The Destiny of the Body

Chapter VII

Why Material Alimentation?

We do, however unconsciously, draw constantly upon the universal energy, the force in Matter to replenish our material existence and the mental, vital and other potencies in the body: we do it directly in the invisible processes of interchange constantly kept up by Nature and by special means devised by her; breathing is one of these, sleep also and repose. But as her basic means for maintaining and renewing the gross physical body and its workings and inner potencies, Nature has selected the taking in of outside matter in the shape of food, its digestion, assimilation of what is assimilable and elimination of what cannot or ought not to be assimilated.

(Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, pp. 52-53)

Life is the same in insect, ape and man.

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book II, Canto V, p. 164)

All that is Breath has its life in food.

(Aitareya Upanishad, 1-3.10)

To all outward appearances a normal adult body seems to retain its form and figure, its weight and structure, unchanged over a long stretch of time. If that be so, is this not rather strange that the body should still be under the obligation of regularly gathering material aliments from outside? What is the rationale of this ineluctable necessity?

To understand it fully we must first know what characterises a living body, what keeps it a viable concern and in default of what the organism dies. Incidentally this study will offer us some significant clues as regards the conditions that have to be satisfied in the purely physical plane before a successful resolution of the problem of material food-intake can be at all feasible.

Contrary to all deceptive appearances, a living body is not at all a static or finished product; it is rather in a state of dynamic flux, undergoing continual interchange of material with its environment. For some reason or other, whenever this exchange

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process is rudely disturbed and finally ceases, the organism is said to have succumbed to death.

Even inside the body itself, there is no sign of any static fulfilment; there is instead a fantastic play of biochemical activities building up a structure of dynamic equilibrium. Modern physiological analysis has revealed the "picture of bewildering complexity in which an immense number of chemical and physical processes go on simultaneously, crossing, recrossing and modifying each other within the limits of each cell."¹ For the viability of the living organism, chemical compounds of extraordinary diversity are being built up and disrupted all the time at an unbelievable speed so much" so that at any given instant, apart from the few relatively stable chemical bodies, the living tissues contain myriads of smaller chemical "intermediates, the partly completed structures which will eventually enter into the larger aggregates, or the messengers which go to and fro, carrying energy or otherwise facilitating the working of the machinery of the cells."²

Now the living body maintains its uninterrupted continuity through an elaborate network of extremely complex biochemical processes simultaneously going on inside it. Some of these reactions have for their function the building up of complex substances of the body tissues out of relatively simpler components, while some others are engaged in the reverse operation, the degradation and breaking-down of more complex substances into simpler ones. The constructive and synthetic processes are grouped together under the term 'anabolism', while 'catabolism' is used to categorise the disruptive, analytic and running-down processes; metabolism is the generic term for both the sets of processes.³

The metabolic machinery by which all these vital chemical changes are brought about in the living body essentially consists of biocatalysts otherwise called enzymes. These ubiquitous enzymes found in their thousands in every part of every kind of living organism are composed largely or exclusively of protein, produced by the cells, and are astonishignly specific so that each particular enzyme controls and mediates one single distinct chemical process.

These enzymes catalyzing a wide variety of chemical reactions

¹Encyclopaedia Britannica (1956), Vol. 3, p. 605.

²J. A. V. Butler, Inside the Living Cell (1962), p. 287.

³ From Gk. anabole, ascent; catabole, descent; metabole, change.

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in the body such as synthetic, degradative, hydrolytic, oxidative or condensation reactions, so essential for the maintenance of bodily life because of their responsibility for virtually all metabolic processes in the body, have been appropriately termed by Prof. Arthur W. Galston the direct superintendents of the cell's chemical machinery. "All cells are what they are by virtue of their chemistry; their chemistry is determined by their enzymes."¹

And man's body forms no exception to this general rule. What is all the more striking is the unexpected fact that Nature has provided all organisms with almost similar sets of enzymes. Thus, even the simplest forms of life which have survived to this day have practically all the types of enzymes that we encounter in the bodies of higher animals that are relatively recent products of organic evolution. In the words of Prof, J.A.V. Butler, "if life has evolved from simple unicellular organisms to complex ones, there does not seem to have been any great improvement in the enzymes. There has merely been an increase in specialization and in the possibilities of cooperation and of division of labour between cells."²

Now, many of these vital enzymes owe their effectivity to the presence of smaller molecules (called coenzymes) attached to the mainly protein part (termed apoenzyme). These enzymes and coenzymes, as everything else in a living body, are not immune from the 'dynamic status' already referred to. And this fact makes us comprehend the first reason why an organism should seek to get from outside a continual supply of proteins and of vital minerals. Let us investigate for other factors necessitating the intake of material aliments.

At the outset, let us bear in mind a few salient points:

(i)Energy is neither created out of nothing nor destroyed out of all existence: it only undergoes transformation from one form to another. This is the Law of Conservation of Energy.

(ii)A chemical change within a living organism and the same reaction outside of it in the inanimate milieu are basically the same and governed by identical laws of change.

(iii)All chemical reactions involve transfers of energy. Some of them are exergonic, that is to say, they are accompanied by the

¹ Arthur W. Galston, The Life of the Green Plant (1963), p. 14.

² J. A. V. Butler, op. cit., p. 27.

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release of energy; while some others are endergonic, necessitating an induction of energy from outside.

(iv)A living body behaves exactly like all other chemical or mechanical systems in so far as energy transformations are concerned. It is not a creator of energy but just its transferer from forms to other forms. Very careful measurements have shown that the total energy produced in and by the body is exactly equal to the amount supplied.

(v)The structure of living matter, as we have noted before, is all the time undergoing a process of continual formation and degradation. The chemical reactions involved in these metabolic processes must thus demand a transfer and transformation of energy. Now, the synthesizing reactions of the anabolic or constructive processes that are solely responsible for the maintenance of body tissues by replacement of the continual loss incurred as a result of ineluctable wear and tear in course of living, are altogether endergonic in character. Far from releasing any energy, they themselves require a certain amount of energy, the so-called energy of activation. Where is then the source of supply for this additional energy so vitally needed by the body to drive the biochemical reactions that synthesize the various structures of the organism?

But, as we shall presently see, energy is needed for other purposes too.

(vi)Energy manifestation in living bodies assumes different forms depending on the species concerned. Apart from the production of heat and the execution of a certain amount of work, — common attributes of all life, — certain organisms, both vegetal and animal, act as spontaneous sources of light, while some others like the numb-fish (also called Electric Ray or Torpedo) produce electricity of considerable strength. Now, heat, light, mechanical work and electricity are nothing but particular modalities of energy, and hence the respective organisms require a source of supply for the necessary energy transformations.

(vii)In the case of an adult homothermic organism like man, in the state of 'weight equilibrium', the energy expenditure is principally made up of two elements: work due to muscular movements voluntary or involuntary and production of heat to maintain the body at a constant temperature in spite of all fluctuations in the environment.

As a matter of fact, in every movement of the body, walking

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or running, rising from a seat or sitting up on the bed, climbing a staircase or executing a sustained piece of work, there is invariably an expenditure of energy due to muscular contraction. So a provision of energy must be made if the bodily life has at all to be dynamic.

Also, the ability to maintain a constant body temperature through a complex physiological process of thermo-regulation gives to man and other homothermic organisms an independence of activity and a relative mastery over their surroundings. But the animal body is always losing heat in the form of radiation, conduction and evaporation on the lungs-surface and on the exterior surface of the skin. So here too there must be a continual supply of energy for the body to function effectively.

But even when all voluntary muscular activity and other energy-consuming functions are totally suspended, the body requires still a certain amount of energy for the sheer maintenance of its status quo and of the vegetative life-processes. Let us see what this irreducible minimum of energy-need is due to.

Basal metabolism: Even when the subject is lying comfortably at rest, many physiological processes continue in the body requiring an inescapable expenditure of energy. Thus some organs like the cardiac and respiratory muscles are continuously at work; even the so-called resting organs — the resting muscles, for example — continue to have a certain tonus, thus necessitating the absorption of nutrients and oxygen; the glandular secretion continues unabated and it is the same with the central nervous activity at least in so far as it is concerned with the regulation of different vegetative functions. Above all, the different cells constituting the tissue are themselves living bodies and hence continually expend energy and if this cellular metabolism is stopped, death ensues in no time.

Thus energy must be provided to the body to sustain respiration, heart action, circulation, muscle tonus, gastro-intestinal activity, glandular secretions and such other functions absolutely essential to the maintenance of life.

Energy-need: The foregoing analysis reveals that the different forms of activity displayed by living organisms are in the last analysis a transformation of energy. But the body itself is no creator of energy; so, in order to replace the energy utilized, a

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regular provision of new external sources of energy must be provided to the living body. If these sources are cut off, the 'vital' machinery grinds to a halt and an irreversible process of death intervenes.

Now two sources of energy are theoretically available to any organism:¹

(i)the chemical energy potentially stored in organic compounds present in the environment; and

(ii)the energy of radiation impinging upon the surface of the organism.

Most plants use the, energy of sunlight but, due to some fortuitous circumstances which we shall presently investigate, all animals except for a few micro-organisms have totally lost the capacity of tapping directly the energy of radiation. They have to obtain their required energy solely from the oxidation of organic compounds by molecular oxygen. Energy in the form of various foodstuffs must thus be supplied to the animal body and embodied life without material aliments becomes an altogether impossible proposition.

Material need: Apart from fulfilling the energy-need of the body, various foodstuffs have to play another essential role, the rôle plastique as it is termed in French: it is to supply the building materials for tissue repair and the construction of new tissues and their constituents.

As a matter of fact, because of the process of constant synthesis and breakdown of body substances, an adult human body for example loses ineluctably a certain quantity of vital matter every day. It has been estimated that, on the average, we lose daily from our bodies 2500 grams of water, 20 grams of mineral salts, 280 grams of carbon in the form of exhaled carbon dioxide and 16 grams of nitrogen in the form of urea and uric acid.

Also, experiments conducted with radioactive isotopes by R. Schoenheimer and D. Rittenberg have demonstrated that most of our body constituents such as proteins and fats that were previously considered to be stable in the sense that they were thought to have been incorporated in the body substance to remain there undisturbed for an indefinite length of time, are in reality in a state of flux and in dynamic equilibrium between ingested substances

¹ Encyclopaedia Britannica (1956), Vol. 3, p. 608.

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gathered from outside as food elements and similar ones already incorporated in the body.¹

In order to allow for this dynamic state of body constituents, also for the replacement of body matter that flows out daily through the kidneys, the lungs and the skin surfaces, a living body must be provided with a continual supply of necessary matter in the shape of material aliments.

These then are the two fundamental factors, the energy need of the living body and its necessity for building materials, that have made life absolutely dependent upon food from outside. But a question may be raised whether any and every available material may satisfy this double criterion and thus be utilised as food by the organism. The answer is no; let us see why.

¹ Encyclopaedia Britannica (1956), Vol. 3, p. 652.

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