By Ben Fuchs | Pharmacist Ben
The body’s most critical control point for the manifestation of health or the lack thereof is a microscopic slice of biochemistry that is hardly ever addressed by mainstream medicine. It’s about 10 thousand times thinner than a human hair and it’s called the cell membrane. Not the cell mind you, but the nanoscopic flexible and intelligent (!) covering that surrounds it.
Now in order to understand the significance of the cell membrane to the health of the body, we really have to use our right brain imagination skills and paint a picture in our minds eye. So think of a grape. That grape is going to be our imaginary cell. Except the grape we’re talking about is actually an intelligent life-form. Our grape/cell is an actually a little animal. A miniature animal that eats and excretes, makes proteins, has a nervous system and a digestive system, reproduces and fights off enemies and even thinks (processes information).
So picture a little grape-like blob. The circles you see on a piece of paper in a high school biology textbook that represent a cell are 2 dimensional representations. In reality a cell is a little blob, but if you looked at it without a high resolution microscope you probably couldn’t tell that it has a third dimension that makes it 3D, grape-like blob, not a circle. And this little blob is a universe of countless components, about ¼ the thickness of a human hair that has more working parts than a Boeing 747!! And, they are highly integrated parts, interacting with each other on countless parallel levels, meaning there are an infinite amount of simultaneous chemical reactions happening on the order of tens of thousands up to hundreds of thousands PER SECOND!!! A typical cell has something like 6 million working parts, all of which are communicating to each other instantaneously, on a parallel level that’s incomprehensible to our silly human heads (that are too busy with important stuff like Herman Cain, Obama and The Simpson’s and the Kardashians). And these 6 million parts are self-repairing and self adjusting. T hey are by definition “smart parts”.
Now this entire enchilada of parallel processing working parts is all covered by a skin, called the cell membrane. Just like the skin on our grape. The only difference between the skin on our grape and the skin that is a cell membrane is that the cell membrane is gooey. And this gooey quality is super important for cell health. Gooey is good!
Goo by its very nature creates the potential for smart. This is a very interesting biochemical phenomenon. The harder and more stiff a material is, the less potential it has for information processing. You notice our brain is gooey, it’s not solid. In fact, as it becomes less gooey with age it becomes less healthy. Alzheimer’s disease for example is associated with multiple hardenings of the brain’s goo which are technically called “plaques”.
The reason goo is smart is because it has an almost infinite different types of shapes it can take, that’s what makes something gooey, you can’t measure dimensions on it, because it always changing shape, that’s what goo is. Technically the shapes are called “conformations” and whenever somethings gooey it has infinite conformations. So, too put it simply: goo means flexibility and flexibility means information processing (smart). On the other hand, solidity means non-flexibility and non flexibility means non-information processing (dumb). To the cell and the body, Goo = smart AND solid = dumb.
Now in reality a biological structure like a cell or its membrane is NOT completely gooey. It will have certain structural components that make it, in actuality, partial goo or“semi-goo”. Remember, goo processes information. One of the ways information processing can be observed is in electrical (energy) conduction. So, our semi-gooey cell membrane is conducting energy. But only through its gooey part not it’s solid part. Because the energy can only flow through the semi-goo, the energy which flows, which is CONDUCTED, is actually only “semi-conducted”. So in essence goo is a SEMI-CONDUCTOR. Now what else can act like a semiconductor? A computer chip. In fact, all a chip is, is a semi conductor. So goo can act like a chip in a computer. Goo can act like an information processing system. But the goo needs be organized somehow (it’s only partial goo). You need organized goo NOT random goo. And nowhere in entire universe do we have a goo structure, that is as exquisitely architected and nano-organized as as a cell membrane. This skin, that coats the incredibly organized and synchronized internal milieu is itself structured with a profoundly deep and awe inspiring complexity that makes it a living breathing, self repairing and self adjusting computer chip. And, it plays a significant role in determining the health and condition of the inner cosmos of a cell.
So, the gooey cell membrane is where the action is in the disease process. Disease is largely about breakdowns in the cell membrane. Aging is largely about breakdowns in the cell membrane. And, many issues with hormone activity are largely about breakdowns in the cell membrane. Fortunately, cell membrane health can be regulated, in large part by decisions, lifestyle choices that we make involving food and nutrition. We’ll address those in a coming post.
SUMMARY:
-Health and the lack thereof always involves cells.
-Cells are 3D grape-like blobs, even though we represent them on paper as 2D circles.
-Cells are covered by a gooey membrane .
-The gooey membrane acts as an information processor, a veritable computer chip!
-The gooey, “smart” membrane plays an important role in determining how healthy the inner environment of a cell will be.
-In large, part maintaining cell membrane health involves healthy lifestyle choices.
