Almost everything in excess can become bad. For example, water is essential for life and therefore the general recommendation is to drink plenty of water. However, even water in excess can be harmful. In certain conditions (like serious dehydration), people can even die if they drink too much water!

Another example: selenium is an essential mineral that plays a critical role in metabolism and thyroid function, helping also to protect the body from oxidative stress damage. Lack of selenium can cause a multitude of problems, including even a higher risk of cancer. However, too much selenium can also cause problems, like hair loss, nail brittleness, nausea, diarrhea, skin rashes, fatigue, irritability, and so on. Similarly, many other nutrients can become toxic if the dose is too high. Thus we can understand that a balance is necessary. 

Under normal conditions, it’s practically impossible for a person to get dangerously high doses of selenium from food. Theoretically, a person that would eat a huge quantity of Brazilian nuts every day, for a long period, could get a dangerous dose of it, but normally this would not happen, since a person would lose the appetite for the nuts as soon as the body would start getting too much of it. However, if someone would start taking selenium in a concentrated form, it would not be difficult to get a dangerous dose. 

Similarly, many nutrients that are useful actually become dangerous when consumed in a concentrated or adulterated form. Table sugar, for example, is nothing more than the combination of glucose and fructose, two types of sugars that are naturally found in fruits. Glucose is the main source of fuel for the brain (it’s actually impossible to live without glucose: even if one doesn’t eat any, the body will synthesize glucose from fat or protein) and fructose that is used by the liver to produce fat that can be used in times of scarcity. People have been eating fruits (and thus this combination of glucose and fructose) since the beginning of time and they were healthy. When however people start to eat the same in the form of sugar, which is the isolated, concentrated form, they start having problems. 

In the next topics we will see a few things that should be avoided, and what can we use in their place.

– This post is part of the book “How to have better health to better serve Krsna”. You can read the other topics of the book here.