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Do Your Insides Spell Trouble for Your Outsides? (Part 2)

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January 20, 2010
	Jo Wehage : Head Operations Ego

Trouble in Cellular Paradise
Even the best A-list night clubs have to stay on guard to keep out the riffraff. In our bodies, the riffraff can come in the form of toxic food. Our culture’s reliance on packaged, processed, cheap and fast foods has shifted the quality of our food in a dangerous direction.

As you may recall in part one of our series, it is the job of the cell membrane to allow nutrients to enter the cell. Over time, poor food choices cause that cell membrane to become more and more rigid which means the cells cannot be fed correctly.

Blame it on the Crowd
Outside of our A-List club known as The Cell, there is a constant flow of taxi drivers you need to be aware of. In your body these taxi drivers go by the name of insulin.

Your body breaks down the food you eat into different parts including a sugar called glucose. Insulin is then called upon to chauffeur that glucose, and then knock on the door of the cell so the nutrients can enter the party. When the streets are clear, this goes off without a hitch, but in some neighborhood there’s trouble brewing.

There’s a bad element filling the streets in some parts of town. The worst is a violent, blood thirsty gang called Trans Fats. Trans Fats are man-made fats that go by the name of hydrogenated oils on your food labels. Avoid them at all costs.

These thugs trash the very doors of this once vibrant club, The Cell. The doors get harder and harder to open. This stress takes its toll on our bouncers, and the cell membrane begins to harden.

As the insulin taxi arrives with new guests they have a harder and harder time getting nutrients past the beaten and decaying doors. Over time the cell membrane becomes desensitized to insulin, leading to elevated blood glucose levels that spill into the streets. Eventually, instead of an A-list club, we now have a neighborhood where Type 2 Diabetes or another degenerative disease has taken hold. 

Other thugs like too much Omega 6 (corn, canola, safflower, and sunflower oils) can further compound the situation. Hooligans like this can create inflammation by insulting some of the clubs guests and neighbors causing even more trouble for the club and, if things don’t get cleaned up, the whole town, Human Bodyville, can be at risk.

What’s a cell to do in an environment like this? There’s no energy to give, no support to the rest of the body. You start to feel sluggish, tired, have a hard time focusing. Perhaps you’ve hit a dieter’s plateau. You continue to watch what you eat and exercise, but you’re not efficiently burning the fat. Oh where have the mitochondria gone?

Thank Goodness for Neighborhood Revitalization
You may recall earlier in our tale we mentioned the fact that the body has somewhere around 100 trillion cells. The exciting thing is that your body creates three to four trillion brand new cells every single day! Talk about second chances.

This is your chance! How will you be treating these new-comers to the neighborhood?

Action Steps:

• Read labels and toss out anything containing partially hydrogenated oils (trans fats)
• Don’t be fooled by trans fat free labels. If there is ANY hydrogenated oil in the ingredient list don’t eat it.
• Do your best to eat as many healthy fruits and vegetables
• Focus on a source of healthy fats like nuts, seeds, avocados, chia seeds, fish oil, extra virgin coconut and olive oil. Even small amounts of clean (organic) saturated fats are part of a healthy diet.
• Be sure you’re getting enough vitamin D3. Ask your doctor to check your levels.

In future posts we’ll take a closer look at those fats and how to get them into the diet.

This post is proudly submitted in the Body Basics category of our 12 Weeks of Wellness

Related:
Do Your Insides Spell Trouble for Your Outsides (Meet Player #1)