NUTRITION & LONGEVITY

Cellular Nutrition is the Starting Point for Building Overall Physical Wellness

When Pablo Picasso worried about his health, no nutritional products were available to him. Instead, he ate a Mediterranean diet to keep his energy and creativity high.

By Mark Zuleger-Thyss

 

 

 

Spain and The Iberian Peninsula are the perfect starting points for your next art-focused vacation. Both offer mesmerizing experiences at every turn. But going there now in 2023 will reveal the greatest of art treasures.

 

To honor Pablo Picasso on the 50th anniversary of his death, a worldwide Picasso Celebration will run throughout this year.

 

You will find works by Picasso in every corner of the country. For example, the Picasso Museum in Barcelona has more than 4,200 works by the artist. In his life, Picasso produced a spellbinding 147,800 works of art.

 

 

How did Picasso, a man who lived from 1881 to 1973, produce so much extraordinary art? It was not because of the latest nutritional science or from stacking the most cutting-edge vitamins and supplements.

The people of his time were not concerned with global health crises, new-fangled diets, or best-selling books about them. There was no going to a gym - there were none. No compulsion to lose five pounds per week and no cooking shows to be glued to. There were no TVs, diet gurus, or celebrity chefs to live out these viewers' food fantasies.

 

 

A Reliance on Intuition

Picasso knew nothing about cellular Aging, nor did he dwell on inflammation, oxidative stress, or how to combat these processes. Whether living in France or Spain, he and his friends naturally moved in harmony with the seasons. They ate what was available in their local surroundings. They knew nothing about a 'back-to-the-farm' movement; instead, there were already living it.

 

The world of nutrition is complex, but many people miss this: Nutrition is ultimately and intimately about the individual - you!

 

Plagued by declining health, Picasso began eating a Mediterranean diet, not knowing it would become a significant nutrition concept in the early 1960s. What Picasso relied on were the eating habits and traditional foods typical of southern Spain.

Picasso's diet was distinct from Mediterranean cuisine, which covers the actual cuisines of the Mediterranean countries. While inspired by a specific time and place, the "Mediterranean diet" was later refined based on the results of multiple scientific studies.

 

"In a Constant Fit of Metamorphosis"

Healthy Aging starts with Cellular Nutrition

What was foreign to Picasso was how food becomes the material that makes up cells, tissues, and organs and how nourishing foods will create nourished cells. What he did know was that there is always time to begin making changes.

Pablo Ruiz y Picasso was the most influential, most-talked of, and most written-about artist on the earth. His iconoclastic personality challenged and bewildered people, especially regarding his ability to be "in a constant fit of metamorphosis." Like his Cubist paintings which he gave not two but three dimensions, Picasso lived to show his cult followers how often he could transform his approach to almost anything.

For forty years, Picasso gave birth to twenty-six styles painted as if by twenty-six different men. No other painter of his stature has ever offered so many completely differentiated versions of himself. His reputation was formed by these restless, drastic mutations that fueled his artistic output to superhuman heights.

 

As Picasso did, his life inspires people who would love to change themselves and achieve great things.

 

 

The death of Picasso's friend, Henri Matisse, had a profound impact on Picasso and inspired even more changes, resulting in a significant series of paintings.

The Algerian War of 1954 left Picasso with an urge to respond to the spreading violence and suffering. Inspired by the Romantic master Eugène Delacroix, Picasso produced 15 canvases, all variations on the theme "Les Femmes d'Alger."

He made his permanent base on France's Mediterranean coast and found a renewed source of inspiration. The years that followed were defined by both an extraordinary flourishing of creativity and, underpinning it, a new awareness of mortality.

 

Could his adoption of a "limited Mediterranean diet have aided this refreshed vigor in productivity?"

 

 

 

A Word about Holistic Nutrition

Holistic Health is a Whole-Person Equation

Fundamentally, holistic nutrition recognizes health includes the emotions, mind, environment, lifestyle, genetics, and spiritual well-being of a person and their body. Holistic nutrition focuses on this interconnectedness.

The goal is to support and optimize the body's innate healing abilities, promoting wellness and preventing disease.

Holistic nutrition professionals emphasize building health by approaching each person as unique and using nutritional education as a primary tool.

This approach involves fully engaging the individual in their health recovery process and honoring their wisdom by working together to chart a course to optimal health.

 

Find your new nutrition professional here at Garden of Healing

 

 

  

 

The Complexity of Nutrition

Under the skin of those brightly colored fruits and vegetables are a wide range of micronutrients. Fresh, uncooked fruits and vegetables contain vitamins C and A, potassium, antioxidants, and fiber. These components and others boost the immune system, enhance vision, and do so much for your body they are too numerous to list here.

Targeting your cellular health with nutrients that optimize the health of your mitochondria while reducing the impact of oxidative stress is critical.

A varied diet of colorful foods ensures your body has all the nutrients it needs to support healthy Aging. How much more enjoyable is eating the fruits of the land than reaching for "a pill for every ill?"

 

Pablo Picasso had a lifelong love affair with food yet had no knowledge of Keto, Atkins, vegetarian diets, bio-individual nutrition, or cellular nutrition. What Picasso, the Cubist master, did get right was to follow his intuition, his soul, and his deepest side. He let his body tell him what it needed.

Picasso was a hypochondriac with a strict food regimen resembling a Mediterranean diet. His meals and snacks consisted of fish, vegetables, grapes, and rice pudding, polished off with mineral water, milk, and lots of Spanish wine.

Picasso's culinary tastes were down-to-earth. And he naturally gravitated to what we now definitively know is intuitive eating. He loved Catalan sausage and beans, and he ate simply throughout his life – and it was no wonder he lived to the ripe old age of 91. Unbeknownst to him, it was the Mediterranean diet he chose to embrace.

 

 

Pablo Picasso is infamous for his unbridled appetite, and an exhibition of this art will make it clear that food was a constant touchstone in his life and craft.

Picasso was a disruptive artist, the type of individual any creative person hopes to become. He was an extraordinary, multifaceted person - a domineeringly prolific, devoted, and celebrated artist. Picasso was cerebral and no general-purpose artist. He was loved by many and influenced the public, who bought his works without really understanding any part of him.

 

Picasso's habits - his somber isolation, eating, drinking, chasing women, sleeping, staying up all night, and painting - defined his life.

 

When you view a painting, what you see is only the skin, the outer layer. To understand what it took to create such inspired and uncommon art, one must look deeper into the man who conceived and brought them into being.

Exceptionally creative throughout his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments. But to really see Picasso, the prolific artist, requires looking under his iconic Breton-striped, blue shirt—and deeper, under his very skin.

 

Picasso was a complicated, sarcastic, tragic-minded man who turned ugliness into a style through Cubism. He ate lots of risotto because it was cheap. He carried a revolver and kept a tame white mouse in a table drawer. One friend, Frédé, owner of the uproarious Lapin Agile, brought his pet donkey to parties.

 

All these oddities in him and swirling around him no doubt contributed to the exotically angular women he painted, deliberately deformed with elongated faces and large eyes, one located under an ear and another over an eyebrow.

Similarly, to understand cellular nutrition, you must delve deeper. It's like looking under the surface of the colors, tastes, and skins of the fruits and vegetables of a Mediterranean diet.

 

 

Looking more closely at your own requirements and the makeup of your body - this is a starting point for body-wide nourishment. Each person is distinctive; there is no 'one-size-fits-all' approach - everyone is unique and ever-changing, some hoping for a metamorphosis like Picasso.

Picasso was one of a kind. He may have loved simple food, but his diet was of his own making, just like his art.

 

The great Spanish artist Pablo Picasso once complained that he ... "learned nothing except to love things and eat them alive."

 

Just because one person thrives eating gluten-free, swears by macrobiotics, or leads a Paleo lifestyle doesn't mean it will work for everyone.

Every human body is irreplaceable. Start looking at your needs rather than mimicking something that works for someone else. Indeed, if your eyes are mismatched, you might need a whole different category of nutrition, something radical. This is how we best understand bio-individuality.

 

In his 1956 book Biochemical Individuality, Roger Williams asserted that individuality permeates each part of the human body. Bio Individuality understands there is no general-purpose, default diet - every person is a distinctive organism with unique nutritional needs. The foods we eat, moods and emotions, our active or sedentary lifestyle, our sleeping habits, and our physical environment are all considered.

The bio-individual approach to nutrition looks at the relationships between symptoms and underlying biological pathways. It can, however, involve testing different diets and allergens to see what makes you feel and perform best.

With bio-individual nutrition, you must play around with removing and reintroducing allergens like gluten, casein, grains, starches, dairy, and certain foods. Consider other diets that limit phenol, amines, histamines, glutamate, oxalate, and salicylate. Once you know what foods work best for your body, you can create a dietary strategy to support your health and development.

The human body is a conglomerate of minuscule billiard balls bouncing and clanging against each other in a tridimensional space. When you introduce nutritional components, the likes of which you cannot see or even spell, to the mix, things will begin heating up. The body is an interrelated web of genes, proteins, pathways, and messengers. Add food, and an inner cascading effect begins delivering nutrients to every nook and cranny of your unified body.

 

 

Cellular Nutrition

Bio-individual diets are closely associated with intuitive eating and cellular nutrition. Had Picasso known such strategies, there is no telling how many dazzling works of art he would have created.

The difference between cellular and regular nutrition is summed up with one word—scale.

Nutrition is chiefly understood on a system-by-system or body-wide scale. Eating fiber helps you feel full and manage your weight, protein supports healthy muscles, and reaching for foods that support immunity will get you there.

There is a slight differentiation between cellular nutrition and regular nutrition. Both types do mean nourishment for the body. But the primary difference is that cellular nutrition happens on a subtle microscopic scale and involves the most intricate and complicated mechanisms.

Cellular nutrition spans cellular biology, aging research, food, and fitness, and understanding and unlocking the connections between cellular processes and better Aging. Nutrition, like your overall health, starts in the cell by allowing them to receive the proper nourishment they need.

Many chronic diseases are attributable in large part to cellular deficiencies in micronutrients. Modern research has identified molecular pathways and cellular processes that underlie aging and age-related chronic disease.

 

Achieve cellular health by focusing on these critical areas:

Support the cell membrane

Your cell membrane is what lets nutrients in and waste out of the cell, and it also communicates with other cells. You can support your cell membranes by consuming adequate protein and healthy fats.

Heal your gut

Cellular health is tied to the health of your gut. You can heal the gut by supporting your microbiome and stomach lining with probiotics and a healthy diet. The gut is where you absorb nutrients from food and supplements alike. Your nutrition status is only as good as your absorption of nutrients; otherwise, they're just passing through your digestive system.

Support your mitochondria

The mitochondria are the cell's powerhouses because they generate ATP, which your cells use as energy. Nutrients like magnesium, CoQ10, vitamin C, selenium, and B vitamins support the mitochondria.

Choose high-quality nutrients

To maintain a healthy microbiome and maximize health, high-quality nutrients are used. They act at the cellular level to optimize nutrient absorption. Cells are kept healthy with proper cellular nutrition and can absorb all the essential nutrients they need to function correctly.

 

 

Nourishing your cells is the real aim of all nutrition. Discussions about nutrients for brain health or heart-smart snacks are easy. But wading into the intricacies of how your mitochondria get properly fed is another story. Your body is made up of cells of different types, and nourishing all of them will impact the health of your large body systems and overall physical wellness.

 

 

Summary

The nutrients vital for maintaining healthy cell nutrition are found in a varied and balanced diet full of fruits and vegetables, along with naturally growing grains and healthy fats.

A nutrient-dense diet is the best way to obtain all the essential minerals, amino acids, and fatty acids our cells need to work at their best.

The world of nutrition is complex, and it's important to remember this: Nutrition is ultimately and intimately about the individual. Healthy Aging begins with targeting your cellular health with nutrients that optimize the health of your mitochondria while reducing the impact of oxidative stress.

Your body is made up of cells of different types, and nourishing all of them will impact the health of your large body systems and overall physical wellness.

 

 

 

Who knows, drinking a bottle of Spanish red wine every night comes into play here, too.

Or maybe being proud of being named Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso was also a factor.

Like his name, Picasso was an exceptionally singular artistic genius.

 

 

 

To honor Picasso on the 50th anniversary of his death, a worldwide Picasso Celebration will run throughout this year, with exhibitions, rededications of public art, seminars, and more.

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To pay tribute, remember to follow the artist's footsteps and visit the many spots in Spain where Picasso lived and worked.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Follow Nature wherever she might lead you

 

 

 

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