Just like self-care and mindfulness are buzzwords you hear in the health and wellness arena, so is cellular health. Anytime there’s a mention of cells, it’s easy to feel as overwhelmed as you might have been in high school biology.
Don’t worry. The team at L’Evate You understands that cellular health is vital to each of our wellness journeys. We also know that information should be accessible to everyone, not just healthcare providers. That’s why we’re breaking down the subject of cellular health into digestible pieces that are easy to understand.
We’ll talk about what cellular health is, why it’s important, and give you some information about how you can support your cellular health on a daily basis.
What Is Cellular Health?
Our bodies are made up of cells. Cells band together to make tissues. Tissues join together to make organs. These organs make up every system in our body that has a specific function. Those functions keep us alive and healthy.
The measure of how healthy we are starts inside our cells. When we have healthy cells, we have healthy bodies. When we have tired, damaged, or dying cells, that can translate into diseases and dysfunction.
How Does Cellular Health Contribute to Overall Wellness?
Each cell in your body has a specific job. When those jobs are carried out properly and expeditiously, you enjoy a balanced (or homeostatic) level of wellness. Healthy cells support a healthy immune system, cardiovascular function, and proper blood sugar and blood glucose regulation, for example.
For instance, the cells in your retina are highly specialized. These cells can take light collected from the cornea and transform it into electrical signals sent to the brain. The brain then tells us what we are seeing. If these cells are damaged, our vision may become damaged.
When our cells are functioning properly, we can continue functioning properly. It makes sense that we should pay attention to our cells and do what we can to help keep them in good health so that we can enjoy optimal overall health as we age.
What Is Mitochondrial Health?
The health of our cells depends a lot on the health of their mitochondria. The mitochondrion is the powerhouse of the cell. These tiny organelles are responsible for producing cellular energy. Without cellular energy, your cells can’t carry out their cell functions properly.
Each cell in the human body can contain between 1,000-2,500 mitochondria. These organelles create ATP from the foods we eat. ATP (also known as adenosine triphosphate) is the molecule our cells use for energy.
How Does Mitochondrial Health Impact Cellular Health?
Our cells depend on their mitochondria to produce ATP. The other organelles within a cell need this to carry out cellular function. If our mitochondria can’t properly produce ATP, a domino-like collapse affects our entire bodies.
Cellular processes begin to slow down, tissues in the body begin to break down, organs lose their function, and systems fail. The course is set for diseases and ailments because of what’s happening on a cellular level.
What Factors Impact Cellular Health?
Many factors affect your own cellular health. Some of them you can change, and some of them are genetic. The impact of each one plays a role in your overall well-being.
Genetics
The genetic makeup of your cells is important because most of the cells in your body are capable of reproduction. The genetic code of one cell is copied into the DNA of new cells.
If that DNA is damaged, the code that gets copied to the new cell will also be damaged, creating a new cell that already lacks proper function.
One way this happens is through oxidative stress brought on by free radicals. Free radicals are produced when we are exposed to certain external stressors like UV rays from the sun, pollution, and cigarette smoke. These molecules damage the DNA in our healthy cells, causing a repetitive pattern of damage that carries into new cells.
To fight off oxidative stress, we need antioxidants. These work to support our overall cell health during exposure to free radicals.
Age
Part of aging involves the aging of our cells. As we get older, our cells get older, and the mitochondria in our cells begin to slow down their production. When our mitochondria become sluggish, we become sluggish. We may notice it as feeling tired, foggy-headed, or just losing our edge.
We usually chalk this up to getting older, but healthy aging should involve feeling good and energized, even as we have additional birthdays.
Nutrition
Our diets can profoundly impact our cellular health. Cells require certain essential vitamins, nutrients, and amino acids to survive. If a compound is essential, it means our bodies need it, but we can’t make it. That means it has to come from our diets.
If we aren’t eating a healthy, nutrient-dense diet, we’re missing one of the foundational building blocks of our cellular health.
How Can You Support Your Cellular Health?
Cellular health sounds like deep science, but thankfully there are easy ways to support it. Taking care of your cellular health can help reduce your risk of disease and can support health markers like cholesterol and blood pressure.
You can support cellular health with these four small changes.
Maintain a Balanced Diet
No one eats a perfectly balanced diet, but the American diet, in particular, can often be void of essential nutrients and filled with non-essential, non-healthful ingredients like sugars and trans-fats.
Try approaching your food choices by whether or not they’ll support your long-term health goals. If they will, eat up! If not, look for a different option. It’s not so much about what you can or can’t eat, but what will support a healthier aging process.
To fill in nutrition gaps, try adding a greens powder. L’Evate You Vitality Daily Greens is a delicious way to optimize your nutrition on the fly. Unlike some supplements, our greens powder contains whole foods (30 superfoods and nine greens) along with probiotics and prebiotics to support every facet of your well-being.
Our greens powder also includes our proprietary M-Charge Complex. These ingredients are research-backed and proven to help boost your mitochondrial function, supercharging your cells so they can return to full function.
Get Your Antioxidants
One of nature’s most important anti-aging remedies is the powerful antioxidant. Found as vitamins, they are abundant in fruit and vegetables and extremely important for enhancing your cellular health.
L’Evate You Vitality Daily Greens contain an antioxidant blend to keep your cells protected and reduce the risk of oxidative stress to your cells. Our blend of antioxidants also helps you recover faster after exercise and supports healthy mood regulation and brain function.
Get Enough Sleep
Everyone is busy, but no one should be too busy to sleep. It is impossible to age healthfully or fully thrive without enough sleep. Most adults will need somewhere between seven and nine hours of sleep per night.
Your cells do the majority of their reparative and restorative work while your body is at rest. If you aren’t getting the sleep necessary for cellular repair, it can lead to cellular dysfunction.
Stay Hydrated
Cells are fluid and surrounded by a flexible cellular membrane. Because our cells are malleable, they need proper hydration to ensure their structure. Dehydrated cells occur when we aren’t taking in enough water. When we are dehydrated, the body begins to draw water from the inside of the cells, leaving them misshapen and decreasing their ability to function properly.
That doesn’t mean you need to drink a gallon of water a day — a good rule of thumb is to drink enough water to keep your urine clear. That’s a good sign you’re properly hydrated, and your cells are structurally supported.
The Bottom Line
The foundation of our health is in our cells. We need healthy cells to be healthy people. When our cells lose their function, we experience sickness and disease. Protecting our cells involves taking care of our bodies with a healthy diet, getting enough sleep, and staying hydrated.
Looking for a cellular health hack? L’Evate You Vitality Daily Greens is the solution. Packed with vitamins, nutrients, pro and prebiotics, and our M-Charge mitochondrial-boosting complex, you can fill in dietary gaps and improve your health with just one scoop per day.
Couple that with the benefits of antioxidant protection and a special mushroom blend to help support healthy cholesterol and sodium levels, and you can easily support your cellular health.
Cellular health is more than science; it’s the key to healthy aging and living a longer life.
Sources:
The Role of mitochondrial function and cellular bioenergetics in aging and disease | NCBI.gov
Oxidative Stress: Harms and Benefits for Human Health | PMC
Mitochondrial Aging and Age-Related Dysfunction of Mitochondria | PMC