DIET

Vitamins
Vitamins are substances that your body needs to grow and develop normally. There are thirteen vitamins that are universally recognized today. They are vitamins A, C, D, E, K and the B vitamins (thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, biotin, vitamin B-6, vitamin B-12 and folate). Vitamins do not include other essential nutrients such as dietary minerals, essential fatty acids, or essential amino acids (which are needed in larger amounts than vitamins). Each vitamin plays a different but very important role in your body. Some have hormone-like functions as regulators of mineral metabolism like vitamin D, or regulators of cell and tissue growth like some forms of vitamin A. Others function as antioxidants like vitamin E and sometimes vitamin C. The largest number of vitamins, like the B complex vitamins, function as precursors for enzyme cofactors, that help enzymes in their work as catalysts in metabolism.

Vitamin A is an antioxidant. Antioxidants are substances that may protect your cells against the effects of free radicals damage. Free radicals are molecules produced when your body breaks down food, or by environmental exposures like tobacco smoke or chemicals in the air. Even exercising will create many free radicals in your body. Vitamin A also plays a role in your

Vision
Bone growth
Reproduction
Cell functions
Immune system

Vitamin A can come from plant or animal sources. Plant sources include colorful fruits and vegetables. Animal sources include liver and whole milk. Vitamin A is also added to foods like cereals.

Vitamin C is also known as an antioxidant. Vitamin C is important for your skin, bones, and connective tissue. It promotes healing and helps the body absorb iron. Vitamin C comes from fruits and vegetables. Good sources include citrus, red and green peppers, tomatoes, broccoli, and greens.

People who may need some extra Vitamin C might include:

Smokers
Atheletes
Pregnant/breastfeeding women
People recovering from surgery
Burn victims

Vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium, which your bones need to grow. A lack of vitamin D can lead to bone diseases. Vitamin D also has a role to play in your nerve, muscle, and immune systems.

You can get vitamin D in three ways: through your skin, from your diet, and from supplements. Your body forms Vitamin D naturally after exposure to sunlight. Vitamin D-rich foods include egg yolks, saltwater fish, and liver. Some other foods, like milk and cereal, often have added vitamin D.

You can also take vitamin D supplements. People who might need extra vitamin D include

Seniors
Breastfed infants
People with dark skin
People with certain conditions, such as liver diseases, cystic fibrosis and Crohn’s disease
People who are obese

Vitamin E is also known as an antioxidant. Vitamin E also plays a role in your immune system and metabolic processes. Good sources of vitamin E are vegetable oils, margarine, nuts, seeds, and leafy greens. Most people get enough vitamin E from the foods they eat.

Vitamin K helps your body by making proteins for healthy bones and tissues. It also makes proteins for blood clotting. People low in Vitamin K may bleed easily. Most people get their vitamin K from plants such as green vegetables, and dark berries.

The B vitamins are

B1 (thiamine)
B2 (riboflavin)
B3 (niacin)
B5 (pantothenic acid)
B6
B7 (biotin)
B12
Folic acid

These vitamins help the process your body uses to get or make energy from the food you eat like carbohydrates. B Vitamins also help form red blood cells. You can get B vitamins from proteins such as fish, poultry, meat, eggs, and dairy products. Leafy green vegetables, beans, and peas also have B vitamins.

The best way to get enough vitamins is to eat a balanced diet with a variety of foods and a good multivitamin/mineral supplement. Over dosing on vitamins can also make you sick so make sure you are not exceeding your recommended daily intake.

Glycemic indexFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The glycemic index, glycaemic index, or GI is a measure of the effects of carbohydrates on blood sugar levels. Carbohydrates that break down quickly during digestion and release glucose rapidly into the bloodstream have a high GI; carbohydrates that break down more slowly, releasing glucose more gradually into the bloodstream, have a low GI. The concept was developed by Dr. David J. Jenkins and colleagues[1] in 1980–1981 at the University of Toronto in their research to find out which foods were best for people with diabetes.

A lower glycemic index suggests slower rates of digestion and absorption of the foods' carbohydrates and may also indicate greater extraction from the liver and periphery of the products of carbohydrate digestion. A lower glycemic response usually equates to a lower insulin demand but not always, and may improve long-term blood glucose control[2] and blood lipids. The insulin index is also useful, as it provides a direct measure of the insulin response to a food.

The glycemic index of a food is defined as the area under the two hour blood glucose response curve (AUC) following the ingestion of a fixed portion of carbohydrate (usually 50 g). The AUC of the test food is divided by the AUC of the standard (either glucose or white bread, giving two different definitions) and multiplied by 100. The average GI value is calculated from data collected in 10 human subjects. Both the standard and test food must contain an equal amount of available carbohydrate. The result gives a relative ranking for each tested food.[3]

The current validated methods use glucose as the reference food, giving it a glycemic index value of 100 by definition. This has the advantages of being universal and producing maximum GI values of approximately 100. White bread can also be used as a reference food, giving a different set of GI values (if white bread = 100, then glucose ≈ 140). For people whose staple carbohydrate source is white bread, this has the advantage of conveying directly whether replacement of the dietary staple with a different food would result in faster or slower blood glucose response. The disadvantages with this system are that the reference food is not well-defined and the GI scale is culture dependent.

PH IN THE BODY

Why is pH level in the body so important to human health?

We all have a pH level in our body. pH is the scale that tells us how acid or alkaline your body is. It’s a scale that goes from zero to fourteen; seven is neutral. In your blood and in the space around your cells, the body maintains a pH level of about 7.4.

Now why is that true for you, for me, and for almost anyone on the planet? 7.4, plus or minus a little bit is where everybody is because that’s the pH environment in which cells do their job – which is to produce the energy that your body needs to replicate, to heal itself, to move your muscles, and to do everything that allows you to be alive. If that pH gets too high or too low, you get sick. If it gets much too high or much too low, our bodies will shut down. The body constantly struggles to maintain 7.4.

Does everyone have a 7.4 pH level?

This is where it really gets interesting. A young healthy person and an older, not as healthy person, probably have the same ph in their blood. The younger, healthier person is youthful, might have good genes, and has taken care of himself or herself, eating well and exercising daily. People who do all these things can keep their body alkaline, and their bodies have no problem maintaining 7.4. Now the older, less healthy person, who does not have a healthy diet, and does not exercise, has to work doubly hard to maintain 7.4. Age, activity, and genetics, can have an impact on how hard your body needs to work to maintain the 7.4 pH. It’s true that some bodies can be slightly more or less acidic, but for the most part, the body attempts to maintain a perfect 7.4 pH. Some bodies just have to work much harder in the process, putting more or less stress on the immune system.

How does too much acid in the body stress the body?

There are seven natural buffering systems that buffer the natural acids that are produced from your body’s metabolic activity. For example, the lungs are one of those systems, expelling waste by exhaling carbon monoxide. These seven buffering systems can sometimes get overloaded. What overloads that system? Age, stress, diet, or more commonly, just exercise. Whether you’re working in the garden, raking the leaves, going for a walk with the dog, jogging, swimming, or participating in any kind of athletic activity, you’re creating acidic waste. Exercise-induced acidosis adds another layer of acid in the body, causing the body to work extra hard on taxing those seven natural buffering systems to maintain 7.4. This process can actually cause the body to pull calcium out of the bones. Sometimes your body can get so desperate to maintain 7.4, it starts to break down muscles to get the nitrates so it can add yet another buffering into the blood stream to maintain 7.4. People may have a problem in their body that begins to express itself as a symptom. Even though someone may have a symptom that is displaying itself, the real problem could be traced back to the pH environment where the cells are doing their work.