“Let Food Be Thy Medicine, Medicine Be Thy Food” -Hippocrates
HOLISTIC APPROACH
The great Hippocrates said, “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food,” or so they say. Whether Hippocrates said this or not, it certainly seems simple enough. Hippocrates’ life dates back to somewhere around 460-370 BC, and is often termed the “Father of Medicine.” He brought forth a new idea at the time that suggested health had more to do with the environment and the physiology of the body, than the previous belief in supernatural causes. For example, many people at the time believed that the Gods and Goddesses were afflicting ill health upon people, and Hippocrates introduced a new approach, that is the foundation for today’s medicine. It appears he looked at health from a more holistic approach, treating each individual separately instead of lumping all diseases into one cause and one treatment.
Today’s medicine is mostly concerned with one disease and one remedy. There are more and more doctors implementing a more holistic approach, and the alternative health practitioners available today are also growing in numbers. This suggests people are looking for answers and real cures and lasting solutions rather than taking a doctor prescribed pill for the rest of their life and calling for a follow up in six months.
When you are searching for diet information and ways to live a healthier lifestyle, or you are ill and seeking remedies for the symptoms you are experiencing it’s easy to get very overwhelmed with what diet to consume when everyone has a different opinion. Each diet conflicts with another and for those of us that trust scientists, nutritionists, and medical doctors, it becomes extremely difficult when these people who claim to have authority in this arena, have such opposing views!
BECOME A RESEARCHER YOURSELF
When you don’t know who to trust you can certainly take your health into your own hands and research all kinds of diet information and various healing modalities that exist. Through awakening and transformation, your mind becomes very open to all possibilities. Because you begin losing the attachment to being right or wrong, you can analyze information, and use your own critical thinking and your own powerful intuition to decide what works for you. You become less attached to what you thought was true about food, and now you are open to discovering other means of achieving health in the body.
One thing you can be certain of is there will always be differing opinions in the world of health, after all this is the dual world. We often want someone else, medical doctors, or other health practitioners to have all the answers so we don’t have to do anything, I mean isn’t that what we are paying them for? The reality is, no one can solve everything for us. We must do the work ourselves, and if we have a great support system in the process even better! If we don’t, then you have to become your own best cheerleader and not worry about what other people think you are doing.
THE CHINA STUDY
One particular study that is worth reading and was published in 2005 is “The China Study,” written by Colin Campbell, Ph.D., and his son Thomas Campbell II, MD. The book is a summary of a thirty-year study done in different parts of China, as well as looks at other types of dietary research. The primary purpose of the study was to see why certain populations were suffering from higher rates of cancer and other degenerative diseases, which were primarily in the cities. After surveying different groups and thousands of people in one of the most extensive studies ever produced in nutritional research, they concluded that the lower amount of animal protein consumed equaled the greater the health benefit. Those that ingested plant-based proteins were healthier overall and avoided chronic diseases.
This is quite contrary to what we have all been led to believe. Most of us have been told and believe we need large amounts of protein and it must come from animal products. However, that is not what this lengthy study suggests. In fact, it seems they were turning cancer on and off in the lab with the adjustment of animal versus plant proteins.
This is incredible information and one you may have difficulty accepting as we are constantly inundated with protein mania. Get your protein here, and make sure you eat enough protein, do you want to add protein to your food bowl, and do you want to add protein powder to your smoothie, it goes on and on. If you are a plant eater, the number one question people will ask you is, “Where do you get your protein?” The China Study certainly points to the absurdity of needing overwhelming amounts of protein, and it is proving the opposite. The less animal protein we consume, the better off our health will be.
WHOLISM VERSUS REDUCTIONISM
Another large concept Campbell discusses is Wholism versus Reductionism. He supports the theory of Wholism, which is simply looking at the body as a whole, that each system works synergistically together to create the whole picture. The body utilizes whole foods in a way that cannot be fully understood. Reductionism is focused on each individual part and looking for answers by isolating each nutritional element. For instance, Reductionism focuses on one nutritional component like vitamin C in oranges, extracts that one component, and says that vitamin C is what is helping the body from the orange. In reality, there are many nutritional elements in the orange that work together. The body assimilates all the elements in the orange naturally, takes what it needs, assimilates, and utilizes it in ways that are far beyond our comprehension.
In Campbell’s opinion, when science stays focused on reductionism the individual as a whole is excluded and the potential for real health is missing. It’s also risky to start giving the body isolated nutrients that are no longer working with other nutrients in the orange. By looking at one element at a time, with a disregard for the whole picture, we are not allowing the body to use the food in its natural state and see the true benefits that a whole food plant-based diet has to offer.
If you are interested in altering your diet in any way, this is a great book to start with. It is loaded with so much research and other nutrition studies you won’t be wondering where all the evidence is. The China Study is providing us with the simple tool of eating a whole food plant-based diet to not only keep our bodies in a greater state of health but reverse chronic diseases that affect so many people.
THE BLUE ZONES
Another interesting perspective on diet and lifestyle and their effect on health and longevity comes from the study of the Blue Zones. The Blue Zones are areas around the world that have the largest percentage of centenarians, or people living to be 100 years old. Not only do these regions have a higher percentage of people living for a century, but they are also not suffering from a wide range of chronic and degenerative diseases that seem to be plaguing most of the world. Discovering these zones led Dan Buettner, author of the Blue Zones, and his team of researchers to look deeper into why these particular communities are living significantly longer than the average person, and without the chronic disease rate attached to it.
They discovered five areas in particular Ikaria, Greece, Barbagia region of Sardinia, Italy, Nicoya, Costa Rica, Okinawa, Japan, and Loma Linda, California. Looking more in-depth at their lifestyles Buettner and his team labeled nine common denominators within these different groups of people. The most common being diet, a sense of purpose, movement, and connection. Looking at diet specifically, they are all mostly vegetarians, with only eating meat sparingly. Most of the diet consists of plant food, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and some of the areas consume goat’s milk. Not only do they primarily eat a plant-based diet, but they also do not overeat. They seem to eat more food earlier in the day and very little at night.
Having a large sense of purpose seems to be a quality they share deeply. Knowing why they get up in the morning, having a strong sense of community or a group of loving people around them and spending time with others point to a longer life expectancy.
They also exercise naturally outdoors by walking or gardening. Being in the fresh air, absorbing plenty of sunshine, and moving the body without extreme stress is a regular part of their daily life. Our idea of exercise seems to be killing ourselves until we can’t walk the next day! How many times have you tried to push yourself to reach some new level of fitness that you could barely get out of bed 24 hours later?
Well, the Blue Zones natural approach seems to improve the long-term health and vitality of our life, and is less concerned with how ripped their muscles look, or how hard their bodies are.
There is a lot more information about each particular region and the specific cultural habits they adopt. These are simply a few that most of us can resonate with and change in our own life fairly easily. You can look them up, get the books, browse through a variety of recipes they offer, and see if it works for you. Both the China Study and the Blue Zones, through much research, have come to the same consensus, that plant food seems to free the body from degenerative diseases and extends the life expectancy.
SAME DIET DIFFERENT APPROACH
Another interesting person to read, and this man who lived in the late 1800s, is Arnold Ehret. Ehret spent his life researching health, especially the benefits of fasting to heal the body and developed healing sanctuaries across Europe for people to detoxify. His focus on cleansing and detoxification to heal disease was at the forefront of his work.
Ehret developed a way of eating he named the Mucusless Diet Healing System. In his research and opinion, eating mucus-forming foods caused constipation throughout the entire body. He wasn’t just referring to the colon, he was also referring to the entire system clogging up with toxic residue that over time the body can no longer eliminate. In his viewpoint, it is this residue that causes all major health concerns and the decline of the body into a disease state. It is this toxic matter creating symptoms of disease and the way to eliminate the symptom was to eliminate the poisonous matter.
A Mucusless Diet consists of foods that do not cause mucus in the body, which allows the system to function at its optimal level. Foods that do not cause mucus in the body are a diet consisting of raw and cooked fruits, starchless vegetables, and raw and cooked green leafy vegetables. Within the plant food community, there is often debate about whether we should be eating raw or cooked foods and which ones provide the most nutrition and electricity to our bodies. From Ehret’s perspective, he was more concerned with whether or not the food produced mucus rather than if it was raw or cooked. He saw that keeping the body free from mucus, and eating food easy to digest, would therefore eliminate obstruction and maintain the body’s vitality.
What stands out in Ehret’s work is his recommendation of a transitional diet approach. He believed that every patients ills should be treated on an individual basis, that their entire life’s diet should be discussed, as well as any medications they have ever taken, and then the person should be assessed on their current state of health. Looking at these factors would determine the transitional diet. People who were eating a very heavy mucus-forming diet would slowly introduce mucus-free foods and slowly eliminate the mucus-formers. Ehret knew that detoxing a person too quickly could make the person very ill so he developed the Mucusless Diet to make this process more manageable.
He also believed in fasting as a means of healing but did so very methodically depending on the current state of health that the patient was in. Ehret used intermittent fasting with his patients and witnessed miraculous recoveries over his lifetime. During a fast he was focused on removing the obstructions that would be removed through the kidneys, therefore, the urine should look cloudy and contain sediment. Ehret ultimately saw the human system as one of a frugivore and used his mucus-less diet system to reach that particular diet.
COMMON THREADS
Arnold Ehret had an entirely different understanding of the body than medical science at the time, and today for that matter. In his many books, he dives deeper into the air gas system, refuted the idea of nutrition, presented his views on blood cells, and other very contrasting ideas than we know today. It is fascinating to look at and look at the physiology of the body from a completely different angle. He has a slightly different approach which primarily focused on detoxification, than The China Study and the Blue Zones, yet they all have very similar findings. A plant food diet keeps the body functioning more smoothly, allows the body to eliminate properly, and possibly extends the average life expectancy.
If there is one thing that these investigations and case studies provide us, is the knowledge that has been around since the age of Hippocrates. “Let food be thy medicine, medicine be thy food,” is a very simple concept that has clearly stood the test of time. Even in our world today, when we are constantly bombarded with nutritional theory after nutritional theory, with the overabundance of processed fast food, with the contradictory scientific information floating around to confuse us, there’s one thing that remains constant, nature.
Nature is still available. We don’t have to look at boxes, bags, bars, and premade packaged meals if we don’t want to. The natural world provides what we need to nourish ourselves, as well as to heal. We have the choice of how we want to handle our health, any health concerns we may be dealing with, and the lifestyle we choose to live. The body is capable of healing. It works for us without us even knowing about it. Its innate intelligence is unmatched and when given what it was designed to process it is capable of regenerating and bringing us back to a state of health and vitality.