Understanding The Relationship Nutrition Plays On Our Overall Health

Nutrition, also known as nourishment, is the supply of food materials required by organisms and cells to stay alive. In science and medicine, nutrition is a study or practice of how the body utilizes the break-down of certain foods, known as catabolism, and uses those nutrients to repair and create new cells and tissues, known as anabolism. The combination of these two processes, catabolism and anabolism, make up what we know as metabolism. As the science in these areas becomes more advanced, we are growing our focus on the biochemical aspects that help explain how different nutrients inside of us are altered from one form to another.

This focus can help us better understand nutrition’s relationship with disease and health.

It’s safe to assume that as long as humans have been around, we have relied on nutrition in one form of another for our survival. It is unknown at exactly what point humans began to realize there is a relationship between the food we consume and our health.

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However, one of the earliest proponents of healing through nutrition lived around 400 BC. It was the Greek physician Hippocrates, who is also known as the Father of Medicine. One of his most popular phrases quoted by Hippocrates was “let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food.” Although Hippocrates is probably the most well-known early advocate of nutrition for healing, there is evidence that humans have used certain foods to treat ailments as far back as the ancient times.

For example, eye diseases were often treated using the juice of a liver, and cases of athlete’s foot were treated using garlic and ginger.

We have come a long way since the days of squirting liver juice in your eye to treat disease, and have discovered many major breakthroughs in utilizing different sources of nutrients to heal the body. In 1747, Dr. James Lind, a physician for the British Navy had a problem with his fellow sailors developing a horrendous disease known as scurvy whenever they traveled on long voyages. One of the observations he made was that their main diet consisted only of nonperishable foods such as bread and meat. As an experiment he decided to test whether their diet was responsible for this deadly bleeding disorder. He gave one group of men vinegar, another group salt water, and third group limes. To his surprise the group that consumed limes, didn’t develop scurvy. It wasn’t understood at the time, but a certain nutrient in the limes which was later discovered to be vitamin C, was responsible for preventing the scurvy. It was this experiment that really changed how doctors looked at food and created a large market for careers dedicated to the study of nutrition.

As nutrition became a widely popular field of study, we began to get a much better understanding of the scientific connection between food and health. In 1770, not long after Dr. James Lind’s experiment to cure scurvy, another major breakthrough was discovered in the field of nutrition. “The Father of Nutrition and Chemistry” Antoine Lavoisier discovered the bodily process of food and oxygen being transferred into heat and water, now a concept known as metabolism. Following this breakthrough realization, shortly into the 19th century, we were able to isolate the elements of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, which make up the main components of food and then connect them with human health.

In the late 19th century dieticians and nutritionists began working in hospitals, as the connection between nutrition and health was becoming well known. In 1919, following WWI, the Public Health Service began implementing dieticians as part of their hospital staff to monitor and increase the health of veterans. The Public Health Service then grew in their involvement with the nations health care system, and even the private health sector.

In the early 20th century a large German company by the name of Justus Liebig began doing research in the field of the chemical components of foods, such as fats proteins and carbohydrates. This research led to the discovery of what would eventually be labeled by Polish doctor Casimir Funk, as “vitamins,” which were essential components of a diet. The original term was actually “vitamine” which was the combination of “vital” and “amine” due to the discovery that they were required to sustain life, but were believed to be amines, which is a composite derived from ammonia.

With the discovery of vitamins, many more breakthroughs in the treatment of common diseases followed. In 1912 a researcher for the Department of Agriculture named E.V. McCollum began studying the effects of vitamins and experimenting on rats instead of humans. His experiments led to the discovery of the first fat-soluble vitamin, which he called vitamin A. His research determined that the rats that were fed butter, were healthier than the rats that were fed lard, because the butter contained more vitamin A. The study of vitamins and subsequent deficiencies led to a better understanding of many common diseases, such as beriberi caused by a lack of B vitamins, and rickets, caused by a deficiency of vitamin D.

Through each new breakthrough in the field of nutrition, we began to see a clearer picture on the overall relationship with the nutrients we put into our bodies and the consequent effect on health. The scientific understanding of this relationship led to the isolation of many other vitamins during the early 20th century, and sparked an entire new industry surrounding the manufacture of science-based health products. In the 1930’s we witnessed the very first vitamin pills being marketed as a product to supplement our diets. It was only fairly recently, in 1994, that congress passed the Dietary and Supplement Health and Education Act, granting the FDA power to regulate the “information” tied to the marketing of nutritional supplements. This was due to many misleading claims being used to promote products, and a lack of resources for the average person to test these claims.

Although we are making significant progress in the understanding of utilizing nutrition to support our health, and have even eradicated many common diseases, we are still seeing surprisingly large numbers of many other diseases that are contributed to our diet. There are approximately 1.5 million Americans diagnosed with type 2 diabetes each year. And over a million deaths each year are attributed to heart disease and cancer combined. A big contributing factor is our culture of quick easy and convenient, which doesn’t translate well into a healthy diet. When examining the typical western diets, we see large consumption of sugar, processed foods, and trans fats and deficiencies in many important nutrients, that these types of diets lack. Low income, and poverty are also contributing factors, as healthy foods are typically costlier than unhealthy foods.

As research and science develops in the field of nutrition, we are becoming increasingly aware of the role that nutrition plays on our health. However, despite all of the prevailing knowledge in the area of nutrition, we witness very shocking statistics on the quality of health across our nation. Despite significant research and evidence that can be easily accessed, and is even taught to some degree in our school system, we remain a nation of high rates of obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease, and many other diseases, directly linked to the foods we consume. We have made great strides in understanding the relationship nutrition plays on our overall health, but we need to do a much better job at utilizing and spreading this valuable information we’ve acquired