Respect Your Elders
Although
the science of acid/alkaline balance sounds complicated, making your
diet more like that of your ancestors is actually quite simple: Consume
more whole foods and eat less processed junk.
You
can bring pH balance back to the dinner table by serving meals that
consist of 60 to 80 percent alkalizing fruits, plants, and vegetables.
You’ll want to reduce your use of acid-promoting white flour by using
whole multigrain flour in its place. You also can increase your intake
of inflammationreducing omega-3 fats, found in fish and flax seeds.
Finally, aerobic exercise every day will help blow out excess acid-producing CO from your tissues and help maintain muscle tone.
Simple Solution:
Start each day with an alkalizing glass of
lemon water by squeezing a fresh lemon (no sugar) into purified water.
Make sure you include the pulp.
More Potassium, Less Salt (Sodium)
Those
pesky ancient ancestors have another message for us in regard to the
imbalance of our modern diet: We’re getting far too much salt and not
nearly enough potassium. It’s estimated that our ancestral diet had a
potassium/ sodium ratio of 10:1, which has now been inverted to
1:3—three times as much salt as potassium—reflecting a thirty-fold
change.
Basically,
our meals used to feature potassium-rich fruits, vegetables, nuts, and
beans along with a small amount of fish or meat—all of which naturally
contain only a small amount of sodium.
As
bad as sodium can be for us, potassium provides a wide range of
benefits that include helping to maintain a healthy blood pressure,
rate of metabolism, and muscle strength as well as reducing the threats
of anxiety, heart and kidney disorders, and stroke.
Compare
that to our modern diet of high-sodium, highly processed food. In that
frozen meal or can of condensed soup you had for lunch—maybe with a
single serving of veggies—you received up to 1,700 mg of salt. This
inverted ratio of potassium to sodium in our contemporary diet is known
to adversely affect cardiovascular function and contribute to
hypertension and stroke.
As if that weren’t disturbing enough, we’ve recently learned that high-sodium foods and acid-producing foods can act independently
to induce and sustain increased tissue acidity. This “tag team” effect
is enhanced as you get older and by the kidney’s impaired ability to
excrete excess acidity.
Even
if you never reach for your salt shaker, you could be getting far too
much sodium. The best way to decrease your salt intake is to cut back
on processed or convenience foods like canned soups, frozen meals, and
potato chips. Read your labels. Even if something doesn’t taste salty, it can contain an entire day’s worth of recommended sodium.
Simple Solution:
Trade in your table salt for natural sea
salt, which contains a mixture of alkaline complexes. And use pepper or
other spices to liven your meals.
Although it’s important to reduce sodium
levels by cutting back on processed foods and by reducing salt intake,
don’t forget to increase your potassium, too. Foods rich in potassium
include apricots, avocados—break out the guacamole!—bananas,
cantaloupe, kiwis, carrots, prune juice, raisins, and more.
Balancing Good and Bad Fats
Earlier
we talked about good carbs vs. bad carbs and the need to stay away from
those white foods with high-glycemic indexes. Well, we’ve also gotten
seriously out of balance with our fat consumption.
For years, governments and marketers did us a disservice by ranting and raving about getting fat out of our diets. We actually need
fat—in fact, we can’t live without it. Our brain is mostly fat. In our
attempts to go “fat-free,” though, we mainly reduced the amount of good
fat we consume and increased the amounts of sugar and bad fat in our
diets.
Some nutrition authorities consider
the essential fatty acids (EFAs) the closest thing we have to a true
miracle nutrient because they’re involved in so many aspects of our
health. From cardiovascular disease to autoimmune diseases such as
multiple sclerosis and cancer, it would take page after page to note
the full listing of the health conditions that we know are influenced
by either a deficiency or an imbalance of EFAs.
Ask the Scientist
“Dr. Wentz, how did you come to your understanding of the importance of nutrition?”
I believe nutrition is
the most important science in all of medicine. My own realization about
the importance of nutrition came about as a result of my scientific
research. While growing cells for twenty years at my previous company,
Gull Laboratories, I learned what nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and
cofactors were needed to keep human cells truly robust and healthy.
Later, I learned how much of the nutritional
value of our foods has declined over recent decades. We have turned the
beautiful world that God gave us into a dumping ground for our toxic
wastes, robbing our food of the nutrients we need to stay healthy and
exposing our bodies to harmful substances. Because of the environmental
hazards in today’s society, our bodies—the cells, organs, and systems
it comprises—need significantly greater amounts of the essential
nutrients, especially the protective antioxidants, than ever before.
Nutrition that will help our cells defend themselves from the oxidative
stress of today’s environment is critical.
There is no question that the nutritional needs
of most people’s cells simply aren’t being met by the food they
consume, which is having devastating consequences—a rapidly growing
epidemic of chronic degenerative diseases. The good news, however, is
that degenerative diseases are diseases of lifestyle, which means they
can be prevented through small adjustments in daily habits, such as
avoiding environmental toxins and stress, obtaining regular physical
exercise, and providing your body with optimal nutrition.
In fact, over the years, I have become convinced
that optimal personal nutrition is the single most effective thing we
can do to decrease our risk of degenerative disease.
However, their influences on our health at the cellular level can be grouped into three major categories.
First,
EFAs are critical structural components for all cell membranes. The
“good” fatty acids—omega 3s and omega 6s—keep the cell membranes
flexible, which is important for transporting nutrients and oxygen into
the cells and waste products out of the cells.
Second,
they are the precursors to important molecules—prostaglandins—that are
key to regulating more than a dozen critical functions from
inflammation to nerve transmission.
Third,
the essential fatty acids are involved in many important processes
without which the cells and the body could not survive. For example,
fatty acids are needed for oxygen transport from the lungs to the red
blood cells that are circulating in the blood vessels. They do this by
facilitating the transport of oxygen through the capillary walls, red
blood cell walls, and directly to the hemoglobin in the red blood cells.
In with the Good, Out with the Bad
To avoid the damaging fats, read your labels.
“Partially
hydrogenated” oils of any type are detrimental to your health. These
oils contain trans-fatty acids, which most nutrition experts agree are
unhealthy for human consumption.
To increase your intake of good fats, look for key phrases on the label:
• Cold-pressed
• Unrefined
• Organic
Use
extra virgin olive oil, canola oil, coconut oil, rice bran oil, grape
seed oil, or butter for cooking. Eat nuts (almonds/hazelnuts) and seeds
(pumpkin/sesame) for snacks. Another good source of healthy fat is
flaxseed oil, which can be drizzled over a salad or added to a smoothie.
Food for the Soul
With all of
our talk about the importance of good nutrition, let’s not lose sight
of just how much fun food really is. Yes, food is fuel, but it’s also
something to be enjoyed and shared.
Take
some time every weekend to map out your week’s meals. Make planning
your menu something fun and encourage the whole family to join in. With
a little effort and a little common sense, you can enjoy a healthful
diet full of nourishing, clean, real food.
Start
wherever you are—nutrition novice or dietary genius—and take it day by
day. It’s the choices you make consistently every day that will make
all of the difference in the long term.
