“You are what you eat. If you don’t put it in your mouth it ain’t there.”

Sometimes the diet is great but the nutrients are not being absorbed and getting to the mark. That’s when we have to become the detective to find out why.

Assuming an adequate diet, do you have maldigestion in the stomach or malabsorption of nutrients in the small intestine?

Are you reacting to foods eaten?

What about good fat versus bad fat?

Are Sugars Evil?

What are the key nutrients to prevent Osteoporosis?

We Ask, Why? How? and What are the consequences of what we eat?

At a cellular level, we are a biochemical factory. The production line won’t work without the essential nutrients that are cofactors for the many chemical reactions that make us tick.

MALDIGESTION / MALABSORPTION

At the first point of digestion past the mouth, the stomach needs sufficient acid to break down foods and kill unwanted bacteria preventing them from entering the small intestine.

With low stomach acid we can’t absorb protein for making muscles and bone, or providing amino acids for our brain, iron and many vitamins for energy production in the cells, or zinc needed for hundreds of enzymes, magnesium for muscle contraction and heart health.

Just a few consequences of low zinc absorption:
. Slow healing of wounds and recovery from injury
. Poor activation of essential enzymes and nutrient absorption in the gut
. White spots on nails, dry skin
. Suffer recurrent infections- poor immune health
. Increased hair loss- poor protein synthesis
. Reduced taste or smell
If one mineral can affect so much, imagine the consequences of multiple nutrient malabsorption!

The flow on from low stomach acid is Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth(SIBO). Bad bacteria in our small intestine prevents digestive enzymes from doing their job and many nutrients are not broken down into an absorbable form and miss their bus stop, receptor point in the small intestine, so pass on through to be excreted in the large bowel. Multi nutrient malabsorption will result.

The mucosal surface of the small intestine can become irritated from foods we don’t tolerate and produce antibodies against that food that travel throughout the body causing global inflammation.

The next stage in our digestion past the small intestine is collection of waste in the large bowel. Over 500 different bacteria live in our bowel to break down undigested materials. A delicate balance exists between good and bad bacteria. We need small quantities of bad bacteria to assist fermenting of foods but when the balance is tipped in the wrong direction, the gut wall becomes invaded with undesirable bacteria, large food particles break through the mucosal surface stimulating production of inflammatory cells that enter the blood stream and deposit in our tissues, muscles, joints, brain, and other mucosal surfaces such as the nose and lung.

GOOD FATS VERSUS BAD FATS

• Reduce Saturated Fats
  • Margarine, coconut oil, butter, palm oil, cheese
• Moderate monounsaturated fats
  • canola oil, cashews, cocoa butter (olive oil is OK)
• Increase polyunsaturated fats
  • Sunflower seeds/oil, grape seed oil, flaxseed oil, fish oils, walnuts. Essential Fatty acids(omega3)

Omega 3 Fatty acids:

• Mediate allergies
• Reduce tissue inflammation
• Needed to form cell membranes, and integrity of nerve tissue/ brain
• Control passage of compounds in and out of cells
• Contribute to lowering LDL- bad cholesterol
• Provide energy for the mitochondria/ our energy factory in the cells

Increasing Omega 3 Fatty acids intake has been found to alleviate symptoms of inflammation, arthritis and depression.

IS SUGAR EVIL?
The provision of energy in to the body via blood sugar is best kept relatively constant and should match energy output, energy in/energy out. If the blood sugar is too low we get hungry and eat more to bring up blood sugar levels. If we eat too much carbohydrate or sugars that increase the blood sugar above resting level, this is toxic to the body. The brain responds by signaling the pancreas to secrete more insulin to bring the blood sugar level back down and excess glucose is stored as fat.

Diets high in carbohydrates particularly those with a high glycemic index and glycemic load producing high blood sugar levels are precursors to insulin resistance and obesity and have been associated with other disorders such as altered fat metabolism, type 2 diabetes, hormone imbalance, and increased tissue inflammation.

With consumption of excess dietary carbohydrate and thus excess blood levels of glucose, insulin stimulates direct conversion of glucose to fatty acids for storage as triglycerides. Hence the development of obesity with diets high in carbohydrates over time.

So what are high glycemic foods?
Take care to read the labels on packaging. One teaspoon of sugar is 5grams, so yogurt with 10 grams of sugar has 2 teaspoons of sugar added! It’s better to eat natural unsweetened yogurt with real fruit to sweeten.

One can of soft drink or coke averages 22 grams of sugars or over 4 teaspoons of sugar.

High carbohydrate foods such as potato, potato chips, white bread, rice, pastas, cakes, biscuits and take away foods laced with sugars and saturated fats, need to be kept to a minimum.

KEY NUTRIENTS FOR BONE HEALTH

Key nutrients:
- Protein, zinc, calcium, phosphorous, vitamin D.

Protein is a building block of the bone matrix and zinc is a cofactor for protein synthesis. Vitamin D is needed for absorption of calcium in the gut. A balance of calcium and phosphorous is needed in the bone matrix.

Vitamins A & D balance:

Vitamin A predominantly promotes activation of osteoclasts and bone resorption and vitamin D promotes the action of osteoblasts and bone mineralisation, and, as mentioned above, is essential for calcium absorption

***15 minutes in the sun before 11am or after 3pm daily will promote conversion of vitamin D in the skin.

Exercise
- Weight bearing or resistance exercise to stimulate laying down of bone
Hormonal balance
- Loss of oestrogen post menopause, the average woman loses up to 10 per cent of her bone mass in the first five years after menopause.

I leave you with this quote:
“When our bodies do not receive vital vitamins and minerals over a period of time, a Nutrition deficiency disease results which, if not remedied, will lead to debilitation and eventual death”
Phillip Day