Have You Talked to Your Cells Lately?

Why bother with Meal Making Transformation if you don’t really believe healthy eating makes a difference? Find out why your cells need you!

Listening to our bodies is a trending topic these days. “Your Body Speaks Your Mind” was a recent LinkedIn article that got a lot of attention. “Every ache, every flutter of emotion, every sensation is your body speaking to you,” the article explained, but we need to slow down to “hear the whispers of your body, and honor the wisdom it holds.” *

The Flip Side While I am definitely trying to heed this very valuable advice, an interesting realization came to mind recently: Communication is a two-way street.

In other words, we do need to listen to what the body is “saying” to us, but at the same time we need to pay attention to what we are “saying” to our bodies.

Does that sounds crazy? How do you talk to your body and its millions of cells?

Likely as not, you’ve never even thought about talking to your body’s cells because in our modern Convenience Eating Culture food is conceived largely in terms of its ability to get rid of hunger and keep us from dying.

However, by reducing food’s value to a just another thing at the store with measurable qualities and quantities, food loses its soul. No longer is it believed to possess “a vital life force, much less a sacred one,” as it has been viewed in other cultures over many centuries.**

So of course most of us–including me!–have never thought about how we communicate with our bodies through the food we put in it.

Food Is Information There is a phrase I first heard a long time ago from alternative medicine advocate and researcher Sayer Ji: “Food is information.” While I could understand his words, I couldn’t grasp the concept behind them until I came across a recent post by Dr.Hyman:

“Food is not just calories or energy; food is information, instructions that upgrade or downgrade your biology with every bite.”***

Suddenly and finally, I “got it:” Food is how we “talk” to our bodies.

What You Might Be Saying to Your Body’s Cells Feed your body a highly processed, non-nutritive Oreo and you’re essentially saying, “I don’t really believe all that malarkey about healthy eating. How can one little cookie matter that much or cause that much harm? It just goes down into a vat somewhere in my stomach and then gets shuttled out the other end.

Indeed, if all we ever ate was one little Oreo every now and then, this thinking might be pretty harmless. But we usually don’t eat just one Oreo but three or four or more–plus artificially flavored and preserved snack foods; white flour pizza, croissants, toast and pasta; plus all manner of sugary muffins, cookies, cake and so on most every day. (In fact, recent studies have shown that nearly 60% of our daily calories come from ultra-processed foods like these.)

What Your Body Says Back In response to the parade of nun-nutritive foods we give it, the body says, “I’ll try to shuttle that Oreo (and all the other not-foods) “out the other end.” But understand,

• because not-foods are such a big part of what you eat, your mitochondria, immune system, microbiome, bones, muscles and brains are all being robbed of what’s needed to keep them from malfunctioning, and
• making matters worse, I have to work overtime to get rid of all the not-food stuff you’ve piled into us–and that takes a lot of my energy.

So, the body concludes, I’ll try to do my best, but don’t be surprised if things don’t work just right, if you feel bloated, get constipated, have an arthritis flare up, get a headache, feel depressed . . ..

Disease Our good bodies, they always try their best until we just wear them out, and then something called “disease” happens, which can look like cancer, diabetes, heart disease or Alzheimer’s, or some “lesser” condition like IBS, SIBO, MCAS, thyroidism, or Crohns.

Diseases, discomfort, debilitation–those are the languages the body uses in response to what we tell it with the food we eat. Maladies don’t just pop up out of nowhere. Our bodies have probably been “talking” to us for a long time, we just don’t want to listen because who wants to stop their busy days:

• To make a meal
• To chop vegetables
• To buy good food
• To eat good food, with respect and enjoyment

So for sure it’s important to listen to our bodies. But at the same time, we need to talk back to our bodies with nutrition-packed, real and whole foods.

Try talking nicely to your body and see if you don’t hear this reply: “Thanks!”

 

* From Elyse Wagner–https://www.linkedin.com/in/elyse-wagner-ms-cn-lmhca-80370419/recent-activity/all/>

**https://greenmedinfo.com/blog/revisioning-cellular-bioenergetics-food-information-and-light-driven-body

***From <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/drhyman_food-is-not-just-calories-or-energy-food-activity-6771157157569146880-9oCC/>

****57 percent at the end (2017-2018). The intake of ready-to-eat or heat meals, like frozen dinners, increased the most, while the intake of some sugary foods and drinks declined. In contrast, the consumption of whole foods decreased from 32.7 percent to 27.4 percent of calories. From <https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2021/october/ultra-processed-foods.html>