Introduction to Nutrition
Hello, and welcome if you are new, welcome back if you have been reading my offerings for a while.
For those unsure of who I am, my name is Dr. Danielle Currey. I am a licensed Naturopathic Physician practicing in and around Gresham, Oregon. My practice focuses on using nutrition, herbal medicine, and craniosacral therapy to help people learn how to take better care of themselves, heal from their afflictions, and feel more empowered within our healthcare system. As part of this, I provide direct one on one care for members of my community and write these weekly articles to help others outside my physical reach better understand how their bodies work and what they can do at home to improve their health.
Last year, I wrote extensively on the topic of herbal medicine focusing on herbs that are easy to access in grocery stores, local herb shops, or grow in your own garden whether that is a plot of land or pots in a windowsill. You can find the index for all of 2020’s articles here.
This year, we will focus on nutrition, a topic that is quite easy to spread over a year or two.
Introduction to Nutrition
When we think of nutrition, it’s easy to imagine spending time reading food labels, counting calories, and bottles of vitamins crowding our cabinets and counters. Let’s look past this more commercial and weight loss focused version of nutrition to see it for what it really is.
Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary defines nutrition as:
All the processes involved in the taking in and utilization of food by which growth, repair, and maintenance of activities in the body as a whole or in any of its parts are accomplished.
Growth, repair, and maintenance all seem pretty important, and they are. Without these functions, we break down, get sick, and die. Instead of thinking of nutrition as an afterthought or as a luxury, we could shift our focus as a society to making sure that we all have access to wholesome nutritionally complete foods. Imagine how strong and healthy our society could be if everyone’s basic needs were reliably met. Let’s not forget one of the big messages COVID-19 shared with us in 2020, our health depends on the health of our society as a whole. None of us is independently self-reliant, we need each other.
Basics of Nutrition
When we look at the topic of Nutrition, it is pretty easy to break it down into bite sized parts (pun completely intended).
Macronutrients (energy)
Macronutrients are where we get our Calories from. Calories are how we measure the energy content of food. One Calorie is the amount of energy it takes to raise one kilogram of water one degree Celsius. We consume Calories in the form of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.
One gram of carbohydrate eaten creates 4 Calories of energy.
One gram of protein eaten also creates 4 Calories of energy.
One gram of fat eaten creates 9 Calories of energy.
Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates can be further broken down by their structure and behavior in the body into monosaccharides like glucose, disaccharides like sucrose (table sugar), starches - long chains of monosaccharides that are easy to digest, and fibers that are branched chains of monosaccharides that take more energy to digest.
"Carbohydrate digestion" by nutritionaldoublethink is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Alcohol also qualifies as a carbohydrate and has 7 Calories of energy per gram but doesn’t deliver any other nutrients - what we call an empty Calorie.
Carbohydrates are found concentrated in grains, beans, animal milks, fruits, and vegetables. They aren’t alone, you will also find protein, fats, vitamins and minerals locked into these food products too.
Proteins
Protein is the major building block of the body. Where carbohydrates are made of sugar molecules strung together, Proteins are made of amino acids strung together. Proteins make up our muscles, our bones, our skin, our hair and nails, our antibodies, our enzymes, our neurotransmitters, our hormones, and so much more. They do the work of living. Our body sources nitrogen from protein and we excrete the excess in the form of ammonia in our urine.
"protein-amino-acids" by staroversky is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
There are around 80 known amino acids, but our body only uses about 20 of them. Of these 20, 7 are made easily by the body, 11 must be consumed, and 2 are produced slowly by the body and are considered conditionally essential meaning that at times we need to eat more of them for our body to function such as during infancy. The amino acids we must get through our diet are called the essential amino acids. Foods such as dairy, eggs, and meat are considered complete proteins as they contain all of the essential amino acids. People who do not consume animal products (like myself) can combine foods such as whole grains and legumes to create a complete protein meal.
Fats
Fats are the most calorically dense nutrient and as such get a bad wrap in dieting circles unless you are pursuing a ketogenic diet. Like proteins and carbohydrates, fats as we think of them in food are created from basic building blocks known as fatty acids. Also like proteins, there are a few essential fatty acids that we must get from our food. These are: Linoleic an omega 6 fatty acid and Alpha-linolenic (ALA) an omega 3 fatty acid. ALA can be converted to EPA and DHA two essential omega 3 fatty acids in the body. Fatty acids are also used in hormone production, our inflammatory processes, the structure of our bodies, and as a source of long-term energy storage. There are also certain nutrients that are only found in fat such as vitamins A, D, E, and K.
We will go into much further detail on each category including food sources and recommended amounts later this year devoting an entire article or two to each macromolecule.
Vitamins and Minerals (the helpers)
Digging deeper beyond the Calorie realm of nutrition, we come to micronutrients. These are substances our bodies need for optimal function but in smaller amounts than the others described above. One group of these that is well studied is vitamins and minerals. There are other substances that have less understood functions or that are not considered vitamins and minerals like choline and flavonoids.
Vitamins:
Tabor’s defines a vitamin as “An accessory but vital nutrient that serves as a coenzyme or cofactor in an essential metabolic process.” The writers add further clarity by stating that, “[v]itamin deficiencies produce well-recognized syndromes.” Scurvy is a deficiency of vitamin C whereas Rickets is a deficiency of vitamin D. Pellagra, a deficiency of niacin (B3) is thought to be the inspiration for the myth of the vampire due to the rash that occurs with contact with the sun, bleeding sores in the mouth, and dementia that develop.
We rarely see vitamin deficiency in wealthier countries like the U.S. but they do still occur in areas that see frequent famine due to climate collapse/war.
The vitamins we know of and will cover this year include:
The fat soluble vitamins: Vitamins A, D, E, K
The B vitamins: Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Pantothenic Acid, B6, Biotin, Folate, and B12
Vitamin C
Minerals:
Turning once again to Taber’s we see minerals described as
“essential constituents of all cells; they form the greater portion of the hard parts of the body (bone, teeth, nails); they are essential components of respiratory pigments, enzymes, and enzyme systems; they regulate the permeability of cell membranes and capillaries; they regulate the excitability of muscular and nervous tissue; they are essential for regulation of osmotic pressure equilibria; they are necessary for maintenance of proper acid-base balance; they are essential constituents of secretions of glands; they play an important role in water metabolism and regulation of blood volume.
As you can see, they are important. Not only do minerals provide us with structure, they make up portions of our enzymes allowing them to work, they help our cells and blood vessels determine what to let in and out, they carry electric charge allowing our nerves to send and receive messages and our muscles to contract and relax. They keep our water inside us, keep our blood from becoming too acidic or too basic, they make up part of our mucus and digestive juices, and they play a major role in our blood pressure regulation.
The minerals that we will cover this year are:
Calcium, Chromium, Copper, Fluoride, Iodine, Iron, Manganese, Magnesium, Molybdenum, Phosphorous, Potassium, Selenium, Sodium, and Zinc.
Applications:
My goal in this deep dive into nutrition this year is to help you evaluate your diet in a much more holistic way. Instead of counting calories, let’s make sure we are getting all of our essential nutrients so all our bodily functions can work smoothly. Before turning to a new medication, let’s look to see if our symptoms could be from an imbalance in our dietary needs and intake. When we do incorporate a new medication, let’s see if it uses up or interferes with the absorption of specific nutrients so we can address this and avoid some of the potential side effects and long-term consequences of depletion.
Also, before you accept a recommendation for a supplement, let’s take a closer look at what that supplement is, how much our bodies need, whether you may need more than the average person, what form is best for absorption, and if there is a more comprehensive whole-food way of getting what you need. Even supplements can have side effects, and since they are not well regulated in the U.S. they don’t come with a list of potential risks written out for you.
Next Week:
You may have heard that you are what you eat. Well, that’s not the whole picture. We are what we absorb. Even if you have the best diet in the world (whatever that is), if your digestion is compromised and you aren’t able to fully break down your food and absorb their nutrients, you aren’t getting the full benefit.
Next week, we will take a look at how our digestive systems work, a few warning signs that they may be malfunctioning, a few basic things you can do to improve your digestion, and when to seek medical help.
As always, please feel free to comment below, send me an email with general questions or comments about the material found within these articles, and if you are in Oregon and would like to pursue care with me, please schedule a discovery video visit where we can meet and chat for 15 minutes to see if we are a good fit to work together.
As always, to our health!
References and Recommended Sources for Further Exploration
Venes, D, Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary Edition 21, F.A. Davis Company, 2009
Linus Pauling Institute Micronutrient Information Center https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: The Nutrition Source https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/
Nutrients - an open source research journal https://www.mdpi.com/journal/nutrients
USDA: Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015-2020 https://health.gov/sites/default/files/2019-09/2015-2020_Dietary_Guidelines.pdf
Nutrition Facts https://nutritionfacts.org/
Gaby, A, Nutritional Medicine Fritz Perlberg Publishing, 2011
