Columns
Hildreth on Health: Understanding the significance of proper nutrition
By Dr. Dewall Hildreth, D.O.
Is our new lifestyle a threat to health? It is increasingly evident that the acceleration of human diseases is most often related to lifestyle and, in theory, should be preventable.
The stress of modern life, our reduced physical activity, and our consumption of manipulated and processed foods and chemicals including pharmaceuticals all contribute to our decreasing resistance to disease.
Much evidence supports the fact that our genes adapted during millions of years through the lifestyle of our prehistoric ancestors.
The genes poorly tolerate the dramatic changes in lifestyle that have occurred, especially in food habits during the past hundred years.
Changes in food habits in Western countries no doubt contribute stresses to the human body that may predispose to inflammatory conditions, infections, ulcerations, degenerative and neoplastic diseases including the following: the consumption of a hundred pounds of refined sugar per individual per year, the ten-fold increase in sodium consumption, the four-fold increase in consumption of saturated fat, the doubled consumption of cholesterol, a much reduced consumption of vegetable fibers and of minerals such as potassium, magnesium, calcium and chromium, and a considerable reduction in the consumption of omega-3 fats, membrane lipids, vitamins and antioxidants in severe diseases.
Important food ingredients such as arginine, glutamine, taurine, nucleic acid, vitamins and antioxidants such as glucothione are often not supplied in large enough quantities.
Some of the above quotes are referenced from C. Tancrede, which has quoted the role of human microflora in health and disease, and it was from the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.
Secondly, S. Bengmark on econonutrition and health maintenance, which is a new concept to preventive GI inflammation, ulceration and sepsis, and that is from Clinical Nutrition.
Then, S. Bengmark and L. Gianotti, which is nutritional support to prevent and treat multiple organ failure, and that is from the World Journal of Surgery.
Because of the above challenges that we are all facing and the tremendous deficiency in the internal concentration of probiotic bacteria that we all depend upon to maintain intestinal pH and resistance to invading pathological and destructive foreign bacteria, many of us experience repeated gastrointestinal indigestion, gastroenteritis and colitis.
The gastrointestinal tract is the main port of infectious diseases unless one smokes or is in constant contact with some of the other toxic elements that are in contact with the lungs, then probably the lungs are the main means of entry.
I would like you to appreciate the tremendous challenge our gastrointestinal organ experiences in an effort to bring us the nutrients our trillions of cells require to stay alive and healthy.
Why is it common for tissue to break down and die or survive by becoming cancerous?
If laid out on a flat surface, our gastrointestinal organ would cover a tennis court. During a normal lifetime, sixty tons of food pass through this canal.
Not only is it for our well-being, but it also constitutes an enormous threat to the integrity of our whole body.
It is not surprising that this organ is affected by inflammatory disease and cancer. Most of the surface cells have a very rapid turnover.
Most are replaced every three or four days in man and faster in animals.
These surface cells along with hundreds of different enzymatic liquid ingredients expressed from the saliva down to the colonic secretions in the large bowel aid in protection from the toxic (live or dead), engulf substances, break down valuable nutrients for digestion and assimilation into the bloodstream on the way to the liver, and for lubrication of all substances along the way.
I just ran across a report that 50 percent of the 2000 pharmaceutical drugs registered in Sweden have reported gastrointestinal side effects.
I would wonder if that percentage might be higher here in the United States.
Altered from what was originally intended for health functioning gastrointestinal tract in the United States and most of the Western world starts at a very early age and progresses in many forms through our life.
Infants fed artificial infant formulas in contrast to breastfed babies have a low degree of colonization with Lactobacillus and Bifida bacteria but high counts in Enterococci, Coliforms, and Clostridium.
Emotional stress that appears to be increasing begins at early age and gets worse as we age.
It is known to affect the composition of the intestinal preventive flora.
Recent observation in Lancet under medical research on ulcerative colitis and xenbiotics has proposed that ulcerative colitis is caused by toxic metabolites of xenbiotic (this is an exogenous agent, such as an environmental chemical not usually present in the body).
The intestinal tract is certainly exposed to all of the environmental toxins in one way or another.
If the mucosa is chronically inflamed secondary to ongoing drug exposure, it is bound to break down in time and experience some form of cellular and tissue changes that can be catastrophic.
In most cases, these changes cannot be corrected by just another symptom relieving drug.
All of the organs of our body, whether it is the gastrointestinal tract, the musculoskeletal system or the cardiovascular system which includes the heart, must be used, but used correctly and not overused or poisoned.
Also, each organ or system depends on all of the other systems for one reason or another. In the case of the gastrointestinal system, all other organs and systems depend on it for their nutritional substance to maintain life.
See where “if you don’t use it you lose it” comes from and how it comes into play?
When you are depending on multiple specialists, either you have to be able to bridge this gap or depend on your primary care physician to assist you.
Contact Green Valley Dr. DeWall Hildreth at (520) 625-1101 or cnhcgv@ yahoo.com . His column appears biweekly in the Green Valley News
The stress of modern life, our reduced physical activity, and our consumption of manipulated and processed foods and chemicals including pharmaceuticals all contribute to our decreasing resistance to disease.
Much evidence supports the fact that our genes adapted during millions of years through the lifestyle of our prehistoric ancestors.
The genes poorly tolerate the dramatic changes in lifestyle that have occurred, especially in food habits during the past hundred years.
Changes in food habits in Western countries no doubt contribute stresses to the human body that may predispose to inflammatory conditions, infections, ulcerations, degenerative and neoplastic diseases including the following: the consumption of a hundred pounds of refined sugar per individual per year, the ten-fold increase in sodium consumption, the four-fold increase in consumption of saturated fat, the doubled consumption of cholesterol, a much reduced consumption of vegetable fibers and of minerals such as potassium, magnesium, calcium and chromium, and a considerable reduction in the consumption of omega-3 fats, membrane lipids, vitamins and antioxidants in severe diseases.
Important food ingredients such as arginine, glutamine, taurine, nucleic acid, vitamins and antioxidants such as glucothione are often not supplied in large enough quantities.
Some of the above quotes are referenced from C. Tancrede, which has quoted the role of human microflora in health and disease, and it was from the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.
Secondly, S. Bengmark on econonutrition and health maintenance, which is a new concept to preventive GI inflammation, ulceration and sepsis, and that is from Clinical Nutrition.
Then, S. Bengmark and L. Gianotti, which is nutritional support to prevent and treat multiple organ failure, and that is from the World Journal of Surgery.
Because of the above challenges that we are all facing and the tremendous deficiency in the internal concentration of probiotic bacteria that we all depend upon to maintain intestinal pH and resistance to invading pathological and destructive foreign bacteria, many of us experience repeated gastrointestinal indigestion, gastroenteritis and colitis.
The gastrointestinal tract is the main port of infectious diseases unless one smokes or is in constant contact with some of the other toxic elements that are in contact with the lungs, then probably the lungs are the main means of entry.
I would like you to appreciate the tremendous challenge our gastrointestinal organ experiences in an effort to bring us the nutrients our trillions of cells require to stay alive and healthy.
Why is it common for tissue to break down and die or survive by becoming cancerous?
If laid out on a flat surface, our gastrointestinal organ would cover a tennis court. During a normal lifetime, sixty tons of food pass through this canal.
Not only is it for our well-being, but it also constitutes an enormous threat to the integrity of our whole body.
It is not surprising that this organ is affected by inflammatory disease and cancer. Most of the surface cells have a very rapid turnover.
Most are replaced every three or four days in man and faster in animals.
These surface cells along with hundreds of different enzymatic liquid ingredients expressed from the saliva down to the colonic secretions in the large bowel aid in protection from the toxic (live or dead), engulf substances, break down valuable nutrients for digestion and assimilation into the bloodstream on the way to the liver, and for lubrication of all substances along the way.
I just ran across a report that 50 percent of the 2000 pharmaceutical drugs registered in Sweden have reported gastrointestinal side effects.
I would wonder if that percentage might be higher here in the United States.
Altered from what was originally intended for health functioning gastrointestinal tract in the United States and most of the Western world starts at a very early age and progresses in many forms through our life.
Infants fed artificial infant formulas in contrast to breastfed babies have a low degree of colonization with Lactobacillus and Bifida bacteria but high counts in Enterococci, Coliforms, and Clostridium.
Emotional stress that appears to be increasing begins at early age and gets worse as we age.
It is known to affect the composition of the intestinal preventive flora.
Recent observation in Lancet under medical research on ulcerative colitis and xenbiotics has proposed that ulcerative colitis is caused by toxic metabolites of xenbiotic (this is an exogenous agent, such as an environmental chemical not usually present in the body).
The intestinal tract is certainly exposed to all of the environmental toxins in one way or another.
If the mucosa is chronically inflamed secondary to ongoing drug exposure, it is bound to break down in time and experience some form of cellular and tissue changes that can be catastrophic.
In most cases, these changes cannot be corrected by just another symptom relieving drug.
All of the organs of our body, whether it is the gastrointestinal tract, the musculoskeletal system or the cardiovascular system which includes the heart, must be used, but used correctly and not overused or poisoned.
Also, each organ or system depends on all of the other systems for one reason or another. In the case of the gastrointestinal system, all other organs and systems depend on it for their nutritional substance to maintain life.
See where “if you don’t use it you lose it” comes from and how it comes into play?
When you are depending on multiple specialists, either you have to be able to bridge this gap or depend on your primary care physician to assist you.
Contact Green Valley Dr. DeWall Hildreth at (520) 625-1101 or cnhcgv@ yahoo.com . His column appears biweekly in the Green Valley News
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