Nutrition is one of the most important topics for maintaining good health, preventing disease and maintaining a positive mental and emotional state. But few conventional doctors are trained beyond the basics in nutrition and most understate its importance. My doctor told me less than a day of his seven years’ at medical school was devoted to the subject!
Conventional Western medicine looks at nutrition largely in terms of its physical and chemical composition. It takes account, for instance, of the metabolism of macro-nutrients (carbohydrates, proteins and fats) and micro-nutrients like vitamins and trace minerals. But the Science of Bio-energetics takes a broader perspective. It recognises that food and drink has energetic and informational aspects too, and that people must get not only the right biochemical elements from their food, but also vital energy.
Nutrition must be considered not only from a biological and chemical point of view, but also as a provider of energy such as light and information.
Nutrition from a Biological and Chemical Perspective
Conventional medicine considers food in three main groups – proteins, fats and carbohydrates – plus vitamins, essential minerals and so on.
Carbohydrates are made of sugars and starch. But simple sugars provide only ‘empty’ calories. They have high calorific value but do not contain any vitamins or minerals. Starch is made up of more complex sugars and provides the main energy reservoir of grains, roots, bulbs and seeds.
Fats are energy providers; they have twice the biological calorific value of carbohydrates or proteins and store huge amounts of energy. If there is a deficiency of carbohydrates, fats and proteins are converted into energy. Vegetable fats are primarily composed of mono- and poly-saturated fatty acids. Animal fats are primarily made of unsaturated fatty acids and have a more solid form. Fats (fat pads) pads protect organs from injuries and serve as temperature insulation; they facilitate the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins; and are flavour carriers for fat-soluble flavours and aromas.
Proteins are made of amino acids. There are essential and non-essential amino acids. The essential ones cannot be synthesised by the body and must be supplied through food. Unlike carbohydrates and fats, proteins cannot be stored in the body and must be provided on a daily basis. Their best-known function is to build up muscles, but they also serve to store certain minerals, maintain the body’s shape, regulate enzymes and hormones, maintain immune defence and transmit nerve impulses.
Vitamins are crucial to body function and support the healing process, but cannot be synthesised by the body. There are fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K ) and water-soluble vitamins (the rest). Fat-soluble vitamins can only be taken up with fat, which means that we can gulp down lots of fat-soluble vitamins but without fat they cannot be absorbed.
Essential minerals include calcium, potassium and magnesium and trace minerals such as copper, iron, zinc, selenium and iron.
Bioenergetic Nutrition
Subtle energies play a significant role in nutrition. Every cell has innate intelligence so the body knows instinctively what is good for it and what is not. It recognises and welcomes healthy sources of nutrition that meet its needs.
The body also knows what is not healthy and tries to eliminate it, sometimes drastically (i.e. sickness or diarrhoea). Unfortunately many people bombard their digestive systems unhealthy nutrition – sugary drinks, excessive fat, food that has had the goodness processed out of it or is cooked to extinction – until the body is overwhelmed and at the last resort packs up altogether.
Living organisms are sustained by a vital force or ‘life force’ that cannot be explained in terms of traditional physics and chemistry. It (or its lack) is responsible for much that happens in health and disease.
To eat and drink healthily, you must know:
- What vital energy comes with what foodstuffs?
- Bearing in mind that people are different, what foods are appropriate for you, to provide the vital energy you need? How do you take account of your body type and lifestyle, etc.?
A significant part of your energy comes from food, but food is more than just a source of thermal or chemical energy – because the magnetic, gravitational and light energy of your nutrients are the basis of all of the building and repairing molecules that become your body.
Individual differences
The ancient healers were aware of the need to take account of different body types. For example, the Chinese identified yin (cold) and yang (hot) types. Hot body types need cold food (e.g. vegetables and salads) and cold body types hot food (e.g. meat, onions and spices).
Ayurveda works with three elemental energies or humors: vata (air & space – ‘wind‘), pitta (fire & water – ‘bile‘) and kapha (water & earth – ’phlegm‘). When these three are in balance, the body is healthy; if not, it is diseased. Everyone has a unique combination of vata, pita and kapha. One ingenious way of assuring a balanced diet in Ayurvedic Medicine is to include some of each of the six tastes – salt, sweet, astringent, bitter, pungent and sour – in the diet every day.
Biophotons in Food
Recent discoveries about the bio-photons that radiate light from the cells of plants and animals reveal a great deal about the health of the body and the food we eat.
In the 1970s, Dr Fritz-Albert Popp showed that living systems depend on light. They exist inside a coherent photon field, and biophotons are responsible for cellular communication and regulating biological functions. He later developed a device to detect biophotons from plant and animal cells which is now being used to determine the quality of food.
Popp also found that healthy people emit light rhythmically and in a balanced way. For example, cancer patients lack these rhythms; multiple sclerosis sufferers exhibit too much light. He concluded that health was a delicate balance between chaos and order. Too much coherence causes the system to collapse. (Consider an army which staggers its steps when marching across a bridge. If all footsteps fell at the same time, the bridge could collapse.)
Some conclusions
Nutrition is crucial in health and healing. It’s also a popular subject in the media – they give out loads of healthy eating messages, many of which are confusing and contradictory. Healthy eating is big business – large companies promote a variety of eating regimes which achieve mass popularity, only to be discarded when the next fad comes along.
Doctors advocate a ‘balanced diet’ in general, but don’t always give nutrition the attention it deserves, nor grasp the differences between individual patients from a nutritional point of view. Holistic healers have known for centuries that nutrition is important. Dietary therapy is a vital plank of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and the Ayurvedic practitioners of India developed a sophisticated approach based on individual body types and the characteristics and tastes of foods.
Mainstream science has a problem with ‘vital energy’ because it can’t be seen, smelt, heard or tasted. Hence it is often ignored. But the best bio-energetic practitioners understand what vital energy comes with which foodstuffs, and how it can be best preserved though the storage and cooking process.
In general, the fresher and more natural the food, the fewer additives and the less processing, transporting, storage and cooking, the higher its bio-energetic value. This is what we should all be aiming for.
©David Lawrence Preston, 15.1.2019
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