Food as Medicine

Food and Nutrients

Health and Diet Issues

Nutrition Therapy

Food as Medicine

That food is medicine is known from as far back as the origin of medicine.

Hippocrates, the father of medicine, believed that illness stemmed from inadequate nutrition and bad eating habits. And, that if people were to learn good eating habits then optimum health would be restored.

There are many reasons why we should pay attention to what we eat. Processed and refined foods that we regularly consume may be convenient and tasty, but they compromise our health.

Especially when we are sick, we need to pay attention to what we eat. We can then give our bodies the nutrients it needs to heal. And if you want to be even more deliberate in improving health, perhaps to address a chronic disease or condition, a Functional Medicine approach can yield great benefits.

The role of food is multi-dimensional -

• Maintains health
• Can prevent disease
• Allows body to function
• Gives cells information and the material they need to function properly

 

How Does Food Impact Health?

The food we eat gives our bodies the "information" and ‘materials’ they need to function properly. If our body does not get the right information, our metabolic processes suffer and our health declines.

If we have too much food, or food that gives our bodies the wrong instructions, we can become overweight or undernourished. We can put ourselves at risk of development of diseases and conditions, such as arthritis, diabetes, and heart disease.

Mindfulness in Eating

Besides breathing and sleeping, eating is life's most vital activity. We cannot sustain ourselves without eating.  But we seem to have forgotten this. We spend very few hours (or even minutes) gathering, preparing, and eating food.

As Jon Kabat Zinn, psychologist and author of multiple books on mindfulness, says, "For the most part, we eat with great automaticity and little insight into its critical importance for us in sustaining life and also in sustaining health."

Food gives us energy, and allows us to think, move, and prosper. But we are no longer attentive to the impact of food on our functioning. Our food preferences and choices are now influenced more by food companies, ad campaigns, and the notion that "faster is better." We don't always or perhaps even often, pick foods based on what our bodies need for optimal wellness.

Our busy lives and stress prevent us from taking the time to really nourish the body and the soul.

We eat for convenience, not health.

What are the key principles of food and health?

1. Nutrition represents the combined activities of countless food substances. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
2. Solely taking vitamin supplements is not the way to good health.
3. There are virtually no nutrients in animal-based foods that are not better provided by plants
4. Genes do not determine diseases on their own. Genes function only by being activated or expressed, and nutrition plays a critical role in determining which genes, good and bad, are expressed.
5. Nutrition can substantially control the adverse effects of noxious chemicals.
6. The same nutrition that prevents disease in its early stages, before diagnosis can also halt or reverse disease in later stages, after diagnosis.
7. Nutrition that is truly beneficial for one chronic disease supports health across the board.
8. Good nutrition creates health in all areas of our existence. All parts are interconnected.

As principle number 7 states, nutrition that is truly beneficial for one chronic disease supports health across the board. There is a remarkable convergence in recommendations for diet and health. Eating as a defense against one disease process may well influence another. For example, eating in a way to support bone health will likely decrease inflammation and keep the brain healthy.

In short, what we eat is central to our health. The nutrition that food provides our body is paramount in defining the state of our wellbeing.  Consider that in the light of Webster's definition of medicine: "The science and art dealing with the maintenance of health and the prevention, alleviation, or cure of disease".

With this and the foregoing discussion, the premise ‘Food acts as medicine to maintain health and prevent and treat disease’ established, we delve deeper into the role of food and nutrition.