Your body cells and health

Ever thought of how the nutrients you ingest are used to regenerate your body? While incredibly complex in its details, the big picture is pretty simple. Inside your digestive tract, the food is broken down into nutrients, pulled from intestines into the blood stream, and sent with it as a fuel and material to some

100 trillions of cells making up your body.

If you are curious about "cell census" data, your tissue cells count for about 10% of the total, or some 10 trillion cells; various types of blood cells total nearly four times as many, or 40 trillion; a few more trillions go for lymph cells and immune-system cells. And if your intestine is healthy, it is home to some 40 trillion friendly bacteria (which is, evidently, either much smaller than a body cell, or pretty badly squeezed in).

Count in dozens of trillions of commensal and unfriendly bacteria, fungi and viruses, (which are not cells, but do seek their place under your sun nevertheless) and you have much greater number of guest organisms to take care of, than of your own cells.

Every second, millions of your cells die, and need to be replaced with new ones (worry not - it still makes only a small fraction of your total cell count). While young, your body is creating more cells than it loses; as you age, this gradually turns around. In any case, in order to sustain life of all those cells - that is, your own -

you have to supply them with necessary nutrients.

That is the main ingredient of the recipe for health. Needless to say, you want to keep your cells happy, and give to them all they need to function, regenerate and multiply optimally. In order to do that, you need to pay attention to your body's metabolic preferences. Not only that it will make you feel better if you eliminate foods that fall short of making you feel energized - foods that your body does well with may tell you something important about your health.

This myriad of cells work in amazing harmony. They are grouped and organized to perpetuate the cycle of life. Somewhat informally, we can sum up these basic functions as:

• acquiring oxygen (respiratory) and nutrients (eating, drinking,
digestion),
• distributing (cardiovascular, cellular) and elimination
• regulatory (nervous, endocrine),
• protective (integumentary, detox, immune) and
• motor (musculoskeletal).

While each phase is necessary for the completion of the life cycle, the quality of it - in addition to the genetic base - clearly depends primarily on the quality of nutritional intake and digestion, as well as on the efficacy in elimination of toxic and potentially harmful agents. Since there is little you can do to optimize your genes, your main supports in the battle for your health are good digestion, quality nutrition and efficient detoxication. R

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