“GIGO”
or Garbage In Garbage Out,
There is a computer term, GIGO, which stands for “Garbage in Garbage Out”. It is an appropriate term for nutrition and your body.
Your diet is the source of raw materials needed to keep your cartilage and ligaments strong. Trace nutrients like manganese, silicon, niacin, magnesium and other nutrients are important for good joint health. Adequate protein is also needed.
A diet that is high in refined sugar, refined carbohydrate, and hydrogenated oils will be deficient in these and other nutrients. A highly refined or “junk food” diet not only is deficient in these nutrients, eating in this manner will actually deplete you nutritional reserves. Sulfur, for example, has two vital functions in the body. It is a very important nutrient for the manufacture of cartilage and it is necessary for detoxification. Your liver needs sulfur to eliminate toxins from the body. When you eat a diet that is full of chemicals, preservatives, hydrogenated oils and sugar, your liver works very hard and uses your body’s sulfur reserves. The junk food diet will not provide enough sulfur. It will also have a negative effect on digestion, making the body less efficient at absorbing nutrients like sulfur. The result s that sulfur is not available for he health of the cartilage and the joints—making the body more prone to injury.
This sort of dynamic exists for many nutrients. A poor diet denies many of the nutrients important for joint health. To compound this problem, joint health is not a very high priority, so the body will use the nutrients for heart, brain, kidney and liver function, preferentially over joint function. It may even steal nutrients from the joints.
Nutrition helps structure and performance in other ways as well. Antioxidants in the diet will help to protect cells. Omega-3 fatty acids help reduce inflammation and will improve muscle endurance.