Before you can understand WHAT your body needs to be healthy, you’ll need to understand HOW your body works, down to a cellular level. I hope I didn’t lose you already, I will try to make this as fun and exciting (while still informative) as possible.
In your mind, put yourself back into high school science class. You more than likely learned a few things about how the human body works; hopefully the word Mitochondria rings a bell. Mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell, one of its main function is to produce energy for the cell in which they reside.
Let’s stop here for a moment and make sure we understand how important that function is; making energy for the cell.
Cells need energy to work, without that energy things go hectic and the cells will not function as they should. Mostly every cell in your body has mitochondria, some cells have more mitochondria since they use more energy, like your brain, muscle, and liver cells. The mitochondria produce energy for the cell by converting the nutrients from the food we eat into usable energy, called ATP.
This is the important part so I’ll reiterate; the food you put into your body (after it is broken down) supplies the mitochondria with the fuel it needs to produce the energy the cells require to function properly.
Think of the engine of your car as a mitochondrion (singular version of mitochondria), the tires and steering the cell, and the car itself as your body. If you provide high quality gasoline to your engine it will make your car perform to its optimum levels. Yet, if you provide the engine with a mix of gasoline and lemonade, it still may operate but with a dramatic decrease in efficiency. With that being said, if you have only been driving a car that uses a mix of gasoline and lemonade, you may not notice a difference in performance until you have driven a car ran off high quality gasoline.
In conclusion, your body is made up of organs, organs are made up of cells, cells rely on mitochondria for energy to run the cell, which runs the organ, which runs your body [phew]…. If you provide your mitochondria with bad fuel (the food you eat) you can’t expect the cells to work correctly. If your cells don’t work correctly, the organ the cells are in will not work correctly either. If the organ does not work correctly then how can your body be working at optimal performance?
You’re fighting an uphill battle by providing your body with poor food choices that lack nutrients the cells and mitochondria need to function properly.
Over the course of the next few weeks, we will dive further into this issue and I will show you some ways to better improve your diet and lifestyle; which if you learned anything today, will make your body run much more efficiently.
I hope you have a happy and safe 4th of July and make it a goal to be conscious of what food you put into your body this weekend.
Be part of the solution and not the problem.
Chad R Puschel
[Further reading in relation to Mitochondria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion ]
