Bible Health Guide
By Philip St. Vincent Brennan
Chapter Five
Bible Nutrients
As noted above, you don't have to stick to the foods specifically mentioned in the Bible. But you do have to include in your regular diet foods that contain the same nutrients.
You need foods containing the omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants, beta carotene, and the essential vitamins and minerals. Each of these nutrients has a specific job to do to keep you hale and hearty. And you need a regular intake of each of them.
Taken together, they can fend off the ravages of age, prevent the onset of degenerative diseases, sharpen your senses, keep your blood vessels clear of plaque, purify your blood, improve lung power, and keep you strong and vital.
The Israelites never heard of these nutrients, but their food contained all of them. And those nutrients made those foods valuable allies in the battle against the ravages of aging and degenerative disease.
There are other powerful nutrients in nature's medicine chest that play vital parts in the war against disease, and each of them can wage war against specific health problems.
Beta-Carotene
Beta-carotene, a form of vitamin A, is a powerful antioxidant. It holds off the effects of aging and the onset of degenerative diseases. Medical researchers have discovered the amazing powers of this miracle substance. It can boost the immune system, help to prevent cancer, fight against skin disorders and reverse the effect of aging of our skin, improve our eyesight, and speed up the healing of wounds.Vitamins C and E are the other two principal antioxidants.
Foods rich in these three vitamins can help protect against eye disorders such as cataracts and muscular degeneration, prevent hypertension, cancer, nerve cell arthritis and asthma.Omega-3 fatty acids help fight arthritis, heart disease, hypertension, asthma, MS, and migraine headaches.
Allicin and ajoene, two substances found in garlic, go after such degenerative diseases as arthritis and heart disease.
Antioxidants
We need oxygen to live, but there are oxidants that kill. Scientists call them free radicals. Our bodies, however, can fight back with natural defenses against free radicals known as antioxidants.
When our systems lack enough of these antioxidants, however, the free radicals can go on a per oxidizing rampage throughout our bodies, causing everything from premature aging to cancer and heart disease.
Arthritis, cataracts, heart disease, memory loss and skin deterioration—all of the disorders we blame on getting old—are the result of free radicals roving throughout our bodies.
The main anti-oxidants are beta-carotene, vitamin C, and Vitamin E. They are potent allies in the war against the free radicals that invade our bodies. And they are contained in food!
Omega-3 Fatty Acids
Among the good fats are substances known as omega-3 fatty acids, and medical science had determined that foods that contain this form of fat are absolute wonders in combating all sorts of health problems, especially heart disease, arthritis, and asthma.
Our brains live on the stuff, and since the brain cannot store nutrients, it needs its daily ration of fat. Fatty acids determine the balance of hormones known as eicosanoids, which control a number of body functions such as blood clotting and the inflammatory process the body uses as a defense against certain disorders.
When this balance is disturbed, processes meant to be helpful, such as inflammation, turn ugly and produce disorders such as arthritis. Eicosanoids are produced largely by two forms of fatty acids— Omega-3, which we get from fish and other marine life, and Omega-6, which comes form meat or certain oils such as corn oil.
When these fatty acids are not present in the proper proportions, and omega-6 outnumbers omega-3 acids, the body gets thrown out of whack and health problems abound. Some researchers insist that this imbalance between the two fatty acids in our diets is responsible for the epidemic of degenerative diseases such as cancer, arthritis, diabetes, and heart disease.
Cold-water, deep-sea fish are the richest sources of omega-3 fatty acids, but walnuts, flaxseed oil, purslane and rapeseed oil also contain some omega-3 fatty acids.
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