The Ingredients That Make Your Blood Work

There are 2 main components to your blood.

• Cells
  
  
• The fluid that those cells flow in.

The cells in your blood consist primarily of red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. The yellowish fluid that those cells flow in is called plasma. A simplified way of looking at the basic function of your blood is this; your red blood cells provide oxygen to the cells in your body and your plasma provides the food. Let's look at your plasma first.

What's interesting is your plasma is 90% water. That should give you an indication of how important it is to make sure that your body is always well hydrated. Dissolved in your plasma are electrolytes, vitamins, nutrients and other elements such as hormones and specialized proteins.

One of the most important groups of components that are dissolved in your plasma are electrolytes. They include sodium, potassium, chloride, bicarbonate, calcium and magnesium. Make special note of sodium here.

Sodium is an absolutely vital element to your body. So important in fact that we are going to devote several issues of Foundations of Health to sodium and salt.

These dissolved electrolytes are important because they influence muscle contraction and nerve signals along with other functions. They also play an important role in pH balance.

Because these electrolytes can act as buffers (acid neutralizers), they are instrumental in controlling the very narrow range within which your blood's pH can vary. They also can be responsible for maintaining the ideal pH of all your inter cellular fluids (the fluids between your cells) and the pH of the fluids within the cells themselves.

Why is it important for you to be aware of this? Because the actual movement of oxygen and nutrients to your cells and the removal of carbon dioxide and wastes depends on the relative pH of the fluids inside of and outside of your cells. Lots more on pH later.

The other elements that are dissolved in your plasma that actually feed and support your cells are carbohydrates (glucose), vitamins, hormones and cholesterol that are attached to low-density lipoproteins (LDLs) and high density lipoproteins (HDLs). As you can see, your plasma is much more than just a fluid in your bloodstream. On the contrary, it's very, VERY important!

There is another class of components that are commonly found in plasma that, unfortunately, can interfere with or even fully shut down the finely tuned process of feeding your cells. These are bacteria, yeast, mold and fungus. They tend to be found in plasma as a result of dietary and lifestyle choices that work against the way your body functions.

These micro forms feed on glucose, undigested protein and cellular waste that your body has not been able to remove from your bloodstream. The photo to the left shows yeast in the center with larger red blood cells (unhealthy red blood cells) surrounding the yeast.

The problem, and the danger, is as these micro-forms feed and live they excrete their wastes right into your bloodstream and produce acids as a result of the fermentation of glucose and other sugars the microforms are feeding off of in your bloodstream.

In reaction to the acids, your body is forced to use extra buffers to ensure that your blood maintains its very narrow pH range. This results in leaving fewer buffers for the rest of your body to use, which, over the long term can have very serious consequences. The wastes from these microforms also tend to thicken your blood and make it harder for the plasma to deliver its nutrients to your cells and remove the metabolic wastes that your cells produce.

So what is the point of all this? The point is that you want your plasma to be clean, clean, CLEAN! Free of bacteria, yeast, molds and fungus. What's interesting is that people who suffer from diabetes, candida, cancer, AIDS and other diseases all tend to have blood plasma that is filled with these microforms and their wastes. So how do you clean up your plasma? We're going to discuss this in detail in another issue.

Next time we'll look at the cellular portion of your blood, including many details on your red blood cells.

Yours in health,

- Andy

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