Genes R You
Have a Glass of Tomato Juice
with your Apple a Day
Tomatoes can be very good for you. Tomato juice may just keep those dangerous blood clots at bay.
A glass of tomato juice a day keeps the clots away according to a recent study, which is very good news for those with cardiovascular disease, which is just about everyone. Occlusions of arteries seems to increase with age. It is a matter of stress and free radical leakage, resulting from mitochondria respiration and cell manufacture of ATP for tissue regeneration.
"After drinking 250 ml of tomato juice every day for three weeks, a group of people with diabetes experienced a much reduced level of blood clotting activity."
(as per a study conducted by dietetics PhD student, Sherri Lazarus at University of Newcastle - from article by Kylie Walker, Tomato juice keeps dangerous clots at bay - AAP General News (Australia) August 26, 2004)
The problem with these treatments is our evolutionary predisposition to disease, and in the case of heart disease, to atherosclerosis. Although it may slow down that which ails us, all the precaution in the world is not going to prevent the disease if we are naturally susceptible because of our genes. We have genes which promote craving for fatty foods and starches, carbohydrates and sugars.
We will eventually fail. It is guaranteed. When you are born you emerge with an evolutionary plan to reproduce and then fall apart. We can prolong the inevitable but we can't really stop it (although some folks are trying to do just that). The fact of the matter is we are engaged in a perpetual arms race against which we ultimately lose.
We love to eat because there may be times when there is no food. We evolved a biological system where a lot of things work together to keep all the parts working but we adapted millions of years ago to a different life; where we hunted and gathered in small groups on the plains of Africa.
On the plains of Africa, we consumed as much fatty food when food was available as we could to carry us over to period of famine - or when there was just less food and today that is for most of us not a problem but since it takes hundreds of thousands of years for us to adapt and selection to do its eliminating we are still running around with the same adaptive bodies our ancestors had in the distant past.
It takes a long time for natural selection to do its magic and the current epidemic with cardiac diseases, pancreatic diseases and cancers are the consequences of having the wrong adaptation for the wrong time because genes do not change that fast, if at all and since natural selection is only operative for reproduction, a younger body that is fit and reproduces is successful and modification won't apply to their descendants.
The same physiology which would predispose to heart disease if we overindulged on those fatty foods existed hundreds of thousands of years ago but were harmless then because our ancestors did not eat at Burger King have a Big Mac for lunch.
It would be too costly to cull out post-reproductive disease disposed individuals, besides being impossible. Post reproductive individuals succumb to senescence. An aging body which doesn't reproduce is not going to influence future generations and natural selection plays no role.
Beware of Killer Tomatoes
The first tomatoes grew wild, discovered by native people in Peru and Equador thousands of years ago. As these Indians migrated north to Central America, they took their tomato plants with them and the Conquistadors after conquering Mexico in the early 1500, took some to Spain. Interestingly, they thought them dangerous; killer tomatoes - which could only be eaten cooked in stews, sauces or soup.
Hank Roth
http://inyourface.info
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