Communication between nutrients affects nutrient absorption & bull; hello healthy

There is no perfect food. The point of this statement is that no food or drink contains all of the nutrients that meet your needs in one meal. Therefore, to get macro and micro nutrients, it is better to eat a variety of foods every day. In the body, all the food you eat will be digested at the same time and the nutrients contained in it will be absorbed. When the digestion process occurs, the nutrients will interact and communicate with each other.

What are the interactions that occur with other nutrients in the body?

The interactions that occur between nutrients affect the amount of absorption in the body. The rate at which a nutrient is absorbed in the body is called bioavailability. In conducting interactions, each nutrient has its respective roles to influence the absorption of other nutrients. The role that each nutrient has is as an inhibitor and enhancer. Both of these roles will affect the amount of absorption and determine the levels of nutrients that can be absorbed by the body. Then what is the meaning of each of these roles?

Enhancers, nutrients that increase absorption

All nutrients can be both enhancers and inhibitors as well as for other nutrients. Nutrients that become enhancers are nutrients that can help the absorption of other nutrients in the body. When nutrients meet with enhancers, these nutrients can be maximally absorbed by the body so that the amount in the body will increase and increase rapidly. In addition, enhancers can also keep a nutrient from being disturbed by inhibitors that can reduce its absorption rate in the body.

For example, if you frequently eat foods with animal protein sources, such as red meat, chicken, and fish and then you are still deficient in iron in your blood, then you need to eat foods that contain high sources of vitamin C. Iron in red meat, chicken, or fish has a good "relationship" with vitamin C. Vitamin C is an iron enhancer that can increase the absorption of iron in the body. This means that you can get more iron in your body with just a glass of orange juice and iron-rich foods such as beef and green leafy vegetables. Another example, fat also acts as an enhancer or substance that increases the absorption of vitamin A. Because of the fat-soluble nature of vitamin A, the presence of fat in the body makes it easier to digest and absorb vitamin A

Inhibitors, nutrients that inhibit nutrient absorption

Unlike enhancers that can increase the absorption of a nutrient, inhibitors actually inhibit the absorption of a nutrient. Inhibitors inhibit the absorption process in various ways, namely by:

Binds these nutrients so that the body does not recognize the nutrients and then the intestines do not absorb them because they think these substances are unknown foreign substances.
Changing the form of a nutrient when it is in the body, so that it cannot be digested and absorbed by the intestines.
Competes to be equally absorbed by the body, for example in plant-based food sources that contain sodium, which is a competitor to iron, calcium and zinc. This can harm the body because it can make the body deficient in minerals. To prevent this, you can reduce the concentration of concentrations in vegetables by fermenting them or soaking them in water.

Another example of an inhibitor is the interaction of calcium with non-heme iron. Non-heme iron is iron that is obtained from plant-based food sources, such as spinach. Calcium and non-heme iron are inhibitors of both. When these two minerals are in the body and ready to be absorbed, they bind to each other to the transporters on the surface of the intestinal cells. However, when iron wants to enter the cells and be absorbed by the cells, calcium actually blocks the entrance of iron to the cells. Therefore, if you take iron supplements, do not consume milk at the same time, to avoid this disorder.

Both of these roles, inhibitors and enhancers can cause bad and good effects for the body, because they will disturb the balance of nutrients in the body. If a nutrient is excessive in the body then it meets enhancers and makes the amount of these nutrients increase in the body and this is not good for health. Vice versa, when the body is deficient in a certain nutrient and then interacts with other nutrients that are inhibitors, it can aggravate the state of deficiency that had previously occurred.