Dear friend

Do you even remember that we are in the process of going through each of my top 7 essentials to healthy living? 

Here’s what we’ve covered so far:

1. Breath (hello, the best stress management technique ever)
2. Hydration (the lack thereof is somewhat of an epidemic in my view!)
3. Sleep (don’t even think about wellness unless you’re doing this properly!)
4. Diet ( covered in 4 parts! I showed you your ideal plate breakdown and gave you 2 different menu planning options to give you that guidance we all need sometimes)

Now we’re moving on to the 5th essential: nutrition. 

Nutrition is one of my favourite subjects, partly because it is so misunderstood. 

But first, a little reminder from the first email in this series.  

• Diet is all the food that you consume through the day, on a regular basis.
• Nutrition, on the other hand, is the fuel that your body requires to function optimally and maintain good health.

The difference is subtle, I know. Keep reading and you’ll understand.   

In natural medicine, we believe that there are only 2 reasons for health imbalances (meaning, anything from a simple cold to the most complex conditions such as autoimmune conditions, alzheimers, cancer.)
These are:

1. toxicity  
2. deficiencies

There is a lot of talk about detoxing and cleansing – rightly so. What we don’t hear about enough is the other side of that coin. Deficiencies are equally important!

 A deficiency in a single nutrient can cause a whole cascade of health problems! (A nutrient is a component within food that an organism uses to survive and grow.)

I love to use the analogy of cake baking when I give my health talks. (You know, the cake you might bake for a birthday and squeeze it into the “20” part of the the 80%-20% rule. 😉 )

Obviously, if we are making a cake, we mix flour, eggs, baking powder, water, a pinch of salt, and sugar. If we are short of eggs, baking powder or water, what is going to happen to our cake?  Well, it’s going to be flat, crumbling apart and taste dull.

Every second, our body makes a whole lot of new cells – or lots of little “cakes” . How do you want your cells to look. Not flat, crumbling and dull like our cake, right? 

To be in optimum health and even reverse ageing, we want our cells to be as perfect as possible, and for that – they need quality nutrients, and lots of them! 

Here’s some astonishing data:

According to biologists Ron Sender and Ron Milo,  our body makes  330 billion new cells per day. At that rate, that’s over 3.8 million new cells every second! That is a whole load of nutrients necessary for every second and imagine, every day!  

Illness first comes on a “cellular level”. When cells become faulty, then the tissues become faulty, then the organs. Then, we have a “health imbalance”.

In order for us to remain in optimum health, we need to make sure those new baby cells have everything they need to be as perfect as possible!  And for that, we need all the nutrients.

Here are 7 main classes of essential nutrients you want to know about:

(An essential nutrient is a nutrient that the body cannot synthesise on its own — or not to an adequate amount — and must be provided by the diet.)

1. Vitamins
2. Minerals
3. Enzymes
4. Proteins
5. Fats
6. Carbohydrates
7. Water

I will go further into these in a few weeks.

Now, I often hear this:  “Surely we can get all this from the diet! Are supplements really necessary? “

The good news is, you can get a lot of it from your diet. But there’s one caveat. In order to do so, you want to follow the rules and the guidelines in my previous 4 newsletters on diet. 

Unfortunately, there’s also bad news. Even with the most ideal diet possible, it is becoming ever more clear that we cannot get optimal nutrition unless we include supplements and superfoods.  It’s not entirely bad news, though! Because we have solutions for this! More on that in next week’s newsletter.

For now, just remind yourself every time you dig into the plants that are making up most of your daily intake, how many essential nutrients you’re giving to your cells – new and old!

Love & light, Dejana ✨

Then,  follow “Dejana Naturally” to read more in my social media posts!