Chapter 3 - Protein – The Body’s Building Blocks

Another real problem faced by the vegetarian is how to get an adequate supply of vitamin B12 from nutritional sources. It’s found almost exclusively in meat. If you’re prone to select the vegetarian lifestyle for yourself, please do your due diligence. Study the literature and make sure you’re getting all the amino acids you need in the right combinations on a daily basis and the other food requirements that may be lacking in an all-vegetable eating plan.

Supplement with vitamin B12 (regardless of the source), especially if your energy levels are low. B12 is the energy and stamina vitamin. Shortages of B12 can also make you vulnerable to homocysteine, a substance that’s known to be a major player in the development of atherosclerosis (cardiovascular disease).

Protein is vital to the healing process after we’ve been injured. Whether the injury has been just a superficial trauma to the skin or a deeper injury involving muscle tissue or even our organs, protein is the major player contributing to our body’s ability to make the appropriate repairs.

It’s imperative to make a point here that few people ever consider. The trauma of surgery is no different, as far as your body is concerned, than being torn open by an assailant’s knife, having your body ripped open by a chunk of jagged metal in a car accident, or having an organ torn out of your body by a piece of flying shrapnel from an exploding bomb! There may be differences in the cleanliness aspects of these injuries, how neatly the cuts were made, and the psychological effects that they have on us, but the body’s repair mechanisms still only recognize that it has been profoundly torn open and it must repair itself in the very same way.

Protein is the primary building block for making those repairs since every tissue in the human body is made from proteins. So, after any injury, including surgery, to maximize the healing process, be sure to include adequate amounts of protein in your diet; or to be even more proactive, increase your protein intake to levels beyond what might otherwise be considered merely “adequate.” This is

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