The Five Principles of Ecological Nutrition

Ecological Nutrition is a concept that I came up with to describe a holistic approach to wellbeing that incorporates not only your biology but also how it interacts with the world around you.

For many years, we believed in biological determinism, the notion that our biology is fixed according to the genes that we inherit. In the last several decades, this notion has been overturned with discoveries in the field of epigenetics showing that, while our DNA provides a blueprint for who we are and how we develop throughout our lifespan, which genes are expressed and how they are expressed is highly malleable.

This malleability is an important adaptation to a world that is constantly changing, allowing us the flexibility to adapt and respond to different environments depending on which genes and phenotypes will confer the greatest survival advantage in any given situation.

Unfortunately, for many of us, our modern lifestyles are at odds with our biology. We live in a world where physiological pathways intended to be activated for only a short time to deal with acute stressors are chronically activated, leading to various forms of chronic disease. We live in a world where this is seen as normal and the answer is typically to write a prescription.

However, the fact that many of our genes and their expression is malleable is a cause for hope. Using the five pillars of Ecological Nutrition, we now know that it is possible for many people to reverse and cure chronic diseases naturally and without medications and stay healthy for the rest of their life.

Below, I will give you a brief overview of the five pillars of Ecological Nutrition and their role in wellbeing. These five pillars are inherently synergistic, meaning that deficiencies or shortcomings in any or all of them will results in shortcomings and deficiencies in the others, particularly when we are going through times of physical or emotional stress for any reason. As such, it’s important to assess and address each of these not only individually but also collectively to create true resilience to life’s challenges.

Diet

I’m sure that it comes as no surprise to you that diet is important for our health. What we put into our bodies has the potential to not only nourish us, help us grow and build new tissue, energise us, and assist in our body’s detoxification pathways, but it also acts as a biochemical signal to our body, letting it know what the external environment is like, what resources are available, and whether or not there is danger of starvation or malnutrition. As our body gathers and assimilates data from our food, it will make adjustments to the way that it uses food to make up for any detected shortcomings and to prepare for any tough times that it thinks may be ahead.

Movement

Movement is an essential part of optimal human functioning. I use the term movement, not just exercise, because I want you to understand that it’s not just your workouts or training sessions that impact on your biology, but also the smaller movements that you do consistently. Things like stretching, walking up or down a flight of stairs, even how much rest you get, all act as regulators of your physiology.

Emotion & Mood State

The body and the brain have been treated as two separate entities for hundreds of years, but the most current research is showing that how we feel emotionally, and our mental health, is intricately connected to our physiology and overall state of health. While we may think of emotions as states that take place in our heads, they are in fact states that take place in our entire body via the nervous system. The nervous system plays an important role in coordinating and regulating all of our other bodily systems, with neurotransmitters (referred to by the late Dr. Candace Pert as “Molecules of Emotion”) associated with different emotional states acting as messengers. This means that our emotional state at any given point in time is not only something that we can experience consciously, but also something that we experience somatically. Our emotions literally act as signals to the rest of the body about what’s going on around us so that organs and systems can respond appropriately in a bid to increase our chances of survival.

Sleep

More and more research is highlighting the role of sleep in our overall health and wellbeing. In a (year?) study, dysregulated sleep was found to be present in every patient involved in the study with a range of different mental health conditions.

Sleep is one of the few times when our body’s ability to repair and remove oxidative stressors exceeds our capacity to induce damage and introduce stressors. As such, adequate sleep, in terms of both quality and quantity, is crucial to maintain healthy biological functioning.

Environment

Humans have always been exposed to a milieu of pathogens and potentially toxic substances, but never at the rates that we are currently seeing. In part, this is due to synthetic chemicals and substances found in food, water, and even the air that we breathe. While subtle in their primary effect, many of these compounds can have devastating lasting effects due to their role as endocrine disruptors and impacts that they may have on our gut microbiota. We are also witnessing unprecedented rates of illness, in part due to pathogens, and specifically mould, in homes and work environments that have been poorly designed and/or ventilated.