New E-Book.

Of necessity some of my blogs have not been updated as often as intended. Be that as it may

I have been able to complete an in-depth E-Book titled ‘Pregnancy & Lactation Enhancement”.

An extract appears hereunder. Add almost 4,000 words with particular attention to foods that

The relationship between life-style, individual behaviour, the global and personal environment and health status are now well documented and recognised. The concept of health promotion and preventive health is being seen as a necessary and important response to the escalating killer diseases and chronic illness conditions which are the major causes of mortality and morbidity in our society today.

In view of the condition of the current medical care delivery system, and resulting cost and dissatisfactions with national health status, the role of Predictive-Preventive medicine can no longer be ignored.

Nutrition affects health from the moment of conception to the moment of death.

Faulty nutrition leads to increased infant mortality and maternal morbidity; it stunts development, both physically and mentally; and it predisposes to or aggravates a spectrum of disease conditions, diminishing the quality of life, personal productivity and longevity

Potential
Sufficient sound information exists with respect to food practices, nutrition, and general health to allow much greater control of health through dietary practices than is now being done. Maximum benefit from existing knowledge will require greater organization of all relevant resources than has been achieved to date.
 
The Master
Hippocrates (640 B.C.) recognised the universal significance of nutrition when he stated

"let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be food".

The food we eat becomes nutrition. That is, after many complex biochemical actions, interactions and reactions.

Simply put, if the individual has any measure of indigestion there must follow consequent maldigestion, malabsorption and cellular malnutrition.

The human body is estimated to contain something like 70 trillion cells; each and every cell requires up to 91 nutrients, clean air and water for its very survival. Less than optimal cellular nutrition leads to premature cell death with consequent illness conditions leading inexorably to a domino affect of progressive illness conditions

.Responsibility
Nutrition is one of the environmental factors that is most readily subject to human control in the total contribution to individual health.

It then follows that there is a need to integrate nutritional services into systems that deliver medical and health care.

The significance of nutritional care during illness and rehabilitation is widely accepted, the significance of a low dose vitamin supplement (and/or folic acid) preconception and at conception in reducing neural tube and other birth defects is now widely accepted. In fact latter day evidence shows that folic acid may play a crucial role in the prevention of cardiovascular disease, stroke and Alzheimer's Disease.

Why then has the role of applied nutrition in preventing disease and promoting both physical and mental health not been widely accepted? 

There are currently in excess of 3000 manufactured or processed foods on the supermarket shelf available to today's consumer. And consumed they are. It has also been estimated that the average diet may contain as much as 2 kilos of disordered chemicals, per annum, that is disordered by the producer, and/or the manufacturer. These include pesticides, rodenticides, herbicides, preservatives, coloring agents, fungicides, antibiotics, emulsifiers and thousands more. Even our drinking water, once obtained clean from a stream or well, is treated with chlorine and other toxic substances in addition to being contaminated by many and varied hazardous chemicals and heavy metals.

By far the most commonly consumed foods in our society, today, are those produced and prepared from and with white flour and sugar. In other words from refined carbohydrates. As an experiment, go to any "take-away" fast food hall and see how many foods? you can buy that do not contain wheat in any form. I often ponder whether or not the term "fast food" refers to the bowel transit time, because almost all fast foods lack the dietary fibre necessary for normal (time-wise) bowel function.

Once off the breast (usually within six months of birth) our children may become hooked for life on sugar and to a lesser extent salt. Many children refuse to eat their "veggies" simply because they are too bland in a food chain which offers so much piquancy. It is well documented in the specialized field of "Clinical Ecology" that we may become addicted (mal-adaptive addiction) to those foods to which we are actually intolerant or allergic.

A good analogy is cigarette smoking; the first one makes you feel absolutely rotten, but the addiction is soon established, ten to fifty a day and you no longer feel the side effects. However, the disease process goes on unchecked. Sooner or later a chronic disease condition will manifest. The same applies to food if you are maladapted to it. Many cancers are the result of food allergy, and other cancers (epithelial) may be a result of vitamin/mineral deficiency, as we will discuss a little later.

Matter Of Balance
Some nutritionists will argue that provided we consume a balanced diet there is nothing to worry about. Why then, on average, do more than 70% of our population suffer one or more chronic illness conditions? It can't all be due to faulty life-style or genetic inheritance.

Not so many years ago the head nutritionist at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital went public with the statement that only about 2% of Australians might need extra vitamins. At that time the latest health survey (ABS) showed that 47% of us suffered one or more chronic illness conditions. Any scientist schooled in clinical and applied nutrition would be suspect if they suggested that any person with a chronic illness condition did not have an increased need for one if not all nutrients. The lady in question was obviously a product of a myopic education system.

Let us hypothesise that most of us , most of the time, consume a balanced diet. And therein may lie the problem. For what, or whom, is the diet balanced? 70% of the world's populations are not genetically (biochemically) adapted to cow's milk. An equal number are probably to some degree not genetically adapted to the lectins of many plant foods especially wheat and other grains.

During and indeed even before pregnancy, and continuing through lactation the dietary intake needs to be optimized to ensure optimal health-enhancement of every cell. In turn ensures optimal fetal nutrition.