WE are what we eat and drink, philosophically and medically. Diet plays the most significant role in our health and longevity — more than genetics and exercise in most instances. Food provides us nutrition and also stimulates and controls the natural production of hormones, electrolytes, and other chemicals, good or bad, depending on our mood and what we ingest. Our body chemistry determines how we think, act, and behave, the same way prescription and illegal drugs influence our psyche and demeanor.
Literally, the foods we eat and the liquids we drink are digested and metabolized into chemicals in the body. The various chemical reactions that follow are reflected in the person’s thinking, feeling, mood, disposition, and judgment — all of which eventually affect health and longevity.
While exercise and our personal attitude also stimulate chemical reactions in our system, for this discussion we will concentrate on the effect of diet.
Diet determines life
What we have at the end of our forks and spoons on most days determines what bodily chemistry takes place inside our body. According to the 2013 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, “diet ranks as the single most important factor when it comes to premature death and diseases.”
For example, occasionally eating chocolates or one’s favorite decadent snack stimulates the secretion of the happy hormones, resulting in a sense of joy and satisfaction, which is a positive state of mind. Some of the major vital hormones are:
Serotonin: The happiness hormone regulates the mood, prevents depression and makes us feel happy. This substance can also be triggered by exercise, exposure to sunlight, or by eating foods rich in carbohydrates.
Endorphins: Also known as feel-good hormones, they reduce your anxiety and sensitivity to pain. It is also released during exercise.
Melatonin: The hormone secreted by the pineal gland that controls our circadian rhythm for normal sleep cycle. Now in a pill, it helps fight jet lag.
Ghrelin: Gherlin is a relaxing hormone that lowers stress and anxiety. Hunger triggers the release of this hormone. So, it is best not to eat a lot to full satiety where the Ghrelin level would fall. To maintain a good level of Ghrelin, push yourself away from the table when you are less than full, which is a healthy habit, anyway.
Dopamine: Dopamine induces mental alertness. The lack of or reduced level of dopamine causes lack of attention and concentration and leads to bad moods. Eating foods rich in protein stimulates the secretion of dopamine.
Phenylethylamine: This substance results in the feelings we get in the early stages of a relationship or love, and the good feeling following ingestion of chocolates and products from cocoa beans.
Adrenalin/Epinephrine: This is the substance secreted in a fright, fight, or flee situation when we face a catastrophe or an emergency. It prepares the body, sharpens our senses, and tones the muscles, ready for combat.
The “ideal” diet?
Medical science and nutrition continue to evolve in man’s quest for the “ideal diet” and the fountain of youth that would lead to the healthiest body and the maximum longevity potential of every person. Several diets have emerged, such as: low-fat, low-carb, the Atkin’s diet, South Beach, Mediterranean, Paleo, and now the Pegan diet.
The Atkin’s Diet emphasizes a low-carb diet and has allowed more meat and is generous about calories, unlike the South Beach diet, a low-carb diet that restricts red meat. Both advocate liberal amounts of vegetables, legumes, fruits, nuts, olive oil, and whole grains. The vegan diet prohibits any food from animals, limiting its diet to mainly vegetable, fruits, nuts, and legumes.
The Paleo diet is heavily focused on meat, a diet mimicking the diet of our Paleolithic cavemen ancestors of 10,000 years ago, who laboriously hunted for their food and ate berries and nuts, but not many vegetables because there was no agriculture then.
The Pegan diet combines the best of the paleo and vegan diets to provide balanced, sustainable, easy-to-follow daily eating habits. While the Paleo diet is heavy on red meat as the main event, the Pegan diet makes meat only a side dish, with the large portion of vegetables, legumes, nuts, fruits, olive oil, as the main dish. Scientifically, the Pegan diet appears to combine all the good features of the Atkin’s, South Beach, Mediterranean, Vegan and Paleo diets into one, with calorie-counting, which makes sense.
A fascinating trend
It is easy to notice nowadays that the human civilization is trending toward the past, the original old-fashioned natural ideas and ways of living, except in the continuously evolving world of technologies. Women’s dresses, for instance, used to cover their bodies from the neck all the way down to their feet; but now the clothing has plunging low-neck lines, baring part of their breasts, and skirts up to mid-thigh, reminiscent of the cave woman’s bare-breasted past.
The popular addicting soft drinks of the past, like Coca Cola which was introduced in 1896 to practically all households, like other soft drinks that followed, are now gradually waning in sales. Purified water and its various forms are today gaining popularity around the world. We seem to be going back to the past, and the trend is more natural and healthy. We are today also zeroing on ecology by curtailing man’s abuse of Mother Earth to manage global warming and save the only hospitable planet we know. And so goes the trend in our diet to maximize health and longevity. People are more health conscious today, thanks to the various media, especially the internet.
Anyway, besides the benefits of daily exercise, abstinence from tobacco and moderation in alcoholic intake, the bottom line of diet is the obvious evidence-based medical recommendation that all refined and processed foods, and soft drinks are toxic to our bodies and responsible for the major diseases killing us today, including cancer. Low carbohydrate, low to moderate lean-meat (preferably fish and chicken), generous portions of vegetables of all kinds and colors, nuts, and other high-fiber foods, are healthier for us.
The only ingredients in the recipe we need to add are our wisdom, personal responsibility, and resolve.
Please visit philipSchua.com Email: [email protected].
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Philip S. Chua, MD, FACS, FPCS, Cardiac Surgeon Emeritus in Northwest Indiana and chairman of cardiac surgery from 1997 to 2010 at Cebu Doctors University Hospital, where he holds the title of Physician Emeritus in Surgery, is based in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, the Philippine College of Surgeons, and the Denton A. Cooley Cardiovascular Surgical Society. He is the chairman of the Filipino United Network – USA, a 501(c)(3) humanitarian foundation in the United States. Email: [email protected]
