Category: Health Basics

Few weeks ago, one of my dear friends shared with me his pain that wasn’t related to physical pain, it was more of a mental, emotional, and psychological pain.
My dear friend is a software engineer, he lives in the suburb of Philadelphia in a beautiful house with his wife and an amazing daughter.
He works for a big e-commerce company.
He told me he is in a position now to leave the job and go back to India and sell coconut water on the Indian beach.
His words, “I feel like my life now is a piece of shit, my life is draining, and all the time I feel heavy and overwhelmed.”
Obviously, it was an informal derogatory language that came out of his mouth suddenly, but I took it very seriously in my mind and it made me really think about our work and its impact on our life.

I am quite aware that people have different problems in life and most of them are stressed out due to financial problems.
If you earn a good amount of money and run your life well above the average American household, you should be happy.
But I feel like that’s not true anymore.
This world has changed enormously now.
My dear friend doesn’t go to the office, almost 90 percent of his work is remote, he can work from his comfort home, he doesn’t have traffic problems, he has no 9 to 5 barrier, but still he is suffering more than anybody else who goes to the office everyday.

My thought process emerged and I’m asking myself why people’s lives go out of balance and they suffer so heavily even though they look happy from outside.

One key factor that I found from my research is elevated stress due to excessive workload.
Stress happens due to many reasons but one of the reasons for elevated stress is excessive mental burden that affects the healthy body.

A lot of people forget that a healthy body is our main asset in life and success is the action it enables.

One of the things I found in stressed people is they are unable to observe everything around them.
They cannot notice the smallest details around them and they are unable to connect the dots around those details and they give up very quickly.
They can’t even reflect on the day, what they actually did, and what they ate, and how many hours they had a quality sleep the day before.
We must understand that good health is the access to a good life, we can’t give up this asset so fast so quickly.

I advocate a lot about healthy lifestyle and nutrition than any other things in life.
I strongly believe that if our body is healthy we can walk boldly and unwaveringly with full authority over time, creativity, and life choices.
This authority is key to spreading joy and happiness in life.

I also believe that a healthy body reassures us that we are worthy of personal sovereignty and are able to create plan B for life.
Healthy body reminds us that we are not here just to stress out and kill disease.

The depressing news that I found from The American Institute of Stress is that at least 120,000 people die each year as a direct result of work-related stress in US.
At least 65 percent of U.S. workers say work is the main cause of stress.
If we convert that stress into stress related healthcare costs, that would be $190 billion a year.
This astronomical number indicates that we have to take action for this silent killer in society.

Science of stress and modern life

The total burden on our body that builds up when we are exposed to repeated stressors is allostatic load.
It is basically the total effects that chronic stress has on our mental and physical health.
It is a ‘wear and tear’ on us due to life and environmental stressors.

Our body’s sympathetic nervous system produces stress chemicals and the adrenal hormone system protects our body from the effects of stress at low levels.
The problems start to appear at high levels when we start to expose stress repeatedly over time.

When our body becomes overloaded with stress, it shows many physiological effects and later diseases due to inflammation caused by free radicals.
Remember, stress response ignites free radicals, the damaging molecules that lead to inflammation.
If we suffer from chronic stress, we feel no pleasure in anything.
My dear friend used to say he doesn’t like social connections which is one of the biggest symptoms of chronic stress.

As we know high stress is bad but low stress is also not good for us.
Generally at a low stress level, we feel underload and low morale, and may be a little bit of fatigue and then we reach the optimum point of stress level.
But once we pass that optimum level, we move towards exhaustion, breakdown, completely overload, and burndown.
I believe that’s what happened to my dear friend.

Chronic stress invites many negative effects in our body.
Dysfunctional mitochondria, increased inflammation, changes in brain function, changes in genes and epigenome are some of them.
Chronic stress is a main cause of faster aging by losing telomeres and damaging DNA.
To make you more memorable, our DNA is a shoelace and telomeres are the caps at the end of shoelace to protect DNA.
So basically, telomeres are the caps to prevent breaking down of DNA.

If we are too stressed all the time, normal aging is no more normal.
A higher level of stress creates shortening of telomeres, so one stressful year can damage five to ten years of normal aging.

Remember, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, MD, cardiology professor and author of “The 21-Day Immunity Plan” says “Stress is a silent killer.”
We have to recognize it as soon as possible and act accordingly.

Stress and hormone secretion

When our body detects emotional and physical stress, our sympathetic nervous system becomes very active.
Our brain produces chemical signals that increase adrenaline and cortisol in our blood.
These two stress hormones are made and released by adrenal glands located next to our kidneys.

Adrenaline increases our heart rate, breathing rate, carbohydrate metabolism so that we can use energy quickly if we need to run away.
Cortisol gets sugar into the bloodstream by increasing its production so that our brain can use enough energy to get us out of mess.
Cortisol also sends a message to the rest of our body systems like digestive, reproductive, and immune systems not to use much energy.
This looks normal in an any emergency situation but under chronic stress, these effects on body systems become serious.

Stress brings anxiety or panic attacks and that eventually leads to hyperventilation.
This happens to a high rate of breathing and oxygen consumption in blood.
Hypertension, heart attack, and stroke are common due to increase in heart rate and blood pressure.
Heartburn, reflex, bloating, constipation are common due to interference with the normal release of digestive enzymes.
Depression and anxiety are also due to fewer immune cells being made.

Stress hormones increase risk of diabetes, decrease sperm formation, decrease testosterone in men, change in menstrual cycle, and worsen PMS symptoms in women.
Difficulty sleeping, inability to pay attention, memory problems, learning difficulties, mood swings, irritability are other problems of excess stress hormones.

Stress hormones have a huge effect on our brain.
The amygdala, the part of our brain that controls fear gradually enlarges, and the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, the memory and decision making points, gradually shrink.

One fact is that some people are more susceptible to stress and others are more resilient.
Our response to stress is encoded in our own DNA, an inherited factor, that determines our capacity for resilience.
Our response factor is also dependent on epigenetic and environmental factors which affect our gene expression.

Stress and irritable bowel syndrome

Stress has a very bad negative effect especially for people with IBS, irritable bowel syndrome.
One reasons I wrote about IBS and stress together is personal. One of my family members has been suffering from IBS for a long time, so I did some research and found out that stress has severe implications for IBS patients.
This disease can only be cured by lifestyle change and diet selection. This is my personal experience from my family.
IBS is a chronic gastrointestinal disorder characterized by abdominal pain and change in bowel habits.

Dr. William Chey, MD, professor of gastroenterology at University of Michigan, says “The symptoms of IBS are triggered mainly by two reasons: food and stress.”

For IBS patients, stress can damage the interactions between the brain and gut.
Stress results in overactivity or underactivity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis along with autonomic nervous, metabolic, and immune systems.

Stress increases intestinal permeability also called gut leakiness.
This leakiness allows potentially harmful toxins into the bloodstream which increases IBS complications and GI pain.

Stress can alter the secretions and movement of the intestine due to slow down or speed up bowel transit causing pain, constipation, and diarrhea.

Stress increases visceral hypersensitivity that leads to bloating and abdominal pain and worsen the bowel urgency.

Dr. Megan Riehl, PsyD, GI Psychologist and author of “Mind Your Gut” says “Stress changes the stress hormone level and alters the bacterial composition in the gut.”

Our gut microbes have the capacity to upregulate stress responses and increase the risk of depression.
The gut microbes affected by stress can alter mood and eating behaviour.
They trigger cravings for highly processed and flavored foods containing processed carbohydrates, sodium, and fats.

Conclusion

There are hundreds of reasons why you should be healthy and stress free because when you become healthy and stress free then you can become anything and offer anything in this world.
This is the power of a healthy body.
Having good health and stress free life frees up a huge amount of mental space.
Instead of having most of our brain occupied by only our problems like how we’re going to get rid of this illness; all of that mental space is utilized to focus on other things like how we’re going to contribute to change this world.

So my advice to all of you is this:
Visualize your life as a series of stories that gives you a chance to take a step back, look at the whole picture, and try to develop a new perspective of your life.
Take a few deep breaths because that recruits our nervous system to help you return to the present moment.

My dear friend, there are mainly three kinds of mind that operate our body: emotional, rational, and wise.
Most of the time we use our emotional mind, and very few times we use our rational mind.
What we have to do is we have to use with a wise mind most of the time because this mind is in the center of rationality and emotion.

We have to think bigger picture and investigate problems from many corners of our lives to balance emotional and rational mindset.
So my friend, start to use a wise mind by adopting a small habit change and do it everyday as a prioritized routine work same like your everyday software development work: (1) Five minutes of breath work and meditation for mental exercise (2) Move your body for fifteen minutes for physical exercise, and (3) Eat a healthy diet mainly plant based food for positive energy.
Your work stress will gradually go away, it will not go overnight but eventually will go away, you will feel it, but only if you stick with your habit. This is my personal experience from my family.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal, PhD, a research psychologist and author of “The Joy of Movement”says “Go after what it is that creates meaning in your life and then trust yourself to handle the stress that follows.”

If you have a few minutes, please watch Dr. Kelly McGonigal’s TedTalk: “How to make stress your friend?”

Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.

We had an important project briefing in the office.
Our team was working on the scale up of one of the API molecules for a pharmaceutical company.
API means active pharmaceutical ingredient which later becomes the drug molecule which we use as a medication for a specific disease.
I didn’t see my colleague Natasha who was supposed to give an update of the project that we were handling.
Her manager came and said “Natasha can’t make her update today because her grandfather is hospitalized.”

After three days, Natasha came into the office and she told us what’s going on in her family.
She told me about her grandfather, a retired car mechanic, no alcohol habit, but still suffers from fatty liver and his liver is almost non-functional.
Her grandfather is taking glutathione supplement to improve liver function but he is not getting satisfactory results.
After hearing this I immediately remembered the glutathione molecule from my graduate school, our only master antioxidant in our body, and how crucial this chemical is for us.

At one point in our conversation, Natasha said, “when I hear the word liver, the only thing that comes to my mind is my grandpa.”
This answer penetrated so deep down in my head that I couldn’t stop mentioning this here.
Sometimes, we don’t know what triggers us to do things in life.
She didn’t say that the liver is one major organ in our body that filters our blood and produces hormones.
To be honest, I became very emotional when she connected liver and her grandpa together and I realized how much we care about the people whom we love.
And, most importantly, how much our life is affected by it.

So the question is, what is the connection between liver and glutathione?

When there is imbalance between the amount of fatty acids absorbed and disposed of by the liver, generally non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) appears.
This imbalance increases a buildup of fat in the liver leading to inflammation and fibrosis.
Glutathione is a very strong antioxidant that our body makes and uses every single day.
It helps to reduce cell damage in the liver.
Its deficiency can contribute to fatty liver disease.

Dr Robert H. Keller , MD, a pioneer in glutathione research who is first to receive a US medical patent for glutathione, says “ We are oxygen based organisms. We live on oxygen, and oxygen creates a fire. That fire is called an oxidant. In order to put it out, we need a very good antioxidant. Many antioxidants work for one thing, or two things, or three things. Glutathione works for everything.”

Liver disease and glutathione

Approximately 2 million deaths occur each year worldwide due to liver disease.
The most common liver disease-related deaths are cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma.
The most common causes of cirrhosis are viral hepatitis, alcohol, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

So now let’s see, what is the biochemistry of glutathione?
Glutathione is made from three amino acids: glycine, cysteine and glutamine acid.
It is a tripeptide and produced by enzymatic reactions using these three amino acids.
It is produced by our liver and plays a major role in tissue building and immunity development by attacking damaging free radicals.

Free radicals are very reactive molecules and are produced in the body by mitochondria due to various reasons.
The most probable factors are poor nutrition, pollution, stress, processed foods, fast aging, heavy metals and toxins exposure, and over consumption of alcohol.

Dr. Gustavo Bounous, MD, says “It’s the body’s most important antioxidant because it’s within the cells.”
His research indicates that a deficiency in glutathione is linked to several diseases and a lack of innate cysteine inhibits glutathione production.

Glutathione is anti-inflammatory in its action so it relieves the symptoms associated with autoimmune disease.
This antioxidant is important for the metabolism of vitamins C and E including many minerals.
People with severe stress due to chronic disease have less glutathione to protect their liver from damage.
Many times liver damage becomes really bad and all the cells die.

Dr. Mark Hyman, MD, author of “Young Forever” says “Glutathione is the mother of all antioxidants.”
His book “Young Forever’ teaches to reduce inflammation and support the health of our immune system, especially how to exercise, sleep, and destress for healthy aging.

After reading “Young Forever”, I believe there is a very simple rule in life: we don’t need a doctor with MD or scientist with PhD to know what makes us sick and what we need to do.
We don’t need dieticians and nutritionists to follow diet rules; we just need to be a little bit more conscious in the kitchen about what we are making and eating and what we are drinking throughout the day.
I recommend watching Dr. Mark Hyman’s TedTalk.

Research also indicates that glutathione helps in the detoxification of xenobiotic and endogenous compounds including carcinogens.
Xenobiotics are foreign substances but endogenous ones are produced within the body.

Glutathione helps to reduce fine lines and wrinkles improving skin elasticity.
It helps with patients with cystic fibrosis, vascular diseases, AIDS, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease.
It improves sperm motility in infertile men.

Low glutathione, obviously, increases risk of many liver diseases: drug induced liver injury, alcohol and non alcohol related fatty liver disease, liver fibrosis, cirrhosis, and liver failure.

People with low glutathione suffer from breakage of red blood cells, spleen enlargement, gall stone, mental imbalance, and anemia.
People suffering from cancer, AIDS, and chronic disease, all have very low glutathione.
Low glutathione increases risk factor for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and atherosclerosis.

Glutathione, avocado, asparagus, and broccoli sprouts

Dr. Mark Hyman, MD, says, “Methylation ingredients are perhaps the most critical to keep the body producing glutathione.”

The best way to keep our body producing this antioxidant is to eat enough natural foods containing this antioxidant including methylation ingredients.

Best foods containing glutathione are: asparagus, avocados, spinach, okra, and broccoli.
Similarly, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kale, mustard green, garlic, mangoes, shallot, onion, fish and poultry are also good supplies for glutathione.
Cysteine is a building block to make glutathione.
So, foods rich in cysteine like avocados, egg, sunflower seeds, beans, whey, citrus fruits, kiwi, pepper, Brazil nuts, fish, cottage cheese, brown rice are extremely helpful.

Foods rich in vitamin C helps to turn on glutathione and helps to reduce toxic damage.
Vitamin C rich foods are citrus fruits, kiwi, and peppers.

Selenium is another key component of glutathione.
Foods rich in selenium like Brazil nuts, yellowfin tuna, halibut, sardines, turkey, cottage cheese, and brown rice are extremely important.
Never forget to folate foods like garbanzo beans, liver, pinto beans, lentils, asparagus for better glutathione.

Remember high levels of selenium from supplements could have negative effects, so it’s always better to take it naturally unless otherwise advised by health care professionals.

We have to reduce the amount of alcohol because it uses the high amount of our glutathione levels.
High quality sleep and regular exercise increase our glutathione level.

Regular consumption of NAC helps to promote production of glutathione.
N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), is a precursor to glutathione.

Oral glutathione is not well absorbed and is not the best way to increase our glutathione level.
Research indicates that glutathione supplement can improve liver function for people with non alcoholic fatty liver damage.
This might be the reason that the doctor prescribed it to Natasha’s grandpa.

As a supplement, standard glutathione is poorly absorbed when we take orally so that S-acetyl-L-glutathione, liposomal glutathione, and reduced glutathione are much more absorbable.
It’s always good to look for complementary antioxidants like vitamin C, alpha lipoic acid, milk thistle, N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), and selenium.

These supplements are expensive to have.
More than that, we have to reflect back and ask ourselves why and how we arrived at this stage in life.
Sometimes, this ‘why’ is very helpful to change our life, maybe, for various reasons we became unable to care about our health, about our foods, and about our lifestyle in the past.

Conclusion

During my conversation with Natasha, I’d asked one more question to her, “Natasha, you are not ill but how much impact does your family experience when your grandpa suffers from chronic illness?”
She didn’t answer in words.
I only saw her tearing eyes.
Our tears speak millions of words.
And, this is not only Natasha’s story, there are millions of households like this.

We store cookies and crackers in our pantry, we don’t walk to Walmart which is less than a mile from home.
We hesitate to purchase fresh avocado and broccoli sprouts regularly because they are not tasty.
And we always complain about no time for exercise, gaining weight and not being healthy.
If you are always sick, then, ask at least a few times why you are always sick.
You will find many answers, write at least three answers.
Pick one and start to work on it, you know what you need to do.

Let me make one statement here, if we hear the word liver, let’s remember avocado, asparagus, and broccoli sprouts; then only glutathione smiles.
Avocado, asparagus, broccoli sprouts, and smiling glutathione.

Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.

At one point in my life I had chronic illness and my doctor told me I have to take one medicine throughout my life.
I was not happy at all.
I used to have severe fatigue, muscle pain, frequent headache, and a kind of skin problem.
My doctor had a conclusive result: I was suffering from oxidative stress.
I also believed myself because I was a scientist working around radiation, toxins, and chemicals all the time.
I thought, maybe, I elevated my free radicals in my body.

I started doing some experiments on my body after reading some books and some research reports.
To be honest, I found so much information, sometimes conflicting and always overwhelming.
Finally, I started to see something that is working for my body.
By the grace of God, I am medicine free now.
As a result of my own research and experiments on my body, I developed two habits.
First habit, I always started my day with a very good balanced breakfast with a lot of vibrant colored vegetables and fruits with whole grain.
And second habit, I started intermittent fasting.

As I said, I am a scientist so I found my best by fine-tuning what I eat and what I do.
My attitude is trying new things and always learning.
It took me years but I learned how to do it and started to feel really good after eating my chosen plant based real foods.
I started to feel physically and emotionally the best when I eat vibrant colored vegetables and fruits in the morning.
I don’t know but I feel like these two habits that I developed are somehow connected for my body, so that I am a vocal proponent of personalized medicine, food, habit, actually anything that we eat and do in life.
Every single human body is different.
I realized that fasting is working really well on my body.
I started to feel really energetic and amazing during and after fasting.

There are different ways I generally go for intermittent fasting, my goal is to get fasting 16 to 18 hours with the eating window of 6 to 8 hours daily.
My best fasting window period, generally, is from 8am to 6pm when I am out of home.
So, the only thing I do is skip lunch and keep my body hydrated with water or lime water or black tea or green tea or black pepper-turmeric water.
The worst part of me is up until now I’m not able to fast on weekends or holidays or when I am at home.
To be honest, I want to enjoy life when I’m around my family and you also should enjoy it, just do what is best for you.
We all are human so we must allow for the joys that our food can bring in our lives.

Intermittent fasting and mitochondria

So let’s reveal a little bit about the science behind fasting.
Intermittent fasting allows our body to adapt to different conditions ranging from normal to severe.
It is a mitochondrial fuel switching process that brings metabolic flexibility in cells.
When our mitochondria feels overwhelmed with tons of various foods, we invite metabolic inflexibility.
It means our body is unable to use all of its fuel sources.
If our body cannot use energy quickly, our metabolism is off.
This leads to brain fog, fatigue, confusion, and memory lapses.
Metabolic flexibility is possible only by optimized diet and lifestyle change.

Our mitochondria are very smart and highly equipped organs to switch between using sugars and fats as fuels in the body.
Fat is a great energy source.
The problem is that our brain prefers to run on sugar and doesn’t use fat very well.
During time of fasting, mitochondria will use fat and let the brain use sugar for energy.
Intermittent fasting stretches our mitochondria and it promotes them to break down fats.
The breakdown of fatty acids into ketones which make energy in our cells and these
ketones help cells to communicate, reorganize and clean up.
During fasting, our body makes new mitochondria and repairs the damaged ones.
Therefore, intermittent fasting is key for mitochondrial health that brings energy and well being for us.

Recent research shows that intermittent fasting improves mitochondrial function especially in brain, liver, and skeletal muscles which are key for brain aging and neuroprotective effects.
It has been shown that intermittent fasting enhances neuronal survival.
Research also indicates that intermittent fasting reduces inflammation and helps to delay disease progression for people with asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and cancer.

Research also shows that we can cut fat with intermittent fasting without losing muscle mass and it improves memory and cognition.

Dr. Jason Fung, a nephrologist and author of the “The Obesity Code” says “your body has two fuel sources: food and stored food. You’re switching them when you fast,” and he adds “the price of fasting is zero.”

The role of ketones is also interesting, they improve performance of cells by increasing the stress resistance, antioxidant activity and decreasing inflammation.
Most interestingly, they allow brain cells to grow and make new connections there.
Free radicals are produced from normal metabolism in our body, mainly made in mitochondria. The kind of food we eat is another source of free radicals like fats, sugars, processed foods, alcohol or pollutants from the environment, radiation from the sun, or smoking, or toxic chemicals from any place like pesticides from fruits and vegetables.

Free radicals exist less than a second but can cause significant changes to nearby fat, protein, and DNA molecules.
Oxidative stress means damage from free radicals that causes arthritis, vision loss, heart disease, cancers, and quick aging.

Dr. Steven Gundry, physician and author of the “The Plant Paradox”
says “fasting or intermittent fasting gives us an opportunity to really get all the best cells all the time and that’s what we all want.”

Antioxidants and mitochondria

So, what about the science behind vibrant colored fruits and vegetables?
As we know now mitochondria have clean up members that protect from free radicals, they are called antioxidants.
The work of mitochondria and antioxidants are complementary to each other.
Mitochondria produce reactive oxygen species like free radicals as damaging molecules and the role of antioxidants is to neutralize them.
These antioxidants are transported to mitochondria by transporter proteins.

Scientists have delivered antioxidant molecules to mitochondria for liver injury caused by oxidative stress in mitochondria.
This is a significant step towards chronic disease treatment.
Scientists have also discovered a key molecule that carries glutathione, the major antioxidant in our body, to mitochondria where free radicals are produced in large amounts.
By stimulating antioxidant transport to mitochondria, we can prevent or treat a number of diseases including aging, neurodegeneration, and cancers.

Dr. Deepak Chopra, author of “Perfect Health” and a Clinical Professor says, “foods that are deep blue, purple, red, green, or orange are leaders in antioxidants and contain many nutrients that boost immunity and enhance health.”

Our body makes very small amounts of antioxidants so we have to eat foods high in antioxidants.
Anti inflammatory diets high in antioxidants like vitamins A, C, E, lutein, lycopene are essential to make our mitochondria healthy and active.
Antioxidants from foods are way powerful and better than external supplements.
For example, foods have eight types of vitamin E but we have only one available as a supplement.

Dr. William Li, author of “Eat to Beat Disease“, a physician scientist says, “selling antioxidant supplements has become a big business, but nothing beats the incredible antioxidant properties of fresh, whole foods.”

Some of the most important antioxidants are sulforaphane from cruciferous vegetables, resveratrol from grapes and red wine, curcumin from turmeric powder, quercetin from onions.
They all decrease oxidative stress and restore mitochondrial function.

Cumin is an antioxidant containing spice that helps with digestion of fats, helps when bloated or having abdominal pain.
Turmeric is another very important antioxidant containing spice.
Curcumin is the active compound in turmeric and when taken with black pepper shows antioxidant and antiinflammatory benefits.
Research indicates that turmeric increases blood flow and improves depression and cognition.
Large amount of turmeric must be taken to get benefits because our body cannot absorb all of it because it is fat soluble.

Foods from plants are the main source of antioxidants.
They are fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, herbs, spices, and cocoa.
Most important antioxidants found in our normal foods are shown below, but remember, these are only the tip of the iceberg.

Vitamin C – Citrus fruits, kiwi, mangoes, broccoli, spinach, berries, peppers, concord grape juice, bitter melon, olive oil
Vitamin E- Avocados, nuts, seeds, tomatoes, mangoes
Allium sulfur – Leeks, onions, garlic, chives
Flavonoids – Black tea, green tea, citrus fruits, red wine, onions, berries, apples, red cabbage, grapes, broccoli
Isoflavonoids – Soybeans, tofu, lentils, peas, milk
Polyphenols – Pomegranates, olive oil, flax, grapes, oregano, dark chocolate, pecans, legumes, teas, rosemary, Greek coffee, wine, taro root, sweet potato, red cabbage, purple corn, elderberry
Indoles – Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, turnips, brussels sprouts
Lignans – Flaxseed, sesame seeds, bran, whole grains, vegetables
Lutein – Green yellow foods like corn, spinach, kale, collards, pumpkin, eggs, carrots, chile peppers
Lycopene – Red pink foods like tomatoes, pink grapefruit, watermelon, papaya
Anthocyanins – Purple foods like eggplant, grapes, berries, red cabbage, concord grape juice
Beta-carotene – Pumpkin, mangoes, apricots, carrots, spinach, parsley, chile peppers
Catechins – Red wine, tea, blueberries, kiwi, cacao
Copper – seafood, lean meat, milk, nuts
Cryptoxanthin – Orange foods like pumpkin, mangoes, oranges, pineapple, peaches, corn
Manganese – Seafood, lean meat, milk, nuts
Selenium – Seafood, lean meat, whole grains
Vitamin A – Liver, sweet potatoes, carrots, milk, egg yolks, broccoli, apricots
Zinc – Seafood, lean meat, milk, nuts

Conclusion

Remember, lack of antioxidants causes oxidative stress that leads to the beginning of chronic diseases including cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and neurodegenerative diseases.
Always be gentle with yourself when you choose diet and lifestyle change for healthy living.
No one is perfect in this world, everybody is learning progress about what our body needs and what it doesn’t.
When I started drinking green tea and black pepper-turmeric water regularly, my symptoms gradually disappeared.
This isn’t about eating everything exactly the right way and right manner all the time.
The secret is habit formation, small changes in the food habit and lifestyle can make a big impact on our health.
Always look for varieties of plant based foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, various nuts, various teas and coffee, various herbs and spices, dark chocolate and fermented foods.
Don’t forget to fine-tune and observe your body, learn from the body, it always tells you something new.
We have to aim for progress, not for perfection when it comes to eating the right food at the right time.
I know it’s still hard but just be patient with yourself as you try and learn what is best for your body.

But always remember, Harvard professor and author of “In Defense of Food” Michael Pollan’s famous food rule: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.

We all want to become rich, but my meaning of rich is different here, rich, of course, financially, but rich also in time, energy, peace, power, and joy.
The only way to achieve this means we must be healthy.
One of the most fundamental things in life is our basic day to day lifestyle which has a profound impact on our quality of life, our healthspan, and our lifespan.
Our choices, especially, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and mindset are keys to optimize our health.
These lifestyle choices are entirely in our hands, it’s all up to us what and how to perform.
For example, moderate exercise can halve our risk of dying from heart disease.
Research indicates that careful dietary decisions can reduce our risk of death from any cause by 36% while poor diets can increase our risk of death by 67%.
Another finding from research is that simply walking 20 to 30 minutes everyday can avoid the risk of dying from a heart attack in half because exercise increases the blood flow to our brain, and improves our cognitive function as well.
One of the major lifestyle changes is dietary and nutrition habits.
Dietary decisions are most neglected and difficult to adopt in daily practice but are essential for our disease free life.

Dr. Dean Ornish, author of “UnDo It” and a clinical professor of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco says, “Think about it: Heart disease and diabetes, which account for more deaths in the U.S. and worldwide than everything else combined, are completely preventable by making comprehensive lifestyle changes. Without drugs or surgery.”

Cancer beating foods

Very few people know the secrets of cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and brussels sprouts.
There are many factors but one most important is that they contain sulforaphane, a compound that reduces inflammation and can even slow the growth of tumors in our body.
Sulforaphane is cancer protective because it reuses antioxidants and detoxification enzymes that guard against the disease.
Sulforaphane not only inhibits tumor growth but also regulates hundreds of genes.

The broccoli sprout is a superfood that contains high levels of glucoraphanin, a precursor to the cancer busting phytochemical sulforaphane, one of the most powerful food derived molecules.
In fact, broccoli sprouts are up to fifty times more potent than broccoli alone.
Research on sulforaphane shows that 80% of the phytochemical we take goes into our body’s cells.

Here are some foods that are so good for our body that they influence more than one defense system.

Zucchini flowers contain a natural bioactive called spinasterol that protects DNA against mutations, aids immunity, and kills breast and ovarian cancer cells.
They also contain a good amount of vitamins A , C, E and K and provide important minerals like magnesium, zinc, and calcium.

Another food is persimmon leaves that could effectively inhibit liver tumor growth via enhancement of the immune function, and it displayed the potential to be a safe and effective anticancer and functional immune-enhancing agent.
Persimmons also have carotenoids, flavonoids, and vitamin E, all of which are potent antioxidants and anti inflammation in the body.
Flavonoids extracts from persimmons kill colon and prostate cancer cells.

Wasabi is widely used as a food spice in Asian countries and it has effects on detoxification, anti-inflammation, and the induction of cancer cell apoptosis.
It has anticancer activities and extracts prepared from fresh wasabi rhizomes kill liver cancer cells.
Extracts from fresh wasabi also kill breast and colon cancer cells.

Bitter melon is a tropical and subtropical vine of the family Cucurbitaceae and has promising anticancer effects on breast, ovarian, and cervical cancer cells.
Bioactives from bitter melon kill colon and breast cancer cells, lower cholesterol, and improve blood sugar levels in diabetes.

Bottarga is best eaten as a condiment food and has cancer-fighting properties.
It is rich in anti-angiogenic omega-3 fatty acids, specifically EPA and DHA, which are preserved even after long-term storage.
Extracts from it also kill colon cancer cells.

Squid ink is a type of seafood.
It has anticancer and strong antioxidant properties.
Studies have found that squid ink proteins and polysaccharides may suppress the growth of breast, lung, and prostate cancer cells
It has antioxidants, antiangiogenic, stem cell protecting, and immune enhancing effects.
It protects the gut microbiome against the side effects of cancer chemotherapy.

Beer is no more only a big dose of carbohydrates, it also contains xanthohumol and isoxanthohumol, which have anti cancer effects, are antiangiogenic, and can retard the growth of fat cells.
It also reduces the risk of kidney cancer.

Research indicates that a high-calorie diet with purple potatoes leads to a reduction in levels of interleukin-6, a pro-inflammatory protein linked to promote colon cancer.
Purple potatoes are antiangiogenic and they can kill cancer stem cells.

There was a time when spicy food was considered a health hazard.
But research made us rethink about spicy food.
Eating spicy food periodically is associated with a reduced risk from cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, respiratory disease, and infections.
Chille-fed microbiomes prevent inflammation and obesity.

Dr. William Li, author of “Eat to Beat Disease” says, “Eating to beat disease empowers you to help yourself and the people you care about. You can love your food to love your health.”
His TED Talk “Can we eat to starve cancer?” tells the story of what to eat to kill cancer.

Our food, inflammation and diabetes

More than 34 million Americans have diabetes, about one in ten, and approximately 90-95 percent of them have type 2 diabetes.
When we eat too much refined carbs like pizza, pasta, sodas, white bread, pastries, fruit juice with high fructose corn syrup, processed meat like hot dogs and sausage, french fries and fried food in general, we are adding sugar and it goes straight into our bloodstream and blood sugar spikes.
Our pancreas makes insulin to bring our blood sugar down, which is good.
But insulin also accelerates the conversion of those calories into fat.
It causes chronic inflammation and many of these mechanisms lead to chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes, and heart diseases.
Healthy fats actually stabilize our blood sugar.
The fastest way to lower insulin levels is to substitute fat for processed carbohydrates.
Some good fat-containing foods are olive oil, avocados, nuts, fatty fish, and unsweetened yogurt.
There are certain foods that fight for inflammation.
Olive oil, green leafy vegetables, brightly colored vegetables, fatty fish like wild salmon and mackerel, most fruits, nuts and seeds, and green tea are some of them.
Olive oil is high in polyphenols.
Specially nuts like almonds, cashews, chestnuts, macadamias, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios, and walnuts are very healthy.
Walnut reduces the risk of colon cancer.

Dr. David Ludwig, an endocrinologist, researcher, and professor at Harvard Medical School says, “Highly processed carbohydrates are among the lowest quality components of the food supply, accounting for the majority of diet related diseases in the United States today.”
His book “Always Hungry” is a must read for those who want to break apart every myth about weight loss, and explains why we get fat and why we are always hungry.
This book also tells a story about why we become sick and how we can heal.

Dr. Robert H. Lustig, an American pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) says, “Sugar is the elephant in the kitchen.”
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Dr. Peter Diamandis, an American marketer, engineer, physician, and entrepreneur says, “Sugar is a poison.”

Plenity is a diet related pill to aid in weight management in adults who are overweight or obese and have a body mass index (BMI) of 25-40 when combined with diet and exercise.
Gelesis is a biotech company to empower people to improve and change their diet, lifestyle and health.
FDA approved plenity for obese people having BMI 25-40.

The higher the BMI, the greater the risk of developing diabetes.
A simple blood test that measures our average blood sugar level over the past two to three months is HbA1c.
HbA1c is glycated hemoglobin and it is made when the sugar in our body sticks to our red blood cells.
Our body can’t use the sugar properly and it sticks to our blood cells and builds up in our blood. Red blood cells are generally active for around 2-3 months so that the reading is generally taken quarterly.
If you have diabetes, your HbA1c level is 6.5 or above. A cutoff of HbA1c of 6.5 percent is an indication of diabetes.

Conclusion

Please remember this, one of the best investments in life is staying in good health by adopting healthy dietary habits. There is immense value for this investment and the truth is most of us came to know the value late in life once we pass and cannot regain it.
I’m sure in the future, we will have personalized nutrition based on gut microbiome, genetics, metabolic profile, and our environment to prioritize our health on an individual level.

Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.

In the coming future, everything will be cheaper to extract, make or synthesize because of automation.
Human labor will be replaced by a lot of robotics.
Energy prices will be way cheaper because of solar photovoltaics and energy storage across the globe.
Transportation costs will be cheaper and affordable due to autonomous electric vehicles on the road.
If you don’t believe it, just look back thirty years ago and check the price of a cell phone and compare its price with current price and it’s accessibility now and how many things you can do with your cell phone.
So then what about our health and longevity in the future?
Let’s explore a little bit about this and understand why we catch chronic diseases like cancer and how to tackle them in the future.

Aging and chronic health problems

When we age, it’s not only that we have a high chance of cancer or lung disease or heart disease or any other chronic disease but also
our body automatically just starts weakening or breaking down, same like rusting our old car.
Aubrey de Grey, a renowned biomedical gerontologist says, “aging is like wear and tear on the engine of an automobile. It is damage that accumulates as a result of the system’s normal operation.”

In our body, we have cellular metabolism to produce energy to stay alive and functional.
We also have cellular reproduction for self-replication as a natural phenomenon.
These cellular metabolisms generate a lot of waste in and around the cells and that damages various internal organs through oxidation exactly like rusting an old car.
Relatively, at young age, waste removal as well as repair processes are smooth and regular but at old age, these processes are not smooth.
Consequently, many errors accumulate and the body cannot fix all of them.
This damage or error might cause fatal issues like cancer, Alzheimer’s, parkinson and heart diseases.

The challenge now is how to preserve life as we are technologically so sophisticated.
Preserving life means extending as well as improving it.
The process for the development of new health treatments is changing rapidly from trial and error process of drug design to an exponential information technology so that we can systematically reprogram the suboptimal software of our life.
Cancer and other neurodegenerative diseases appeared later in our life when we started to live longer and our immunity started to fall apart.
They are mainly caused due to misfolded proteins called prions and other reasons.

Current information technology is nothing but sharing ideas to fulfill human potential and to solve many social problems including biological and medical issues.
The key of information technology is artificial intelligence AI that is taking us from linear advancement to exponential advancement in understanding these complex biological issues to treat and cure these chronic diseases.

AI and nanorobots for our longevity

The use of AI for discovery and design of both drugs and other interventions are coming rapidly.
We can find key safety and efficacy data in hours from simulated in silico trials whereas only human trials take years to get these data.
Ray Kurzweil, a world class inventor, thinker, author, and futurist says, “if we put nanorobots inside our body, we can repair the damage caused by aging at the level of individual cells and local tissues.”
He is one of my favorite authors and his latest book “The Singularity Is Nearer ” is a must read for those who always hope for a better and healthy future.

Aging degrades our organ performance but the nanobots will repair and strengthen them.
Nanorobots can be programmed to damage all types of pathogens, they can be also used to treat metabolic diseases.
They will help to keep substances into our blood supply or lymph system, for example, our entire digestive system supplies nutrients into the blood.
They might remove substances from our blood supply.
It might be the same as our lungs taking in oxygen and taking out carbon dioxide, similarly, the liver and kidneys remove toxins.
Pancreas produce hormones to control metabolism, change in hormone is the cause of diabetes, as we know, type 1 diabetes occurs because pancreatic islet cells cannot produce insulins.
Except our heart and brain, all of our major internal organs can keep substances in and out of the blood supply and many health problems result from their malfunction.
If we use medical nanorobots, they can monitor the blood flow and can also increase or decrease hormones, oxygen, nutrients, and toxins by mimicking the function of internal organs.
This technology will solve the problems of diseases and aging in the near future.
Nanobots will monitor, supply, and adjust these different substances so that our organs maintain good shape and ultimately we will be able to optimize our biology for longevity.

Cancer and more hope for the future

Cancer is a chronic problem for humanity and spreading like wildfire across the globe.
Do you know that we are always developing cancers in our body all the time.
But our immune system finds them at a very early stage and defeats them completely.
It’s only when our immune system fails to defeat and cancer enters inside our body.
A very strong performing immune system is one of the most important ways to defend against cancer, and virtually all chronic diseases.

Muscle is the largest endocrine organ in our body and research shows that people with strong muscle mass have a significantly lower incidence of cancer and other illnesses.
Higher the muscle mass creates the higher immune function in our body and the longer we live.

Nowadays, we know more about what’s going on inside our car or microwave or cell phone but we don’t know much about our body because of its complex biochemical pathways.
The problem is, it’s often too late by the time we find something wrong inside our body, especially cancers.
Eighty percent of cancers don’t have any screening mechanisms or tools to detect.
Many cancers like pancreatic and ovarian are so deadly because they are frequently detected very late.

Cancer is hard to remove because each cancer cell can self-replicate so that every single cell has to be removed from the body.
At some point, each cell can develop resistance to the body’s immune cells and any kind of treatment can destroy most cancer cells but after some time new tumors can grow again.
The problem of chemotherapy is that it cannot cure cancer entirely and can damage non cancerous cells. The biggest challenge of chemotherapy is that it also weakens our immune system.
Up to now our medical science has an incomplete molecular understanding of how cancer evades our immune system.
Our natural immune system includes T cells that can destroy bad microorganisms and without them, we cannot survive longer.
Hopefully, AI biological simulators will be advanced to break this poor understanding between cancer and immunity.

One alternative for radical life extension and cancer treatment in the near future is possible by medical nanorobots. The major development and extension will be in the area of our immune system.
Medical nanobots can examine each individual cell and can determine if it is cancerous or not.
If we are able to selectively repair or destroy individual cells, we can manipulate our biology and the medicine will work effectively and selectively.
Manipulation of biology means we can control our genes because cells self replicate by copying the DNA in each nucleus.

At the moment, immunotherapy is serving many stage 4 terminal cancer patients to go into remission which is encouraging development in cancer treatment.
CAR-T cell therapy technology is a clear example, it can reprogram a patient’s own immune cells to recognize and destroy cancer cells.

We now have induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells which can rejuvenate the heart after a heart attack.
We can grow organs using iPS cells.
These are adult cells which are converted into stem cells by the introduction of specific genes.
These iPS cells have been used for the regeneration of tracheas, bones, retinal cells, nerves, and tissues from heart, liver, and kidneys.

Dr. Silviu Itescu, CEO of Mesoblast, and professor of Columbia University Medical Center says, “The bone marrow in our body contains a homegrown pantry of non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory medicines.”
The native stem cells in bone marrow are also known as mesenchymal precursor cells, the body’s most versatile and potent building blocks. They differentiate into bone, cartilage, muscle or fat whatever we need.
After an injury, they are crucial because of two reasons: they keep inflammation within normal healthy range and they repair damaged tissue.
Scientists regard inflammation as a key culprit in aging and specifically in cancer.
The problem is that stem cells grow scarcer with age especially with people with chronic diseases.

Dr. Bob Hariri, an accomplished surgeon and biomedical scientist, pioneered in using NK cells to combat cancer.
His company, Celularity harvests NK cells from human placentas.
He says, “The placenta is often regarded as a throwaway organ, but it is packed with stem cells as well as NK cells. They are more youthful than those found in the bone marrow of adults or even children.”

Stem cells are somehow similar to cancer cells, the challenge is how to find ways to minimize the risk of uncontrolled cell division.
The good news is these iPS cells can behave like embryonic stem cells and can differentiate into almost all types of human cells.
When we know the mechanism of iPS action with advanced AI, regenerative medicine will identify the body’s own secret for healing.

Jeff Huber, CEO of GRAIL, whose mission is to detect cancer early, when it can be cured, has developed a blood test for cancers.
GRAIL developed a blood based screening test called Galleri, which could detect more than 50 types of cancer.
This test searches for tiny fragments of DNA and RNA that have been released into the bloodstream by a tumor and that reflects the tumor’s genomic features.
GRAIL’s technology is so sensitive that it can detect even a faint signal that an early tumor exists.

Conclusion

Let’s hope that exponential technological development interfaced with cheaper computing power, biotechnology, nanotechnology along with AI will help us to understand our biology better and defeat cancer and other chronic diseases.
The fundamental components of our living body like genes, proteins, and cells are changing into tools, as biology is appearing as technology, to shape and improve our life.
Our body, obviously, is a collection of cells and the better understanding and function of these cells with the help of these new technologies will bring multi-cancer early detection and cure.

Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.

I think there are two things that can not be neglected in anyone’s life, no matter who we are, where we live and what we do for a living.
The first is our health and second is how much money we have or we make.
It doesn’t matter whether we care about these two things or not, these two things always come and touch our lives in different ways.
Let’s put it this way.
Can we preview the next year ahead?
Did we see that covid-19 was coming in 2020 when we were in 2018 or 2019?
The point is that we cannot predict what kind of health crisis is coming into our lives tomorrow.
Because it is very difficult to wrap our heads around how this thing called the human body works, how these complex biological and chemical systems are working all day and all night. But there are certainly things in our body which we can all learn from to live a healthy life.
Among many things, one part is the microbiome, which was ignored or not understood before but getting a lot of focus in research recently.

Up to now human health is typically taught as a symptom based approach, where we take the symptoms and plug it into a treatment and we expect a solution.
But there is a huge gap between symptoms and treatment because in general by the time we get symptoms of any disease, it is already too late to recover.
And that’s why I’m bringing up this piece of content about the microbiome in our body and its role in our health as a fundamental health endeavor.
When we become an informed healthy citizen, we become aware not only of how health problems and concerns appear but also how we can take actions to benefit from these new research findings around microbiome.

Global picture: chronic diseases and microbiome

Since the last many years obesity rates have consistently skyrocketed among adults and especially among children.
At the moment, more than 42 percent of American adults are obese and the number is constantly going up.
We are suffering from type 2 diabetes that is affecting many of our lives and the American heart association predicts that 45 percent of people in the US will have heart disease by the year 2035. This data is alarming and needs some kind of immediate action.
Not only diabetes, early cancer is dramatically increasing across the world, and the US is in the front line.
Someone in the US is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease every single minute and Parkinson’s disease is threatening worldwide as the fastest growing neurological disorder on the planet.
“All these diseases are directly or indirectly related to auto-immunity, leaky gut, and intestinal dysbiosis. They all stem directly from the gut. And gut chemistry is directly related to the microbiome,” says Dr. Steven Gundry, a cardiologist, heart surgeon, medical researcher, and author.

Inside our digestive system there is a galaxy consisting of trillions of bacteria belonging to thousands of different species with many viruses, fungi, and other microbes.
All these microbes have more than three million genes whereas the human genome has only twenty three thousand genes.
This means we have our genes in our body but we also have microbiome genes. The reality is the majority of genes in our body are not our genes but the bacterial genes.
If for some reason bacterial diversity is imbalanced, bacterial genes are also imbalanced then our suffering from many diseases starts.
Let’s put these microbes in our head to compare how big they are.
We have eight billion people and approximately three trillion trees are expected on earth. But there are more of these bacteria and other species in our body than people and plants combined in the universe.

Now the question is what do these trillions of bacteria do inside our body?
Inside our gut, they break down everything we eat into amino acids, fatty acids, sugar molecules with the help of stomach acid and enzymes.
These molecules then approach the gut lining to exit the gut and enter our bloodstream.
Our relationship with microbiomes is symbiotic, so if we help them to grow and nourish then only they will help us to remain healthy.
When our microbiomes are well balanced and well nourished, they ferment essential compounds which keep us healthy and also protect themselves so that they can take care of our body.
In addition to all of their many jobs, the metabolites created by the gut microbiome act as signaling molecules that regulate our appetite, immunity, and aging.
When our microbiomes are affected and out of balance, our immune system is also affected, our hormone levels fluctuate, our mental health and longevity suffer.

Due to this imbalance and destruction in microbiomes by many reasons of our modern lifestyle, there are increased risks of developing autoimmune, heart, and neurodegenerative diseases including arthritis, diabetes, and cancer.

Here is one simple example of how important microbiomes are.
Recent research showed that people with obesity have an imbalanced ratio of bacteria in the gut. Obese people have limited microbial diversity with less Bateroidetes and more Firmicutes, which are two main kinds of bacteria.
Metformin, the common medication used to control type 2 diabetes, works not by lowering our blood sugar but by improving our gut diversity and this drug also increases the abundance of Akkermansia, one type of good bacteria in our gut.
Metformin is also a mTOR suppressor in our body.
Let me tell you a little bit of science here, mTOR means mammalian target of rapamycin, when it feels that there is energy to spare it excites the growth hormone IGF1 which is insulin-like growth factor 1 that leads cells to grow and if mTOR feels like there is no energy available, it restricts the production of IGF1 and inhibits the growth.
Therefore, it’s always good to suppress mTOR to protect our health.

Microbiome, mitochondria and polyphenols: the intricate relationship

We all know mitochondria from high school biology which convert our food into ATP (adenosine triphosphate) which is our cellular energy house.
The information mitochondria receive is from our microbiome which directly affects how much energy mitochondria produce. Our mitochondria is powerful, it can produce 32 molecules of ATP for every molecule of glucose.
Mitochondria uses glucose as a vehicle’s gasoline and fat as charge on battery. When gasoline is finished mitochondria use fat to run the human engine as stored energy.

Mitogenesis is the addition of more mitochondria in a cell and under certain circumstances, a cell will make more mitochondria to handle the workload.
The interesting fact is mitochondria have their own DNA and can divide when they need to, regardless of what the rest of the cell is doing.
There are only two ways to make more mitochondria either by fasting or by exercising.
Generally at night, the repair of mitochondria occurs and our body also makes ketones at night and they inform mitochondria to repair and produce more of it.

Now let’s talk a little bit about polyphenol compounds, why they are so important.
The polyphenol compounds, which are antioxidants and found in colored fruits and vegetables like berries, pomegranates, walnuts can only protect our mitochondria if microbiomes absorb them.
So, the bottom line is, even if we eat different kinds of colored fruits and vegetables which contain many polyphenols, our body cannot absorb polyphenols directly, we need microbiomes to help us to make them absorbable by our body.
The chemistry of the microbiome is so delicate that it always needs a balanced diversified microbiome.
Microbiomes normally activate polyphenols to make beneficial signaling molecules that’s what we want but if the microbiome is imbalanced and not diversified, the same polyphenols might work against us by increasing the risk of developing some kind of cancers.

All dark colored fruits and vegetables which contain polyphenols work as a double sword: they protect mitochondria and they also repair DNA in our cells through activating Sirtuin1(SIR1) an enzyme in cell nucleus.

Resveratrol is another type of polyphenol which is found in red wine that decreases the risk of cardiovascular disease, inhibits memory loss, and increases lifespan.
Recent study shows that in cancer cells, polyphenols actually increase oxidative stress and drive tumor cells into apoptosis.
The same resveratrol is toxic to cancer cells and shows antiproliferative properties.
Resveratrol also activates sestrin genes that also activates Sirtuin1 to repair and protect cellular DNA. Sirtuin1 is used to suppress mTOR.
Again the truth is, polyphenols work only if our gut microbes digest them for us.

Flavonoids, another group of polyphenols, help to reshape gut microbiomes to tackle cancer. Here again, gut microbiomes digest flavonoids and help to inhibit carcinogenesis.
Quercetin, another flavonoid found in berries, onions, grapes, broccoli, and citrus fruits also activates sestrin and inhibits mTOR.

Independent of Sirtuin1 and resveratrol, there are other polyphenols that activate AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), an enzyme that activates glucose and fat uptake by mitochondria so they can produce more energy.

Another important polyphenol is called ellagitannins which are found in berries, pomegranates, walnuts.
Microbiomes use ellagitannins to produce a metabolite called UrolithinA, which increases lifespan through mitophagy and mitogenesis.
Mitophagy is the recycling of old and damaged mitochondria and mitogenesis is the creation of new mitochondria.
Even if we eat all the good foods like berries, pomegranates, and walnuts, if we don’t have good microbiomes in our body, we cannot produce UrolithinA from polyphenols.
So please, understand the intricate relationship between polyphenol and microbiome and why we should eat foods containing polyphenols and why the microbiomes are involved in the process.
So the cycle is that polyphenols regulate our biological and chemical system and microbiomes activate polyphenols and use them as signaling devices to our cells.

Conclusion

The first thing is we have to maintain the diversity of the microbiome by our own efforts: proper diet and exercise, sound sleep, and periodic fasting.
We must eat healthy foods, especially natural foods containing high amounts of polyphenols, fermented foods, and antioxidants. We also need enough vitamin D from sunlight, and the fact is if we don’t have the diversified microbiome, we can not synthesize vitamin D.
We must maintain our stress level because it imbalances the diversity of the microbiome which creates problems in the gut and that triggers inflammation and neuroinflammation.
Inflammation and neuroinflammation are the causes of multiple diseases in our body.
So now let’s remember Hippocrates, the Greek physician of the fifth century BC, who said “all diseases begin in the gut.”
So, please, let’s protect our microbiome and, they protect our health.

Jeffrey Gordon, MD, distinguished Professor of Washington ­University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the most ­influential human ­microbiome scientist ­working ­today says “you are what you — and your microbes — eat.”

Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.

“Mitochondria seem to be able to exist, in the form of free-living bacteria, without our help. But without them, we die in a matter of seconds.”
-Lyall Watson

I was in my mid twenties.
I first got sick and that was followed by having chronic fatigue.
It was such a heaviness I’d never experienced before.
It didn’t matter what I ate regularly or how much I slept in those days.
I felt really heavy and unmotivated, no interest in anything.
It was an exhausting feeling and it took me a very long time to go away.
Eventually I was free from chronic fatigue but I learned a big lesson about our cellular mechanism especially about regeneration of power houses in our body for healing.

Few weeks ago, I was with my eldest daughter in a doctor’s clinic.
She had some health issues and we were in her doctor’s clinic for a follow up visit.
I met a middle-aged man in the clinic and he initiated the conversation while waiting for the doctor.
Immediately after a couple of minutes of conversation he said,
“Some days, for no reason, my body feels like it is made of nothing. My muscles feel like they just can’t do anything, I feel very tired, soft and fatigue very quickly. I was a very strong, energetic, and efficient person before. It feels so sudden, like I’m physically moving through quicksand, my doctor couldn’t relate my past and present life.”

Disconnected human body and its whispering: ME/CFS

I went into flashback immediately and correlated his story with my situation many years ago.
Of course, he was very dissatisfied and unhappy about what’s going on in his body.
What to say I just listened to him and politely asked him for any progress of diagnosis up to now.
He said, “I was diagnosed with CFS, chronic fatigue syndrome. My doctor did not even address the issue of my physical exercise pattern, even though it was an important part of my life and it’s such a key issue for managing ME/CFS, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.”

When I heard the word CFS, I immediately realized the disconnection between our human body, it’s whispering with us, and disease diagnosis.
In my own experience as well as acquired knowledge, the real understanding this disconnection is very crucial for healthy living.
His feeling was saying that his doctor isn’t getting ready to know him properly.
His doctor was looking for a problem, trying to fix the problem, and telling him what to do.
But he is looking for a conversation with his doctor, not his instruction, for that, I’m sure his mind is coming up with many questions for the doctor and the doctor should be very patient with him.
This, in my view, is a disconnection in our health system, his body wants a conversation and his doctor wants to give him an instruction.

In our short chat, he showed the curiosity to know the strength in our body, its origin, good and bad parts of it, and the role of genetics.
After passing half-way through life experiences and being a science researcher, I’ve realized that nobody in this world knows everything, we all kind of know one area that we study and spend time on it.
The only way we can uplift one another in society is by contributing and sharing the knowledge and information to each other about what we know.
This man’s curiosity which is also related to my past experience is the reason why I am writing this post.

After the conversation with this man in the doctor’s office, I realized immediately that very few people are aware about why our body becomes tired, fatigued and lethargic so quickly.
I asked him if he was exercising regularly and all of the sudden he started to feel tired and fatigued quickly.
I wasn’t testing his medical or scientific knowledge which I never do because we all have our own life, own circumstances, own choices, and experiences in life.
We all should respect each other and appreciate what we have to offer.
I only wanted to know how much he is aware about our biological body and its relation with energy, food, and regular lifestyle choice.
I asked him if he knew the power house of our cells, mitochondria, and how they operate in our body which are basically the center of our tiredness, fatigue and lethargic body.
He said, “no.”
Ultimately, this “no” initiated me to go a little deeper into mitochondria and let people know about them and their specificities.

Mitochondria and our energy

Among many reasons, one of the most probable causes from research is that there are probably differences in mitochondria in people who suffer from ME/CFS.
And these problems may be associated with detoxification pathways which are related to mitochondria.
Mitochondria are powerhouses of cells, they are basically the batteries in our body.
There could be many other reasons but defects in mitochondria are very concerning in overall health and especially fatigue and tiredness in our body.
Our body’s energy storage and production systems play the key role to our body’s ability to produce energy, fight fatigue, and protect our body from inflammation.

Energy metabolism is the phenomenon by which our body converts food, water, and oxygen we take into energy.
Proteins are broken down into amino acids, the most basic components of protein that our body absorbs.
Likewise, fats are converted into fatty acids.
And carbohydrates are converted into sugar.
Once these simple products get into our cells, they are taken apart by a complex set of reactions to power our body.
The excess energy that we produce is stored in special fat cells called adipocytes.
To access this stored energy there is a requirement of coordinated hormone signals in our body.

So in simple terms, energy is generated in the factories of our cells, the mitochondria.
Every cell in our body except red blood cells has hundreds of them.
They have their own genes called mitochondrial DNA, because a long time ago they were their own organism before they came to join our body.
In reality, mitochondria were so powerful at converting oxygen into energy that other organisms absorbed them and they became part of us.
Our mitochondria are essentially batteries or energy sources of our body like the batteries in our cell phone or laptop.
The air we breathe and the food we eat charge these batteries so what type of fuel we take inside our body determines the health and longevity of our cell batteries or mitochondria.

Remember, all the mitochondria in a cell are in constant contact, communicating with each other about what is going on in their part of the cell.
They know whether they are happy or sad or frustrated.
They sense fluctuations in stress and sex hormones, blood pressure, blood sugar, and even how much ice cream and pizza we just ate.
They know when we are sleeping or reading or working.
They know when we are awake and doing meditation or sexual activities.
It all means that they are completely in tune with our body.

Dr. Martin Picard, PhD, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University says “It makes more sense to think of mitochondria as the information processors of the cell. They are equipped with a surprisingly wide variety of receptors to sense what’s going on in the cell, they integrate all this information to maintain the health of the organism.”

Since the mitochondria know all the internal communications, they influence the activity of the cell and get it to send signals to our body.
If things are quiet and smooth, they may lie low, relax, and enjoy.
If things are busy or stressful like we are doing heavy exercise or weight lifting or running a marathon then they ramp up.
Sometimes, the stress for mitochondria is too much and they get damaged, therefore, too much exercise is also not helpful, and the body treats damaged mitochondria as a foreign invader.

Supporting our mitochondria is not only charging our batteries but also promoting their longevity to run our body machine efficiently.
Fatigue is the result when the batteries run low.
One reason that happens is because mitochondria cannot keep up with the behaviors and choices of our current lifestyle.

Low physical activity, ultra processed food, bad breathing habits, poor sleep, and high stress cause life altering changes in cell metabolism.
In response to all of these cellular stresses, our cells make more mitochondria.
Quickly made mitochondria are sometimes damaged and cannot run smoothly, causing the body’s battery to run dangerously low.
It is useful to explore what supports our mitochondria and to make small shifts toward supporting our health.

Happy mitochondria and diet

Now the question is what makes our mitochondria happy.
Plant based foods, intuitive eating, adequate hydration, regular exercise, restful sleep, and managed stress are keys to make our mitochondria happy.
Ultra processed foods and extreme or minimal exercises both are responsible for making our mitochondria unhappy and sick.
Poor sleep in both quantity and quality, poor oxygenation, limited microbiome, and high stress are equally important to make our mitochondria unhappy and sick.

The concept of mitochondrial nutrients has been adopted in recent years through research.
It indicates the adequate nutrients to keep proper mitochondrial function in our body.
Different research experiments have shown that components of polyphenols, plant-derived compounds, and polyunsaturated fatty acids, can improve mitochondrial metabolism, biogenesis, and antioxidant capacity.
Such effects are valuable to counteract the mitochondrial dysfunction associated with many abnormalities.
The beneficial feature of polyphenols-enriched olive oil, vegetables, nuts, fish, and plant-based foods are the key nutrients to make mitochondria happy.

L-carnitine is one of the key nutrients that has been studied for its role in mitochondrial health to help in the elimination of toxic metabolites.

Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) is another dietary enzyme that has also been researched for its role in mitochondrial health and on fatigue symptoms to restore fatigue, sleep, and quality of life among ME/CFS patients.

Ari Whitten, The founder of The Energy Blueprint and author of “Eat for Energy” gives a deep dive into supercharging our mitochondria with a framework for restoring cognitive function, alertness, and an abundance of energy.

Mostly what research tells us is that health problems don’t just jump out on us from the dark room randomly.
They come through the accumulation of our life choices over time.
It’s not about just making our mitochondria happy, it’s about life, it’s about connection, it’s about love and it’s about all these things that mitochondria have given us.

I still think that our body is a temple, a sacred place and mitochondria are the batteries to light the temple.
They are the foundation of doing work for people around us, doing work that we like in community and connecting humanity because they give energy to perform such work.
The more we better ourselves and become clearer and healthier, the more we treat our bodies as temples and mitochondria as batteries of the temple.
Better we become healthy human beings, the better we can contribute towards the community.

Conclusion

Finally, I would like to share one of the lessons I learned recently.
In order to be proactive about our own health, we have to take personal inventory of our lives honestly.
We have to sit, think, and start a conversation about what we want out of this body, life and whole experience, and what actually we are doing everyday.
We have to think proactively about what we are looking for because health is very personal now.

It’s becoming the conversation with the body itself, it’s not all about only medical intervention by medical professionals.
For example, if we have a tumor in our internal organ then we have to seek help immediately from a medical specialist, but if we want to live a happy and healthy life up to age ninety, then we have to start conversation with our own body immediately.

Steve Sisgold’s book “What’s Your Body Telling You?” is a best resource how to know our body’s clues so that we go through life fully connected with our true desires.

It’s an integration of a holistic but personalized approach in life.
Please, don’t ignore the conversation with your body, the earlier we start the better for our psychological well-being. 

Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.