The Better Baby Book by Lana Asprey, David Asprey Read Free Book Online

protein they do eat has been made very difficult for the body to use because it's gone through a chemical process called denaturation . Denaturation is what happens when proteins are exposed to high heat or pressure that permanently alters their structure. Denatured protein is at best hard for the body to use, and at worst it can be harmful to mother and baby. We identify which foods contain healthy protein and which foods contain harmful protein in chapters 4 and 5. We also explain how the way you cook protein makes a huge difference in how healthy it is.
    Minerals
    A fertile woman's body is about 4 percent minerals, with skeletal calcium, phosphorus, and potassium composing most of it, followed by magnesium, chlorine, iodine, iron, sodium, and sulfur. The body also contains trace amounts of chromium, cobalt, copper, manganese, molybdenum, selenium, vanadium, zinc, and others. These minerals perform many functions in the body and are building blocks of important enzymes and hormones.
    They're required for life, and they must be kept in careful balance. Iodine composes a minuscule percentage of the body, but without it, thyroid function declines, and brain function follows. Another example of maintaining balance is the ratio of calcium to magnesium. We've all been led to believe that calcium stops osteoporosis, but the truth is that calcium by itself, without magnesium, can cause problems, including osteoporosis. Few people know that prenatal vitamins are woefully inadequate in establishing and maintaining the mineral levels that mother and baby really need. We show you how to get the minerals you need in chapter 7.
    Salt
    Even though only 0.15 percent of the body is salt (sodium chloride), we cannot live without it. Our bodies have incredibly sensitive mechanisms in place to regulate our salt levels, because the ratio of sodium to potassium has to be perfect at all times or, simply put, life isn't possible. Our bodies can go to great lengths to keep sodium and potassium balanced, but there's a lot we can do to make the job easier.
    It's commonly believed that eating salt leads to high blood pressure, but the science shows that only a small percentage of people with high blood pressure react strongly to salt. Michael Alderman, a past president of the American Society of Hypertension, conducted a well-controlled, four-year study of three thousand people and found that study participants who ate the least salt had the most heart attacks and cardiac complications. He concluded, “The more salt you eat, the less likely you are to die,” because low-salt study subjects were less healthy and died more often than high-salt subjects. Low-sodium diets raise LDL (bad) cholesterol, reduce sex drive, and raise insulin resistance (a precursor to diabetes), all of which tilt the balance away from having the healthiest baby you can.
    For healthy people, salt alone does not cause high blood pressure. High blood pressure is just as easily caused by too little calcium, magnesium, or potassium as by excess sodium. This is why reducing salt intake hasn't helped with high blood pressure, as people thought it would. It's much easier—and healthier—to deal with hypertension by increasing magnesium and potassium intake instead of reducing salt intake.
    Also, sodium and salt are not the same thing. What we usually call table salt is now a mix of chemically extracted pure sodium and toxic aluminum anticaking agents. Too much sodium makes you thirsty because your body needs water to deal with the excess. Other common symptoms of excess pure sodium are cellulite, rheumatism, arthritis, gout, kidney stones, and gallstones.
    High-quality sea salts, on the other hand, naturally contain a blend of minerals that provide the sodium the body needs while maintaining mineral balance. Some table salts are iodized, but iodizing doesn't even come close to getting the mineral balance right. The best salt we've found is pink salt mined in Utah or the Himalayas.