Maintaining our Cellular Cities

by Gwyn Whittaker

Diagram of a cell

In GreenFare's 21-Day Kickstart program, an entire class is dedicated to overcoming food addictions. One of the most harmful myths we challenge is the idea of a "cheat day." When I ask former chain smokers or recovering alcoholics if they ever "cheat," their response is always one of surprise—followed by a firm, emphatic "No." They understand that the adage "everything in moderation" does not exist for addiction.

Our brains are glucose-seeking engines that require a certain level in our blood to think, remember, and learn. Glucose is a form of sugar that is derived from food sources; the problem is when simple sugars (up to a magnitude higher than found in a whole food) are ingested. Sugar is the prevalent form of food addiction, driven by hyperpalatable foods. Think of a chocolate, nut-covered apple instead of just the fruit. Anything after that is a disappointment to our palate and brain.

I had an interesting epiphany around food a while ago that I wanted to share to reframe this issue. With electron microscopes and other technologies, we have a much different idea of cells than we did when I was in grade school where a cell was depicted with a nucleus, mitochondria, and DNA residing in a membrane. Today, the picture is more like a city, with some estimated 37 trillion cells (80 billion in our high energy consumptive brain) and very complex processes and pathways we are only beginning to understand. Cells replicate, repair DNA, synthesize protein, and have the ability to move in the body. Aging and disease can be sped up by our own hand.

Imagine you are the mayor of a city and decide that one day a week, you will replace the water system with orange juice and provide only candy to eat. The surgeons that day wouldn’t be very effective nor would the kids learn in school. Everything would be mayhem until the hyperactivity stopped. Crime would go unnoticed due to the major disruption of ordinary processes. The construction work would be shoddy, and garbage would pile up. Your cellular city would be in a major state of disfunction.

We constantly encounter environmental factors that challenge our immune system—radiation, chemicals, viruses, bacteria, fungi, and single-celled organisms. So why would we intentionally weaken our immunity, even temporarily? I now see myself as the CEO of my cellular city, and this awareness helps me avoid things that I know will cause my roads to become clogged or my bones to collapse. As Kim Williams, past President of the American College of Cardiology, wisely says, “We are all going to die; I just don’t want it to be my fault.”

In the same way that we would never hurt our loved ones, let’s love ourselves just a little more.