Everyone wants to be healthy, but in fact very few do see the hazards and are aware how to care for one’s health.

Our ancestors used to live in harmony with nature that determined their lifestyles and reinforced natural needs of their bodies. Nowadays, even though our body structure has remained the same as of the primeval men, our life environment keeps us further and further away from nature. Our bodies, covered by polyester clothes, apartments and offices decorated with artificial plants, plastic furniture, synthetic wallpapers, wainscoting, siding and carpets. We spend nearly half of our lives in air-conditioned, hermetic buildings, seeing the sun only through window panes. Always in a hurry, we travel by car, unable to imagine life without mobile phones, computers, radio or TV. Surrounded by electro-energetic networks, we live under continued stress and never-ending pursuit for the civilization achievements.

The contemporary research has revealed that more than half of the calories we eat come from sources unknown by our grandparents. Month by month we eat more and more excessively processed, artificially preserved products, canned food or ready-made dishes to be heated in a microwave oven. Consequently, our average annual intake of various toxins in food ranges from 6 to 8 kg. These compounds obstruct digestion, absorption of vitamins, macro- and micro-elements, and the undigested food generates secondary toxins that penetrate the blood and irritate the immunity system.

Quality malnutrition, excess of synthetic chemical compounds, systematically overburdened immunity system are the main causes of so many civilization diseases. As an effect in the industrialized countries the arteriosclerosis starts already at young age, the diabetes has become the most frequent metabolic disease, younger and younger patients suffer from the osteoporosis and over half the population suffers from fungal infections. Common conditions include allergies, rash, asthma attacks, stomach inflammation, inefficient intestinal function, ADHD, insomnia, blood pressure disorders, etc.

For ages, when the Earth was in balance, healthy diet, natural environment and natural magnetic fields used to control biochemical and physiological processes of human bodies, and the entire ecosystem used to maintain the order, controlling the oxidation and reduction processes.

Nowadays we do not live in ecological paradise. Stress caused by wrong diet, lack of necessary nutrients, foreign chemical compounds and artificial electromagnetic fields causes complete chaos at the molecular (cell) level, resulting in disruption of process functions in the body.

ANTIOXIDANT, unpaired electron, FREE RADICAL

The oxidation and reduction processes have always been present in nature. They were so obvious that not much attention was paid to them. Only in 1986 two scientists, Fleming and Migiel, noticed that the aging processes of the body are closely interlinked with the excess of free radicals attacking our cells. Such were the beginnings of the knowledge consolidated in the nineties by the biochemists that proved in thousands of studies the intensification of the oxidation processes.

The excess of free radicals penetrates the body determined by: contaminated, ionized air, cigarette smoke electromagnetic smog, highly processed or off food, microwave oven dishes, etc. An example of the oxidation process can be observed in rancid butter, but free radicals are formed also in many products where fats are subject to rapid oxidation. These include: confectionery products with long use-by date, crisps, potato chips, crackers, biscuits, pizzas, salad dressing, mayonnaise, cheese-like products, high efficiency processed meat, canned food, refined vegetable fats, butter-like products, margarines, corn oil, sunflower oil, etc.

Free radicals are simply molecules, atoms or ions with a single unpaired electron on the outer orbit. “Searching their pair” they are highly active chemically – i.e. they are aiming at neither connecting an additional electron nor eliminating the unpaired one, so they oxidize each compound they get into contact with. The immunity system has always used free radicals for eliminating infections, killing viruses, bacteria, fungi and carcinogenic cells. The issue starts when the number of such aggressors gets out of control and the body cannot manage them and starts to generate more of them than foreseen in normal metabolism.

Free radicals in the human body include: proteins, DNA structures, unsaturated fatty acids contained in the cell membranes, polysaccharides or fat molecules contained in blood. It has turned out that an avalanche of free radicals “bombarding the cell membranes intensifies the oxidation processes, i.e. generates the so called “oxidation stress”. Continued stress results in cell damage, thus rapidly accelerating the aging processes, causing chronic inflammatory conditions and numerous civilization diseases.

The most recent research confirms that the more toxins we have in our bodies, the less efficiently nutrients are transported and the slower cells are renewed.While the efficiency of all these reactions determines our physical and mental condition.

However, we are not entirely vulnerable and doomed to diseases. Good health and wellbeing are maintained by the continuous regeneration processes of the body and the bodily transformations are fast enough that we are able to regenerate effectively. During each minute of our life we lose more than 40 thousand cells, i.e. ca. 60 million old cells vanish daily from our body. The cell death process (apoptosis) is a perfectly natural physiological phenomenon, as instead new and healthy cells are formed, provided that the building material is available. The success in this respect can be attributed to a diversified and balanced diet, rich in vegetable products, including a variety of antioxidants.

In our daily diet we cannot miss cereal grains, rolls and groats, including millet and buckwheat groats, dark rice and legumes. Vegetables may be eaten both fresh in salads, as well as cooked in soups, or steamed shortly. Recommended nutrients include as well natural vegetable juices, dill vegetable pickles, and cereals, nuts and sprouted grains.

Proteins in our diet should include dairy products from free-range, healthy animals, in particular fermented yogurts, kefir, sour milk, natural cottage cheese, pure butter, cream and free-range eggs. Additionally meat and naturally bred fish. In nature fats occur together with products containing proteins and carbohydrates. That is why our diet should contain fresh butter, drawn butter, extra virgin oils, especially olive, linseed and pumpkin oils. All food seasoning should be natural – i.e. sea salt, unrefined and not iodated artificially, a variety of herbs and spices. The commonly used white sugar and aspartame may be replaced with honey, home-made plum stew, xylitol, stevia or agave syrup.

As a result proteins built our cells, fruit, vegetables and cereal groats supply a lot of enzymes and vitamins, and the additives contain minerals and biologically active compounds that facilitate the body development and maintaining balance of the oxidation and reduction processes and, thus protecting our cells effectively.

ANTIOXIDANTS

Antioxidants are organic compounds that by blocking free radicals strongly inhibit the oxidation, thus protecting cells against damage. The best known antioxidants include vitamin C and E, and beta carotene.

In fact there are much more of them, such as selenium, lutein, flavonoids, polyphenols and other vegetable compounds protecting our body against harmful exposure to free radicals, and resisting attacks of bacteria, viruses or fungi Regular intake of the flavonoid containing food, especially fruit and vegetables, improves the function of all the body systems, increasing the inter cell communication.

Antioxidants, similar to the dietary fibre, can be found mostly in vegetable products, and even though apparently they have no nutritional value, they are necessary for the human body.

Antioxidants function as a natural serum against premature aging, cancer, heart diseases and various civilization diseases. If not for the antioxidants, many of us would be victims of various infections, degeneration diseases and cancer. Dr Ronald Priori has proven that “by increasing the intake of fruit and vegetables, especially those with high flavonoid content, the antioxidant level in the bloodstream can be increased even up to 15-20%”. That is why there is so high interest in antioxidants both amongst the scientists, as well as manufacturers of various functional food, supplements and cosmetics.

With common dietary mistakes and years of health problems, apart from the right habits there is a growing demand for the so called “functional food” as a rescue for our health. It contains natural organic nutrients, supplying the body with necessary building material missing from the daily diet.

While selecting food supplements one should remember that the human body is adjusted only to the joint use of nutrients.

The best form of supplementing one’s daily diet is to provide the body additional low quantity of proteins, unsaturated fatty acids, mineral compounds, enzymes and vegetable fibres – enabling the supply of all the necessary nutrients to the body.

Home-made chutneys, salads, fruit preserves, vegetable sauces are part of our tradition but those who are too busy to prepare them can use instead ready-made mixes available on the market for a couple of years: the excellent freeze-dried beetroot with chokeberry and multi-ingredient berry or fruit and vegetable mixes in micellar form, containing natural powder mix of all the ingredients as in a fresh plant, just to be mixed with water for a “meal” to be served. A valuable source of antioxidants can be found as well in unprocessed fruit growing in the virgin areas of the world and the “youth potions” – based on the Acai berry, that combine in a synergic way with other fruit thus guarantying a shot of necessary antioxidants.

The Brazilian Acai berry, originated directly from the Amazon Basin, grows only on the top of tall palm trees, in the heart of the rain forests, the virgin wood of South America.

For ages the native inhabitants have treated this fruit as one of the healthiest food ingredients and a panacea for all diseases. The berry was discovered by a world’s famous botanist and healthy nutrition specialist, Dr Alexander Schauss who together with a team of scientists spent ten years examining and evaluating the nutritional value of the Acai berry. The results of this arduous research have by far outgrown the expectations of the researchers. Not only the exceptional curative properties of the discovered plant were confirmed, but it turned out as well that Acai berries have several times stronger anti-oxidation and anti-inflammatory properties than any plants discovered so far. No wonder that they are able to eliminate oxidation stress so rapidly, eliminate inflammatory conditions, facilitate wound healing and continued replenishment and regeneration of body cells.

The missing anti-oxidative ingredients may also be periodically supplemented with tablets or capsules, provided that these are natural and organic supplements – e.g. vitamin C from acerola, fibre from chokeberry, natural vitamin E, coenzyme Q 10, etc. We should remember, however that such supplementation will not replace a varied and balanced diet, even though it is a lesser evil than a prolonged deficiency of antioxidants that leads to the body aging and various diseases.

Grażyna Pająk, PhD

Biologist, nutritionist, natural therapist. Professor at the Bielsko-Biała College of Józef Tyszkiewicz.                                Author of numerous scientific publications and press articles.