THE human body is a collection of about 100 trillion cells. One single cell is microscopic. The cells are gathered together to first form the tissues, which are further joined together to form organs.Inside a cell are the nucleus and other organelles that carry out one function or the other. Besides these organelles and cell nucleus, the cell is essentially water, which is about 90 per cent of the cell.The cellular organelles are fully bathed in water and when the body is well hydrated each cell looks like a fully blown balloon. Around the cell is water that is known as extracellular fluid. The extracellular fluid is the link between the cell and the blood in the tiny capillaries that pass between the cells.A lot of metabolic activities, productions, chemical reactions, enzymatic activities go on inside each of these 100 trillion cells of the body. For all these functions to go on optimally there has to be sufficient amount of water inside the cell and not only that, there are certain raw materials that would be required. These raw materials will include food nutrients, oxygen, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, co-factors and more water. In the process of carrying out all the activities in the cell, energy is used up and more energy produced, hormones and neurotransmitters are manufactured and nutrients can be converted from one form to the other for storage or utilisation. As expected, wastes are generated and released.Now, the raw materials arrive at the cell by the water transport system of the blood. They are passed through the single cell layer of the capillaries into the extracellular fluid from where they are further ferried into the cell where they are utilised for the various functions that take place in the cell. The return journey is the same for the wastes; they are moved out of the cell into the extracellular fluid and from there to the capillaries where they are transported to the various excretory organs of the body. These wastes are made up of acids, toxins, chemicals and carbon dioxide.One important activity that goes on inside the cell is the generation of energy known as Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) for the division of cells to produce new cells to replace the old and dying ones. The primitive cells in the bone marrow are a good example of cells that are regularly and rapidly dividing. The red blood cells live for about 120 days on the average and there are about 2.5 trillion of them in an adult body. The primitive stem cells in the bone marrow divide to produce 2.5 million new red blood cells per second so as to maintain the number of the red blood cells and replace dying ones. The mature red blood cells do not have the capacity to divide.Generally speaking, about 25 million cell divisions per second take place in the adult and this works out to about two trillion cell divisions in 24 hours. Cell division is so important because the quality and well being of the new cell and by extension the tissues, organs and the whole body depend on it. Cell division on its own part is dependent on the quality of the raw materials supplied to the cell for its usage. The expectation is that each new cell that is formed will be healthier and of a better quality than the one that is dying.In practical terms this is not so and the reason is not farfetched. The raw materials are sub-standard! Take the food we eat for instance, they are dead food by reason of the excessive heat that is applied when cooking. In other words, the food is cooked until all the nutrients, vitamins and enzymes in them are 'killed.' The substrate in the food in which the energy of the sun is stored and transported to man has been tampered with and the energy can no longer be of the same quality as that of the sun. In essence, we are using dead food (nutrients) and low energy substrates to nourish living cells and the outcome is that the new cell that is formed is not as healthy as the one it is meant to replace. This is the beginning of the process of degeneration.Other factors that contribute to this degeneration include tampering with the natural food that God gave to man. By this I mean processing and refining these natural foods to get things like white sugar, white and polished rice and milling wheat to get white flour. These all become rid of minerals and fiber making them injurious to the body. Not only the food, but oxygen and water have also been devalued. The air we breathe, especially in the modern cities of the world has become much polluted with gases like carbon monoxide from cars and factories.It can therefore be said that the quality and quantity of oxygen available to the cell today has become a fraction of what it was in the past.Like we learnt a couple of weeks ago in this column, our bodies were created by God to function optimally in an alkaline environment and one of the things we should do to keep it alkaline is to drink alkaline water. The water we drink today is anything but alkaline. There is no 'pure' water that is alkaline and most of the bottled water sold in this country do not fare better. Considering also that people consume other beverages more than water these days, the average human is dehydrated.One of the greatest causes of ill-health at cellular level is dehydration. In a state of dehydration, circulation becomes slowed down and sluggish leading to accumulation of the wastes in the extracellular fluid initially. If nothing is done the wastes begin to accumulate in the cells leaving the cells flabby and congested. Metabolic functions of the cells become compromised and new cells continue to degenerate.
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