Protein is a word of Greek origin, meaning “primal life substance.” Your body is a collection of millions of microscopic cells and each cell contains chemicals, which must have protein, raw materials upon which its life and therefore yours, depends.
Why proteins are important ?
The “genes’ in our cells which give us heredity, dictate the colour of our hair, or its future disappearance, are probably protein molecules. “Muscles, nails, skin, hair, tissues ” are largely of protein composition. Even your teeth contain minute protein.
The “hemoglobin” molecule that makes your blood red is mostly protein. The “haemo” or iron-containing fraction is a five percent, and the protein or “globin” fraction is 95 percent. Many cases of simple anemia do not respond to iron tablets alone, if underlying protein deficiencies also exist. This explains one way in which stepped up protein intake may restore zest and vigour to some people who complain of chronic fatigue.
Many ‘hormones’ are proteins or are intricately assembled from protein elements.
“Enzymes”, those wonderful spark plugs of every single chemical process we live by are proteins.
Wear and tear of tissues requires protein repair. Children, of course require more protein than adults (babies, three or four times more, relatively) because they are growing and building ” new” tissues. But adults need constantly renewed supplies of protein too. Studies with radioactive tracer substances prove beyond doubt that protein of living tissues are being exchanged and this process never ceases for an instant while life remains. Twice a year there is a complete turn over of proteins in your body for new ones. Your liver exchanges its protein in about 10 days.
Adequate protein helps to keep the water balance of your body at normal levels. Many people aren’t really fat. They are water-logged. Their tissues hold fluids in such abnormal amounts that when a finger is pressed into their flesh, a pit like depression remains for some time. When placed on well-balanced diets the torpidity vanishes and bodies become normally slender as their nutrition improves. The water retention from which these people suffer is called oedema, and this particular type, caused by inadequate diet is called “nutritional oedema” or “hunger oedema”.
Since 70 percent of your weight is represented by water in one from or another, you can see what a difference protein can make to your weight. There are of course, other factors involved in oedema – it isn’t that the protein always does the job single – handedly, but that other factors can’t operate if protein is deficient.
You get your proteins from foods, of course. But – foods vary both in quantity and quality of protein they contain. The differences have to do with little things called amino-acids.
What are proteins made up of
All proteins are built out of various combinations of 23 different kinds of “chemical units”. These units or building blocks are nitrogen containing substances known as amino acids. Billions upon billion different combinations can be made by re-arranging, adding or subtracting, changing the sequence of these 23 structural units.
The proteins you obtain from food are broken down by digestion into the amino acids building blocks that composed them. The chemical precision of your body, selects amino-acid ‘bricks’ and builds them into hundreds of unique proteins upon which life processes are utterly dependent.
Although 23 amino-acids are known, not all of them have to be obtained regularly from food. But eight amino-acids are rated indispensable. We must regularly obtain these eight from food, and they must be available in the body, when they are needed , if we want to stay healthy. Any one of these eight is essential to good health hence these eight are also called essential amino acids. It has been proved that experimental animals sicken and die if deprived of just one of these “essential eight” aminos. A hormone, an enzyme, a protein necessary for some mysterious body process, can’t be made because an essential amino acid is not at hand at the right time.
So just eating a generous ‘quantity’ of protein isn’t enough. ‘Quality’ must be there too for buoyant health.