Feed Your Cells: Live Long and Stop Cancer

Are you really well fed?

You may be eating well and your weight may be fine.  You stomach may feel full after each meal. However, the cells in your body may be starving!  Our bodies are made up of organs: heart, liver, brain, kidney, the skin, etc.  Each of these organs is composed of many different types of cells. 

Cells are the basic building blocks of all living things: humans, animals, fish and plants. The human body contains trillions of cells. Cells provide structure for the body – like the skin cells and bone cells. Cells take in nutrients from your food and change those nutrients into energy. Groups of cells have specialized functions: some make hormones that control your kidneys, pancreas, ovaries, heart and lungs. Cells also contain the body’s hereditary material – the DNA -- and can make copies of themselves.

It runs in the family - or does it?

We all have an “Achilles heel” – a weakness that your family has. Your biochemistry – the function of your cells – is like your fingerprint – no person is identical to another.   What runs in families when you see heart or lung disease or cancer is a difference in the nutritional requirements of the cells in those families.  For example, someone may have a heart attack at 50 years of age. The cells in this heart did not get enough of the nutrients the heart cells needed. So the heart cells wore out before their time. Under a microscope these cells look like the cells of an 80 year old.  

Each body cell has a genetic message to live for a certain time span.  If the environment around the cell is healthy, the cell will reach its potential – it will “go the distance”.  But our cells are exposed to many toxic substances – air pollution, tobacco smoke, chemicals in our food. They still manage to survive but function poorly on less than optimal fuel.  Then the cells don’t live as long, the organs stop functioning and so we don’t live as long.  The “hungry” cells look smaller and miss-shaped under a microscope. When you see abnormal shaped cells, you are usually talking about cancer. 

The best cancer treatment is prevention

It is amazing that with all these insults we still live longer than many species of animals. This is because we have better cell repair mechanisms. Damaged cells are repaired or discarded. Cancer cells appear in our bodies every day.  As long as the repair mechanisms and our immune system is in good shape, we stop the cancer cell in its tracks. But this repair system depends on key nutrients that the cells need. The better the nutrition, the better is the chance of holding off disease and the forces of aging.

In the second part of this article we will talk about the nutrients that your cells must have to live long and thrive.