This article is about nutrition in relation for smokers, the one who asked it me asked a good question, asking for nutrition instead of food. Please do read till the end!
Maybe for some people food is nutrition and vise versa however there’s a huge difference, medically seen, between food and nutrition. Simply said what we take in our mouth to eat (no candy or so but really eating) is food, if this food is nutritious depends on the food and on the way you and your body convert the food into nutrition.
You and your body, this seems to be odd but is an important factor. The audience I’m writing for are people from welfare countries and in our western world eating is often an “in-between-case”. You’re working and while working you eat quickly this happens much for example in a car too, you need to catch a meeting and eat quickly in your car. In such cases that you eat quickly I call that you food processing, you put food in your mouth and a lot of the food you swallow without chewing first, that’s bad and more bad for smokers. In this case the swallowed food goes to your stomach and is from there on further processed. I prefer in this case to write for us busy people “processed” instead of digest. A lot of smokers (non smokers too) are since way to long used to eat in a bad way whereby digestion became a smaller part than processing food. A lot of people even nearly digest nothing while that’s the most important part to get from food nutrition!
Digestion is breaking down the food in the nutritious components we need to have good food for a healthy life. Food, moreover nutrition is an underestimated factor in healthcare, it’s really time that we give eating and digestion a lot more attention then we’re used to do. This is of course all in general speaking maybe some smokers take very good care, or try or think it at least, about healthy living.
About food, the first step when buying something to eat, we need to forget fast food or junk food then you can say that at the paper is written which nutrition this junk food contains and I do not say that they’re wrong but what I do know is that you never get that nutrition because those junk food companies who try to get rid of their stigma that it’s bad food let their food being analyzed in a lab. The results from the lab and the nutrition you get from junk food is way more less.
I’m not a nutrition specialist in the pure medical way but what I do know very well just like all MD’s should know is that when you have a fresh carrot from the field, let it analyze by a lab let’s say (this are random numbers) that the lab measures 5mg pro vitamin A but when a health freak who eats perfect according the medical rules gets maybe 2.5mg pro vitamin A in the blood after digesting that carrot.
Usually we eat junk food very quickly and instead of digestion there’s almost only processing so the absorption of the nutritional levels mentioned by those junk food chains is almost zero that’s one of the reasons that there’re so much fat people, processed food becomes fat somewhere (can be everywhere at your body with not much change for hands and feet, in case your hands and or feet or more fat looking they probably contain water, consult your physician).
Another thing is when you really buy food certainly in our western industrialized countries I see often by people at home and even more in exquisite restaurants 70% meat, 20% vegetables and 10% ‘basic’ food like potatoes, rice, paste, couscous, etc… This is completely wrong!!
A note about meat. Although still no consensus whether we’re meat or vegetable (plant) eaters the majority of nutrition specialist agree that we don’t need meet at all. I agree with them too, I personally eat nearly no meat at all. I do eat meat when I’m for example in China invited for dinner and there’s a little chicken, I don’t eat a pound of meat in a year. Some people say that they eat no meat but fish however I classify fish by meat. Meat is simply from animals, other basic products come from plants and are for us vegetables or fruit, that’s what we need! There’s however a gray zone between plants and meat like eggs and milk that’s why there’re vegetarians and lacto-vegetarians, the latter also don’t use any product from an animal without to mention the mother milk which is underestimated important to feed her baby.
Anyway, I won’t be nagging about to stop eating meat what I highly advice you to the benefit of digestion, upgrading the nutrition level with the same amount of food, is to eat no more then 30% meat instead of 60 to 70% by a warm ‘healthy’ dish. But there’s more. Nearly all meat we eat is not straight from the cattle or whatever! Before meat is driven to the stores it’s in a very bad way processed. As an example, when having chicken filet of 50 gram then they inject it with lots of a kind of needles and add mainly water to it, the chicken piece swells and becomes 110gram. This also happens by complete chicken, you buy a grilled chicken of 1.2kg but you have about 450gram of real chicken. You might be thinking that the injected water disappear when a complete chicken is grilled but that’s not true however I’m no butcher and can’t go further into the processing of meat.
Anyway, I advice to eat no more than 30% of a warm dish as real unprocessed meat, how you can get unprocessed meat is a mystery to me, I think you can only obtain it from people who get the unprocessed meat. This all means that because in general meat contains 50% not meat that you’ve to slice the 30% I say to 15% to minimize the bad influence of real meat itself and from the adjectives injected into the meat which are a lot worse then the actual meat.
So far I know most people eat in fact (if you know it or don’t know it) meat because when it’s baked it smells good, it gives most people extra saliva in their mouth. Based on a good smelling dish you’ve enough with just a little (bad) meat. Don’t worry about that bad meat, you can become a centenarian with it however the important thing here is nutrition.
I take as example the dinner which now consists of a little piece of meat, about 70% vegetables and 15% basic food like potatoes, rice, etc.. The fresher your food the better. I mean, your food should come from the field and be eaten within 72 to 96 hours. Be aware of those fresh vegetables in the supermarket, those are most of the time more then a year old!!! When you get a good carrot fresh from the field of a farmer who cultivates vegetables according the biological standards the carrot is firm and 2 weeks later the carrot is still firm but take a firm carrot from the supermarket and if you don’t put it in a cooler but just on the shelf then next day it’s like rubber that’s bad food.
Now over to eating food itself so you get maximum nutrition from it. Whatever you eat when it’s in your mouth the digestive process is in it’s important starting phase. Before swallowing we need to chew our food very good, for each bite we should chew 40 times, that’s why we’ve teeth for. When food is being chewed then in our saliva are extra aids to break down your food so it’s already a little digested before you swallow. When you swallow there’s nearly no digestion before the food/nutrition (food became nutritious a little in your mouth, I can not say this enough!) becomes into your stomach. It’s oblivious that from the moment we’ve swallowed we can’t do anything anymore, from in the stomach our body takes over and the better the food is and the better the chewing is the better for your stomach and intestines to further break down the food/nutrition into nutrition that goes via a complex system into our blood.
In food are hundreds of nutrition’s which must be taken into our blood, the better the nutrition the better your stomach, the better your blood circulation, the better for your heart and lungs.
Our lungs are our primary organ for life. We can be without food for ours but we need very quickly air. As a matter of speak you can see our lungs as a very quick stomach, we breath in and in no time oxygen comes via our blood in our brain. Failure to do so causes death.
Smoking was a while seen as a healthy method to get quickly gasses in our bloodstream straight to our brain and indeed smoking good tobacco in a healthy way it can cure some lung diseases.
Our lungs are still used to administer quickly medication like for asthma patients who have a bottle upside down and take puffs of medication. Our lungs are still also used as only a transit of gasses quickly to our brain for anestheology.
Tobacco however in today’s cigarettes contain also a lot of poison even who stay in our lungs if we don’t take good care and slowly ‘glue’ lung tissue what can cause severe illness, remember that the main task in normal conditions is bringing air (oxygen) to our brain.
The smoke in our lungs give ‘nutrition’ into our bloodstream whereby we’ve a quick satisfaction feeling in our brain for the nicotine. However our bloodstream isn’t divided in parts for the point of view of non medical doctors so a lot of smoke poison gasses come into our bloodstream and break down at least an important circulatorory nutrition vitamin C therefore smokers should even more than other people take daily a gram of vitamin C. A gram is much but vitamin C is a very essential component, when lacking vitamin C then you die. When some hundreds years ago ships traveled for months to discover new land etc… many many sailors died due to the lack of vitamin C because when they departed they could take a limited quantity of fruit because after a short time fruit and other vitamin C containing food becomes bad while they needed food for 3 to 4 months and in that time they had only good food.
Vitamin C is a component that’s very easy for our body, when we take 0.5gram, or 5 gram our body takes what it needs and the remaining goes via a healthy process away with our urine.
I advice smokers to take 3 times a day right before eating 0.5gram pure vitamin C. You can buy it OTC in a pharmacy with a kilo in white nearly powder. Take a soup spoon to take the vitamin C and do it in a glass of bottled water, turn in the water till the vitamin C is solved into the water, drink it and start to eat. Smokers who smoke mainly after their last meal I advice to drink vitamin C like described before they go to bed or do I need to say after your last cigarette. Also other smokers and non smokers can do the same. Vitamin C is since hundreds of years known as a very healthy component and there’s still research going on about taking vitamin C for cell regeneration. Vitamin C has many functions and it’s helpful by cell regeneration but probably more than we know and because certainly the tar in tobacco put a heavy strain on the lung cells smokers can use additional vitamin C and you never have to worry about taking to much.
Vitamin C is an acid, it’s called ascorbic acid which is also an anti oxidant. When you see (female) face products it says often that it contains an anti oxidant, those are for every human being these days very important in the struggle against free radicals, a reason the more the use daily 3 to 4 times 0.5gram vitamin C.
The storage of vitamin C is very important, never do the powder in a metal container!!! Mainly when you buy vitamin C with a kilo or so you get it in a dark brown glass bottle maybe with a sponge within. Vitamin C may not come in contact with metal, air and light. Of course there’s some air in the bottle of vitamin C that’s why you do not use a half a bottle, going for 3 months on vacation, come back and use it further, in this case you throw the vitamin C away and buy new.
Suppose mother and father are taken vitamin C, when the food is ready on the table, somebody takes out the closet the bottle when the 2 glasses of water are ready, open the vitamin C bottle, a soup spoon in on one glass (while not touching the water!!!) and another soup spoon in the other glass. Closing quickly the vitamin C bottle and put it immediately in pure dark and not warmer then 77°F (25°C) place. When you’ve taken the last vitamin C for the meal you can use that soup spoon to turn already in the water the solve, in the other glass is a spoon and you bring the two glasses to the table, even when not yet all vitamin C is completely solved you can drink it but an underestimated factor by taking a meal is to be relaxed so why the hurry for a second more to completely solve the vitamin C.
Medical warnings
Although in most cases from heart burn, reflux oesofagitis, ulcers, etc… Vitamin C is mostly safe to drink. No human being can live without vitamin C but I advice you that in case you have diabetes, blood circulation problems, stomach and/or intestinal problems or whatever, consult your GP who should know you the best and has all records of your medical history.
When drinking a lot of vitamin C without health problems and the smell of your urine is somewhat different that’s normal, also the color can become a little bit green, no worries but if you feel worried get rid of your worries before your worries become a problem on it’s own and consult your GP.
I strongly advice not to take vitamin C tablets with a good taste to lemon or orange or so. Please use 100% pure vitamin C that’s the best and it’s normally everywhere the cheapest too up to 500 times cheaper than taken from tablets. The medical reason is a long difficult explanation and your pharmacist is not the one who knows it better than me. Please always drink out of a glass, no plastic!
Don’t forget
- good food (store for biological cultivated food, ask how long it‘s of the field)
- good food is for breakfast no flakes but dark brown bread, the wheat can be old that doesn’t matter
- good chewing to start digestion = 40 times crushing one heap of food before swallowing
- more vitamin C when smoking more
The article above is not a medical opinion.Consult your doctor first.
