beginning to understand. Nutrients like vitamins, minerals, protein, carbohydrates and the like will nourish flesh, blood and bones. But in the right amounts and in the proper combinations they also have the power to renew the body, repair physical damage, prevent the onset of disease and may be even reverse some of the signs of aging.

You realize that supplying yourself with the proper nutrients can foster growth and renewal when you know about regenerative nutrition. And just thinking in these terms can give you a big push down the road to well-being. Regeneration (which can apply to economics, agriculture and other fields as well as nutrition) means changing or reforming for the better by using your own resources. In regenerative agriculture for example, farmers thrive by planting legumes that pull nitrogen from the air and into the soil instead of buying expensive synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. In regenerative economics, communities produce locally most of the consumer products they need rather than paying higher prices for goods produced elsewhere. And in regenerative nutrition you enhance, even renew your health by taking charge of it by manipulating your nutrient intake, a potent personal resource.

The body responds to regenerative nutrition because it is already preoccupied with regeneration. It is a pulsing, humming mass of regenerative processes that is cells replace cells, tissues heal, muscle expand, nerves and organs change to meet new biological demands. So regenerative nutrition (like exercise, weight control, preventive dentistry and other regenerating strategies) is a way of turning up the body’s existing regenerative power. Scientists dream of regenerating human organs. With a disdainful look forward immortality schemes and myths of eternal youth, I dream of finding ways to regenerate the whole person, body and soul, starting with techniques for helping the body do what it does best. Just sharing such a dream can be renewing in itself, an inspirational nudge toward better health.

Regenerating bodies

Inch by inch, scientists are documenting nutritional road to regeneration. So far, they have found at least three ways that nutrition can regenerate you.

*Reversing deficiencies. When you don’t get enough vitamins and minerals over a long period of time your body literally degenerates. Without enough vitamins A, you get skin problems, greater susceptibility to infection, eye trouble, even blindness. Without B vitamins you are open to fatigue, nerve damage, poor memory, sleep problems, anorexia, anemia. The list of physical degeneration caused by lack of nutrients is long and familiar. What is not so well appreciated is that getting enough of the right nutrients can halt the decay and often put it in reverse. The body proves for itself that the opposite of degeneration is regeneration.

*Reversing excesses. Have you ever talk to someone who survived a heart attack then changed the way he ate to prevent a second attack? I have some of my clients who are like that. Some of these survivors may tell you how great they feel since they started cutting down on fat, alcohol, sugar, salt, high cholesterol food and started to exercise. They may say things like: “I feel like a brand new person or I never felt better in my life.” Such dramatic testimonies are affidavits of nutritional regeneration and physical activities. You hear them from people battling weight problems, diabetes, allergies, fatigue and other health disorder. You even hear them from people who have known ailments at all. It is proven that eliminating dietary excesses can give your body a chance to heal and even feel young.

*Slowing down the clock. Scientists have been presenting evidence suggesting that it may be possible to use certain nutrients to affect aspects of the aging process. There are intriguing but unconfirmed studies showing that people who had higher intakes of certain vitamins outlived people who had lower intakes. And there’s also very preliminary evidence that antioxidants like vitamins E may be able to prevent the aging of certain cells. Whether vitamin E can actually increases the life span of humans has yet to be determined scientifically.

The most impressive research yet shows that nutrients may be able to prevent or reverse some disorders associated with getting old. Vitamin D and calcium may slow down the bone-degenerating disease known as osteoporosis (bones becomes brittle and thin). Vitamin E may relieve the circulation problem called intermittent claudication. Vitamin C and A may boost immunity. These and other healing possibilities are the first sketchy signs that nutrition may be able to de-age the aging body.

By far the greatest advantage of nutritional regeneration is that it can provide what I call “low input solutions” to health problems. By “low-input,” I mean low cost, inexpensive in money, energy or time. If a treatment or preventive is low input it must be regenerative. For by definition regenerative health solutions are inexpensive, readily available and abundant. They come mostly from internal resources we already own, resources that generally grow as we grow. High input answers to health troubles on the other hand, have external sources and therefore costly and often scarce. They are usually medical which means professionally administered and sometimes hard on the body as surgery or drugs with severe side effects.

Let’s say you have the painful wrist had disorder called carpal tunnel syndrome. One high-input external solution to the problem (if anti-inflammatory medications or cortisone injections fail) is surgery in which may cost thousands of pesos and may require a lot of time in recovery and still may not correct the problem. A reported low-input solution for some people is vitamin B6. Preliminary research shows that some victims of carpal tunnel syndrome have found relief from symptoms after taking daily doses of B6 for several months. Also, the technique of administering acupressure therapy and hot compresses does wonder that it gives complete relief. Manipulations of the nerves and muscles from the neck, back of the shoulders down to the upper and lower arm will give fast relief and recovery on this kinds of muscle and nerve disturbances.

Here’s an even more dramatic example: Cancer. The high-input answer to this scourge is chemotherapy, radiation treatments, surgery, drugs. Only victims of cancer know in many painful ways how truly costly these therapies can be. To me even though high-input is very expensive I still believe it is the best way of treating cancer. It must be a priority of treatment before taking any alternative ways. Some of my friends and people I know who got cancer and did not undergo the complete program and treatment succumbed to death or did not survived. Most of them died because they switched to some alternative form of medicine like herbals. Life is so precious and we should not gamble our love ones by putting their life at risk. I know how expensive the treatments is but if you have faith in God that He will supply all your needs then He will make a way to help you.

Scientists are working on proving the power of a low-input nutrition solution but I believe that high-input must be given the priority especially if one has cancer already. To those people who do not have cancer, studies found that people who reported the highest consumption of carrots, squash, tomatoes, salads or leafy greens, dried fruits, fresh strawberries or melon, broccoli had a decreased risk of cancer.

Choosing what type of input you want to follow is your decision. Use your common sense. Well-being is always a matter of balancing the regenerative internal strategies (high-input) with the external. The point is not to waste our own regenerative power but to use it to best advantage. My guess is that if we start thinking regenerative nutrition we’ll start doing regenerative nutrition. And that just might set the scales in better balance, a step or two closer to regenerative living.