SuperLife summary

As we learned in the previous blink, whole foods are great for our bodies. So – is the problem of nutrition now solved? No – because there’s more to food than meets the eye. Our produce isn’t as healthy as it once was.

Modern farming practices can be harmful: big-scale, industrial agriculture relies on chemicals to increase crop yields. So we need to think about how clean our food is. 

What’s inside your body? Well, there is no straightforward answer. Human cells, sure – some 70 trillion of them. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You are also home to nearly ten times that many nonhuman organisms – the bacteria, viruses, fungi, and yeasts that live both inside and on the surface of your body. That’s a lot of hungry mouths to feed.

These organisms are absolutely vital to our health. In fact, we couldn’t live without them. Beneficial bacteria, for example, make up 80 percent of our immune systems. 

If something constituted two-thirds of our body mass, that would be a big deal. We’d have entire research institutes and hospitals specializing in it. Well, this “something” does exist – and it’s water. It makes up 70 percent of our body mass. 

Water is crucial to our very survival. It’s our internal public transport system: it ferries everything that needs to move around the body. And it’s also the basis of every fluid we produce, from saliva to semen.

In the previous blinks, you heard about two crucial life forces: nutrition and hydration. It’s time to find out about the third one: oxygenation. If you want to know how important oxygen is, just hold your breath. We can go without food for months, without water for days – but without oxygen for only a few minutes. 

Nothing new there, right? But do you know why, exactly, oxygen is so important?

If you made it through high school, you’ve probably encountered these two letters: pH. They stand for the potential of hydrogen. These letters measure how acidic or alkaline a substance is. The more hydrogen, the lower the pH, the more acidic the substance. 

We all have a pretty strong image of what acidity is – it’s to do with acid, that stuff that dissolves walls in cartoons. But alkalinity? This concept is more mysterious. And yet, alkalization is the fourth life force. Until quite recently, it was overlooked. But this is beginning to change. 

Have you ever seen images of cities where trash collectors have gone on strike? Garbage bags pile up in the street, decompose in the sun, and attract all kinds of vermin. It all sounds gross – and you wouldn’t want to live in a city like this, would you? 

And yet, it’s a pretty good analogy for what can happen inside your body if your biological trash collectors become overstretched – if your built-in detox systems stop functioning as they should. Harmful substances start to accumulate in your liver, intestines, muscles, and joints. They cause all kinds of havoc and lay the foundation for serious diseases.