Every living organism, including human body, is constituted and organised at four levels – cell, tissue, sub-system and the whole organism. The ultimate level of the organism is what is visible from outside and it only interacts with the external world. Here, I intend to discuss some issues relevant to human body, hence in the discussion that follows, the whole system is meant to be the human body.
Human Body
Human body is constituted of various sub-systems such as blood-circulation, digestion, breathing, sexual organism, excretion, etc, which interact with each other to make the whole organism to function. These sub-systems have tissues which, in turn, are composed of cells. Substances keep on flowing in these levels from cellular to subsystem levels, as essential to and indicative of their working. These substances work as nutrients for different levels of the constitution. All the conveyances of nutrients and products made from them by cells are in fluid form, making the life an intricate composition of fluid flows from cellular to sub-system levels.
Nutrients, absorbed from the food we eat by our intestines, reach liver to get mixed up with the blood for being reached to cellular levels throughout the body. It depends on the nutrients quality, quantity and type how these nutrients are shared by various sub-system cells.
At cellular level, these processed nutrients manufacture new cells for growth and replacement of the damaged cells in tissues and for forming new tissues for growth. Some nutrients are further processed to be sent to tissue level to strengthen them. Here again, some nutrients are further processed and conveyed to sub-system level to provide immunity to the subsystem. Thus, at sub-system levels in the body, we have the finest of the nutrients pre-processed and pre-refined at cellular and tissue levels, while those at tissue levels are of medium quality and those at cellular levels are just raw. Thus, nutrients have three major roles in the body – growth, strengthening and immunity.
These multi-level processes are there in all living organisms including plants and trees and their produces – the seeds, which too are complete living organisms in their own rights, having all the four levels of their existence - cellular, tissue, sub-system and the whole. Similarly, human sperm and ovum too are complete living organisms.
Foods and Supplements
Some living organisms, such as food-grains, fruits, vegetables, animals, etc are used as foods by some other living organisms such as humans and wild animals, and also as raw materials for manufacturing food supplements, drugs and medicines for curing diseases in humans and pet animals. These raw materials too have four level constitutions as discussed above with storages of nutrients at the cell, tissue and subsystem levels. It is these nutrients that serve as foods and drugs.
When we try to extract oils from oilseeds, at the first and the easiest way, we get the nutrients from the sub-system level, the finest of nutrients contained in the seed. Next, with more efforts and processes, we get the medium quality of oil from the tissue level, leaving behind the raw nutrients at cellular level. The whole residual produce is often called pomace. Nutrients contained in pomace may be obtained through further processing of it. The same concept is applicable to getting other extracts from living organisms.
Various nutrients extracted from living organisms, such as food-grains, fruits, vegetables, animal fleshes, etc, too have three qualities as discussed above and they provide the same services to the consumer for which they were meant in the living organism – growth, strength and immunity. Thus, a nutrient affects the consumer depending on which level of constitution it has been taken from. The first extractions work for providing immunity, the second provide strength while the third obtained from cells contribute to growth of the consumer. This is how drugs are made from nutrients for various treatments.
Since, every living-being needs all the three attributes – growth, strength and immunity in differing proportions depending on the stage of growth, foods need to have all the three types of constituents to be full-fledged. This underlines importance of whole grains, fruits, etc in human foods.
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