Biology has now found an answer to this interesting question: 120 years.

If you ask yourself now, as I did, how you can find the answer, there is a surprisingly simple answer:

Our DNA can only be replicated a limited number of times before it can no longer serve its purpose. So-called telomeres determine the number of divisions. You can imagine them as the plastic pieces at the ends of a shoelace, protecting the DNA from fraying. With each division, the telomeres become shorter until they finally do not allow any further division.

Then why don’t we all get to live til 120?

Well, apart from murder and accidents, disease often take our lives. In other words, once you have taken care of your physical safety, you have to focus on your health.

In addition to an active life full of exercise and little stress, you have to pay attention to a healthy and rich diet. Remember: diseases always strike when the body can no longer fight.

For your body to be able to protect you optimally from illness and defend you confidently, it needs a whole range of nutrients and building blocks. If these are not readily provided to the body,  it cannot do its job of keeping you alive! And if you finally give it back what it needs, you can achieve enormous improvements in health! In fact, malnutrition is the main cause of many diseases and ailments: Although almost no one suffers from hunger in our society, almost everyone still lacks the crucial minerals, vitamins, and trace elements.

Overall, there are 6 categories of foods:

Your body needs a great amount of energy to function. The most efficient way to get energy is from carbohydrates and fats, which are high in energy and easy to convert. The medium-chain triglycerides, the ketone bodies, which your body produces in the liver, play a special role here. The ketone bodies are like a turbo for your brain cells.

In the western world, we have no problems to eat enough of these foods.

Proteins are the fundamental building blocks of our body. Nothing grows without proteins, which is why especially the fitness community worship proteins. The need for proteins can range from 30g a day to 120g a day, but this is hardly a serious problem for anyone when we are aware of their importance.

We usually get enough.

Fiber is the stuff that the body cannot digest and absorb. Nevertheless, it plays an important role in our diet: It helps our digestive tract to produce hydrogen, which our body can then absorb. Hydrogen is one of the best radical binders of all and protects your body from damage caused by oxidation where none should take place. As a gas, we can inhale it. However, the concentration is not high enough in the atmosphere to meet our needs. Therefore, you can inhale hydrogen through various devices to support the anti-oxidant household. Nevertheless, concerning dietary fiber:

We often get too little.

Vitamins are essential for the functioning of your body. The body can produce some vitamins and some it cannot produce. As a result, you have to make sure that you intake them with your meals. They also have the annoying property of being destroyed by heat. Even if you use the best ingredients, cooking or baking drastically reduces the vitamin content!

Many water-soluble vitamins are also difficult to store, which is why you have to refill them constantly. Thus, you should to get used to eating good, raw fruit or vegetables more often.

You can produce Vitamin D with nothing more than sunlight. Nevertheless, studies show an acute lack of Vitamin D, especially in northern countries with too little sunlight. With less than 30 nmol/l of 25-Hydroxyvitamin D, according to the DGE, the population in these countries are considered to be insufficiently supplied. In other words, over 60 percent of Germans suffer from an undersupply of Vitamin D.

We often get too little.

Minerals are essential for the proper functioning of your body.

With them, the body is able to build enzymes: The catalysts of the body. Without them, no biochemical processes are possible. Vitamins, by comparison, are merely coenzymes, i.e. they support the enzymes in their work. Coenzymes can only be used once, whereas enzymes work in our body for several months. This fact makes the importance of minerals clear; a strongly mineralized body becomes extremely resistant and can tolerate a diet that undersupplied with minerals for a while.

Since the body cannot produce the minerals, you have no choice but to intake them with food. This is a quite difficult goal nowadays, because through industrial agriculture our food often contains hardly any of these essential nutrients. In fact, even if you have access to high quality ingredients, it is often difficult to get all the minerals in sufficient quantities.

The consequences are manifold, from constant fatigue (iron, magnesium) to depression (lithium): A deficiency of a certain mineral has serious consequences.

We often get too little.

One does not really WANT to take these substances, but it is difficult to avoid them nowadays. I have dedicated a separate chapter to the topic of toxins, because they have such a serious effect on our body chemistry.

Drugs and hormones are mainly a problem of industrial animal husbandry. Drugs and hormones have a direct impact on our body chemistry and further unbalance our system, which is already under heavy fire. As a result, I renounce milk (growth hormones), eating as little meat and cheese as possible. In fact, I limit myself to regional breeding with dignified living conditions or hunting meat from the forest.

The animals from industrial animal husbandry are pumped full of growth-promoting nutrition and antibiotics in order to meet the price expectations of the customer. Anyone who buys a kilo of pork for less than $20 must be aware that this is only possible with additives that allow the animal to grow quickly to its target weight, while taking up as little space as possible per animal.

We as a consumer society cast our vote with every Dollar spent.

We get far too many and then definitely the wrong ones.

Even as a child, I had the choice: ready meals or homemade cooking. The choice was simple. Both my mother and grandmother have always been excellent cooks and when my mother had to work in the evenings, I did my best to emulate them.

With fresh ingredients from the garden and the cellar, I set out to become more independent and learn how to prepare delicious dishes myself.

I grew up in Schweinfurt, and there was always a weekly market where you could buy freshly harvested produce from the farmer. When I bit into a tomato there, it actually tasted like tomato. The best part: the produce was even cheaper than in the supermarket!

The difference:

Some tomatoes grow on depleted soil, are picked unripe, and are then transported hundreds of kilometers, only to be on display in the supermarket for days.

The other tomatoes have grown well-fed, are picked the day before, and then transported a few kilometers to the weekly market where they are bought immediately.

Some just look like tomatoes, others actually taste like them.

Unfortunately, not everybody has access to such a weekly market. When I moved to Berlin, the market was one of the things I missed most painfully. However, I didn’t let it get me down. While it is not as good as from your own garden, Denn’s organic market or the Bio Company sells produce that is still miles better than anything you can find at a discount store.

If you lead an active life and actually demand more from your body than just sitting at your desk and on the couch, it is often still not enough to give your body everything it needs.

When I worked in the automotive industry, I always had tense calves and was extremely irritable. When I finally decided to try supplements, I was immediately amazed. With just a little magnesium supplement (precisely magnesium citrate) my problems were blown away.

Since that first experience, I have never let my pride stop me from supplementing my body with what I cannot give it by eating. I have never looked back and regretted it. Why should you? My body and my health have never been better since then!

Tryptophan is a precursor of the happiness hormone serotonin and therefore has a direct influence on the state of mind. The more tryptophan in the body, the easier it is for the body to produce serotonin. In other words, it is actually possible to make it easier for the body to be happy with food alone!

Here are my top 5 foods with high tryptophane levels:

This course is for information purposes only. The information is in no way a substitute for professional advice or treatment by trained and accredited physicians. We urge all users, especially those with health problems, to always consult a doctor when necessary. If you have any questions regarding your health, please contact your trusted doctor. Never start a treatment on your own, do not change it or stop it on your own.