What does today's overwhelming concern with: body, image, restrictive diets, anti-aging supplements, antioxidants, fitness, extreme physical exercises, eternal youth, readily available aesthetic interventions, and personal development in bulk, say about us and our identities?
Without needing an exhaustive syntactic analysis between all these and the unconscious psyche, we realize that the identity of the human species is fragile, adolescent, loosely anchored in the adult centrality of being, feeling the need to imitate, copy, mimic value, blindly follow various trends and fashions, looking good in social media pictures.
The lack of confidence, inadequacy, subordinations, vanity, fueled by the tyranny of current standards, develop a chronic, almost pathological self-discontent, in which a Psycho-Neuro-Energy-Immuno-Social balance is difficult to maintain.
Phew, what an endless word I've composed... German language is well known for its ability to form long compound words, saving time and space in communication, but look, Romanian also adapts well to synthesis.
Society seems somewhat schizophrenic, preclinical, the individual fights on illusory fronts, which will end with the exact loss of the result they aim for: eternal youth of the image, eternal health, and the order of immortality.
That's how I ended up talking with a client about how we understand things about teeth, aesthetics, magazine smiles, sugar, alkaline diets, or the importance of fruits in nutrition.
She said:
"Ana, there are qualified voices recommending fruits at any cost, daily, for children and adults because they bring vitamins and minerals to the body."
Me:
"They are indeed complex foods (not complete), but do they only bring benefits, are they superheroes?"
It's a topic that can be widely debated, I don't claim to cover it all, but I'll share slices of our discussion with you.
I see 2 well-defined dangers at least at the teeth level:
1.Fruits increase dental plaque through the nutritional intake of glucose, directly to the microorganisms that make it up.
2.They reduce the buffering capacity of saliva, for the acid itself from their content and for the one generated in the microbial metabolism of the oral cavity ecosystem.
Certainly, fruit consumption doesn't only have the benefits sold by the media, it also has drawbacks, which depend on origin, intake rhythm, diet plan, the medical authority in nutrition you refer to, and many others.
And perhaps by looking exactly through the lens of the oral cavity, we have the opportunity to finely modulate our perception of them.
Let's take them one by one.
Fruits, whether we find them on trees or closer to the ground, contain:
-pH acidity (usually below 6.5)
-sugars / carbohydrates (regardless of how you want to name them): simple or complex
1.Glucose from anywhere, including fruits, is the preferred energy source for both human cellular fractions and the microorganisms of dental plaque. These will increase in number, and their final metabolic product is invariably an acidic compound.
It is said that almost all fruits and vegetables are acidic, but after metabolism, they have an alkalizing effect on the body.
Is it really so?
The classic example of a lemon: whether I put it in my mouth or just think about it (having had a previous consumption experience), the brain perceives too much acid, a danger to oral mucosal destruction, and triggers a protection program at the level of thalamus, hypothalamus, cranial nerves by:
-increasing saliva secretion (predominantly aqueous) at the level of the parotid glands
-increasing sodium bicarbonate concentration.
And thus, acidity is diverted and injury is prevented.
So, the alkaline effect comes from buffering systems and not from chemical fruit decomposition.
2.It's difficult to explain, but yes, the body has its own buffering systems, its own pH balancing systems, which only fail in severe renal or pulmonary pathological conditions.
I wonder how much effort the brain puts into bringing saliva to 6.7 after sour berries/lemons with a pH of 2.80 - 3.10 because acid-base homeostasis is essential for the body's functioning within physiological limits.
Under normal conditions, acid-base balance is maintained at an arterial pH between 7.36 and 7.44 and an intracellular pH of 7.21:
-either by increasing secretion quantities
-or by its own alkalizing substances such as carbonate type: sodium bicarbonate, phosphate type, proteins, or hemoglobin.
So, when consuming fruits:
-Daily
-Frequent intake
-Rhythmically (every few hours), the body's capacity to effectively buffer oral cavity acidity (partly from fruit and partly from microbial catabolism) is exceeded.
If this happens isolated, from time to time, then it doesn't produce secondary effects.
But if it occurs over a long period, day by day, enamel demineralization will not delay to appear.
In my clinical experience, I have observed this phenomenon in vegan or vegetarian families, frequent juice or smoothie consumers, or when children's snack boxes were composed daily of many pieces of raw/dried fruit.
If you are facing demineralized teeth, my friendly recommendation for protected enamel would be to try reducing fruit consumption to once a day (maximum twice).
You can have a generous portion, satisfying all "fruity" preferences (make sure to bring fibers, proteins, and lipids before, to avoid huge glucose and insulin spikes in the blood, but that's another interesting story), and for snacks, choose vegetables (less acidic, less rich in carbohydrates, with increased self-dental cleaning effect).
And I won't talk now about other important aspects regarding fruits, as I would extend writing too much.
I'll let you meditate on these:
-origin and cultivation of fruits,
-physico-chemical isotopic differences of some fruits that do not grow in our geographical area and are difficult to recognize enzymatically metabolic for the body (such as mango, pineapple, coconut, papaya),
-their natural ripeness level when they reach the table,
-pesticide treatments (thiabendazole in bananas and citrus seems to be the most used) to prevent dehydration and spoilage,
-the quantity of biophotons (produced in natural metabolic processes under the influence of the Sun), which are the drop of vitality for humans, actually.
-their cold energetic essence, not at all conducive to organisms going through long periods of low temperatures, as in a continental temperate climate (perhaps not coincidentally, Nature doesn't offer us fruit varieties in winter or spring).
In the end, I add one more thing: every Human has their own Truth! Usually, we believe our own story...
And maybe for X, fruits are good (no demineralized teeth, enough amylases for metabolism, alkaline resources), but for Y (in "his" story), they don't fit at all.
So, we need to educate ourselves, empower ourselves in knowledge, observe ourselves, master the Art of Life, in its playfulness, in the paradoxical corporality that was offered to us at conception, for a well balanced physical and mental culture.
Comments