http://www.diet-blog.com/archives/2...as_medicine.php
10 Reasons to Choose Food as Medicine
The "Pill for an ill" mentality still has a stronghold in our cultural mindset. But does medicine really get to the true cause of chronic illnesses? A nutritional approach is often a better way and here's why...
Mother knows best
Natural wild foods are generally far more nutritious than many modern foods. These low nutrient density, high glycemic modern foods are leaving us nutritionally bankrupt and so more susceptible to disease as a result. Of course, natural doesn't necessarily mean edible or healthy. But just like any animal, humans have a natural diet and our bodies work best with the best quality human food--fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and animal foods in the right proportions.
Father says so
Hippocrates, the father of medicine said “Let food be your medicine.” Even today, doctors swear the “Hippocratic Oath” but largely ignore his advice. Since Hippocrates, many have realized this truth. One of them was two time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling who coined the term "Orthomolecular Medicine" which means;
"The treatment of disease by the provision of the optimum molecular environment, especially the optimum concentrations of substances normally present in the human body."
Today, there are many systems of health and disease treatments based on the vision and insight of people like Hippocrates and Pauling.
Synergy and complexity
Food is complex and so are you. The two have been working together for millions of years. Science and its main contributor--the drug industry like to identify one element, find out what it does, isolate it and put it in a pill. Nature doesn’t work like that and neither do you.
To keep the status quo
Your internal status quo is maintained by a whole host of delicate interacting mechanisms. It’s biological poetry. The complex metabolic pathways of your body need raw materials... high quality nutrients in sufficient quantities. Your job is to provide those raw materials. If not, expect a breakdown sometime soon.
Sticky plasters don’t work
Pills generally fail to address the original cause of disease. That’s why medicine has a very poor track record of dealing with chronic illness.
You don’t want to go there
Pills can buy you time, but never health.
Your self-healing body
Cut your skin and in a few days it’s healed. Isn’t that amazing when you really stop and think? Your body can do amazing things given the right conditions.
Resilience
Nutrition is like money in your health bank account. Stay in the green and you’ll have resilience to disease. Go into the red and well, lottery time.
Get the benefit of futuristic science today!
Omega-3 fatty acids and phytochemicals are recent discoveries and we’ve benefited greatly from knowing about them. But guess what? They’ve always been in the natural human diet. What else is there to discover in our food? What’s the next big thing? The reductionist, slow and corrupted scientific method will eventually grind out the truth. But you can stay ahead of the game, by living a life in harmony with your genetics. Use the valuable knowledge gained by science such as omega-3 to learn how you can best adapt your ancient genes to the modern world.
Evidence
The scientific journals are literally heaving with evidence of the benefits of nutrition and lifestyle measures and there are countless case studies of folks regaining their health through nutrition. Clinical trials of nutritional regimes for specific diseases though, are few and far between. Trials are incredibly expensive, who would fund them? Where is the money to be made?
Unsurprisingly, most of the cutting edge ideas are coming from independent organizations outside the medical profession where necks don't have to be stuck out quite so far, livelihoods are not on the line and free-thinking is much more acceptable. If governments and science were to really get behind this idea of optimum nutrition as medicine, amazing things could be achieved.
10 Reasons to Choose Food as Medicine
Linear Mode
