Will we be healthier after Peak Oil?

We might be healthier after peak oil. If a breakdown in the economy and transportation infrastructure occurs, not only will food additives become rare, but we will be forced to eat locally grown food. These changes will help significantly in improving our health, but are not the only factors. We've developed eating habits that may continue after peak oil that can interfere with homeostasis, our bodies’ natural ability to heal itself.

No one is immune from this, including vegetarians. For example, a diet with little salt and high in raw vegetables eaten in the winter time will mess with calcium function. A diet high in raw fruits eaten year round will also mess up calcium function if a person is not getting *lots* of sun. Both these examples affect the sodium/potassium ion ratio that the kidney's use to regulate vitamin D, the transportation vehicle for calcium in our bodies. The liver stores vitamin D and releases it in varying strengths based on instructions it receives from the kidneys. It's the varying strength of vitamin D that's significant here because vitamin D can be produced 1000 times stronger than its weakest form. To top it all off, properly regulating vitamin D is pretty much all for nothing if a person has a vitamin K deficiency, for it's this vitamin that's used for the absorption of calcium into bones and other membranes. Any healthy diet that isn't based on an understating of how our bodies work - as a whole - could be problematic.

Storing vitamin D is one of only 500 different functions the liver performs! Possibly the most important function of the liver is destroying toxins. The process of toxin destruction within the liver naturally produces peroxides. Peroxides are safe within the liver because one of the other functions of a healthy liver is to destroy peroxides. Peroxides outside the liver are destructive chemicals. Naturopathic medicine focuses on the liver, and specifically on an unhealthy liver spilling excess peroxides into other organs and the blood stream. It's believed in naturopathic medicine that peroxides outside the liver are responsible for most diseases and chronic illnesses.

After reading the 'anecdote' article linked to above, I could relate to the authors plight with aspartame, and his frustration with western medicine unable to identify this as the source of his ill health. I live with a chronic illness and it's this alone that's forced me to study what's going on with my body. Most healthy people have little incentive to research physiology unless they have a natural curiosity for it. The fact that America has the best health care system in the world, and is touted as such, sets up a sort-of 'we don't have much to worry about' attitude because we know we're well cared for. So we just plug along and give little or no thought to our diet even when we end up in our doctors’ office with a case of irritable bowel syndrome. So not only are we under informed about harmful additives in our foods, like aspartame, most of us lack even a basic understanding of foods role in our physiology.

Pharmaceuticals are concerning with profit and not much else. Most doctors on the other hand are well intentioned people with only a small minority of them motivated by money. The problem with western medicine is that it relies heavily on technology and more importantly specialization.

In order to be an effective specialist ones focus must be kept narrow (to look at things narrowly, microscopically, requires technology). Trauma specialists will always be needed; however disease specialists loose sight of homeostasis. While disease specialists are effective at treating what ails us, they rarely cure us. Disease specialists should really spend less time studying pathology and more time studying physiology and homeostasis, because it's here that I believe the cures are found. Those of us planning for a peak oil world will also benefit tremendously with a better understanding of how the foods we eat and lifestyles we choose affect our bodies as a whole.

I like your co-worker's quote.

As a vegetarian, who avoids pre-packaged foods, I had a huge problem with electrolytes. I learned the hard way that you can't rely on conventional nutritional wisdom (avoid salt in the diet) if you are in any way atypical. Meat is a major source of electrolytes in the Standard American Diet (SAD).

In a post-peak world, I don't see meat consumption remaining very high (except for in rural areas). Getting sufficient electrolytes will be important, especially if you exert yourself physically for whatever reason, or get some nasty intestinal bug.

Sorry to hear about your electrtolyte problem. One of the many things cheap energy affords us is morals. Without access to salt, meat is the only feasible option as a source of sodium. That will be an unfortunate prospect for many as well as a reminder of just how dependant humans are on energy as a way to satisfy our desires.