Food as Medicine: Does it Really Work?

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Foods can make you sick or foods can help heal. The amounts needed for the

maintanence of health is usually small compared to that needed to heal or to

reverse a condition.

 

For healing try and think outside the box some. For example, fresh food juicing

to concentrate nutrients.

 

 

The nutrients needed are in proportion to the extent of the damage. If the

damage is severe or the health condition serious, the amounts needed are usually

very large and more than a person can derive from their foods (which are usually

not very nutritious anyway) so the best way sometimes is to use supplements. In

that way a person can bring huge amounts that are needed to the problem.

 

Frank

 

 

http://www.mercola.com/2004/jan/28/food_medicine.htm

 

 

Food as Medicine: Does it Really Work?

 

 

 

By Dr. Joseph Mercola

with Rachael Droege

 

 

 

The notion that foods play an enormous role in your health is not new thinking

as evidenced by Hippocrates’ statement from nearly 2,500 years ago, “Leave your

drugs in the chemist's pot if you can heal the patient with food.”

Unfortunately, this simple statement and smart way of thinking has yet to become

a mainstay of American culture. The concept fell into obscurity by the 19th

century, and during the first 50 years of the 20th century the discovery of the

essential elements and vitamins, particularly in the context of deficiency

diseases, occurred. This lead to " enrichment " of processed foods to help people

regain the health they lost when they abandoned real whole foods.

 

 

 

It is possible to eat all day long and still starve yourself. Why? Because if

all you eat are junk foods and other foods with little to no nutrition, such as

overly cooked foods, you will not receive the nutrients your body needs to

function properly, let alone heal disease. All that your body has to run on are

the foods you put into it, and it needs the best foods it can get to combat all

of the stress and environmental toxins that are virtually impossible to avoid in

today’s world.

 

 

 

In this way, whole foods certainly can act as “medicine” in that they can

protect and heal your body. Another way to look at it is if you fortify your

body with healthy nutrients from fresh foods, you likely won’t have a need for

medicine. Individual foods each have their own unique set of nutrients that meet

the varying requirements of your body. This is why it’s so important to eat a

wide variety of foods--to ensure that your body gets all of the diverse

nutrients that it needs. Naturally, in order to achieve the most optimal results

you should eat foods within your metabolic typing guidelines.

 

 

 

To get an idea of the healing power of foods, consider fresh vegetables, which

are among the most powerful of foods. They contain many natural antioxidants

including vitamins A, C, E, carotenes, zinc, selenium, bioflavonoids,

tocopherols, lutein and quercetin and many beneficial phytochemicals. These can

help to fight age-related and chronic disease like cancer and heart disease,

boost the immune system, fight osteoporosis, lower your risk of diabetes, and

slow brain aging. They will also help to alkalinize your system, as most of us

are far too acidic.

 

 

 

Eating healthy vegetables everyday, or juicing them, generally has more

comprehensive nutrition than nearly any multi-vitamin supplement. This is

because the combination of substances in a whole food is more synergistically

effective than a specific dietary nutrient that has been isolated and

artificially combined with other nutrients.

 

A free full-text article published in the January 24, 2004 issue of the British

Medical Journal really displays this concept. The article reviews some of the

many benefits of folic acid. Ideally, this nutrient is best obtained through

organic, fresh whole vegetables, but supplement companies (many of these are

drug companies) have rushed to provide cheap chemical look-alikes that do not

work.

 

The form of folate in supplements and in fortified foods is pteroylmonoglutamate

(PGA), a form that does not occur in nature. It is both cheap and stable unlike

most native forms of the vitamin. The article goes on to warn that we have no

idea as to the consequences of using high doses of this cheap synthetic to reap

the benefits of folic acid that researchers have found from natural foods.

 

 

 

However, foods can also negatively impact your body, and anyone who’s ever had

heartburn or indigestion can attest to that. Consider what you are giving your

body if you eat an order of French fries: trans fat, the potent cancer-causing

substance acrylamide, and large amounts of damaging free radicals. Contrary to

the nutrients in vegetables, which your body uses to build itself up, the

substances in French fries will work against your body, and your body will have

to expend energy just to keep the toxic substances in check. Of course, if your

diet is skewed in the way of junk food, sooner or later your body will be unable

to adequately detoxify the harmful substances and disease will occur.

 

 

 

What can you do? The good news is plenty, as you are the one who controls what

goes into your body. Choose foods that have the greatest nutritional value and

that go along with your metabolic type and then try to eat them in a way that

will maximize their nutrients. In most cases, this means raw. At least one-third

of all the food you eat should be raw, as cooking and processing can destroy

essential micronutrients.

 

 

 

 

British Medical Journal January 24, 2004;328:211-214 (Full Text Journal Article)

 

 

 

 

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