How many people don't even bother with the easy stuff, yet get all tingly over the idea of the exotic? Yes, açaí has ... have? ... more antioxidants than blueberries. Which is fascinating, but not all that useful, if you don't even eat blueberries. The point is about being practical. True, you can bankrupt yourself on Baikal caviar, but why not eat fisheggs? If you're into that sort of thing. They taste the same, and do the same job. That's our theory anyway, and for purposes of this example, it is correct.
Consider that populations that eat a certain type of potato have less of a certain type of cancer. Not of all cancers -- just a certain type. This tells us that at least some cancers are a deficiency disease. Like scurvy. Like, um, beriberi. The obvious lesson is that we want to include as wide a variety of nutrients in our diet as is reasonable. Give your body what it needs to heal itself and to keep itself healthy.
No medicine, no drug ever cured a disease. Diseases do get cured, but it isn't toxic chemicals that do it. Well, maybe they kill tapeworms -- but that's more a condition than a disease. What drugs do is suppress aggravating factors, so that your body can heal itself. It only takes a bit of thought to see the truth in this. Drugs can only stimulate your own body to do a job, or attack something that's causing a problem. Neither stimulation nor suppression is a cure. The really good doctors know this. It makes them humble. The foolish doctors are all about symptoms.
So, yes, add a spoonful of açaí berries to your diet. Why not? But don't imagine that it will make even a noticeable difference. What will make a noticeable difference is having a wide spectrum of nutrients in your bloodstream. Some your body will need, some not -- but it will have the choice. Maybe you're not susceptible to such and such a cancer. But since you don't have your genome memorized, it's better to graze than to binge -- roam the wide savanna, don't hunch over the carcass and glut yourself on zebra guts. Because your body does have its genome memorized -- it knows what it needs, even if you don't.
Eating complex meals, in which there are many nutrients, does have its risks. The enteric system -- the whole digestive system -- has as many neurons, as many "brain" cells as the brain does. The obvious conclusion is that digestion is a fantastically complex process. The greater the variety of foods you eat in a single meal, the more complex the process of digestion will be. It's not just a blender, your gut, where everything is dumped into an acid bath and dissolved into a featureless paste. Carbs aren't even digested in the stomach. Meat. Proteins. Not carbs. Carbs get digested farther along. The thirty feet of small intestines coiled up in our midsections aren't just a long hose to the restroom. Specific nutrients get absorbed at only certain spots along the way. It's very complex. So sometimes it makes sense to give your body a break, and eat simply.
Some folks have smart bodies -- very few health or digestive problems. Some people have, well, they have not-smart bodies. Through years of abuse, their digestive system has become befuddled and confused, and just can't do a lot of complex thinking anymore. It's like calculus. If you know it, and are thinking straight, you can solve the problem. If you never learned it, or have become stultified over the years through sloth and auto-intoxication, then forget about it. There's a brain in your gut. It has an IQ. You can make it backwards. If you do, it will take its unsubtle revenge.
Antioxidants are like Stonehenge. One sarsen stone may be much taller and more impressive than all the others. But it's not Stonehenge unless it describes a circle. Açaí may indeed be the tallest pillar. But you can't live on a pillar. Built a wall. Build four of them, and add a roof. Some specific species of berry provides a rich supply of beneficent plant chemicals, although along a narrow band of the vast spectrum of nutrients. That's so wonderful, but how about you flood yourself in brilliant light? How about you ensconce yourself in the noble bastion of mighty security, so that when the chill hand of the boreal wind comes clutching after your throat, you'll have some shield to fend off the blah blapity blah. Shall we say it in blank verse? Have Frank Miller illustrate it?
The upshot is, get started. Go ahead and continue eating not-so-good things. But eat something that will help you live, too. Same thing with exercise. Do a little. Do that gym stuff that does a little something, but doesn't quite get the results that the muscleman mags promise. Because something is better than nothing, and mostly it's not actually bad for you. Well, some of the machines are bad for you, but only if you do them too much, however much that is for you -- just enough to do some damage, eh?
But if you're interested in doing more, in seeing really impressive results pretty fast, look for it. That's what effectiveness is about. Not magic, not quick fixes -- sound principles of how the body works -- a soul living in a body, not looking for a way out ... looking to prolong the experience, vigorously.
Be excellent.
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