January 2025 letter - health from food
For this month’s letter, I wanted to talk about our health, to hopefully provide a little more basic information about what helps us stay healthy. What are those factors that maintain our health and wellbeing, our ability to function like we should. I wanted to look at the physiological functions of our body and how all those nutrient are so important for our health, how our metabolism works, what happens to our food after eating it. I just wanted to look at all of this briefly, just to remind us how important it is to make sure we eat well, good, real food to ensure nutrition for our cells for them to be able to function optimally every day.
It goes without saying that everything else, relationships, stress, financial situation etc have a major effect on our wellbeing also, so effective stress management, whatever it means to each of us, needs to be looked at too when maintaining health and wellbeing.
We looking at the food we eat, we need to understand that we need certain essential nutrients, such as essential amino acids and essential fatty acids, as well as many vitamins and minerals all the time, every day. Some of the nutrient our body can produce, but many of them we need from the food we eat. The amount of different nutrients we need often depends on our situation, for example if we suffer from any illness or are recovering from illness or trauma, the demand for nutrients is higher. The need for amino acids (protein) is high when recovering, repairing our body. We also need fatty acids for this, as well as the absorption of fat soluble vitamins, such as vitamin D. It important to notice that carbohydrates (glucose) on the other hand, is NOT essential, but our body can produce enough for it’s needs. For eat fish rather than bread if you need good nutrition when unwell.
So where do we need all the nutrients?
Our cells, in order to function properly, use many different enzymes as their ‘tools’. There are different enzymes in different tissues, for example our liver and heart have completely different functioning enzymes. These enzymes need these essential nutrients in order to function optimally. Many of the nutrients are also needed for other functions within the body, for example fatty acids are needed to form our cell walls and amino acids for protein production in muscles and other tissues.
If we don’t have enough of these nutrients, our cells just don’t function efficiently. It is as simple as that. And if this problem continues for too long, it might lead to illness of these tissues as their functioning is impaired. The symptoms are therefore often called ‘functional problems’ which might include many different symptoms. You might have heard about functional abdominal problems for example that is usually used when talking about IBS. If the functioning of the cells is compromised, the symptoms slowly progress and get worse over time.
Functional medicine is something that looks at these problems and is looking to regain the normal functioning of the cells and tissues, in order to reduce symptoms. Medication can help to reduce the symptoms, but does not cure the root cause. It is extremely important to find the root cause, otherwise the problems persist.
Functional medicine always focuses on the root causes of symptoms, instead of treating the symptoms. A good idea to start to find the root causes are thinking about when the symptoms started and what happened before this. When have you last felt well. What are those factors that make the symptoms worse, or better. Has there been any stressful situations before the symptoms started or any changes in the diet. Is the diet generally good, or not. Is there chronic stress present.
Functional practitioners often use the analogy of a tree to explain the holistic approach to health and wellbeing. Looking at the functional medicine tree is a perfect way to understand how the body’s metabolic functions are interconnected. You can see the branches of this tree as your body’s metabolic systems. Their proper functioning depends on the content of the “soil” and how the “roots” deliver water and nutrients into the body, the ‘tree’. With this tree you can see and understand how your metabolism depends on your environment, diet, and lifestyle.
With any symptom, I try to first find out whether it is a question of deficiency in essential nutrients. Is the diet healthy and nutritious, or is there too much poor quality food.
If the diet is good, then the problem could be in the absorption of nutrients. Abdominal symptoms, such as in IBS can be a sign that there are deficiencies in nutrients.
DIGESTION
If you are not sure of the cause, look at the gut. With this you usually cannot go wrong. Improving your gut health always improves your overall health. Within the gut, the main areas to focus on are the wellbeing of the gut microbiome, a possibility of a leaky gut syndrome and digestion. To learn more, please look at my short presentation of the most common abdominal complaints and also read through more information about the importance of gut microbiome.
chronic stress
This is an extremely important area to look at in addition to the quality of our food. If there is stress in life, it is impossible to reduce symptoms without including effective stress management into daily routines. This is an area which many of my patients do not understand. The harsh truth is that we all need to manage this ourselves. It is a big part of taking responsibility of our health. If you have read through my presentation about gut microbiome, you know about the gut brain axis and how important stress management and reducing negative thoughts is for a healthy gut.
The best way to start reducing any symptoms and improving health is to look at all these ‘roots’, not just one of them and think about what improvements we need to make with each of them. This is proper holistic healthcare.