How many times have we heard it? “You are what you eat.” It is very cliché, but also very true. Our bodies are quite literally built out of what we eat.
There is a documentary on Amazon Prime called Origins. In it, Alejandro Junger (MD) puts it very well. He says that if you follow around any good gardener and they find a plant that is looking sick, they don’t spend much time observing the aerial parts. They will go straight to roots and the soil. He says, “Our gut is like the root of a plant.” I love this analogy. It just makes so much sense. A plant “eats” from its roots the nutrients in the soil. When these nutrients aren’t available, the plant’s systems will not be functioning at full potential. This means that not only will it possibly have to give up some leaves that it can’t afford to provide with circulation and have a hard time producing seed and fruit, but it will become more susceptible to disease.
Our gut is responsible for breaking down the nutrients in our food and processing them for use in other parts of the body. It is also directly correlated to our immune system. Just like the sickly plant, if we aren’t able to extract the proper nutrition from our diet, our bodies will suffer.
We have an entire laboratory constantly working within ourselves. It breaks down chemicals we ingest as part of our diet and binds them with others to create new ones. Some of the more important chemicals it creates are hormones. Hormones tell our bodies how to regulate all of its various systems. You can read more about it here> http://www.hormone.org/hormones-and-health/what-do-hormones-do. If we don’t have the proper nutrition/supply of chemicals to start with, how are our bodies supposed to keep the laboratory up and running? The answer is that, they simply can’t.
We need to get to the “root” of the problem instead of looking at the symptoms and trying to suppress them. We need to keep funding the laboratory so it can continue its good work. We need to become the succulent peach ripe off of the tree grown out of healthy soil instead of the fast food burger with pretend meat. What will you choose to become?