You Are -Not Exactly- What You Eat
BY DERYA SONER (MBG/IV)
a_soner@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
Mankind has been on a quest for immortality since the dawn of time; this is especially obvious in mythological tales where what separates gods from men is immortality. We seem to be slowly approaching this ambitious cause - as recently as only 50 years ago, people in Turkey had much shorter life spans. Diseases such as polio or scarlet fever caused the deaths of many infants but are now considered a thing of the past.
The most common diseases of our age, on the contrary, are brought on by our own actions, and mostly by what we eat. What the common media tends to do is name a food as "good" or "bad," but they miss the point that what you eat with it and how much you consume are the most important factors here, and it is unrealistic to expect a person to completely eliminate a food from their entire lives.
Aging is considered an enemy that scientists are expected to find a cure for, but not many people know why we age and why we are mortal. The basis of this lies in the fact that our cells are mortal; they cannot divide infinitely because our DNA gets shorter with each division.
Our cells need to divide after they grow a certain amount, and in order to do this, they need to replicate their DNA. The human DNA is linear, and the replication enzymes miss the last bits of our DNA when they dock on it, so every time our DNA replicates, it gets shorter because the ends are left out. Our DNA has meaningless repeats at the ends called telomeres, which ensure that the important part of the DNA is not lost during this process. But if we force the cells to divide after a certain point, it is not the meaningless telomeres that get shorter but the actual DNA sequence, and the cell dies.
So here's the main idea here; the faster we force our cells to grow and divide, the faster they will reach the end of their limited life span. And how do the cells grow? As they intake nutrients! Recent studies have shown that calorie restriction has had great effects on the life spans of mice and monkeys, but the idea not to miss here is that one needs to cut calories from food that contains sugars and such simple carbohydrates, and not turn this into malnutrition by missing out on essential vitamins and minerals.
An example of the media's misdirection is the never-ending debate over "Are eggs (or butter) good or bad?" Everyone seems to say something different. The point they miss is that where animal fats end up in our bodies is heavily dependent on our intake of simple carbohydrates, i.e. sugar.
Simple carbohydrates, such as those found in a bar of chocolate, a dessert, a bowl of rice, or a sweet drink, are different from the good complex carbohydrates we can get from a slice of whole wheat bread or a salad in one important sense; they cause a nasty peak in our blood glucose levels.
Why is a peak in blood glucose so evil? Well, for many reasons. First of all, your pancreas has to synthesize a great amount of insulin to make sure the cells of your body take up this glucose, and when the pancreas is put under such stress, many cells produce misfolded proteins and die as a result. This is actually the underlying mechanism of Diabetes Type 2: the more stress you put your pancreas under with glucose peaks, the more cells will be lost, and you will no longer be able to produce insulin, causing glucose to remain in your blood. This has a devastating affect on your cardiovascular and nervous systems. So a habit of starving yourself with a ridiculous diet and then rewarding yourself with a bar of chocolate is a one-way ticket to diabetes!
The second catastrophe caused by a glucose peak is that the high level of insulin that your body will generate as a response tells your cells to store fat! So yes, if you eat butter or eggs with slices of white bread with strawberry jam on the side, it will be bad for your body. But if you eat it with a slice of whole wheat bread, you should be OK (if high cholesterol is not a factor).
Hope this information helps you better understand how your diet affects your health.