By Nancy Adler
The nutrients in food enable the cells in our bodies to perform their necessary functions. The nutrients in food are essential for our physical functioning.
Nutrients are the nourishing substances in food that are essential for the growth, development and maintenance of body functions. Essential meaning that if a nutrient is not present, aspects of function and therefore human health decline. When nutrient intake does not regularly meet the nutrient needs dictated by the cell activity, the metabolic processes slow down or even stop.
In other words, nutrients give our bodies instructions about how to function. In this sense, food can be seen as a source of “information” for the body.
Thinking about food in this way gives us a view of nutrition that goes beyond calories or grams, good foods or bad foods. This view leads us to focus on foods we should include rather than foods to exclude.
When counseling a client I try to relay the message that Instead of viewing food as the enemy, we look to food as a way to create health and reduce disease by helping the body maintain function.
The food we eat gives our bodies the “information” and materials they need to function properly. If we don’t get the right information, our metabolic processes suffer and our health declines. If we get too much food, or food that gives our bodies the wrong instructions, we can become overweight, undernourished, and at risk for the development of diseases and conditions, such as arthritis, diabetes and heart disease.
In short, what we eat is central to our health. Consider that in light of Webster’s definition of medicine: “The science and art dealing with the maintenance of health and the prevention, alleviation, or cure of disease.”
As a society we are facing significant health problems. The United States ranks ninth in life expectancy among nations in the developed world.
We have a workforce plagued with absenteeism and reduced productivity because of chronic health problems, including depression.
78 percent of healthcare expenditures are for the treatment of chronic disease.
Many researchers now believe that these problems are partly related to diet. While they used to believe that diseases-such as type II diabetes ,obesity, heart disease stroke, and certain cancers were caused by a single gene mutation, they are now generally attributing these conditions to a network of biological dysfunction. To put it simply, the food we eat is an important factor in that dysfunction, in part because our diets lack the necessary balance of nutrients.
One component of Nutritional practices focuses on how diet impacts health and function. When Nutritionists and some Medicine practitioners examine the role of nutrition in chronic disease, they look at multiple systems, such as the digestive system, the immune system, and the detoxification system, because of the interconnections between those systems. For instance, because 80% of the immune system is contained in the gastrointestinal system, a person’s issues with immunity could be related to faulty digestion.
Implementing proper nutrition maintains that chronic disease is almost always preceded by a period of declining health in one or more of the body’s systems. Thus, practitioners seek to identify early the symptoms that indicate underlying dysfunction, possibly leading to disease. One of the ways eating nutritionally, seeks to address declining health is to provide the foods and nutrients needed to restore function. This is a cost effective, non-invasive intervention that aims to stop the progression into disease.
Nancy Adler is a certified nutritionist and practitioner in Linwood. Her office is located in Cornerstone Commerce Center, 1201 New Rd. Learn about her practice at ww.nancyadlernutrition.com (609)653-4900
You may listen to Nancy every Sunday at 2 pm Nancy Adler Nutrition LIVE! NewsTalk 1400 WOND
