Is poor cellular nutrition the true cause of degenerative diseases?

BodSolutions - What is the secret to cellular health?

Cellular Nutrition: When we think of health and nutrition, few of us imagine the cell. But actually, the cell is the source of the body’s energy supply; it’s what keeps you not only functioning at optimal health, but functioning at all.

In fact, as soon as the cells lose any of their capacity to produce energy for the body, the result is a decline in health and the emergence of degenerative conditions.

Healthy cell life produces what we call “vitality” – a healthy level of energy and resistance to stress.

But how do we make sure our cells are working at full pump on the energy front? Fortunately, it’s not as hard as it sounds, because scientific research shows that good nutrition is the key.

Cells and energy

To understand how eating a particular diet can affect your cells, and therefore your energy levels, it’s useful to have a rough idea of how the cells actually work: how the cell produces its energy.

That particular task falls to the mitochondria, the "power plants" of the cell. There are hundreds of these in a typical cell, every one containing a unique pattern of DNA, and their job is to facilitate cellular respiration, a process through which they transform oxygen and nutrients into energy and water.

The many finger-like folds in the mitochondrial inner membrane house respiratory chains where this process happens.

The "bad" side of oxygen

So far, so good. Except that unfortunately, oxygen is actually toxic to biological molecules and cells. That means that all processes involving oxygen, including the oxygen used in cellular respiration, leads to the formation of free radicals.

It’s just a consequence of normal metabolism. The bad news is that these free radicals tend to oxidize biological molecules, just as iron oxidizes when it rusts. Eventually, this assault on the cells can damage them, and inactivate the cellular respiration, leading to the death of the cell.
The body’s response to all this is to unleash a grand defense mechanism, using antioxidant molecules (good guys) against the free radicals (bad guys).

It doesn’t always get the response right, however, or it can’t produce enough antioxidants for the task. The result is that free radicals ravage the body’s proteins, fats, and DNA/RNA. The body also removes and repairs some damaged macromolecules, but often the sheer volume of free radicals overwhelms the repair system.

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