Chapter Seven in Whole addresses the impact that reductionist thinking cannot fully address the complexity which is the human body. We would like to share with you here one excerpt about metabolic complexity from Dr Campbell's work. We hope you find it thought provoking and allow you to approach your own bodies' complexity with a deeper understanding of just how much there is to actually understand! I mean these images are so amazingly complex - and it is just a glimpse of what is happening within our bodies each day.
If you are interested in joining our explorations of Whole with our 6D Book Club, where we dig deep into these ideas and how they impact our own lives, registrations are open through May 2023. You are welcome to join us - simply click here to register today!
Registrations close on 31 May 2023.
Excerpt from Whole by Dr T Colin Campbell
"I emphasize this metabolic complexity so you can see just how impossible it is to fully understand the way our bodies react to the foods we eat and the nutrients they contain. Explaining nutrient function by only one or even a couple of these reactions is not sufficient. Once consumed, nutrients interact with one another and with other food-borne chemicals within an enormous maze of metabolic reactions located in these hundred trillion cells. No single reaction or single mechanism accounts for an individual nutrient's effect. Every nourishing nutrient and related food chemical enters cellular metabolism and gets metabolized into multiple products via highly integrated pathways just as complex as those as shown in Figures 7-1 to 7-3.
The fact that each nutrient passes through such a maze of reaction pathways suggets that each nutrient also is likely to participate in multiple health and disease outcomes. The one nutrient/one disease relationship implied by reductionism, although widely popular, is simply incorrect. Every nutrient-like chemical that enters this complex system of reactions creates a rippling effect that may extend far into the pool of metabolism. And with every bite of food we eat, there are tens and probably hundreds of thousands of food chemicals entering this metabolism pool more or less simultaneously."
- Whole by Dr T Colin Campbell
(pages 94-97)
Dr Campbell's final thought in the chapter (page 106)
"And that biological complexity must be acknowledged as the cornerstone of our approach to health. Unfortunately, reductionist science has become so besotted with the growing amount of that complexity it has managed to name, that it all but ignores the relationships between those elements that are the heart of homeostasis and health."
We thank Dr Campbell for all he has done and continues to do for us all in this world trying to live a plant-centric lifestyle, searching for optimal health and wellness and for always sharing his own authentic self.
If you are interested in joining our explorations of Whole with our 6D Book Club, where we dig deep into these ideas each week on zoom and learn how they impact our own lives, you are welcome to join us - simply click here to register today!
Registrations close on 31 May 2023.
Whole by T. Colin Campbell, PhD is an eye-opening, paradigm-changing journey through cutting-edge thinking on nutrition, a scientific tour de force with powerful implications for our health and for our world.
"The first problem for all us , men and women, is not learn but to unlearn."
- Gloria Steinem
"In the China Study, T. Colin Campbell revolutionized the way we think about our food with the evidence that a shole food, plant-based diet is the healthiest way to eat. Now, in Whole, he explains the science behind that evidence, the ways our current scientific paradigm ignores the fascinating complexity of the human body, and why, if we have such overwhelming evidence that everything we think we know about nutrition is wrong, our eating habits haven't changed"
Be well
Stop.Breathe.Focus.Move.Flow.
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